The Secret Thief

by Nina Lane

  “…for original tales versus retellings,” he says.

  Er… what now?

  With effort, I pull myself reluctantly out of the fantasy. My skin is hot, my clit tingling.

  He heaves in a breath and rests one hand against the wall, lowering his head to let the hot water pound against his neck.

  Eve, focus!

  I busy myself opening my organizer and taking out a pen, hoping my face isn’t too flushed. “Excuse me, I didn’t catch that?”

  “The database. How do I know if a book is an original tale or a retelling?”

  “I can show you.” I turn on the computer and bring up the database.

  He slips his gaze over me. Again it’s his look—the hot appraising one that brings heat to his eyes. But this time, it’s not like he’s thinking about kissing or touching me. He’s remembering.

  “You see, I cataloged each title in a three-level system.”

  I type Briar Rose into the title field. He moves around the desk to stand beside me, and his proximity floods my senses with all the good things—the warmth of his body heat, his strong, protective presence. If he were to stand at my side forever, I’d feel like I could do anything.

  I pull my attention away from that thought and point to the search results. “The first level is the original work or a translation, with the author as the primary access point. You’ll also find collections there. The second level is adaptations and retellings, and the third is spin-offs involving the same characters.”

  His breath stirs my hair. I overslept this morning and hadn’t had time to slather on the apple-lavender body lotion. Can he tell?

  “Does that make sense?” I glance at him.

  “Yeah.” He steps back. “Any questions?”

  I gesture to the thermos. “Is that yours?”

  “It’s for you.” He starts toward the door, his posture straightening into the closed off demeanor I’ve come to know so well. “Figured you could use a new one when you’re out somewhere.”

  I pick up the thermos, running my hand over the glossy surface. He bought me a thermos. He remembered mine is too old to keep my tea hot for very long.

  For me, it’s a better gift than flowers and sparkly jewelry.

  “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  He shrugs off my gratitude and leaves the room.

  Probably no other woman in the world would be so ridiculously pleased by the gift of a stainless steel canister, but I’m the only one who knows Flynn. I’m the one who’s developing possessive, intense feelings for him. I’m the one who recognizes this as an effort to make amends.

  At least… I think I’m the only woman. God knows I’ve been deceived before.

  I set the thermos down and shake that doubt out of my head. Even after David’s threatening call, I won’t let him ruin my attraction to Flynn.

  I work through the morning, pausing once when my phone pings with a text from Graham:

  Eve, your paper is phenomenal. I’m attaching it with my notes. Truly excellent work. Wish I’d discovered Maria Wood!

  The message floods me with pride. Much as I’ve lost recently, I’ve always had my scholarly talent. I’ve also always had Graham.

  My phone buzzes again, this time with a call from an unknown number. My stomach knots with anxiety. 408 area code, both Graham and my mother’s location but not either of their numbers.

  Warily, I answer the call. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  Apprehension slithers into my blood. I sense someone on the other end. David’s horrid, crude words fire into my head. Destroy you… tits and cunt… passable fuck.

  “Hello?”

  More silence. The line goes dead.

  Shaking, I end the call and block the number. Tossing the phone aside, I turn back to the computer. Not until tears fall onto the keyboard do I realize I’m crying.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He has no reason to hurt me. He’s already done everything he can do. Maybe that wasn’t even him. Maybe it was a prank Halloween call, someone trying to spook me.

  If that’s the case, it certainly worked.

  For the next two days, I adhere to a strict routine to maintain my sense of normalcy. After work, I run farther and farther on the trail to expend my fears and frustrations. Though my morning interactions with Flynn remain cordially businesslike, he fails to join me for teatime. His absence leaves a hole in my day, and I increasingly long for his secure, unwavering presence.

  On Friday at two, I head into the kitchen and stop in the doorway. Flynn is looking out the window, his hands in his pockets. I let my gaze roam over the breadth of his shoulders and back, his dark hair brushing his collar, the fit of his jeans. Just the sight of him loosens the tension in my spine.

  He turns to face me. I take a tentative step into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t know you’d be here,” I admit.

  “You promised me a tea tasting.”

  I blink with surprise. “You still want to do that?”

  “Did you bring the stuff?”

  “Yes, I brought it on Monday. It’s all still in the trunk of my car.”

  “I’ll go get it.”

  He heads outside. Pleased, I put the kettle on to boil and set up the pot and cups we’ve been using. I open a bag of masala chai I’d brought yesterday and spoon leaves into the pot. As I close the bag, the rubber band snaps.

  I search through a few drawers for a new one. A junk drawer is packed with local brochures, menus, paperclips, a stapler, stamps, and pens. Rummaging around, I see an old photograph slip from between the brochures.

  Curious, I pull it out. Creased and faded, it shows a dark-haired young boy holding up a fish on a line. A wide grin spreads over his face. Beside him stands a smiling older man with a white beard and wearing a tattered Vikings cap. His hand is on the boy’s shoulder. Both of them radiate happiness and pride.

  “Where’d you get that?” Flynn’s voice startles me.

  I turn, my heart suddenly racing. He’s standing right behind me, a frown darkening his face and his shoulders stiff.

