Queen Bee: A Greenbridge Academy Romance Read online

  Queen Bee

  A Greenbridge Academy Romance

  Abby Knox

  Copyright © 2019 by Abby Knox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Edited by Aquila Editing

  Proofread by Red Pen Princess

  Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creations

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to my own special in-house nerd. Wait … does that make me the mean girl?

  Queen Bee

  Book five in a collection of stories from Greenbridge Academy

  By Abby Knox

  The mean girl has a secret ... and it's hot and nerdy.

  Ridley Rushmore is the meanest Queen Bee that ever buzzed the halls of the elite Greenbridge Academy. Her mega-rich parents have spoiled her rotten out of guilt over their failed marriage. This Christmas, however, both of her parents have been acting weird. Instead of flying off to spend the holidays at one the family’s many resort properties, Ridley’s engaged mother is making her stay home for Christmas, and has even invited her gold digging yoga instructor fiance and his geeky gamer son, Crosby, to spend the week. When she runs head long into the graphic-tee-wearing brick wall that is her future step brother, however, Ridley realizes he is anything but the gamer boy she pictured in her head. Needless to say, this nerd won’t be spending any time at all holed up in her mother’s basement. Things take an awkward turn when she heads back to her final semester at Greenbridge Academy, and her geeky little secret starts to come out. Will she and Crosby be able to keep the buzz to a minimum or will their inability to keep their eyes and hands off each other risk both their reputations?

  Books already out in the Greenbridge Academy series:

  Swim Coach (slow burn)

  Grumpy Dad (a grumpy single dad meets sunshine Kindergarten teacher)

  Benefactor (sugar daddy)

  Headmistress (OW/YM)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Hot Off The Press

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Abby Knox

  1

  Crosby

  The imposing, festively decorated mansion on the highest hill in town looks like something on the set of a Christmas movie. It’s supposed to look warm and inviting. But, assuming I know all there is to know about the people inside that house, that warmth is only for show.

  My stomach lurches at the sight of it and my mind immediately starts planning my escape.

  Dad steers the car up the long, winding driveway and chats me up about the plans for the week. It’s been years since I’ve been a passenger with him driving; it only happens around the holidays and always makes me feel like an awkward kid again.

  “I hope you remembered to pack something other than that Star Wars tee-shirt,” Dad says, parking the car in front. A young man appears in the doorway, descends the stairs and approaches. My dad hands the keys over to him like he’s done this before.

  I realize this kind of fancy living has become normal for him, even though this is definitely not how our family normally lives. This house has staff, and he’s already acclimated to it. It’s worse than I thought. He’s totally forgotten where he came from.

  I run my palm down my front, where my zip hoodie hangs open despite the cold. “This shirt is not from Star Wars,” I say.

  “Well, whatever. You know what I meant,” Dad says as we ascend the stairs. At the top, another staff person of the house holds the door open for us while another takes our bags from the trunk of Dad’s car.

  It doesn’t matter how successful I am at game design, I’ll always feel like a nine-year-old at Christmas and not entirely in a good way.

  My eyes scan the ornate and festive front parlor. If for some reason I can’t bug out of here, maybe the house has a basement in which I can set up a temporary office. Maybe I can hole up there and pretend to miss by accident all the fancy festivities my dad’s fiancée has planned.

  The first things I notice are the cold marble floors, grandiose staircases, and spindly, uncomfortable-looking furniture. And dozens of white Christmas trees. Every single one of them is white with blue and metallic ornaments. A little bit of blue can be a welcome contrast to the traditional red and green, sure. But somehow this person has made her already ostentatious house feel even colder at Christmastime by splashing every surface with wintry colors.

  None of this bodes well for the person I’m about to meet.

  “So where is she?” I ask. I would have thought she or someone in the family would be there to greet us at the door like normal people do.

  Dad shoots me a scolding look.

  The staff person who showed us inside answers me. “Ms. Rushmore will be with you shortly; she’s just finishing up with the Christmas Eve party planners.”

  Multiple event planners, in addition to the existing house staff? Good grief.

  Truth be told, I’m predisposed not to like the woman. My predisposition is not totally unfounded. My father was a bit of a womanizer in the past. Easy to do when he meets all kinds of rich women at the overpriced yoga classes he teaches at his studio. I’ve run into several of them from time to time while visiting my dad, and they all seemed to look down their noses at us and our small farmhouse out behind the barn yoga studio.

  The only reason I have to hope that my dad might have finally found the real thing is the fact that I’ve never seen her. He’s been keeping mum about her, until today. He flaunts his conquests, but he gets quiet when he’s genuinely serious about something or someone.

