Shades of Amber Read Online Free

“I’m sorry! I almost
forgot to introduce our new student: Troy Montague. Jade, be a dear
and help Troy catch up.”
    The finality in her voice
made me shudder. I felt like pulling my hair out even though he was
watching me.
    “ Okay class, get started.”
She tapped the marker against her desk. “And play nice, you’ll also
be partners for the mid-term project. Exchange names, phone
numbers, and emails!”
    I put my head in my hands,
wondering if I’d look down and see myself naked. Surely, I wasn’t
really sitting next to the handsome guy I’d been thinking about
since Friday night.
    Desks screeched across the
linoleum as people paired off. I held my breath as my desk shifted
to the right. I tried to move back, but I wasn’t strong enough to
do it without drawing attention.
    “ You intrigue me.” His
words were quiet and accompanied by a smirk.
    “ Excuse me?”
    He shrugged and tapped a
pen against his black notebook. “You don’t introduce yourself when
we meet, and then you pretend we don’t know each other. Do you do
that with everyone?”
    “ No, I didn’t introduce
myself because I never thought I’d see you again!” I
hissed.
    Why was I so frazzled? I
didn’t have time to get caught up in drama, I had to keep my grades
up and make the Dean’s List.
    He smirked. “Ah, so I’m
special.”
    “ Yes. I
mean, no.” I shook my head. “ You are a stranger.”
    He touched one of my hands
before I hid them beneath the desk. “That’s alright.”
    I raised my
eyebrow.
    “ We’ll be seeing a lot of
each other.” He traced the line that separated our desks. “You have
to get me caught up, remember?”
    “ How could I forget?”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my notebook until I found a clean
sheet of paper, and then I looked him square in the eye. “Hi, I’m
Jade Nightingale.”
    “ Jade,” he whispered.
“That’s a beautiful name.” He leaned so close that I could smell
his cologne. It was spicy and unique. “That wasn’t so hard now, was
it?”
    I rolled my eyes. The guy
was infuriating, but his cursive turned my name into a work of art.
“You have really nice handwriting,” I said as I scribbled his in my
cursive-print.
    “ Thanks.” He smiled.
“Beautiful penmanship for your beautiful name.”
    Perhaps, I mistook his
friendliness for flirting.
    His easygoing demeanor
made it hard not to smile… until he asked the next
question.
    “ What’s your phone
number?” He sat quietly, watching me.
    I rubbed my throat. “I
prefer email,” I said as I leaned over to get the water from my
bag.
    “ You don’t have a phone
number?”
    I tried to look him
straight in the eye, but settled on the space just to the left of
his head. “Nope, just an email address.”
    From the way his eyes
sparked, I knew he was laughing on the inside. “Okay, I guess we’ll
just have to meet up every day, so you can help me get caught
up.”
    “ Excuse me?” I put down
the water and crossed my arms.
    “ Well.” He exhaled. “If
you had a phone I could call, and you could tell me what I’ve
missed over the last two weeks, but you don’t. So we’ll have to
meet up.”
    I waved my hands. “Let’s
worry about contact info later. What did you like about the book?”
I paused, remembering the quote I couldn’t find. “Or did you just
watch the movie?”
    He chuckled and tapped my
desk with his pen. “Why would you think that?”
    I shrugged. “I didn’t find
your words in there.”
    His hand rose, and for a
second, I thought he might touch my hair. “I read the book, and
watched the movie. The quote is from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song:
‘All I Ask of You’.”
    “ So did you like the book
or not?”
    He leaned close. “I like
that it kept the reader on his or her toes, but it was also
predictable.”
    I wrote his response. “How
so?”
    “ The good guy always gets
the girl. People would never expect Christine and the Phantom to
end up together.”
    “ So are you the good guy
or the bad