Free The Prince Charming List by Kathryn Springer Page A

-ics were popping up everywhere and I’d only known him a few hours. I cupped my hands over my face so I wouldn’t hyperventilate.
    A few minutes later, Jared ran back over to me, rumpled and out of breath. And adorable. I scooted over and made room for him on the bench.
    “What would you suggest for the sculpture?” I was curious. And a little uneasy. Bernice was vice president of the Prichett Advancement Council and she’d hinted they didn’t exactly embrace change. In fact, she mentioned something about them fighting it, and I quote, tooth and nail. Jared was going to be in Prichett all summer and I didn’t want him to make a bad impression in the first week.
    Because they might fire him, right, Heather? And then he’d have to leave town.
    To my amazement, Jared pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and thumbed through the contents until he found a piece of paper. “Something like this.”
    I studied the pencil sketch and resisted the urge to flip it around the other way. Just in case it was upside down. The three twisted spirals didn’t look like anything that occurred in nature.
    “What do you think?”
    I think I felt the same way my mother felt when I’d bless her with one of my preschool art projects. In a burst of inspiration, I remembered her response.
    “Tell me about it!”
    I exhaled quietly when he smiled instead of dumping the rest of his milk shake over my head and stomping off to sulk the rest of the night away on his twenty-foot couch. I wasn’t sure why Marissa had described him as temperamental.
    “It’s the land that gives back to the people who live here,” Jared said, tapping his finger against the paper. “This is the land. ”
    It looked like a handful of corkscrew pasta to me. But what did I know? When my friends and I played Pictionary, I was the designated timekeeper because no one trusted me with a pen and paper. I drew a coat hanger once and everyone thought it was a swan.
    “I’m not sure if they’ll change their minds,” I murmured, hoping he wouldn’t be too disappointed when his dreams were crushed under Junebug’s cloven hoof. “Why don’t you run it by Marissa, first?”
    “She says she isn’t on the committee.” Jared put the paper carefully back in his wallet and then slapped a mosquito on the back of his hand. “Looks like they found us again. We must give off tourist pheromones.”
    I realized we were alone. While I was studying Jared’s sketch, our pint-size chaperones had raced home to beat their Friday night curfew. Crazy as it sounded, I wished I had one again. It would have given me the perfect excuse to avoid the subject I knew was about to resurface. All twenty feet of it.
    This is no big deal. You watch a movie for a few hours. You go home. You’re twenty-one years old. You don’t need a chaperone.
    This came from the rational, logical side of me. At least it sounded rational and logical. But if Jared didn’t think I wanted to spend time with him, he’d find someone else to claim my spot on his shiny green couch. What made me nervous wasn’t the going to Jared’s house, but how much I wanted to. But I didn’t want to get into a potentially uncomfortable situation, either.
    “Do you want to come back—”
    Jared’s words were snuffed out by the soft but unmistakable sound of church bells down the street. I tilted my head back and saw a star winking at me, right above the trees. Reminding me that logical doesn’t always equal smart.
    So not funny, Lord.
    “I think I’ll go home—I have to work tomorrow morning.” I held my breath right after I said the words. Here was Jared’s next line: No problem. When can I see you again?
    “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
    I sighed. Why didn’t guys memorize the script?

Chapter Eight
    What did u do 2day? (Text message from Tony
    Gillespie to Dex)
    Dropd potato salad on my feet. (Dex)
    Y? (Tony)
    So I wouldnt have 2 share. (Dex)
    “H eather, have you met Dex?” Annie’s muffled words