  “Don’t look so glum, son,” Dad says with an elbow nudge. “You won’t be the only young person hanging around the house. From what I understand, Bianca’s daughter will be joining us this week, so this will be a great time for you to get to know your future stepsister. And you’ll get to meet her friends at the Christmas Eve party. Won’t that be fun?”

  The young man who greeted us at the door shows us to the guest wing up an echoing hallway. Why do they need so much staff when this house looks and feels that nobody actually lives here? He opens a set of double doors and gestures to me.

  “Stepsister? Hardly,” I scoff as I step into my room, which, with a four-poster bed, a sofa and its own bathroom, looks more like a hotel suite. “I’m 24. Just because you’re marrying her mom doesn’t make us a blended family.�
�

  Dad offers, “Look at it as a chance to take a break from video games. You work too hard.”

  I snort. “Sure, sounds like a blast,” I say as I picture a spoiled rotten princess and her mean girlfriends all sitting around, glued to their phones. But then, maybe that’s to my advantage. Maybe this Ridley character will be so bored by me, I’ll have plenty of time to be alone and work.

  He shrugs. “Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know how any of this works. I’ve never married into an existing family before, but I’m gonna to go with the flow. I find it’s best to do just that. The Rushmore family prefers it that way. You might start by relaxing your shoulders a bit, son.”

  I hadn’t even noticed I was holding them that close to my ears.

  Dad gives me a nod and follows the house staffer away to what I assume is Bianca’s room, where he’ll be staying.

  I shake my head at the opulence of the room, wondering why I agreed to fly in from California to meet this family. Why couldn’t we all meet somewhere—I don’t know—more normal?

  Sure, I grew up around here, but I never expected that I’d have to come back and play house with the richest family in town.

  Hooking my thumbs in my belt loops, I examine a sheet of vellum paper on the nightstand that outlines the week’s activities. Nothing against the Rushmores and their exclusive A-list holiday parties, but this is not my idea of holiday fun.

  What does sound fun is spending to Christmas alone at my office in Silicon Valley. I was hoping to grab all of the Thai carry out I could fit into my car and spend the entire week in the empty office.

  Instead I have to be here, with a mommy blogger-slash-Real Housewife and her spoiled socialite daughter, the hotel heiress. I hope they don’t mind a guy in the corner wearing a Comic Con tee-shirt and testing out games on his three different devices at their black tie affair.

  2

  Ridley

  Wrapping myself up in my favorite cashmere blanket scarf, I wind my way through the hustling and bustling party planners in the kitchen to check on the pregnant Sassy.

  Sassy is my cat. Well, not exactly my cat. She’s a stray cat who showed up in the pool house one day last summer and I fed her. Mother told me not to feed her, which compelled me to feed her again the next day.

  When the temperatures began to drop, I was able to pull at Mother’s calcified heartstrings hard enough to convince her to let me keep her. I bought a heated dog house on Daddy’s credit card, because Mother refused to let Sassy come inside the house.

  I peek inside the cat house and Sassy pads up to me. I scratch her behind the ears and she purrs. Her belly is getting bigger, and I’m getting nervous. I’ve looked it up on the internet and I know there’s not much for me to do. The vet says everything looks normal, too. But I just have a bad feeling about it. Maybe because she was so scrawny when I found her.

  While I pet her soft fur, she scratches her sandpaper tongue against the inside of my wrist. The more time I spend petting Sassy, the more I think it’s probably for the best that we’re going to spend the Christmas holiday here at home. I don’t really trust anyone else to look after her.

  After I make sure Sassy has everything she needs, I step back inside the kitchen and the warmth of the house makes me regret leaving Sassy outside. The kitchen windows are decked out with faux greenery. Nothing is what might be considered traditional decorations, and frankly, the colors leave me cold. Everything is expensive, spiky, and untouchable in chilly shades of blue, silver and copper.

  Mother has gone with an “icy” theme for the holidays this year, for the sake of standing out for her social media followers. I’ve had very little input in how she decorates for the holidays. As you can imagine, I’m just here to be the dutiful daughter, another Christmas ornament decorating her home for her party guests.

  Usually at this time of year, I’m jetting off with Mother or Dad to one exclusive Rushmore resort or another. But Dad is acting hella strange and talking all about how I need to learn a work ethic, whatever that is. He even spoke to me about my graduation present. Apparently I won’t be getting a new car, I’ll be driving his hand-me-down Land Rover. How hard have I busted my ass at school, and now I won't even be getting that new car smell?

  And Mother isn’t fighting Daddy on any of this. She’s so obsessed with her gold digging yoga instructor, she’s actually invited him here, him and his super-nerd son who plays video games for a living. Or something like that, I’m not sure.

