Style by Chelsea M. Cameron Page A

control freak.” My mouth almost dropped open and I risked a look up to stare at her.
    “What the hell are you talking about?” I’d been called worse before, but for some reason this really got under my skin.
    “Uh, is this new information? Like, are you really surprised?” Her voice was totally dry and I wished I was less attracted to her because that would make things so much easier.
    “I’m not a control freak, I just like things a certain way.” She let out the cutest little snort-laugh and it did funny things to my stomach. Was there anything she did that didn’t make me want her more?
    “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it, babe,” she said and then we both realized she’d called me “babe.”
    Oh. Hell.
    We just sort of stared at each other and then she cleared her throat and looked down at her book.
    “So we should probably get to work,” she said in a low voice.
    “Yeah.”
     

     
    N early an hour later, we’d demolished the berries, one bag of chips, three sodas between us and we hadn’t gotten much done. It wasn’t for lack of trying. We just didn’t see eye-to-eye on the paper.
    “This was such a bad idea,” she said as she typed in the Google Doc that I was also working on at the same time. “You just keep deleting everything!”
    I hadn’t been. Just editing here and there. Picking a better word or making a sentence stronger or adding a comma. Nothing major. But she saw it as an assault against her writing skills, which were actually better than I thought they would be.
    Not that I doubted her ability to write, but I just thought that numbers were more her speed, but she had some excellent points and used a lot of words that I didn’t know she knew.
    She was smart. Really smart.
    If only she’d been pretty and dumb, I might have been able to resist her. But the smart/sexy combo? I was a goner.
    “I like to think of it more as polishing what’s already there and making it shine,” I said.
    “You always have the most diplomatic way of putting things. Makes me wonder where all those rumors come from.” She tried to make it a throwaway comment, but it definitely wasn’t.
    “What rumors?” I asked, as if I had no idea. Hell, I started a lot of them myself. Had to keep reminding people not to mess with me.
    “I’m sure you’re familiar with them, Stella.”
    “Why would I be?” I asked, trying to sound oblivious.
    She just rolled her eyes at me. Cute. So cute.
    “You also don’t seem like an idiot, so let’s cut the crap, okay? You know exactly what people say about you. I wouldn’t be shocked if you were the one who encouraged it.”
    No. This was bad. This was why I didn’t let people get too close. Midori was one of my exceptions. When people got close they could see me clearly and I didn’t like it. If they really saw me, they wouldn’t like me.
    I just narrowed my eyes at her and didn’t answer. Most people looked away from me after a few seconds, but Kyle held my gaze and then one side of her mouth turned up in a smirk. The smirkiest of smirks.
    “You get quiet when you don’t know what to say. Means I’m right.”
    There wasn’t much I could say without digging myself an even bigger hole, so I just turned my attention back to my laptop and thought about highlighting the entire paper and deleting it like a bitch, but then I’d have to spend even more time with her and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
    “I think that’s enough,” I said after a few minutes of silence. I had to get her out of here. She was all I could see and all I could hear and all I could smell and it was a real problem. I had to get her out of here before I did something stupid.
    She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes before putting them back on. I still had a bunch of other homework to do and I was sore from practice.
    She looked at me and then down at her laptop.
    “Yeah, I guess.” Was she reluctant to leave? After all the stimulating conversation?
    “What, you want