Castled Prologue: Duke Society Series Read online

  I didn't answer. It had been my plan to keep our moms as far apart as possible. Different planets would have been ideal. The length of the campus was as much as I could manage. I had a very good reason for this—Mom knew me too well. She'd see how I really felt about Gray. That was the last thing I needed. As long as Mom saw that I was happy and had buddies, she'd be happy and in the dark that I was tortured over a girl.

  "Love to, Gray, but no time. Mom and I have a busy schedule. I'm showing Mom some of my classrooms right now. Then I promised to take her to the craft fair. We need to get there with plenty of time to shop. It closes at three." Did I just kind of say I was eager to go shopping? At a craft fair? Mom's Weekend was killing me.

  I had every moment of Mom's visit scheduled to the minute. After the craft fair, where I'd play packhorse and carry Mom's bags, we'd play a round of beer pong back at my place and grab dinner at a popular Mexican place I'd made reservations at months ago. Tonight was the big Mom's Weekend concert. I'd scheduled us so tightly that there was no time for Mom to meet and get chatty with Gray's mom. I'd told Gray about my tight schedule. And yet she'd called. I knew what she was up to.

  "Noah?" Gray said, challenging me to either change my mind or insult her.

  "Yeah?"

  Mom had been looking around the classroom we were in. She came up beside me. "Who is it, Noah?"

  I put my hand over the phone's mic. "No one. One of my study partners."

  "Noah, is that your mom? Are you lying to her?" Gray laughed and yelled into the phone. "Noah's mom, this is Grace. We're good friends. I want to meet you and for you to meet my mom. Come to lunch with us. We're at the SUB saving a table."

  Mom raised an eyebrow and gave me that piercing look of hers. "Noah?" she whispered.

  I shrugged. "Do you want to? We won't get as long at the craft fair."

  "Since when do you love craft fairs so much?" Mom whispered. "Let's do lunch with your friend."

  Damn, she was clearly intrigued and suspicious.

  "I won't take no for an answer," Gray said.

  "All right. We'll meet you there in a few." Ganged up on by the women, I was resigned to my fate.

  "Wear your matching sweatshirts," Gray said to be annoying.

  She knew I hated the matching sweatshirts Mom had bought us. Girls loved that shit. Only guys who were coerced wore clothes that matched their moms.

  "Oh, we are," I said, side-eying mom.

  * * *

  The student union building food court was packed. Every restaurant and fast food place in town would be crowded, too. It wasn't like we had a better option. I scanned the crowd for Gray. She spotted us, stood, and waved. She motioned to the table. They'd already gone through the cafeteria-style line and gotten their food. She pointed to the line, indicating we should get our food first, too.

  I waved back and led Mom to the line. Fortunately, it moved quickly. With trays filled with food in hand, I led Mom through the crowd to Gray. Before I could introduce Gray to Mom, Mom stared at Gray's mom. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open. "Linda, is that really you? After all these years?"

  Gray's mom popped to her feet. "Carol?"

  Mom set her tray on the table.

  Before Gray or I knew what was happening, our moms were hugging, laughing, and talking a mile a minute over each other. "I can't believe it! It's been years!" "What are the odds?" "You still look fabulous!" "What have you been doing all these years? We have to catch up."

  Gray and I stood mute, watching them.

  Linda finally turned to me. "And this must be little Noah all grown up. I'd recognize those silvery blue eyes anywhere. Marston eyes, you used to say."

  Little Noah? What the hell? I was six foot two now. How far back did these two go?

  Mom gave me a one-armed hug I awkwardly accepted. It was bad enough we were dressed in matching sweatshirts. Yeah, Gray and her mom were, too. But they looked hot and stylish, not geeky. Gray's mom was an attractive, older, well-maintained version of Gray who looked more like her older sister than her mom.

  "Yes, this is Noah." Mom beamed. "And you must be Grace." Mom mercifully let go of me and hugged Gray. "You've grown up to be a beauty, like I knew you would. You were such a pretty little blonde girl." Mom elbowed me. "Noah was so in love with you."

