Mann of My Dreams Book 6: The Best-Laid Plans

Chapter 5

He looked around his apartment. Aside from his clothes, he didn’t have a great deal to pack.

He was overcome by a wave of emotion. He was uncertain whether it was fear or relief. Or just the pain in his gut.

***

THE BLOWUP with his parents was as bad as he expected, cold, knife-sharp, and quietly vicious.

“Useless.”

“Worthless.”

“Always a disappointment.”

“Why couldn’t you be like your brothers?”

His brothers, who were tall and fair and handsome and fulfilled their parents’ fondest dreams.

Whereas Rush was the chronic disappointment. He couldn’t seem to do anything to please his parents, not a four point zero GPA or a permanent place on the Dean’s List, or the fact that he’d completed the course requirements for both degrees with a semester to spare. Nothing he achieved seemed to matter.

The worst had been when his father had taken him aside. “If you didn’t have my mother’s mouth and eyes,” he’d snarled at Rush, “I’d swear you were a cuckoo in the nest!”

Unlike his brothers and his mother and father, he had brown hair and eyes. His frame was slight, and he barely topped five feet nine inches.

Rush forced himself to meet his father’s fiercely disapproving blue eyes, his mother’s icy cold gaze. “I’m sorry.” He was surprised he got the words past tight lips.

“Sorry doesn’t solve anything,” his father snarled. “We’ll want your apartment vacated as soon as possible.”

“Of course. I’ll return the key to you as soon as I have everything in order.” He turned and walked out of the room, out of the house… out of his parents’ lives?

Rush had planned to transfer that spring, but this pushed up the timeline. Dr. Griffith pulled some strings, contacting the colleague who chaired biomedical engineering at Pulaski and Jasper and not only got Rush into the program a semester early, but he’d found housing for him on campus as well.

Rush shipped what he could down to Savannah, packed his suitcases, and caught a Greyhound bus. He needed to conserve his money.

Three hours later he disembarked on W. Oglethorpe Avenue.

The college was about a twenty-minute car ride away. He hailed a cab, loaded his suitcases into the backseat, and gave the driver the address of the house where he’d be staying.

It was a big old house, built after the Civil War. The grad students who rented rooms shared a communal kitchen and dining room.

“I’m Mrs. Fairbanks. Your room is up on the third floor. If you’ll follow me?” She led the way, speaking over her shoulder. “Washers and driers are in the basement, and you’re responsible for your own laundry. I’ll provide breakfast and dinner. If you want snacks, that’s fine, just see you clean up after yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’re very casual here at Mercer House. Well, all my boys are adults. However, I have one hard and fast rule. I don’t care whether it’s male or female—no overnight visitors.”

“I understand, and I’ll keep that in mind.” Although the odds of him dating were minimal. He’d kept his promise to God and avoided thinking of guys that way, although it had been hard. Difficult!

Mrs. Fairbanks was huffing and puffing by the time they reached the third floor.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She shuffled down the hallway, unlocked a door, and gave him the key. “The bathroom is just down the hall.” She gestured behind them, and he nodded.

“Thank you.” He gazed around the room. The walls were beige. A twin bed between two windows was covered with a brown chenille bedspread, and on a battered pine dresser sat a clock radio and a lamp with an off-white shade. As for the boxes he’d sent on ahead, he was relieved to see they’d arrived and had been stacked against one of the walls. “This is very nice,” he said politely, although to tell the truth, it was nothing compared to his apartment over his parents’ garage.

“Now, dinner will be ready in a couple of hours, so that should give you some time to unpack and shower.”

“All right. Thank you again.”

She patted his shoulder and left him, and he closed the door before getting to work unpacking.

***

AS HE’D expected… dreaded… his father had pulled the financial plug, so Rush had applied for every grant, scholarship, and form of funding he could find.

They just weren’t enough.

The winter semester hadn’t started yet, so he made an appointment to see Professor Borders. The assistant chair of the biomedical engineering department was his major professor, the man who would help him in his quest to obtain a master’s degree.

And to pass the time until he had to go to Addison Hall, the building that housed the science and medical departments, he stopped at an on-campus coffee bar and ordered a cappuccino.

Rush found an empty table at the rear of the coffee bar and set down his cup. What are you even doing here? he asked himself. He was supposed to go easy on the caffeine, but it was either this or something stronger, and while it might be five o’clock somewhere in the world, it wasn’t here in Savannah.

He took a sip of his cappuccino, then pulled out a notepad and began making a list of what funds had come in, hoping he’d added wrong, but no, his addition had been fine.

That meant there wasn’t going to be a happy ending. His life was going down the toilet.

“Hi there.” Someone stopped at his table. “Is this seat taken?”

“You can have the table.” Rush barely glanced up at him.

“I don’t mean to crowd your space.” His voice was soft, with a hint of Savannah in it, and while it might be intriguing, another tall blond was the last thing he needed in his life.

