Love Comes Calling Read Free Page B

the freshmen popped out of the dining room.
    â€œDon’t you dare answer that door!”
    She plastered herself against the wall. “I won’t. Promise.”
    Spearing her with a Pola Negri glare, I ran back up the stairs and down the hall to Martha’s room. I might have been an Eton, but she was the one who’d received the honor of the corner room.
    She didn’t answer my knock.
    Please, please, please!
    â€œI’m coming!” She opened the door, her hair already set in water-wave combs and tied up in string.
    â€œCan I borrow one of your windows, Martha?”
    â€œOne of my . . . windows? Why?”
    Pushing past her, I strode to one. Unlatching it, I pushed up the sash, then hitched up my skirt and sat astride the frame.
    â€œEllis! What on earth—?”
    â€œHush, Martha. I need to concentrate.”
    She sprang through the door and out into the hall. “Help! Help! Ellis Eton is committing suicide.”
    Oh, for heaven’s sake. “I am not!” I raised my voice so it could be heard over hers. “But I might just have to murder you, Martha Davis!”
    She came back into the room and shut up her mouth as she clutched her collar tight about the throat.
    â€œWish me luck.” I hoped this would go more like a Douglas Fairbanks movie than a Charlie Chaplin one. Leaning forward, I swung my other leg over the window ledge. Then I pushed off the sill as I grabbed at the edge of the gutter. As I hung there, I wrapped my legs around the downspout. I’d seen Buster Keaton do it once in a movie; it had looked so easy as I was sitting there in the theater, but now I couldn’t quite figure out how it worked.
    I loosened my hold on the pipe and started to slide, then tightened my grip and stopped. Nothing to it! And much easier than climbing down a tree.
    Only . . . those voices sounded louder. Were they getting nearer?
    I loosened my grip again and started to slide, when my thighs got hung up on something sharp and pointy.
    Ow!
    It probably would have worked just fine if the pipe hadn’tseparated from the building just then and swung me out away from the dormitory like a ride at Salem Willows Park. I tried to hold on as long as I could—I really did—but with the pipe peeling off and then curving down toward the ground, suddenly I was sliding along the gutter in the wrong direction, upside down. And before I knew it, I’d reached the end of the pipe and sailed off through the air.
    I closed my eyes.
    There wasn’t anything else to do, and I really didn’t want to see where I was headed.

3
    M y landing wasn’t quite what I’d expected. It was much softer, and it was also accompanied by a grunt. A very masculine grunt. Which was followed by a laugh and the scent of black licorice. “Fancy seeing you here, Ellis.”
    I’d shut my eyes up so tight it took me a moment to open them. And another long moment to believe what they insisted on telling me. Apparently, my attempt at escape had been spotted, and when I’d fallen it had been straight into the arms of Griffin Phillips.
    He was staring down at me, his blond hair flopping forward into those gorgeous blue eyes he had. “Are you all right?”
    Someone started up a Harvard fight song, and all the fraternity brothers joined in.
    Griff slung me over his shoulder as if I were some damsel in distress and ran several yards down the grass before stopping and setting me carefully down on the ground. Everyone cheered as if he’d just scored another touchdown.
    Rah-rah. Sis-boom-bah.
    I pushed through the boys and headed out toward the street.
    Griff jogged to catch up with me. “Hey—you headed to the theater? Can I come with you?”
    â€œSure.” Why not? I would have done better just to have opened the front door to him in the first place, but that’s about the way things had been going this term, and there was no reason to