Tap & Gown (41 page)

“You want him to, right, dear?” asked my mom, taking my diploma out of my hands.

Want him to what?
I’m sure I mumbled an answer of some sort, but I was already floating past them and up to Jamie, who’d materialized out of the crowd. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said, and held out the lilies. “For you. Thought you might be sick of roses.”

I took the flowers, though my gaze did not leave his face. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a burning desire to see my little sib graduate.” He smiled. “The cartwheel was especially enjoyable.”

I called shenanigans on that explanation. “I thought you were gone for good.”

He hesitated. “Right. So here’s the thing. That job? Turns out it’s not really me. Or it was for a different me.”

“You quit?” I whispered. “But what will you do now?”

“I’m going back to Eli Law. If they’ll have me.” He studied me carefully. “I made a mistake.”

If
they
will have him? “Jamie, I don’t know if—”

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“Please don’t think I did this for you,” he broke in. “I did it for me. The guy who wanted those secrets, that life? I’m not that guy anymore. I haven’t been for a while.”

I said nothing, just stood there, clutching the lilies.

“That part, I think,
can
be attributed to you,” he admitted. “Or at least the time I’ve spent with you.”

Somehow, I remained silent. I may have been possessed. Amy Haskel doesn’t keep her mouth shut.

Has never kept her mouth shut. But I had no idea where he was going with any of this.

“I know you’ve been through a lot since I left,” he said. “And I don’t have the right—”

“I’ll be in New York,” I blurted out. “I’ll just be in New York. If you come back here—”

He gave me the biggest smile I’ve ever seen from Jamie. “New York.”

“I decided to take a job with Caritas. Jenny’s company.”

“God bless Metro North,” he replied. For a second we just stood there, neither of us wanting to make the first move. Around us, families and friends embraced, but there was more than an armful of lilies that separated me from Poe. I wanted to ask him what trick he’d pulled with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

I wanted to tell him that at this very moment, Darren Gehry was preparing for his case in front of the juvenile court. I wanted to know what was the trigger that made him come back.

“I read your e-mails,” he said at last. “I—wished I could have been there.”

“We managed.” Heck, D177 hardly needed to be there.

“Yes, you did. And in a way I never would have expected.”

“It wasn’t us, honestly,” I said. “The new club is full of surprises. They have their own way of doing things.”

Jamie chuckled. “You could say you deserve that.”

“You could,” I said. “
You
would probably relish it.”

“Oh, believe me, Amy, I have been.” He took a deep breath. “I—uh, got you a graduation present.”

I brightened. “Where?”

He pointed at the lilies. “Check in there.”

I peered into the bouquet. There, nestled among the blooms, was a red and blue envelope. “These are tickets to England.” I looked closer and gasped. “First-class tickets to England!”

“I decided you needed an upgrade. Notable international scholars such as yourself should always travel in style.” He pointed at the ticket. “I hear you get to sleep in some sort of pod. It sounded very cool.”

I flipped through the paperwork. “Jamie, you can’t afford—” I froze. “There are two tickets here.”

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He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I took a chance. I don’t have a job this summer anymore, so I’m free. I mean, I may come back here and do research for a professor or two, providing they let me re-enroll, but …” He trailed off. “I’ve always wanted to see England.”

“With me?”

“No, not always to see it with you, but now, yes, absolutely.” He began speaking very quickly. “I know you’re going to be staying at Oxford for the conference and that’s fine. I’ve got some friends in London who probably wouldn’t mind my crashing at their place for a few days.”

“Friends?”

“Yes, Amy. Friends. I do have them. And afterward, well, I don’t know what plans you’ve made in terms of sightseeing, but I thought it could be fun if we traveled together. I’ll even do the Jane Austen thing if you want—”

“Yes!” I beamed at him. “Yes, yes.”

“—but I’m more of a Tower of London type of guy.”

“Figures.” Torture, murder, mayhem, beheadings. Just his style.

Hey, Mom and Dad, this is my “friend” Jamie. My boyfriend Jamie. We’re going to England
together. Also, I met him in a secret society. We’re Diggers, folks. And Eli graduates. And in love.

What do you think?

But all that was for later, at the dinner I’d shoehorn him into attending with Josh and Lydia and our respective families. He’d get his double date and then some. Right now, I just wanted to drink him in, press into his arms. He was staring at me the same way.

I bit my lip. “How in the world can you afford first-class tickets anywhere?”

And now he did wrap his arms around me. “I’m a Digger, Amy. We’ve got connections.”

I laughed and kissed him as my graduation cap slid from my head. Yes, we certainly did.

1)
Clarissa Cuthbert (
Angel
): CFO of Caritas
2)
Gregory Dorian (
Bond
): Fulbright Scholar, Oxford, England
3)
Odile Dumas (
Lil’ Demon
): Untitled Odile Dumas Project, Paramount Pictures
4)
Benjamin Edwards (
Big Demon
): Price Waterhouse Cooper
5)
Amy Haskel (
Bugaboo
): V.P. of Publicity, Caritas
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6)
Nikolos Dmitri Kandes IV (
Graverobber
): Deputy V.P, Kandes Industries
7)
Kevin Lee (
Frodo
): Assistant, Creative Artists Agency
8)
Omar Mathabane (
Kismet
): Harvard Kennedy School of Government
9)
George Harrison Prescott (
Puck
): Teach for America
10)
Demetria Robinson (
Thorndike
): Berkeley School of Graduate Studies
11)
Jennifer Santos (
Lucky
): President, Caritas
12)
Harun Sarmast (
Tristram Shandy
): V.P. of Development, Caritas
13)
Joshua Silver (
Keyser Soze
): Stanford School of Law
14)
Mara Taserati (
Juno
): The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania My endless thanks to the usual suspects at the venerable Bantam Dell: Kerri Buckley, Nita Taublib, Lynn Andreozzi, Kelly Chian, Pam Feinstein, and Carol Russo. Thank you to the folks at the Knight Agency especially Deidre Knight and Elaine Spencer. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my colleagues and critique partners, Carrie Ryan, Erica Ridley, Julie Leto, and Justine Larbalestier, for keeping me sane when under deadline. More thanks are due to my fellow writers at the Washington Romance Writers, Chick Lit Writers of the World, TARA, Novelists, Inc., and the Greater Pacific Seahorse Polo Team.

I would also like to thank my friends and family for their love, support, and inspiration. My parents, my brothers, my in-laws, Elizabeth, Glenn, Chris, Megan, Mackenzie, Nicola, and Lauren—you’re the best!

Thank you to Dan for bringing takeout Thai, back rubs, and kisses after a long day of writing, and to Rio for consenting to nap under my chair while I worked.

As always, thank you to my secret sources, especially you new ones.

Finally, and most important, I am grateful to you, the readers of this book. Thank you for following Amy’s story.

DIANA PETERFREUND is a graduate of Yale University and lives with her husband and dog in Washington, D.C. She is the author of three other novels about the members of Rose & Grave:
Secret
Society Girl, Under the Rose
, and
Rites of Spring (Break)
.

Page 196

www.dianapeterfreund.com

Tap & Gown
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Delta Trade Paperback Original

Copyright © 2009 By Diana Peterfreund

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delta, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York

DELTAis a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peterfreund, Diana.

Tap & Gown : An Ivy League novel / Diana Peterfreund.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33859-8

1. Women college students—Fiction. 2. Greek letter societies—

Fiction. 3. College stories. 4. Chick lit. I. Title.

PS3616.E835 T37 2009

813'.6—dc22 2009004145

www.bantamdell.com

v3.0

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