“You’re not. It’s… I’m sorry, I have to go.” He rose, stuffed the notepad into his pocket, and crossed to the trashcan near the door. He tossed away the coffee he hadn’t taken two sips from and yanked open the door.

A damp wind was blowing across campus, and he shivered and hurried to Professor Borders’s office in Addison Hall.

“Good morning, Professor.”

“Ah, Mr. Dalton.” The professor was an older man. His brown hair was receding and he had a bit of a paunch, but he had a nice smile. “You’re right on time.”

Rush handed him his notepad. “I’m going to wind up short, sir.” His gut was starting to hurt again. “I’ll have to forget about this semester and get a job.” If he wasn’t a Pulaski and Jasper student, would he be able to stay in the room he was renting?

Professor Borders was shaking his head. “We both know that if you leave school at this point, the odds of you returning are slim. You’ll become so wrapped up in trying to survive in the real world that your plans for furthering your education will go by the wayside.”

“But I—”

The professor held up a hand. “I have an idea to get you some additional moneys. I believe I saw in your personal statement letter when you applied to this college that you were a Boy Scout?”

“Yes. I actually made Eagle Scout, and I assisted my troop leader for my last two years as a scout.”

“Excellent. I know of a grant for former Boy Scouts. It’s not a lot, but if I recall correctly, it should cover your books. Tell me. Do you have any relatives who were Freemasons?”

“My grandfather. My mother’s father.”

“Splendid. That should provide enough for your room and meals. There’s also a codicil in an alumnus’s will that should give you some spending money. You won’t have to leave school.”

“But Professor Borders, what am I going to do for this semester’s tuition? The Edmund Kirby Smith Grant will pay for it as long as I’m a full-time student, but even if I only take the minimum of nine semester hours, not all the classes I need to take are being offered this semester.”

“Then we’ll find another class for you to take. I see you have a minor in accounting. How does Advanced Accounting sound to you? I know Dory Curtis’s class isn’t full.”

“That sounds really great.” He’d always liked figures and had a way with them. In a perfect world, he would be getting his master’s degree in accounting. “I can’t thank you enough, Professor Borders.” Rush blinked rapidly and looked away.

Professor Borders cleared his throat gruffly. “Now, get this paperwork filled out, young man, and we’ll get this show on the road.”

***

WOW, THIS year went fast.

Thanks to his major professor, Rush was on track with his degree in bioengineering—just one more year to go.

However, in spite of the fact that he no longer had to take any additional courses, he’d enjoyed accounting too much to give it up.

That was one of the reasons why today saw Rush hurrying down the corridor of James Jackson Hall, the building that housed the accounting department of Pulaski and Jasper College.

But… why had Dr. Reynolds, the chairman of the department, sent for him?

“Hi, Rush.” Coming from the opposite direction was January Stephens. She was a senior who was in his advanced accounting class.

“Hi, Jan.”

January was a pretty, petite, and vivacious blonde, and all the guys in the class had taken one look at her and tried to impress her with their numeric expertise. Jan had smiled and treated them all with the same sisterly friendliness.

Rush was a little surprised to realize that while her dimpled smile always made him smile in return, he had no desire to ask her out on a date.

Which was probably just as well, he thought. They were study buddies who had become friends, and if a romance had blossomed between them, it would have complicated things.

Besides, Rush had no desire to get thumped. Jan was dating the captain of the football team. The guy was an asshole who treated her like a possession, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Rush knew she was trying to smooth out her accent in order to please him.

“Are y’all goin’—” She sighed. “Are you going in to see Dr. Reynolds, too?”

“Yes. Do you have any idea what he wants?”

She was excited in a subdued manner. “Professor Curtis said somethin’—something—about the owner of a construction company needing an accounting major to do some work for him.”

“But I’m not majoring in accounting.”

“You want to quarrel with the powers that be?” She gave a saucy grin. “It probably won’t pay much, but we both can use the money.” She was also using grants and scholarships and student loans to fund her way through college.

“True.” Rush wondered again why her grin didn’t do anything for him. If a girl as pretty as Jan had smiled at him like that in high school, or even in his first years in UGA, he would have dissolved into a puddle of goo, and they would have had to mop him up off the floor.

While he’d dated a little in high school, the girl he’d lost his virginity to, Josie Brown, had been tall, gangly, and myopic, and hadn’t been able to get a date with anyone else. Rush hadn’t really been interested in her as a girl, but they’d become good friends. They studied together, saw the occasional movie, and had s*x when they both were drunk enough. The relationship, such as it was, kept his parents from questioning him too closely about his social life beyond his father instructing him not to get her pregnant.

And then during their first year in college, Josie had suddenly blossomed. Her figure filled out, her skin cleared up, and she began wearing contacts and having her hair styled by an upscale beautician. All the boys started panting after her, even the jocks. Reveling in the newfound attention, she’d left Rush behind.