Page 13 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

"If you're not too busy destroying other historical artifacts."

"Nah," he said with that infuriating smirk. "Destroying your rules is much more fun."

After he left, I stared at the restored displays, trying to process what had just happened. Jack Morrison, the bad boy of Preston University, spent his Friday night carefully reassembling Victorian medical exhibits while discussing Civil War history.

This is not how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to be careless, arrogant, and dismissive. Not careful. Not knowledgeable. Not looking at artifacts as if they matter. Not making my stomach flip every time he handles something with those stupidly gentle hands.

My dental tools seemed to watch me knowingly from their cases.

"Not a word," I told them. "This doesn't change anything."

But as I did my final checks, I couldn't help noticing he'd arranged everything perfectly, following all my preservation protocols. He'd even remembered about proper display angles for optimal historical appreciation.

I was going to need to add a rule about bad boys who paid attention to museum curation techniques. And maybe one about the way they looked with their sleeves rolled up, handling historical artifacts with unexpectedly gentle hands.

Just for academic purposes, of course.

And possibly another rule about practice jerseys that had no business looking that good on someone who could quote Civil War medical statistics.

Also, for academic purposes.

Not because I kept thinking about how he'd said "like I do" when talking about finding history interesting. Or how his hands had moved so carefully over the artifacts. Or how he'd stayed to help when he could have left.

I was in trouble.

The kind of trouble that no amount of rules could fix.

The kind of trouble that started with careful hands-on historical artifacts and ended with broken hearts in museum storage rooms.

The kind of trouble that looked really, really good in a practice jersey.

Focus, Sophie.

Right. Rules. Professionalism. Distance.

But maybe, just maybe, one small rule about appreciating historical competence wasn't completely out of line.

For academic purposes only, of course.

Chapter six

Bad Reputation

The problem with small college campuses is that gossip spreads faster than Victorian-era cholera. By Monday morning, three separate versions of Saturday night's party at the hockey house were circulating through Preston University's rumor mill, each more outrageous than the last.

The whispers followed me through the quad, growing louder with each passing group of students:

"Did you hear? Jack Morrison threw this insane party. “I heard he actually drove someone's BMW into the fountain... "No, no, he got into this huge fight with the football team... "My roommate's cousin said he broke Sarah Thompson's heart. You know, the swimmer?"

I tried not to care. I had more important things to focus on - like the Victorian medical text waiting for cataloging or the paper on 19th-century surgical innovations due next week. But my phone kept buzzing with updates from the campus gossip Twitter account, each notification more ridiculous than the last.

This is exactly why you made all those rules, I reminded myself as I scrolled through yet another thread about his exploits. He's the kind of guy who treats hearts like library books – something to be checked out and returned damaged.

The library study room felt smaller than usual that Tuesday evening, the tension palpable as Jack slouched into his chair fifteen minutes late. His copy of "Jane Eyre" looked suspiciously well-worn for someone who supposedly spent his weekend destroying campus property.

"Did you really put someone's car in the fountain?" I asked, trying to sound casual and probably failing spectacularly.

Jack looked up from his book, his jaw tight. The fluorescent lights caught the edges of a bruise near his collar - from fighting or hockey, I couldn't tell anymore. "Thought you didn't listen to gossip."

---