  My mouth went dry. I was trying hard to play it cool. What? I didn't forget the women I'd been in love with. Of which there were very few, by the way. This was playing out even worse than I'd expected. "Mom, what are you talking about?"

  "Noah." She shoulder-bumped me, jiggling the soda cup on my tray. "This is Gray. From daycare. I can't believe you still call her that." I turned to Gray.

  She wore a triumphant look. "I knew I knew you!"

  "Don't gloat," I warned her. But it was eerie. How could she remember me from when we were so small?

  "You two were babies together. Linda and I worked in the same building and put you both in the same daycare across the street. You were in the same daycare class until you were two. Then they moved you to a different room, Noah. Because you're a week older."

  I got a sick feeling in my stomach. Now I remembered. Not Gray. But the stories Mom told when she wanted to tease me about the little blonde girl I'd been in love with when I was two. This was not going to end well for me.

  I mechanically pulled Mom's chair out for her. We all sat.

  "Oh, they were so cute together," Linda said. "They used to hold hands in class."

  Mom nodded. "Gray was all Noah could talk about. On the weekends, he missed her so much. He begged me to a make a play date to visit her."

  I shot Gray a desperate look. She had her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh.

  "I have the cutest picture of them holding hands at the corn maze and pumpkin patch." Linda sighed and smiled at Gray, before turning to scrutinize me. "I think Gracie was in love with Noah, too, in those days."

  Well, what the hell had happened? Why didn't she love me now?

  "I begged and begged the daycare to make room for Gracie in Noah's class just a week later when she turned two. But they refused. They just didn't have room." Linda frowned.

  "I know," Mom said. "Remember that glass wall that separated the classrooms?"

  Linda nodded.

  "I used to come to pick Noah up and find Gray and him each up against their side of the glass, looking sadly and longingly at each other, hands pressed against the glass toward the other's on the other side." Mom shook her head.

  I slunk down in my chair, still hoping to retain some vestige of coolness.

  "They used the baby sign language they learned in daycare to communicate," Linda said. "It was adorable." She sighed, too. "I've always been romantic. I thought, maybe this is a sign? Maybe someday these two babies will marry."

  I swallowed hard. This was the worst torture a guy could endure. I looked to Gray for help.

  "Oh, that's sweet," Gray said, shooting me a glance. "I bet we were adorable. Noah, that's why I trusted you when we met in the mall last fall. And why I let you kiss me and play along that you were my boyfriend. I knew I knew you. We have a connection."

  "You kissed Gracie?" Mom looked way too excited and intrigued. "There must be a story there."

  "It was nothing," I said, trying not to look like a brush of lips had curled my toes. "I can explain—"

  I didn't have to. Gray cut in and explained for us, making me sound more heroic than I was by omitting her pepper spray.

  "So what happened?" Gray turned to her mom. "How did we lose touch?"

  "We pulled you out of daycare when you were two and a half and Grandpa died. We moved back to Wenatchee when Dad inherited the orchard."

  "Oh. Two and a half," Gray said, looking amused and relieved. "That explains it. I thought I'd forgotten Noah from that brief stint in the daycare in Wenatchee when I was five." She shuddered. "I hated that place. I feel better now. Real long-term memory doesn't start until about three—"

  "Gray?" I waved a hand in front of her
face. "You just stopped. Earth to Grace."

  She tilted her head and studied me like her mom had. "I think I just remembered something. It's vague. But I remember a little brown-haired boy holding my hand when I was crying. I was hurt. Someone hit me on the forehead with a toy. I was bleeding." She paused. "And you were calling for Teacher Jane and telling me it would be okay. 'Don't worry, Gray,' you said. I can still hear your baby voice. You were very articulate for a toddler." She pulled her hair back. There was a tiny scar at her hairline that I hadn't noticed before. "I had to get stitches."

  I paled. "I remember that."

  "Four stitches," Linda said to Gray. "A little girl named Carly hit you. It was an accident. Her mother was so apologetic. Noah was holding your hand when I came to pick you up and take you to the doctor. Neither one of you wanted to let go of the other. For a minute, I thought I'd have to take Noah with us."

