Class Reunion

By Juliet Chastain

After years apart, Dana and Nicholas meet at their class reunion, each hoping the other will feel more than friendship. Their desire ignites a frenzy of passion, but their horrible ex-classmates keep getting in the way.

When the class beauty queen makes a play for Nicholas, Dana has had enough. No longer is she the shy, awkward teen she used to be...and she's determined to show Nicholas just how much she's grown up.

This is a previously published work. It has been revised and edited for Evernight Publishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Jan 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772336818

Juliet Chastain

Fashion writer and photographer, Juliet Chastain says that, in a way, writing fiction is like fashion photography. You have a few elements—the models and the clothes in photography, maybe a character and a couple ideas in fiction—and you make them into an interesting story. Juliet loves to tell stories and if she isn't doing it with the camera she's doing it with her keyboard.

Book preview

Published by Evernight Publishing ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2016 Juliet Chastain

ISBN: 978-1-77233-681-8

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Audrey Bobak

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For ELM, I couldn’t have done it without you.

CLASS REUNION

Romance on the Go TM

Juliet Chastain

Copyright © 2016

Hunched over his computer, Nicholas Barberis logged onto his e-mail and checked his flight confirmation. Again. And the hotel reservation. Again. Yep, there it was, spelled out on the screen. He'd fly out on Friday afternoon and return Sunday morning. And he was booked into the best suite in the Hotel Aurelia.

Once again he pulled out the invitation and checked the date. He knew he was being ridiculous. He flew all over the world, for heaven's sake, and never behaved like this. He never double-checked times or dates no matter how important the meeting or the people involved. He paid his assistant well to take care of details like those, and she always did—flawlessly. She'd been her usual efficient self when he'd asked her to book him into the sole hotel in the tiny, back-of-beyond town of Aurelia, Ohio. She knew he had been born and bred there. In fact, anyone who was into multi-player video games or who paid attention to business news knew that. But the third time he'd asked her to confirm his itinerary, she'd looked at him funny. So now he closed the door to his office and checked it himself.

Then he pulled out the invitation to his high school reunion. Studied it for the umpteenth time. And the note from Jay Bunter, reunion chairman, that had come with it:

Hey Barberis, my best bud, I sure hope to see you at the dinner dance. I know you and I have so much to talk about.

Nicholas shook his head and thought back to all the times Jay and his crew made his life a living hell, pushing him around and making fun of the fact that his clothes were off-brand.

I've got nothing I care to discuss with you. He tore the note in two.

He didn't give a damn about those guys. Or the girls who'd looked at him funny and giggled when he’d walked by in the school halls. He tore the note some more and threw the pieces in the wastebasket. He was an adult now, and if they still thought him a weirdo he didn't care. He wasn't going back to see them. He was going to the class reunion for one reason and one reason only: to see her, Dana Mitchell.

He'd been in love with Dana since he'd first met her the day she toddled over to him and asked him to join her next door in her sandbox. She'd been a cute, plump four-year-old then. Now, years later, his feelings for her were unchanged.

He opened up her last e-mail. He knew it by heart, but he read it anyway.

Hey, Nicholas, you going to the reunion? I'll go if you go. I want to see if everyone in our class—except you—was really as horrible as I remember them.

It didn't sound like she was particularly anxious to see him. So he typed, Yeah, I'd like to check that out myself. See you there.

He'd thought it