Broken Beauty

by Skye Warren

  “Plans change, Mel. People change. For what it’s worth, I told you that I wanted to make a difference. And you said—”

  “I said I would make that difference even bigger.”

  “Is this what we’re supposed to be doing, bickering over a fucking semester? We won’t be together, but we can find that spirit again. Of doing things that matter. Not harassing a young woman who’s had a hard enough time as it is.”

  To her credit, Melinda looked contrite. “Really, I don’t know where you even found her. I can’t imagine she runs in our circles.”

  “Leave her alone, Mel. I know you’re on the committee. You can challenge her all you want, but when it comes to vote, I expect you to do what you would for any other student. And since Reese Miller has been bragging about her project to any faculty who will listen, I have no doubt about the merits of her work. Are we clear?”

  “My, my. You certainly get protective where this girl’s involved. I guess it is more than an easy f—”

  “Melinda.”

  “Fine. I’ll leave her alone. And you’ll keep my secret.” She bent down and rummaged in her leather briefcase, pulling out a manila folder.

  He accepted it and flipped it open. Jesus. There was Erin, naked. His pulse pounded. “You came to my house,” he said flatly.

  “No, absolutely not. You told me not to.” A pause. “I hired a private investigator. Oh, don’t look at me like that. He didn’t go on your property. He has one of those fancy long-distance-lens things.”

  He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The sad part was, he wasn’t even surprised. Just angry. They may have been young and stupid, possibly still were, but Erin was light years ahead of them. Mature and brave. He was furious she’d had to face this alone. Hurt that she hadn’t come to him for help.

  I’m sorry, she’d said. Well, fuck, he was sorry too. But he would fix this. He’d fix every single thing that came up, run a goddamn gauntlet if she needed him to until she finally believed in them.

  * * *

  She’d just gotten out of the shower when her phone rang. She dried herself off quickly and grabbed it, thinking Blake and no, not Blake. Her stomach sank. Her mother.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asked immediately.

  “How do you know anything’s wrong?”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’ve known. You haven’t been calling as much, and now your nose sounds stuffy. Either you’ve caught a head cold, or you’ve been crying.”

  Her smile pushed away some of the clouds she’d felt all afternoon. “You know me too well.”

  “Talk to me.”

  It was probably time to give it up, anyway. There was nowhere to go from here, nothing to be gained from discretion. She sighed.

  “I made a mistake. A big one.” Or several, depending on the way she portioned it out. “I was seeing someone. He was in the military but he’d left. And then he got an offer from the university and accepted it before we knew…before we knew he’d be teaching my class. My last class. By then it was too late to back out.”

  “Oh, Erin. I can’t believe…”

  She laughed shortly, understanding the speechlessness all too well. “Yes. Now it looks like we might be found out. Almost. So I’ve broken things off with him.”

  What a thin phrase for what she felt. Broken things off, as if it were a twig from a tree. Instead of how she felt—shattered. Split apart into a thousand shards. Her stomach clenched tight, her head strangely thick and full of cotton. Not all of this came from leaving that note for Blake. Some was the humiliation of being accused of whoring herself, as she sat in an office in her university. She’d felt so low, so unworthy. How she’d always felt, really, but all her insecurity had floated to the surface. Her eyes closed tightly. In fact, maybe that was why she’d been so damn quick to write that note. She’d felt awful, disgusting, and she hadn’t wanted to tell Blake about that. Hadn’t wanted to see him defend her, knowing that she probably deserved the censure. Or worse—hadn’t wanted to see the light of agreement in his eyes.

  “Of course you did the right thing ending it,” her mother said.

  Erin said nothing.

  “In fact, I… A professor, Erin? How old is he?”

  “Not that old. It’s not like he was tenured or anything. Just a man with a graduate degree and a good academic reputation who they’ve hired for the semester.”

  “I don’t understand. If you didn’t meet him through the university, where did you?”

  Her stomach clenched. She took a deep breath. “I was cleaning his house.”

  “Erin!”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, but I just… It wasn’t a big deal.” A lie, of course. It had been a huge deal, and she’d known her mother would mind that most of all.

  “Erin, men like that—”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know enough. Men like that don’t respect women who clean their big, expensive houses.”

  “Blake’s not like that.”

  “Oh, so he’s not rich? He didn’t grow up with everything handed to him?”

  “God. Not all rich people are like that.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. They both knew what Erin meant. Whatever unspoken thing had been done to her mother by the man she worked for.

  When she spoke again, her mother’s voice had softened into pleading. “Tell me this much. Did he ask you out, take you on a nice date like he can afford? Or did he make a move while you were working and suggest that you keep it a secret?”

  She felt like she might throw up. She was just so confused, so upset. She didn’t really doubt Blake, but it was hard to explain. What could she say? I caught him masturbating and thought it would be fun to join in. That would hardly make her mother feel better. Besides, Blake had his own reasons for being so reclusive, and she didn’t want to get into that now.

