by Skye Warren
Erin stopped in her tracks. The crowd of people sluiced around her as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk. If her mom had actually visited the doctor without being cajoled and forced into it, she must be in a lot of pain. “Surgery?”
“It doesn’t matter. You know I can’t afford it.”
“They don’t have any sort of programs or something, for low-income patients? A payment program?”
“I don’t know, but I couldn’t do it anyway. The surgery will make it so I can’t work for weeks. Maybe even months. I can’t take off work that long.”
Erin closed her eyes. “Mom, if he says you need the surgery, we’ll find a way.”
“No, I’ll figure it out, Erin. You don’t worry about me. Focus on school.”
Focus on school, and not an illicit relationship with a man way out of her league. Yeah, that was a fair request. Only she wasn’t sure she could actually follow it. Leave Blake? Chills raced through her body. Wrong, all wrong.
“I will, mom. One more semester.”
“One more semester and you’ll never have to clean houses for a living. You’ll never have to deal with this kind of problem, of not being able to afford your surgery or take time off to have it. That’s all I want for you, honey. All I’ve ever wanted for you.”
Her heart squeezed. “I know.”
“That’s my girl. You and me against the world,” she said, as she always had since Erin was a kid. It was a secret club with just two members.
At one time it had been a comfort.
Her mother’s goodbyes were happy and heartfelt as they hung up, but Erin felt stricken. Did it really come down to choosing between school and Blake? After all, when she eventually had a career, she’d have to juggle them, so she might as well learn to do it now.
She smiled without any humor. Blake might take the decision out of her hands. He might decide to rekindle what he had with Professor Jenkins.
Then Erin’s problems would go away…
Ah, but they wouldn’t. She loved him, simple as that. And it superseded so much. She wasn’t willing to sacrifice her degree for that love, or her future, but she’d give up her pride. It wasn’t worth much anyway.
Blake
A low growl emanated from Blake as he watched Erin leave the office. Their sexual encounter had been mind-blowing, more than he’d ever expected or hoped for, so much that his usual sense of foreboding had abandoned him completely, but it had all come crashing down.
Because of Melinda.
She was still here, coming up behind him, giving that trill laugh he’d once thought endearing. Fuck, he should have handled that better. Should have handled her better.
He’d been so damned surprised. Bowled over by the orgasm with Erin, by the shock of seeing Melinda after so long. And her innuendo that they might rekindle their relationship. Shit. No way in hell, and he’d been ready to tell her that.
He’d been ready to throw the position away. What did he need this job for anyway? He had already turned it down once. It wasn’t worth upsetting Erin, and it sure as hell wasn’t worth losing her. So he’d been about to tell Melinda exactly who Erin was, but maybe it was best that she’d interrupted him.
Erin was more than his lover; she’d been his ray of light in a dank, dark place. He wasn’t even sure she knew how much he had relied on her presence, looked forward to her visits.
If he told her, she might run.
Hell, he thought with a sinking feeling, she’d already run. Down the hallway might as well be to the moon for all he could talk to her now, with Melinda breathing down his neck and a meeting with the dean in twenty minutes.
The students outside his office sounded like a herd of elephants, their voices augmenting one another and bouncing off the white-bright walls until his head pounded. His palms were sweaty, his heartbeat erratic, and it wasn’t just the great sex or awkward encounter. He thought he was over these damn flashbacks, but it turned out he’d been avoiding them, staying home where no one ever came. Now he was immersed in people and drowning, suffocating.
Melinda propped a hip on the edge of his desk. “I think that girl might have a little crush on you. Fire her before she gets the wrong idea. Did you see the way she looked at you?”
Jesus, he needed to end this. “Probably the way everyone looks at me. Like my face was blown up and then sewn back together, which is exactly what happened.”
“No, she looked at you the way they used to look at you. You were the handsomest man on campus then. And when you wore your uniform? None of the girls could keep their eyes off you back then. I’m sure it feels good to have even one crush now.”
