Down to the Bone by Thirteen Page A

averting her eyes like an embarrassed nerd, but it soon became apparent that she was ignoring them.
    That didn’t happen to Jarrett, not since his first growth spurt at age thirteen. Feminine eyes followed him wherever he went, flickered side-wise, glanced longingly before demurely falling. Especially the desperate eyes of girls like this one.
    Crissy left to call her girlfriends and Jarrett stepped around to get a better look at the geek. She was seated, so it was hard to see her figure, but the V-neck of her inky camisole top revealed adequate breasts. Her upper arms looked plump and soft, not unattractively so, but Jarrett was used to the toned limbs of cheerleaders. Marking her left shoulder was a strangely compelling tattoo of a skull with a heavy brow ridge. No jawbone, just the jutting upper half of the face. It wasn’t done up to be scary or iconic, rather it looked like some textbook sketch of a piecemeal relic. Not the sort of tat to turn a guy on, Jarrett thought. A butterfly or floral tramp stamp that was sexy, or something delicate and pretty around the ankle or accenting the nape of the neck. Something to kiss and lick seductively.
    But a fucked-up skull?
    Why wasn’t she looking at him? He was willing to bet that back in high school this girl had suffered from acne, that instead of the fairly cool glasses she had on now, there had been a pair of broken, wire-rims. She’d eaten alone, her nose in a book. And she had gawked in awe at guys like him. So why wasn’t she interested now?
    Screw it. He didn’t have time for this. He checked the catalog number he’d jotted down in the notes section of his phone. The professor had assigned a particular book to each student and put all the texts on reserve. This one had to be here.
    Jarrett frowned. Wait. He stepped around the stack, edging closer to the girl’s table. Books were spread and piled all over. One of them was the one he wanted.
    “Excuse me,” he said petulantly. Damn geeks! She was flipping through photos of skulls. Old skulls. So, not just a geek, but a weird geek.
    “Excuse me,” he said louder, and leaned his weight on the desk. It shifted a little and his shadow cut off her light. She finally looked up. The magnified eyes behind the glasses were dark as flint and totally disinterested. They blinked at him as if they couldn’t be bothered to really see him.
    “Excuse me, but I need that book there,” Jarrett said. “It’s on reserve.”
    Unlike the nerdy girls he’d known in high school, she did not shrink or wince or apologize or grab the book to offer it to him meekly, as a supplicant to a great warrior.
    “Oh?” she said mildly, and glanced over at the text. “Oh, that one . You must be in Sorrenson’s Dinotopia course. Figures.”
    Jarrett felt his cheeks go hot. The class title was Prehistoric Biology but her amused disdain made it clear she knew the truth: that it was a biology-made-easy class to help jocks meet their requirements and maintain their GPA’s.
    She pushed the book his way. “Enjoy,” she wished him, and went back to flipping through pictures of skeletons and skulls.
     

     
    Liddy listened to the jock’s heavy footsteps as he stomped away. Had she hurt the poor caveman’s feelings? She snorted. Impossible. But for a moment she couldn’t quite turn the page or concentrate on Australopithecus bones. All she could do was flash back to the moment when he’d leaned over her. She’d smelled him, a hint of sweat and musk, and she’d seen his hands, broad and strong. Looking up to meet those gray eyes, there’d been no denying that sudden feeling of pure, sexual attraction.
    She was a female and he was a male of her species. Which was all well and good, but Mr. Caveman would have never noticed her if she hadn’t had one of his books. Likely he’d already forgotten all about her. Likely, he’d never give her another thought. Best to forget about him as well.
     

     
    It was the skull, Jarrett thought as he