Chapter 5

"I'm almost positive that she likes him. You should see the way she looks at him when she thinks no one is looking." Brandon was sitting at his desk, trying to write a paper for his European Civilization class despite the fact that his sister seemed determined to distract him.

"She looks at him like he's a ten pound bar of the most decadent piece of chocolate known to mankind and she's on a diet. Sometimes I feel like they could burn me with the looks they give each other. They've been working on some project for like the past 3 weeks and every time I come in the room, you can practically see the tension in the air, it's so thick. I don't know why they don't just give in to it."

Brandon knew his sister wasn't expecting an answer and he didn't give her one. He and his sister were probably the only people in the school who noticed the tension between the two. They were both quite good at masking their emotions. Especially Hayley. If you didn't know better, you'd think that Hayley hated Aidan; or at the very least was indifferent to him. But Brandon and Brigid did know better. Brandon could feel the sadness and longing and desire that Hayley radiated whenever Aidan was around. She might be able to hide it from most people, but no one could hide their true feelings from Brandon.

There were times when he felt that his empathic abilities were more of a curse than a gift; especially before he'd learned to control them. But whether he liked being an empath or not, he was one and Hayley's emotions were so strong that Brandon could pick them up from miles away, no matter how good she was at hiding them from everyone else.

And though Brigid seemed a bit scatterbrained—always flitting from one thought and activity to the next, never concentrating on any one thing for more than a few minutes—she was more observant than most people gave her credit for. People tended to think that just because she talked a lot, she never noticed things going on around her. But she noticed. And more often than not felt it was her duty to interfere in some way.

"I think it's time we do something." Brandon looked at Brigid, brow raised. She was so excited she was practically ready to jump out of her skin. She gave him a smile full of mischief.

"What do you mean by 'we'?"

"Hayley, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure. What's up?" Hayley answered without looking up from her book. She was halfway through Pride and Prejudice. The reading wasn't due for a few more weeks, but Hayley thought it would be best to go ahead and get it out of the way. It's not like there was anything else she'd rather be doing. Of course, there were things she should be doing. Like studying the book of attack spells that she'd barely glanced through since she got here. But Hayley hadn't been motivated to do much magic lately. And she knew how dangerous it could be to practice magic when you weren't focused. She'd learned that the hard way and had scars to prove it.

"I was supposed to give Brandon something that Mom sent for him the other day, but I forgot to give it to him at breakfast this morning and I'm not gonna be at dinner tonight 'cause I gotta go to practice earlier than I thought, so can you drop it off at his room tonight. I would do it when I get back from practice, but I'm probably just gonna come home and go straight to sleep. I swear, the coach is possessed this semester. She's making us do the most absurd exercises. The other day she had us doing—"

"Yeah. I'll take it to him." Hayley interrupted, stopping her before she could go into another one of her ten-minute monologues. She gave her a small smile to soften the insult. "Just leave it on your desk."

"Thanks Hayley. You're the best roommate ever." Hayley had already returned her attention back to her homework and didn't see the triumphant smile that Brigid wore as she bounced out the door.

"Oh. Hey Hayley."

"What are you doing here?" She wasn't expecting him to answer the door. And she definitely wasn't expecting him to answer the door in nothing but a towel. She had deliberately waited until she knew he would be at practice to come over. As if spending so much time alone with him for the project wasn't enough, now this. The gods must hate me. Hayley glanced at Aidan's bare chest again. But they must surely love him.

"I live here."

"I mean, I thought you were at practice."

"I was. We got out early today. Coach had a doctor's appointment or something.

"Oh."

"Yeah ... So, did you, uh, need something?"

"What? Oh, right. Yeah." Hayley felt the heat creeping from her neck up to her forehead and knew she was turning a nice, deep shade of crimson. Oh yeah, this is just great. Nothing better than completely embarrassing yourself in front of a ridiculously hot, half-naked guy.

"Ummm, Brigid wanted me to, uhh..." Hayley was distracted by a drop of water traveling from his shoulder down to his navel. Dear gods, what I wouldn't give to be that drop of water right now.

"Hayley?" Her head shot up and she felt the heat return to her face. She could hear the amusement in his voice and she hated him for it. It was bad enough that she couldn't concentrate; he didn't have to make it worse by laughing at her.

He was amused. He wouldn't be able to deny it even if he wanted to. This was Hayley; the girl who'd been giving him looks of contempt since the first day of school. This was the girl he'd been unable to read for months. Sure, she'd loosened up a little since they started working together, but that was completely impersonal. They never talked about anything but the project when they met. For the entire 3 weeks that they'd been working together, he'd only seen her smile a couple of times. But, damn, when she did...

He remembered that first day in class when they'd seem to have some kind of connection and he wished that it had been more than just his imagination that made him think it was special. But here she was, this girl who seemed as cold as ice, standing in front of him, practically drooling.