“Stop,” he said dryly. “You’ll flatter me.”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re offended. If there’s one thing we’ve had between us, it’s honesty. Your face is not handsome anymore. But I can live with the scarring.”
“Funny, that’s not how I remember it.”
Melinda gave him a small smile, a pout that he assumed was contrite. “You have to admit it was a lot to handle.”
Long-buried frustration surfaced. “Which part, Melinda? Because I didn’t ask you for a damn thing before you walked out my door for the last time.”
His bandages hadn’t even come off yet. “It just isn’t going to work out between us,” she’d said, but inside he’d heard, you’re hideous, you’re disgusting.
Over time his anger at her had dissipated, because he was hideous. He was disgusting. And he’d been stuck in that place for a full year, swinging back and forth between waking depression and haunting dreams of his time overseas, of a blast that had shredded his life to ugly, misshapen pieces.
Then one day, he’d woken up amid pizza boxes and soda cans and realized that if he were going to keep on living—and since he hadn’t died yet, he supposed he was—then he could at least live cleanly. So he’d pulled up the local job board and posted a message. Erin had replied and… Ah, Erin.
She had been a shot of healing heat in a bleak winter. Slowly he had improved himself, each day becoming a little stronger, coming back into his old self when he hadn’t thought it was possible.
Melinda circled the desk, coming to stand beside him. Some unknown curiosity had him letting her. Was anything left, any of the love and devotion he’d once felt for her? It seemed hard to believe he could have spent the rest of his life with her…when now he felt nothing. Like looking at a stranger smile at him, like feeling the cool back of her palm touch the unmarred side of his face, the part that was normal.
“I thought I was going to marry Blake Morris. The Blake Morris, with a whole future ahead of him, maybe even a run for Congress one day. You looked so different. It wasn’t just your scars. You were angry, withdrawn. I didn’t know how much of you was left.”
He moved her hand from his face. “You didn’t stick around to find out.”
“I freaked out. You can forgive a girl for that, can’t you?”
“We’re done, Melinda. You made that clear once.”
“I was young,” she said softly. “I thought appearances mattered.”
He laughed, the sound bitter and sharp as razors. She was only a year younger than him, and if he wasn’t mistaken, her dress suit was still designer. Her shoes probably cost five hundred dollars. “And I suppose now you’re interested in what’s on the inside, right? Or is it just my bank account you want back?”
She jerked her head back as if slapped. “That was low, Blake.”
“Maybe.” He sighed. “Yeah, it was. I shouldn’t have said that. But this ends right here. I don’t want you to come to my office unless you have school business to discuss.”
A smile curved her lips. “You have yourself a deal.”
She left, seeming entirely too pleased with herself. Probably plotting, if he knew her well, but he could handle her if she tried anything. He sat back, trying to focus. He was glad things had been squared away with Melinda. Maybe some closure there was a good thing.
He would fix thing
s with Erin tonight when she came over.
So why did it feel as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet?
Chapter Seven
Erin
On autopilot, Erin threw her backpack into the passenger seat and pulled out of the packed parking lot. She spent the drive to her apartment going over the outline for her research paper. She’d been sketching it out for months. Now she could finally get feedback and start writing it. The thought excited her—and terrified her. It was only her entire future.
Maybe she could run her ideas by Blake tonight.
Tonight.
The company she started working for mostly did residential cleaning, but sometimes they asked her to clean a corporate office after hours. They had a standing date to see each other in the evenings she wasn’t working. She had taken up the habit of showing up at his door with a DVD in hand. He’d order Chinese delivery, and they would eat greasy noodles and crack open a fortune cookie to share between them for good luck.
They’d only watch the first half of the movie because by the middle he would be kissing her and she’d have her hands down his pants. It had seemed like bliss only a few days ago. Now it all paled, darkened under the shadow of a woman from his past.
From the shadows of her own past that she’d never told Blake.