  Either way, whether I spend the holiday with Daddy or Mother, this is not where I thought I would be at Christmas.

  Earlier this semester, I complained to my best friend Hadley about all these changes coming. She rightly pointed out that perhaps I’d be receiving some good guilt presents. In the past, when he was feeling bad about their divorce, guilt presents from Daddy included front row seats to Fashion Week.

  Maybe Daddy got his new attitude about me when I scratched my heat at the first swim meet of the season in protest against Coach Ford. Maybe that, or when I got suspended because of it for two subsequent meets.

  But what Daddy doesn’t know is, Sassy has done something to me. I don’t much care for other people—I barely have any respect even for half of my friends who follow me around at school—but maybe, now that I’m a senior at Greenbridge Academy, I’m figuring out who I am, finally. I think I might be an animal person. If Sassy needs me, Fashion Week can go kick rocks.

  As I text with Hadley, I round the corner into the library and hit a brick wall, sending my phone skidding across the marble hallway. I lunge for it, but a big, masculine hand already has it.

  “Excuse me. Are you OK?”

  I pop up and take in the tall brick shithouse standing there holding my phone out to me. Very large but dorky hiking boots are partially covered by woefully outdated and frayed cargo pants that barely hide leg muscles that could put Jason Momoa to shame.

  The hand that holds my phone is big with long, strong fingers. My eyes travel up his arms to take in his biceps that stretch the short sleeves of his tee-shirt. He has the shoulders and neck of someone who either works out a lot or is in the military. And his face. Oh my god. His hair is too long and unstyled on top with curls everywhere, but the big, gray-green eyes and unforgivably long lashes draw me in like catnip.

  I put my hand out to take my phone and he turns his hand over, placing it in my palm. I rein in my ogling and smile as if I’m totally unfazed. I’d better be unfazed. Mother’s new fiancé is a total snack — an entire meal, in fact — and the holidays are about to get super awkward if one of us thinks the other is hitting on them.

  “I’m fine. Totally. Fine.”

  When I take the phone, I feel the brush of a finger. It’s almost undetectable but I definitely felt the heat of one finger pad against the meat of my palm.

  Our eyes meet, but neither of us says anything for a few seconds. I casually let my eyes travel from his face back down to the chest that I just bounced off of a few seconds earlier. That’s when I notice his worn-out olive green tee-shirt has a cross section diagram of a spaceship and the word “Serenity” above it. The shirt is so geeky it makes me mad. I don’t know what Serenity is but it looks like the ultimate geek boy tee-shirt, evoking the image of people with poor hygiene who spend all day in basements commenting online about superhero movies.

  And then it hits me.

  Oh shit. This is not Neil, my mom’s fiancé. This is Neil’s son, Crosby. The dorky game designer something-or-other and my soon-to-be stepbrother.

  He is gorgeous. So gorgeous it makes my heart not just skip a beat, but pole vault over a beat and clumsily hit a ceiling fan. His eyes, his chest, everything about him puts me at risk of acting like a swooning schoolgirl. I have to check myself as my eyes keep roaming from his full lips to his beautiful lashes to his bulging biceps. There’s not a single spot on this man for me to look without getting turned on.

  Wait, there has to be. Elbows? Nope, they’re too closely connected to his
thick, sinewy forearms. Adam’s apple? Come on, eyeballs, it’s like you’re not even trying now. Finally, I spot the slightly crooked front tooth in his smile. Clearly nobody took care of his orthodontia as a child. But damn if that tooth is not utterly charming and makes me imagine the pattern of bite marks on my skin.

  “You must be the gamer boy,” I say, making it look like I’m smirking at his stupid tee-shirt when really I’m ogling his jacked pecs that are right in my face.

  His chuckle makes every inch of my skin light up, right down to my hair follicles. How did he just do that? He holds out his hand. “Crosby.”

  I finally let our eyes meet because I’ve decided that I’m not turned on by the name. It’s not adorable at all. And I’m definitely not thinking of how it might sound in my mouth while I moan, my body crushed against all that hardness, my legs wrapped around him.

  “Nice to meet you,” I reply, letting him squeeze my hand in his. The skin of his hand is warm and rough, with a hunk of metal in the middle. I look down at our joined hands and see he wears a weird skull ring on his right hand.

  “Interesting ring,” I say, intending to make the words sound snobby, but they escape me sounding more earnest than I intended.

  “Thanks,” Crosby says. “I got it to commemorate the day I met my idol at this con I went to as a kid. You might know him, he was in that movie…”