  “I… I was just looking for a rubber band.” I extend the photo. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t prying.”

  He shoves the photo into his back pocket. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Looks like you were having fun.”

  “Yeah. My grandfather used to—” He cuts himself off and indicates the wicker basket and two full bags he’d brought in from the car. “Just how many people are you expecting for this tea tasting?”

  He had a grandfather who used to take him fishing.

  Like his mention of the school Peter Pan play, that little piece of information both assuages my curiosity and incites a thousand more questions. Is your grandfather still alive? Why don’t you want to talk about him? Where are your parents?

  He’s watching me. Wariness brews in his eyes, as if he senses all the questions bubbling beneath my surface. But I won’t ruin our fragile accord by asking any of them.

  “A tasting is serious business.” Setting myself to the task at hand, I open the basket and take out several cups. “You need different pots and cups for all the different teas. It’ll take me a few minutes to get it organized.”

  “I can wait.” He leans back against the counter with his arms folded, a model of patience as I prepare the pots and brew several varieties of tea.

  “Did you bring scones?” he asks. “I’ve heard of people having scones with tea.”

  “There’s a British tradition of afternoon tea with scones.” I focus on putting the leaves into the filter so he won’t notice how pleased I am that he remembered our plan. “But for a tea tasting, you shouldn’t eat anything too sweet or savory. It could interfere with the flavor of the tea.”

  He makes a noise that could be either interest or disdain.

  “I have to brew them in cups since I don’t have enough pots.” I lift the filters from the cups. “And we want them to all be properly steeped. Sit down.”


  Rather to my surprise—considering how often he issues orders—he obeys. I set the cups on a tray and bring it to the table.

  “I have six varieties.” I point to the cups one by one. “Green, white, black, pu-erh, and oolong. This one is chai, a spiced Indian tea. Black is usually my favorite. It’s the most heavily oxidized of all the teas, which is why it has a stronger flavor. White is the most delicate and unprocessed, and oolong is partially oxidized. Green tea leaves are usually either steamed or heated in a pan.”

  “So what am I looking for?” He lifts the green tea and sniffs.

  “Among connoisseurs, of which I am not one, the brewed tea is called liquor. It’s really similar to a wine or beer tasting, except you slurp the tea to spread it across your tongue. Then focus on smell, mouth feel, what kind of flavors you taste. Tea tasting has a language of its own. Earthy, fruity, floral, sweet. But there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s all about your own experience.”

  Though Flynn looks far from convinced, he takes a generous slurp of the green tea, then furrows his brow. “Grassy?”

  “Agreed. Salty too, don’t you think? A little like the ocean. Full-bodied. Fresh vegetables.”

  He eyes me dubiously over the rim of the cup. “Sure.”

  My mouth curves. I indicate the white tea. “Try that one. It’s called dragon pearl jasmine. The leaves are hand-rolled.”

  He picks up the cup. “Why dragon pearl?”

  “The rolled tea leaves look like little pearls, but I’ve also heard the name is derived from a Chinese folktale. One winter, a girl sought help from a mystical dragon to cure her sick brother. The dragon had a pearl on his chest, and when he soared into the sky, a drop of water fell from the pearl. A tea plant grew on the spot, and the dragon told the girl that the tea would cure her brother. And so it did.”

  We both sip the tea. Flowers, cream, sunshine.

  “You should see the tea pearls during infusion,” I say. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  I return to the stove and put the kettle back on, then add the fragrant tea to a clean pot. Flynn stops beside me. Beneath the aroma of jasmine, I again catch his delicious scent of salt and spice, one that warms me from the inside out.

  “Watch when I add the hot water.” I take the kettle from the stove and pour water into the glass teapot.

  The tea pearls dance and swirl, rising to the surface of the pot and unfurling like flowers blooming before descending gracefully to the bottom. We watch until the last little tea leaf sinks to join the others.

  “It’s quite beautiful.” I smile.

  “Yes, it is.”

  I lift my gaze. He’s looking at me, not the teapot. Pleasure fills my veins.

  “The process is called the agony of the leaves.” My pulse increases. The steam from the pot floats between us, aromatic and sweet. “I’ve always found it symbolic in a way. Even when infused with boiling water, the dragon pearls dance and float. And in the end, they create something entirely new.”

  He doesn’t respond. I flush and reach for the filter. No need to get all fanciful.

  “Your uncle said the same thing about fairy tales.”

  Sudden hope surges beneath my heart. “Uncle Max talked to you about fairy tales?”

  A smile tugs at Flynn’s mouth. “Didn’t he talk to everyone about them? He told me that was why they’re so universal and powerful. The characters all have to undergo trials, some of them pretty intense, before they can have a new life.”

  A happy ending. Guaranteed in so many stories, but not so much in reality.

  Deflecting a stab of sorrow, I pour two fresh cups of dragon pearl tea and bring them back to the table. We sit and sip, though neither of us remarks on the flavors we detect. The steam from all the tea fogs the window, obscuring the grass-covered plateau sweeping to the woodlands.

  “I didn’t know David Landry was married.” Not until the confession is out do I realize how much I want Flynn to believe me. No one else did. I even doubted myself. What kind of idiot doesn’t read the signs from her married lover?