  "I remember that, too," Mom said. "Noah was more upset than I'd ever seen him. He worried about Gracie all night and wouldn't sleep. He was always a sensitive boy."

  Oh, great. Sensitive men—just what turned women on. I shot Mom a desperate look, begging her not to keep talking about this.

  "I took him to the store. He insisted on buying Gracie a stuffed animal, a frog, to make her feel better. His little worried face. I still remember it. It was so sweet." She looked lost in the memories. "Noah didn't relax until he saw Gracie the next day at daycare. It's been years since I've thought about that."

  "A frog?" Gray got a funny look on her face. She pulled out her phone and brought up a picture of her room. She was smart enough to show it to Mom, not me. How the hell would I remember? "Is this it? I've had it on my bed forever."

  Mom frowned. "Yes. I think so."

  "Yes!" Linda said. "I'd forgotten, but that's right."

  I took a deep breath and tried to regain some measure of being cool and nonchalant. All this was definitely uncool. Adorable, apparently. But uncomfortable. All anyone had to do was really look at me to see that I would still be the guy holding Gray's hand through the good and the bad and buying her stuffed frogs. If she'd let me.

  "That explains why I've always treasured it," Gray teased. "It's worn from being loved so much. It's from my first boyfriend." She winked at me. "Noah says his dad is an earl," Gray said to Mom. "That must mean you were a countess?"

  Though I hadn't said much more about it, Gray knew my parents were divorced.

  Mom smiled. "For a very brief time, yes. But it was nothing like you'd imagine. It was no fairytale by any means. We lived on a ranch near Calgary. It was as unglamorous a life as I could imagine. I wasn't cut out for it. And Noah's dad is a hard man. The marriage was miserable. I left him when Noah was a month old and moved back to Seattle and got my old job back. It was absolutely the right decision for Noah and me. He met you. And now he's met you again. Isn't that crazy?"

  Chapter 4

  Twenty-two

  I stayed in town a week after graduation to pack up my apartment and get ready to move home. Junior year I shared an apartment with three other guys. Senior year I moved to a single-person apartment. I loved it. The thought of living with Mom and Bruce again was almost worse than the thought of forty years in the work force.

  Mom and my stepdad were great. But they were parents. After four years of college, living away on my own and doing my own thing, living at home again filled me with dread. It would be for a few months before I could move out to my own apartment like I'd planned with a few of my buddies. We needed time to find a place and save up first and last month's rent and a deposit.

  I'd sold most of my secondhand college apartment furniture online. I was waiting for the guys who'd bought my sofa to show up to haul it away. At the end of the school year, this town was like one gigantic swap meet. I swore some of this furniture had survived generations of students. I'd picked it all up used before my junior and senior years. Now I was making a nice little profit selling it back into the ecosphere of university life. I could have hauled it home and stored it in Mom's garage, but the rental truck would have cost more than the furniture was worth. I was looking forward to starting fresh with grownup stuff once I got on my feet. I had a good job. It wouldn't take long once I started getting a paycheck.

  Generally, I would have had my headphones on, but I wanted to hear the knock when the buyers came. I had my music playing and was at the back of the apartment in the bedroom when there was a sharp knock on my front door.

  "Coming." It took fewer than ten steps to get from the bedroom to the front of the apartment.

  When I threw open the door, Gray fell into my arms, sobbing. "It's over. It's just over."

  A lot of things were over—the school year, our undergraduate career, graduation…

  Obviously, she wasn't talking about any of those. She was crying so hard that it was difficult to understand what she was saying. Most of it didn't bear repeating, anyway.

  I led her to the sofa I was selling, the last piece of furniture in the room, and sat down, pressing her against my chest. "Shh. It'll be okay."

  "That douche. I can't believe he broke up with me by text as he was leaving town. The coward. The—" Some choice language followed. "After I convinced him to transfer here. After I let him move in with me. He still owes me two months' rent." She broke into another round of sobs. "We've been together since high school."