  As much as she disagreed with her mother’s assessment, she could also understand her worry. From the outside, it looked similar. Goddamned precedent. For reasons she couldn’t explain it made her angry to use Blake’s lesson in this, but she couldn’t ignore the implications. Her mother was the precedent here, the framework for analyzing her own situation. But in this case, the differences were so vital, so deep at the core, that it turned the precedent on its head. Her mother’s boss had taken advantage of his position. Blake was her friend. Her lover. And he didn’t deserve to be tossed away like garbage because she suddenly got scared. Even if she had a good reason to be scared.

  She sighed. “I’ll work it out, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “Baby…”

  “What about you? How are your knees?”

  Her mother’s harrumph told her she didn’t appreciate the blatant attempt at distraction. “They’re fine. I’m always fine as long as my little girl is okay.”

  She placated her mother with promises that she would focus on school and take care of herself. Which she would, but that included talking to Blake. Once she was tucked into bed, her tears fell freely. Melinda’s words kept replaying in her mind. I suppose the rest is just extra credit. God. What a bad day, that was all she could think. What a horrible day, and the one man who could make her feel better, she’d pushed away. She cried until she was exhausted and sleep finally overtook her.

  In the morning her eyes were puffy. She felt tired and tense at the same time. A jog would loosen her muscles at least. She dressed quickly, throwing on her ratty workout clothes and graying sneakers. But when she opened the front door of her apartment, she stopped cold.

  A small cardboard box sat in the alcove. Her body felt wooden as she knelt to look inside. A few of her books were stacked at the bottom. A sweatshirt. And a note. She unfolded it with shaking hands.

  Don’t worry about M. I took care of it. Love you.

  He’d written a note instead of trying to talk to her, exactly as she’d done to him. He’d come to her apartment and left this box of her things. A chill ran down her sp
ine. If it were really over between them, if he was done with her…

  Love you, he’d written. Two little words, and she hung every last one of her hopes on them.

  * * *

  Erin stared at the wide farmhouse. The shutters were green. How had she never noticed that before?

  She was stalling. The engine was probably cool by now. She suspected he knew she was out here, but he hadn’t come out. Wouldn’t come out. The note had made that much clear. He was going to quietly go away because she’d asked him to. God. She hated herself. Was he pissed at her? He should be. Strangely, she was pissed at him for respecting her request, since he seemed to know about Melinda’s threats. Didn’t he know she’d been desperate and distraught? Didn’t he care?

  Well, she would speak to him today. He deserved that much. So here she was, gathering up the courage to go inside. Trying to figure out whether she would ask for him back or just give him the closure he deserved.

  With a sigh, she stepped out of the car and went to the door. He answered after only a minute, confirming her suspicion that he knew she was out there. That he knew how hard this was for her. His expression was reserved, eyes revealing nothing. None of the hot desire he usually let her see. None of the love. The anxiety in her stomach grew heavier. Her heart beat faster.

  “Good morning,” he said, and what did that even mean? She felt anxious and not totally put back together after her little breakdown.

  “Morning.”

  He stepped back to let her in. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as she passed. The green T-shirt he wore hung off his broad shoulders, loose where his waist narrowed. His jeans rested on his hips and sloped over muscular thighs. He was barefoot and smelling of soap…in a word, edible. But he wasn’t hers, because she’d panicked. Because she’d caved.

  She turned to face him. “You look good.” A blush heated her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to say that.

  He quirked that lopsided smile. “That’s one benefit of looking like I do. A few shadows under my eyes don’t make much of an impact. I couldn’t sleep.”

  Her breath caught. “Blake. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, I read that in your note.” There was a reserve to his voice, making him foreign and intimidating. Not the Blake she’d lain in bed with. Not even the Blake who’d chatted with her when she came to clean his house.

  “I freaked out. I made a mistake.”

  “We all have our moments.” His words were forgiving. His tone was not.

  She stared at him. “So, that’s it?”

  “If that’s all you want, then yes. For now.” He was still courteous. Still cold.

  “What do you mean for now?”

  “I mean I’m not going to push you. This semester. There’s a few weeks left. If you don’t want to see me during them, I’ll respect that.”

  She made a face. “And if I don’t want to see you after that?”

  “You will.”

  Hope bloomed inside her, fast and powerful. “You sound very sure of yourself.”

  “I’m a work in progress, but this much I know, you want me. I want you. Nothing’s going to change that.”

  She frowned. “How did you know what happened?”

  “About Melinda? Because you aren’t the kind of woman to cut and run. It hurt like hell to get that note. Even Melinda said her goodbye face-to-face.”

  Guilt squeezed her throat, making it hard to breathe. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she blinked them away. She’d hurt him worse than she thought. Imagining herself so very different, so much better than Melinda and then doing the same thing. Worse.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He looked over at the windows, where thick cream-colored drapes blocked the view. Now those were definitely new. He had been busy.

  “It didn’t make sense, though, for you to do it. You’ve told me so many times you don’t care about how I look—”

  “I love how you look,” she interrupted.