  I look at the window. My solemn, blurred reflection stares back at me. The story bubbles up inside me, the truth I suddenly need this man to know.

  “We were together for a couple of months,” I continue, old shame still cutting deep. “It happened right when Max stopped chemo. I was in a bad place, not that that’s an excuse. I fell pretty hard for David. Never saw a sign that he was married. He even had an apartment in Westwood, a standard bachelor pad. I figured out later that was probably where he brought all his fuck dolls.”

  “Don’t call yourself that.” Flynn’s tone hardens.

  I shrug. “That was probably how he saw me. It wasn’t as if we were having deep conversations about artistic theory and venture capitalism. But after Max died, I just wanted to be close to someone, to have someone be there. For the most part, he was… at least, until it all went to hell.

  “One afternoon I was on campus, giving a lecture to almost four hundred undergrads. Halfway through an analysis of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, the door burst open. A woman charged up to the stage and grabbed the microphone from me. I was scared. I thought she was going to attack me or something.

  “The whole lecture hall was shocked into silence. She started ranting about how all the students had a whore for a professor. She told them I was fucking her husband, business professor David Landry, and that I was a homewrecker who didn’t care he had a wife and two children. She had…”

  My breath hitches, horrific shame rising to choke my throat. I swallow and force myself to keep going, to get it all out.

  “She had printed some photos of me that David had taken. N-naked photos. God.” I close my eyes, press my hands to my hot face. “I never… I never posed for them, I swear. I was stupid, but not that stupid. He was on his phone so often, he’d taken them without me noticing. In bed, at the bathroom sink, wherever.

  “His wife had printed them out, and she threw them at me in the lecture hall while she was ranting. I couldn’t get the microphone away from her. Two guys from the front row came onstage to help me, and she ran out.

  “You’d never believe the silence that fell after she was gone. All I could hear was my heart hammering, the panic building. I managed to dismiss the class and get back to my office, but by then it was far too late for any damage control. I called David, but of course he didn’t respond. Word of the incident spread over campus like wildfire. Next thing I knew I was being summoned in front of the academic board.

  “For some reason, I kept thinking there had been some horrible mistake. That it wasn’t David they were talking about… or me. It didn’t make sense, didn’t fit with anything I knew or had even suspected.

  “Then the police contacted me. David had requested a restraining order against me. He’d said I’d been stalking him for weeks, that I’d sent him the naked pictures of me, and he was concerned for the safety of his family.”

  Flynn has a white-knuckle grip on his cup. Tension spikes his whole body. I brush my fingers over his in an indication that he should loosen his grip or risk breaking the cup. He relaxes only slightly, his muscles tight.

  “What happened then?” he asks.

  I take a sip of tea and rub my finger over a crack in the hardwood table.

  “I never stood a chance. I hired a lawyer, but David knew what he was doing. Obviously he’d done it before. I had no record of texts or emails from him. Ultimately the only defense I had was to say it had been a consensual affair and I hadn’t known he was married. I’d never have gotten involved with him if I’d known.

  “No one believed me. Not the police, the board, the provost, the students, the other professors. Not my mother. The naked photos of me showed up in news articles on the internet. Uncensored on other sites.

  “You wouldn’t think a salacious affair involving an assistant professor would be a big deal, but David is famous in his field. He made it newsworthy. When it became clear the story was
n’t just going to blow over, the board of regents fired me.”

  Flynn’s expression is like stone. His gray eyes glitter with anger. “On what grounds?”

  “Personal conduct that impaired the fulfillment of my academic duties,” I recite with a shrug. “That was it. If Uncle Max hadn’t left me his house, I don’t know where I would have gone. And if you hadn’t given me a job, I don’t know what I would have done. David took almost everything from me.”

  “Was he the one who called?”

  “Yes. To tell me to keep my mouth shut.” I give a hollow laugh. “As if I’d ever want to rehash that whole humiliating mess.”

  “If he calls you again, I want to know.”

  I shift my gaze to him. Inexplicably, his tense features and the hard, possessive note in his voice soothe the prickling fear and pain elicited by David’s call. While part of me realizes Flynn could never put a stop to anything David does, it feels incredibly good to have someone on my side. To have him on my side.

  “Does he know where you live?” Flynn asks.

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I look down at my tea. “I purposely didn’t tell anyone where I was moving, but of course it’s not difficult to find people these days. My PhD advisor and my mother are the only ones who have my address. But as long as I keep quiet, I don’t think David cares where I am.”

  His jaw tightens. “And if he does?”

  I don’t know. I couldn’t do anything against him then. What can I do now?

  “I lost a lot.” I swallow past the tightness in my throat. “My career, my home, my friends, my self-respect, my voice. Honestly, there’s not much more he can take from me.”

  “He’d better not try.” Anger, a hard promise, edges Flynn’s voice.

  Again my heart warms at the thought that he’s more than just my tea companion and the subject of my hottest sex fantasies. He’s also becoming my ally. And in a strange way, my friend.

  We fall silent again, the pattering of the rain the only sound echoing through the kitchen.