  A fact I knew all too well. Part of me was doing the internal dance of joy. I hated Kyle for a variety of reasons. It was hard to believe I could have hated him more, but he'd just broken Gray's heart. If he were here, I would have wanted to punch him. Yeah, conflicted. I was definitely conflicted. I murmured comforting noise and agreed with everything she said.

  I wanted to say a lot of things. Like how he didn't deserve her anyway. But coming from me, that was just self-serving.

  A knock on the door startled us. The guys who'd bought the sofa were here for it. I ignored them. They could wait. Gray was all that was important now.

  She looked over her shoulder at the door. "You should get that."

  My tiny second-floor apartment had an unfortunate layout. An outside walkway ran the length of the building past my front door and my picture window that looked right into the living room. My blinds were open. My sofa faced the wall opposite the window and had its back to the window. I tried to ignore them. Gray needed me more.

  The guys went to the window, cupped their hands, and peered in at us. They began banging. "Hey! Dickhead. We can see you. Open the door. We're here for our fucking sofa."

  "You'd better get that." Gray wiped her eyes. "You managed to sell this piece of crap?" She shook her head and patted the sofa. "Let them have it. You won't find such indiscriminate buyers again at this late date."

  I opened the door and pointed to the sofa. Three big guys charged in, smelling of beer.

  "Awesome," one of them said, running his hand over the back dangerously close to Gray's shoulder. He peered over the top of her head to look down her blouse. "It looks even better in person than it did online." He grinned lecherously at Gray.

  She stood up. "You have excellent taste." Her sarcasm was lost on him. Or maybe she was referring to herself.

  The guy looked at her puffy, tear-stained face and glared at me menacingly. "Is this guy giving you trouble?"

  This guy was offering to take care of me for her? What a joke.

  "No." Gray shook her head a little too vehemently. "He's just a friend. I came here to cry on his shoulder."

  Just a friend. Always just a friend.

  "All right, then," the guy said gruffly. "Let's get the sofa and get out of here, guys."

  One of the guys lifted one end of the sofa. The speaker took the other. The third guy eyed the doorway, trying to figure how to cram the sofa through it without taking half my apartment wall with it.

  "Need any help?" I offered lamely and unenthusiastically.

  "Nah, we got this." One of them shoved an envelope with the agreed-upon hundred dollars
at me.

  With that, the wedging began. I silently prayed they didn't rip the doorframe off. I'd had a hell of time getting the sofa in in the first place. Somehow they managed. We listened to them as they carried it along the outside walkway and wrangled it down the narrow stairs.

  Gray went to the window and watched them load it in a pickup parked in the lot below. "How much did you get for that?"

  "A hundred bucks."

  She whistled. "I had no idea you're such a good negotiator. I would have thought you'd have to pay to dump that thing or have someone haul it away."

  I shrugged. "What can I say? Sit a pretty woman on it and I can sell anything."

  She actually smiled.

  "I used most of this furniture for two years. Now I've sold it for a profit. Win-win." I put my arm around her. "If you've still got something to sell, I'm your man to make the deal. Fix your makeup. I'll take a picture of you in front of it, and even though it's late days and most guys are already gone, bet you I could get you a good price."

  "Noah. I do love you." She hugged me. "You always know what to say. Unfortunately, I have no need of your excellent salesmanship. My apartment was furnished. Dad hauled the few pieces of furniture I owned home right after graduation. I can fit everything else in my car." Her eyes misted over again. "It's over, Noah."

  "Yeah," I said. "This chapter. This whole chapter of our lives. Now it's on to something bigger and better. Time to conquer the world." I got the two remaining beers from my fridge. I twisted off the cap of one and handed it to her.

  We plopped on the floor and leaned up against the living room wall of my now almost-empty apartment with our beers. I had no chairs or sofa left to sit on.

  "I thought he was the one." She took a long pull of beer.

  "It's clichéd, but if he doesn't want to be with you, you're better off without him." Fine words to live by. Why didn't I take my own advice?

  "What if I never find the right guy?" She looked so forlorn.

  What if I never get over you? I wanted to say.