Page 3 of One Bet

She nodded to the house. “You guys paint a lot.”

“Yeah.” She had the smoothest voice of anyone I knew. I cleared my throat and stared. Up close, she was more than beautiful. Clear gray eyes, not boring gray, more like storm clouds rolling in, and her hair was board straight and hung to the middle of her back in a color so deep and dark it looked like satin. I shook my head, this was no time to be lusting after a woman who wanted one of my very best friends. “So, I thought about your…idea. Are you sure this is what you want?”

She looked over my shoulder, and I didn’t have to guess at who. She bit her lip and smiled. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

I knew I should say no, I knew this was the worst idea in the history of ideas. “Okay.”

And so, it started, the beginning of the most beautiful and the most devastating relationship of my life.

3

Avery

Home sweet home, no more classes, or students, no more meetings with the department head. Just me, a glass of wine, and a bubble bath in my little faculty cottage. Three rooms and a bathroom with a clawfoot tub, enough for me.

I twisted the nozzle marked hot then added some Tahitian Dream bubbles into the pooling water and stripped out of my skirt and sweater, just as the doorbell rang.

Shit. Shit. Shit. I ran down a list of suspects, Mom was in Atlanta and she wouldn’t dare, nor could she afford to spring a surprise trip north. Dad was…well, I didn’t know but Maine was as unlikely as anywhere else in the world since he’d left twenty-five years ago and hadn’t been back since. My one friend, Alex Rhodes, wasn’t due in town until tomorrow. That left either a prank knock or the religious spreaders of the ‘Good News’. But damn, I had to answer.

I pulled a towel around me, tucked the tab in over my heart, and walked across the living room to the door. Before I opened it, I checked the peephole, and my heart stumbled, it might have even fallen into my stomach.

Keaton Shaw, what the hell was he doing at my door?

“I’m busy.” And wearing a towel and definitely not in the mood for a walk down any memory lane that involved him. As such, an act of God wouldn’t be enough to convince me to open the damned door.

“Avery.” The way he said my name, soft and low, still gave me goosebumps, still made me want to purr.

Okay, so an act of God wouldn’t do it, but his voice did. I yanked the door open a few inches, enough to poke my head out without giving him a view of my towel. “Why are you here?” Blunt, harsh, and to the point. Maybe there was some of the old me left, after all.

He chuckled. “There she is, the girl I met in Film Studies class. That’s the girl I haven’t stopped thinking about in ten years.” He pulled a pen out of his back pocket, a blue Bic he could’ve bought anywhere, but a little part of me hoped he hadn’t just stopped at the campus store on the way over. “You know what this is?”

He leaned his head against the doorframe, and because of my unwillingness to open the door, we were nose to nose. I could see every fleck of dark blue in his light blue eyes. “It’s your pen. I kept it all these years.”

Though, by the smell of him, this conversation was inspired by a few too many Bud Lights, his smile melted my…well, everything. “Keaton, go home. You’re drunk.”

“My home is lonely.” He sighed and moved back and leaned his head against the doorframe. “Are you married, Avery?”

“No.” There was no point in asking him if he was. If the great Keaton Shaw dared tie the knot, a hundred different tabloids would have been on hand to report on the bride’s designer dress, the exotic locale, the way the sun made the day brighter and the groom couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off the bride. They certainly played show and tell with the harem of women he dated.

“But I have a boyfriend.” No, I didn’t. Not even a prospect.

“Oh.” He pushed to stand almost straight, stumbled, and I flung the door open to step out and hold him up. He wrapped both arms around my waist and pulled me into his chest, suddenly quite able to stand strong and sturdy.

“You have a boyfriend?” He puffed out his lower lip as if pouting. “Damn it.”

I pulled away, now holding onto my towel. We were standing on my front porch on a street populated by faculty, the last thing I needed was to be seen groping the alumni hero. “You should go.”

He looked around me to the inside of my cottage. “Is he here? Can I meet him?”

Shit. Shit. Shit. “Um, no. He isn’t here, he’ll be in town tomorrow.” Alex would go along with my ruse if I asked him and I would because no way could I be the pathetic one. Plus, it was only for a week, at least, I hoped so.

“We should get drinks. I’d love to meet him.” He had a twinkle in his eye and my stomach leaped. Some things never changed and apparently, my reaction to his pretty face was one of those things.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

He reached to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear and I shivered at the unexpected familiarity of his touch. “I remember when it was you who had too much to drink and I took care of you.”

Yeah. I remembered that, too. Vaguely.