Page 3 of Beneath the Beauty (Beauty 2)
She shrugged, wandering closer. “It’s okay. You can work whenever you want.”
Like a beacon, her presence shone light on things better left dark. She brushed her fingers over a dusty pile of papers. He’d told her to skip this room on her first visit here, and despite everything that had happened between them, he’d never changed that. Her first time in this room, the one place he’d felt alive in those dim hours, and her presence somehow felt more intimate than the sex they’d shared.
“Let’s go back in the bedroom.” His voice came out hoarse. “I can think of something better to do.”
“Not sleep, though, I guess.” Something seemed different about her, a diffidence. A chill in the air between them. She ran her fingers along his desk and gently blew the dust off her finger. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were hiding something from me.”
He wasn’t, not like she meant, so why did he suddenly feel guilty? Because she didn’t know the extent of his injuries and PTSD. Because she didn’t know how much he longed for her. Because she didn’t know how lost he was when not anchored to her. He couldn’t divulge any of that without losing part of himself—without losing her.
“Ask me anything you want to know,” he said. His voice sounded raw, because that was how he felt. Exposed here, vulnerable. For her, yes.
She swiped a finger across the top of his glowing laptop—of course that one came away clean. One of the few things disturbed here. “Is there another woman in the picture?”
Shock mingled with relief as he laughed. “What? No.”
“I mean, our relationship was pretty sudden. I’m not saying we have to be exclusive or that I expect that from you.”
He spoke bluntly to put a stop to that. “There’s no one else for me, Erin.”
“Then why do always come in here when you think I’m asleep? I know you already work in here all day. When do you rest?”
He opened his mouth to respond and then realized he didn’t know the answer. She hadn’t stayed over every night in the two weeks they’d been sleeping together, but dawn usually found him right in that leather swivel chair, eyes bleary from staring at the screen. He’d gone from being active in graduate school and in the military to…nothing. He still felt that drive, that ambition, but he had nowhere to put it, nowhere to go.
Seeming to assume he’d refused to answer, she wandered to a shelf piled high with books—academic journals that were probably years old, highlighted and dog-eared.
Her hand stilled over the answering machine. It blinked red up at her. She turned to him in question, asking if she should press it.
He shrugged. He had no idea who it was nor did he care, but if it would help ease her mind that there wasn’t some other woman, some secret plot, then he’d rather she listened.
Instead she faced away, speaking to the door. “I didn’t mean to snoop or…or accuse you of things. I never wanted to be that girl.”
“They’re reasonable questions. I want you to ask them. No, I’m not with anyone. You. I want only you.” And he didn’t want her to be with anything else either.
She made a small gasping sound, like a sob pulled up short.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”
He waited.
Her laugh was breathless. “Okay, I guess it does mean that. I just…have some trust issues. The last guy I dated…well, let’s just say it didn’t end well, you know?”
Yeah, he understood that she’d been hurt, and he hated that. He also figured he would be lumped in with that asshole. Which normally wouldn’t bother him except he already had enough flaws at this point and couldn’t afford to pay for another man’s sins too.
“So I’d like it if—” She spun to face him, her eyes glistening in the dark. Her lips trembled. “If we could take it slow.”
Slow? That was the opposite of how he felt about her. Every part of him wanted to claim her, to take her as his own so no other man could ferry her away when she went out into the world while he was trapped here.
“No problem,” he said, achieving some level of casualness. “That’s what we’ll do.”
If it killed him, that’s what he’d do.
The goddamned red light was still blinking, mocking his inability to communicate with the outside world. Distracted, and maybe needing to prove something about his trustworthiness even if she wasn’t ready to believe it, he pressed the butto
n to play while she looked on.
“Hi, Blake, this is Jeremy. Jeremy Mosely, Dean of Social Sciences. You remember we spoke about the Associate Professor’s position? I know you turned me down then, and we went ahead and hired some bigwig advisor from Washington to come down for the summer semester. But wouldn’t you know, his guy got elected and now he’s backing out of the contract. Can’t change his mind and we’ve got a class without a professor. We’d love for you to reconsider…ah, who am I kidding? We’re desperate at this point. It’s only a six week class. Name your terms, Blake.”
Jeremy rattled off some phone numbers, but Blake didn’t move. Damn. He hadn’t really wanted Erin to know about that. It would only serve to highlight his uselessness. His brokenness. Of course, the cat was out of the bag now, and if he tried to backtrack in any way, she would only look at it like he was hiding something.