  He smiled slightly. “Sometimes I just like hearing you repeat it.”

  “Nice.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t leave because of that or because things were difficult. Unless you got scared about something. By someone.”

  She groaned. “I never should have freaked out like that.”

  “It’s okay. We all get freaked out sometimes. I think I hold the world’s record for longest time spent hiding in his house.”

  “That was different. You were…” She couldn’t say the words. Almost killed. A prisoner of war.

  “Wounded,” he said softly.

  She swallowed hard. He’d never really talked about what had happened before, and she’d never pushed. He pulled her to the couch and sat down with her. She remembered, with a flash of heat, what they’d done on this couch with a glass of wine. His smile said he noticed her blush.

  He grew serious. “I was upset you didn’t come talk to me when Melinda threatened you. Did you think I’d get pissed at you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It’s not that. I wasn’t thinking straight and I wanted to handle it myself. I feel like I’m always coming to you with problems or trying to change you. I was the one who pushed you into accepting the job and then it got all twisted when we found out it was my class.”

  “Erin, only I can take responsibility for the things I did. Or the things I didn’t do. That’s something I’ve had to relearn recently. I accepted the position because I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m not going to let Melinda jeopardize that any more than I’m going to let her come between us.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “So how exactly did you take care of it?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, the usual. Blackmail, extortion. Now that I think of it, I could have used bribery. But it didn’t come to that.”

  “Blake Morris, you didn’t! The pillar of honor and integrity.”

  “Don’t pin those words on me, sweetheart. I was raised to be a politician, remember? Besides, it got the job done. And this isn’t about you bringing me problems or trying to change me. This is taking care of what’s mine.”

  She felt breathless, her body alight with excitement. “I’m yours?”

  “You know the answer to that, Erin. You’re mine forever, whether I touch you in three minutes or three weeks or three years. Though let’s not wait as long as that last one, please.”

  “Touch me now,” she whispered. She wanted to feel connected to him again, the deep and abiding intimacy that only came of bodies joining.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “If I take you, we’re going upstairs to my bed, and I’m not letting you out until morning. You’re going to be very sore tomorrow.”

  She moaned softly, imagining all the ways they would fill those hours. Her body twinged with the phantom imprint of him, eager for the thick length filling her up.

  “Are you thirsty?” he asked solicitously. “Hungry? We should take care of you now. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”

  Her groan was pure sexual frustration. “You’re teasing me.”

  “A little payback, sweetheart. You really drove me crazy with that note.” He still spoke evenly, but she sensed the turmoil beneath his words, how deeply she’d affected him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She took his hands in hers, marveling at how large they were, how strong and capable they felt. And yet he let her hold them, turn them over. Let her press her lips to the back of his hand. He was like that everywhere, big and wonderfully competent, yet he allowed her to lead. Was it because he knew she needed that? Or a natural respect he granted her as his lover? There was so much more she wanted to know about him.

  It wasn’t seductive, but it was honest. “What happened over there? You don’t have to tell me everything. I wouldn’t expect that. Just…something I don’t know.”

  He didn’t seem surprised by her question. He nodded, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to ask about his darkest
hour, and maybe it was.

  “We were on patrol. Me and three other guys. We were attacked by insurgents with missile launchers. Taken by surprised and outgunned. One of my men died on impact.”

  Her breath caught. His voice was flat, but God, the pain wavered near the surface. She could feel it in the air around her. It shimmered there, like a hot summer’s day.

  “Joe was trapped under the vehicle. I want to take you to visit him someday soon, by the way. We knew they were coming for us, but I was messed up too badly from the explosion to move. The last guy though…he got up and walked away. I watched him go. First he walked, then he took off running. I was furious with him for leaving us that way, but at the same time…envious.” He laughed hollowly. “I wanted to be the hell away from there.”

  “Oh, Blake.” She heard what he didn’t say. One of his teammates had walked away. When he’d gotten home, his fiancée had walked away. This was his nightmare. His worst fear was being left behind. And she’d triggered that. She pressed a kiss to the center of his palm, as if she could draw the pain inside of her, just breathe it in.

  “I found out later he was never recovered. Presumed dead. So what’s the lesson there, huh? Walk away and die of starvation. Or stay behind and get tortured—” He broke off at her small gasp. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go that far. It feels so random. So horribly random.”

  Her heart broke for him. He was a scholar, so goddamned intelligent he couldn’t see the writing on the wall. He wanted answers to life’s tragedies when their very unfair nature meant they had none. A life that allowed a strong, loyal protector to be slain and left for dead. That allowed a hardworking woman like her mother to suffer and be victimized, all for what? She certainly couldn’t comprehend it or explain, but it was true nonetheless.

  “I don’t know why these things happen,” she confessed. “I’m not sure we can understand.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Well, that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She laughed suddenly, because even though the situation was serious and fraught, it seemed ironic. That he had seen and lived through unimaginable things—things like torture and treason—only to find her comment depressing.