The Outfit Clash: I'm Told to Strip novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Knockoff
Twenty minutes before convocation, Hunter Sterne orders Georgia to take her shirt off on the quad because her suit 'copies' his; she refuses, exposes his knockoff and drops his bodyguard, and a voice yells 'Stop!' as the second guard swings.
"I told you to take your shirt off," Hunter Sterne said. "Didn't you hear me?"
He said it loud enough for the whole quad to hear.
I had stepped around him once already, on my way to the auditorium.
He had stepped sideways and planted himself in front of me again.
"I heard you," I said.
"Then why aren't you doing it?"
"Why would I?"
The students around us went quiet.
A girl with a coffee stopped with the cup halfway to her mouth.
Two boys on the steps put their phones up.
Nobody talked to Hunter Sterne like that. I could see it on every face.
I had been on campus for six days, and even I knew who he was.
His name was on the arts center.
He was wearing a charcoal suit with a white silk shirt underneath, the front folded into tiny knife pleats.
So was I.
Mine was cut for a woman. His was cut for a man.
Otherwise they were the same suit.
That was the problem.
"You copied me," he said. "Somebody saw a picture and ran to a mall tailor. That shirt is mine. Take it off."
He pointed at my chest, right there in front of forty people.
I almost laughed.
The suit came from a couture house in Paris. It was an unreleased design from the fall collection.
Only two had been made in the entire world.
One was on a dress form in the studio on the Left Bank.
The other one was on me.
My mother had cut the pattern for it on her worktable the winter before she died.
I looked at Hunter's jacket.
The wool had a faint plastic shine where the light hit it.
The shoulders pulled when he pointed.
The whole thing was cut half an inch too narrow through the chest.
Nobody else on the quad would have seen it.
I grew up under my mother's worktable. I saw it in two seconds.
I laughed out loud.
Hunter's eyes narrowed. "What's funny?"
"Nothing," I said. "I just didn't think the heir to Sterne Group would be caught dead in a knockoff."
The girl with the coffee made a sound.
Hunter went very still.
"Are you saying I'm wearing a fake?"
I didn't answer.
I checked my watch.
Twenty minutes until convocation.
"Move," I said.
That one word did it.
The blond boy at Hunter's shoulder came at me first.
I'd heard someone call him Tyler on the walk over.
He shoved me in the chest with both hands.
"Hunter asked you a question. Who do you think you are?"
I took half a step back and let the next shove hit air.
"There are cameras all over this quad," I said. "Whoever starts a fight gets a conduct record."
Tyler snorted.
"A conduct record? His aunt is the vice president of this school. Hunter could slap you right now and nobody would touch him."
His aunt.
Patrice Sterne, vice president for campus operations and student affairs.
Yesterday an anonymous report had landed in my inbox.
It said Patrice Sterne had steered the cafeteria contract and two dorm renovations to her own relatives.
It had invoices attached.
I had read it twice at midnight and thought, I'll start on this next week.
Apparently not.
I took out my phone to text my assistant that I'd be late.
Hunter slapped it out of my hand.
It hit the brick path face down.
He set his shoe on it and leaned until I heard the glass crunch.
"Calling for help?" he said. "Not a chance. Take that shirt off, right now, or you'll regret it."
For a second I thought I'd heard him wrong.
Forty people were watching.
Some of them were filming.
Not one of them said a word.
"Hunter," I said. "This is a university. It isn't your house."
"My family paid to build this university," he said. "What gives a broke grad student the right to lecture me?"
I looked him in the eye.
"This university was founded a hundred and seventeen years ago," I said. "Sterne Group was founded thirty-two years ago. How exactly did your family build it?"
His face stiffened.
Someone on the steps laughed out loud.
Tyler spun around. "Shut up! What's funny?"
The laughing stopped.
I bent and grabbed my phone out from under Hunter's shoe and yanked.
His foot slid off it. He stumbled and nearly went down on the bricks.
When he got his balance back, he swung his open hand at my face.
I caught his wrist.
He pulled.
He couldn't get it back.
"Let go," he hissed. "One phone call and you're expelled. Do you understand me?"
I let go.
I took a tissue out of my pocket and wiped my palm.
"I'd like to see you try," I said.
That was when he lost his mind.
"Hold her down!"
His two bodyguards came off the path at the same time.
They were big men in black suits who had been standing behind him.
The first one reached for my arm.
I stepped back and his hand closed on nothing.
The second one grabbed my shoulder.
I took his wrist, turned it up behind his back, and let his own weight carry him down.
He grunted and hit the bricks on one knee.
Six years in Paris, I had boxed three mornings a week in a gym under a bakery.
Rich boys' bodyguards weren't hard.
The first guard saw his partner on the ground.
He swung a fist straight at my face.
"Stop!"
The voice cracked across the quad.
The fist stopped an inch from my cheek.
The crowd parted.
A woman in a cream jacket came through it with two campus security officers behind her.
Silver-blonde bob. Red reading glasses on a chain.
I knew her face from the staff directory.
Patrice Sterne looked at her nephew, at his bodyguard on his knees, and at me.
Then she raised one finger and pointed at me.
"Officers," she said. "Take her into custody."
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