What did they really have in common? Great sex. That wasn’t much to base a relationship on, especially when they needed to keep it a secret. Maybe Erin was blowing this out of proportion. Hopefully so. Old wounds causing pain in the winter. This could all mean nothing. Professor Jenkins meant nothing. Though still new and even fragile, her feelings for Blake felt breathtakingly real. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
God, she hoped so.
She pulled onto the dappled concrete beneath the large elm tree. The apartments farther away from campus were much cheaper. Unlike the manicured gardens near campus, the beautiful foliage here was allowed to grow and bloom—even if it was only allowed to run wild to save on trimming costs.
Even the old building had a certain charm—she imagined the mottled brown shingles and faded yellow shutters had been very pretty when they were brand new. And if she had to put up with the old pipes breaking every month and backing up questionable water onto her bathroom floor…well, she didn’t really have a choice. This was all she could afford.
She unlocked the door and waved to Courtney.
Her friend and roommate didn’t glance up from the thick, spread-eagle textbook. Her sleek, straight black hair fell around her face. “How was lover boy’s first day?”
“Oh, swell.”
Now Courtney did look up, her eyebrows arching in question. “Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good. What happened?”
If only Erin knew the answer to that. She grabbed an orange from the bowl and sat down. The sharp citrusy scent burst into the room as she pulled the peel away, invigorating her after the deflating ride home. “Well, things started off pretty good. Scratch that, really good.”
“Sex?”
“Oh yeah. The best kind. Sort of frantic and breathless. And extra urgent because someone might have come in.”
Courtney moaned. “Stop. I haven’t been laid in like five years.”
“You broke up with Derek a month ago.”
“Yeah, but we hadn’t had sex for a month before that.”
Erin suppressed a smile. Two months wasn’t very long in her book, considering she’d gone for two years without it before Blake. But she could understand better now. The orgasms, the intimacy—it was all so wonderful that she didn’t want to go without it ever again.
“So,” Courtney prompted, stealing one of the sections of orange and biting into it. “Great sex, and then?”
“And then Professor Jenkins stopped by.” At her friend’s blank look, she added, “She’s one of the professors in my department. She’s also on the board, which means she’ll be one of the professors signing off on my final research paper. She has a reputation for being kind of mean, or at least harsh, but she always seemed nice enough. Or so I thought.”
“The plot thickens.”
“You have no idea. Because it turns out, she and Blake were…well, they were friends. Like serious friends. Friends friends.”
Courtney cocked her head. “Why are you saying it that way?”
“Some kind of relationship. It’s not like they spelled it out for me with a line graph or anything. It was just there between them, thick in the air. Like they’d been lovers.”
“How awkward.”
“Then Professor Jenkins—Melinda, that’s her first name—she starts going on about how they can go back to the way things were. While I’m still standing there.”
“Even more awkward.”
“Then Melinda asks me to leave.”
Courtney gasped. “She didn’t.”
Erin waved her hand. “There was this weird excuse about me cleaning his office, because no one at the university is supposed to know about us, so she thought I was just working there. Anyways, I bolted before Blake could even explain anything, but I’m going over there tonight, and you have to tell me how to not freak out.”
“Girl, you go ahead and freak out. I’m freaking out for you. I mean, you’ve been seeing him for like two weeks. Then the ex comes back in the picture? That’s freak-out material.”
“Surprisingly, this is not helping me calm down.”
“You’re trying to be rational and mature about this? Sometimes I don’t know why we’re even friends.”
“Trying is the operative word. I’m not succeeding very well.”
Courtney looked sympathetic. “I know you were really into him. Are,” she corrected herself. “You are really into him.”
“Oh God,” Erin moaned. “You think it’s over? Should I not even go over tonight?”
“Of course you should go. Be mature and rational, yes. But also be sexy and irresistible, and then ask him what the deal is. I bet he’s very happy with what he has now and was just taken by surprise when she was there. But if he turns you down, at least you’ll leave him wanting more.”
