Fantasy Boyfriend (A Tattooed Bad Boy Romance) by Vanessa Stone Page A

teased me about being a
loner, too shy for my own good. Oh, I liked to admire the guys just as much as
anybody else, but more often than not, they were the ones that actually did the
chasing while I did most of the watching. I don't think it’s so much a lack of
self-confidence as the fact that I was looking for a specific type of guy. Maybe
my standards were too high, I don't know.
    I hadn't seen my sorority sisters and best friends
Becky Gaynor, Desiree Adams, or Selena Hudgens all
summer. Becky Gaynor was a native Nebraskan and came from a Midwestern farm
family. She hadn't quite decided what her major was going to be, but knew she
had to designate one this year. She was leaning toward some kind of social
work. She had traditionally Nordic features with the pale skin, light blue
eyes, and blonde hair typical of her Norwegian and German ancestry. Desiree
Adams was a light- skinned African-American from Georgia majoring in child
education. Selena Hudgens was half-Hispanic, half-Navajo
from New Mexico, majoring in criminal justice. Me, I was plain old Jessica
Mallory, lower middle class native of Billings, Montana.
    All of us were transplants to Massachusetts, and we
had naturally clustered together in our freshman year. Last year, we had been
lucky enough to join the same sorority and found this lovely old Victorian home
where we could share expenses and live together.
    At the end of our sophomore year, we had bid each
other goodbye at the train station and gone our separate ways. I had gone back
to Montana to visit with my family. Oh, we'd kept in contact by cell phone and
Skype, but it would be nice to once again return to the home we'd shared last
year. Well before the school year had ended last semester, we had renewed our
intention with the landlord to occupy the top floor of the old Victorian.
Although I and my sisters could party hearty with the best of them, we were
also responsible young women who took care of the building. The landlord seemed
to recognize that and appreciated it.
    I was especially fond of the old house, which wasn't
surprising considering all the historical romance novels I love to read. There
was something about the Victorian era that captivated me, and I was indeed
fortunate that I had been able to find this place to share with my friends. We
split the rent for the top floor four ways, which certainly made it affordable.
We knew we were lucky to have been able to find a place to live so close to
campus that we could engage in regular sorority events, our classes, and of
course, the sporting activities on campus, which mainly included boy-watching
and plenty of chasing.
    I smiled as I walked into the old building and headed
upstairs. At the top of the stairs was a small landing. To the immediate left
was one of the larger rooms on this floor, which Becky and Desiree shared. The
room immediately to the right of the stairs had been tapped by Selena, while I
had the room down the hall, a kind of U-turn away from the landing. A large
kitchen downstairs served as a communal space for all the apartment tenants.
Three rooms had also been converted into small apartments downstairs and were
occupied by three additional girls, though they didn’t belong to our sorority.
I didn’t know the girls from last year, but I knew that they had moved on and
three new tenants would certainly be occupying that space soon. Down in the
kitchen, two large side-by-side refrigerators were adequate for all our needs.
Everyone was designated a specific shelf in the refrigerators, with a verbal
and written agreement in the lease defining no "stealing" of other
people's food. The same went for the cabinets. Each of the overhead cabinets in
the kitchen was labeled with the names of the apartment tenants. As in the case
of Becky and Desiree, they shared the largest cabinet, while Selena and I each
had one of our own, as did the first floor residents.
    The arrangements worked out pretty well, although
sometimes we had to plan