Erin looked down at her plain T-shirt and well-worn jeans. Her sneakers had turned grey and scuffed two years ago. “I don’t really do sexy and irresistible.”
Her friend smiled. “You do now.”
Erin
The lace-covered wire in the bra cut into Erin’s sides, making it hard to breathe. The high-heeled shoes pinched her toes. It had taken a whole extra hour to get ready, but it was all worth it, because she had to admit, even to herself, that she looked pretty damn sexy. It wasn’t an image she could keep up for any length of time, but then Blake was used to seeing her in drab, plain, well-worn workout clothes. The slinky black dress and heels were Courtney’s. The lacy underwear was her own, something she’d grabbed in a bargain bin at the mall but forgot to wear for Blake before tonight.
She was dressed for battle, primed and ready to wage a sex war, where the only rules were pleasure and both of them would be victors. At least, she only hoped it led to a night of hot sex…not her walking out the door, leaving him “wanting more,” as Courtney had said.
She turned off the main paved road onto the rough gravel one leading to his house. This wasn’t exactly the country, still just twenty minutes from downtown Tanglewood. But somehow this area hadn’t been populated thickly. Houses were sprawled across gently rolling hills, invisible at night, as if they were far from civilization.
Her old car grumbled softly as it bumped and jittered over the rough-hewn road. She patted the dusty leather dashboard. “You can make it, buddy.”
She hoped so, anyway. She broke even every month, spending what she earned cleaning on her share of the expenses plus textbooks and food. There wasn’t any margin for error, no room for a tired car to give out.
The farmhouse spread before her. It was relatively new and certainly large, but it was missing any pretension. Down to earth. Inviting and warm, like Blake.
The presence of another ca
r parked off to the side squeezed her heart. A sleek blue roadster sat where Erin usually parked. It could have been anyone’s car. But all her dread culminated, and she knew.
Professor Melinda Jenkins.
Please be wrong. Be somehow horribly mistaken about this whole thing. Maybe he has a friend over and didn’t mention it when we talked about me coming over. Maybe Blake bought a new car sometime between his afternoon class and now.
Not likely.
She pulled her car up behind the other car and stepped out, grimly noting the contrast between the expensive car and her own. Surely that transmission had no problems running over gravelly roads. It probably purred while it went.
Her heels were shaky on the pebbled pathway. That was something she hadn’t anticipated. She decided to cross between the cars and use the sidewalk, something she didn’t do often because it really wasn’t all that convenient, shoved up against the house and overgrown, with palm leaves blocking the path.
But this way she could walk without tripping and falling on her face. The last thing she needed was to sprain her ankle and get caught out here. Stuck in another awkward three-way, watching Melinda make googly eyes at Blake while Erin did her best impression of invisibility.
Orange light glowed from the kitchen window. A particularly far-reaching agave plant nipped her ankle, and she stumbled, catching herself against the brick wall. As she turned her face up to the light, she froze.
Standing at the counter was Melinda, but not as she had been before. Not put together in a business suit with her hair pulled into a bun. This Melinda was wearing only a shirt, a white business type of shirt that hung to her thighs. Her red hair fell down her shoulders, clearly mussed. She looked like a woman who had just been made love to.
The same way Erin must have on the nights she slept over.
As if to twist the knife and plunge it deeper, Melinda picked up a white container of Chinese food and fished inside with a fork. She took a bite, tilting her head and chewing thoughtfully as if to gauge the flavors.
A cat-got-the-cream smile curved her thin, wide lips.
Erin’s stomach churned, that familiar sick feeling of being on the outside looking in. God, she had wanted to believe it was all in her head. She had wanted to be wrong, but this was her nightmare, exactly so. Worse because of how comfortable Melinda looked…how smug. Erin didn’t know what that would feel like to be so sure of her position, her desirability, her man’s commitment to her that she could walk away and he’d be waiting when she came back.
