Chapter 4

 

“God.”

As Erica entered the lobby of the Charlotte Times the following Monday, her first day back after her sabbatical, her stomach felt like it’d fallen through her feet. She stood in front of the double doors, frozen, swallowing the bile rising up in her throat. Finally, she spun on her heel, figuring she’d go home and call the secretary. She’d tell her she caught some bug on the flight on the way home.

The hairs at the back of her neck pricked up, warning her of his proximity. She hadn’t gotten far. Shit. It’s like he has Erica ESP.

She sighed her defeat.

“Look who’s back!”

She didn’t respond to the deep male voice originating from the back of the newsroom’s cube farm. Instead, she studied the insides of her eyelids and silently counted backward from five while squeezing her spare lens cap.

Four.

Three.

Two.

The heavy press of arms over her shoulders made her sag. The scruff of an untended beard abraded her cheek and made her draw back, farther into his grasp. Hot lips against her cheek made her open her eyes to see the hirsute forearms nearly skimming her breasts. She stifled a retch.

Do. Not. Touch.

She wrenched her body free of her boss’s embrace with as much dignity as she could muster. They had an audience. Tact was in order. By the time she met his gaze, she’d smeared a smile onto her face.

“How are you, Tate?”

“What’s this how are you shit, huh?” He laughed and reached for her again, but she pretended to be very concerned with one cuff of her skinny jeans.

“Did you forget about me in the six weeks you were gone?” he pressed.

When she stood again, she put several paces between herself and the newspaper’s bureau chief. He’d given her the gig. In a way, he’d owed it to her. “Who could forget?” she asked in her cheeriest voice, grinding her teeth all the while.

“Tell me about it. Where’d you go? You stopped responding to my emails, what, a week in? That wasn’t nice.” He rubbed his hand over his beard and licked dry lips. “I had to ask Maria-Elena if you were still alive.”

Little traitorous bitch. Last time I tell her any of my business. “That wasn’t really necessary. Sometimes I was in remote areas with unreliable Internet access. Hell, checking my email was low on my list of concerns. Besides, I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself since–”

He put up his hands and peeled his thin lips away from his teeth into a grin. “Now that I disagree with. I was there, remember? I witnessed your fall from grace.” He closed the distance between them and put his lips against her ear.

Her body drew back, but he held her tighter to whisper, “Aided and abetted it.”

When he let go of her, he winked.

She wanted to fix that eye for him so it’d never wink again, but she had the sort of self-restraint that got people sainted after death.

The receptionist, at the other end of the lobby, caught her eye and waved a stack of pink message slips at her.

Glad for the interruption, Erica approached the desk’s high counter and leafed through the notes, hoping Tate would go away.

He didn’t.

She stalled, reading each twice, although none were particularly relevant to her job. The usual solicitations and kids asking about internships. She didn’t do interns. That was Tate’s MO.

He was still there when she looked up. “You got pictures to show us? We can set up the projector in the conference room during lunch. Order some sandwiches from Jason’s or something.”

“Um…” She balled the messages up and lobbed them neatly into the trash receptacle behind the reception desk. “Other than the ones on my cell phone, I’ve got nothing. My memory stick shat out when I got to Dublin. Totally corrupted every photo. Gave up after that.”

Tate cringed. “You know better than that, woman. You should have been backing up to your computer every night.”

She shrugged in a whadda ya gonna do? fashion. “It was a sabbatical. I was careless.”

He sniffed, dragged his shirtsleeve under his nose, wrapped an arm around her once more, and guided her toward the newsroom. “Back to business, huh? Listen, Charlotte-Mecklenburg has two new principals this year. We’ve got write-ups scheduled for the print edition on Wednesday. Need you to get out there and get some shots of them. Good ones if you can manage. I hear one of them has a face like a bulldog, but is sweet as can be. Maybe you can make that sweet shine through during digital correction. Don’t want to scare the parents off before the school year even starts, right?”

She mumbled her assent.

“I’ll get you the info.” He gave her a swat on the bottom before she could shift away, and did a fake jog to his office–one of the kinds of jogs that were so slow he might as well have been walking. A show jog.

Eyes closed tight, she sighed and wondered what had made her get into his car all those years ago. What a fucking idiot.

Barely nine o’clock and already dejected, she wound her way through the cubicles, waving here and there at coworkers she liked and returning polite hellos until she arrived at her own seat. It might as well have been an electric chair for all the joy seeing it gave her.

Her best guess was she’d have five minutes before her reporter peers rolled over to ask about her solo adventure. The very one she’d taken against Tate’s explicit guidance. When the discourse became too animated, Tate would perk up, hustle from his office and break it up. Wouldn’t want anyone to get too close–that wouldn’t do.

Truth was, she’d already uploaded the photos she had to her computer at home. And that reminded her of something. She woke up her phone and scrolled through her missed calls, hoping to find one with a Triangle area code. Nope.

“That fucking Irishman.” She stabbed the power button of her Mac and scanned the walkway behind her before pulling up a browser tab. Navigating to Curt’s university website, she scrolled to the public directory, entered his name, and found him listed under the graduate school. Interdisciplinary mathematics. She whistled low. “Who the hell gets a PhD in math? Nerd.”

She giggled as she thought it. He wasn’t the typical nerd. Since when did nerds come hot and broody? Maybe she’d missed the memo.

No sign of Tate nearby, so she dialed the university-issued phone number listed in the directory. When Curt’s voicemail greeting queued up, she let out the breath she’d been holding and jotted down the cell number he recited at the end.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Her momentum wouldn’t last long, so she dialed the next number as soon as she’d ended the first call.

He answered after three rings. “Curt Ryan.” He sounded tired.

Stupefied by the sound of his brogue, she mentally fumbled for an appropriate introduction.

Say something, stupid. “Are you in America?” she managed in a light, but trembling tone. If he caught her hesitance, he didn’t call her on it.

“More or less. I’m in New York City at the moment, waiting on a flight home. Who is this?”

Damn. That burned a bit. Still, she pressed on. “Either the woman of your dreams, or some bruja who’ll make your life a living hell. You decide.”

A pause. “Hmm. How about the bruja of my dreams? That could be interesting.”

Oh, he’s cute. “I suppose I shouldn’t be offended you haven’t called, seeing as how you’re not quite home yet.” She stilled, expecting his creative brush-off.

He was quiet. Too quiet.

Her stomach sank.

“Pretty sure my roommate’s at the house to let you in. If you’d like, you can be waiting naked on my bed for me when I get home. It’ll give me a reason to ignore the Russian.”

She closed her eyes and slumped in her seat. This putting-yourself-out-there stuff was really overrated. “The Russian?”

“Yeah, a big red one. Can’t miss him. Goes by the name of Seth and is an astrophysicist. If you make the mistake of being polite, he’ll talk your ear off about rocket science, then query you about your vodka preferences. Never play drinking games with him, by the way. Even if you win, you lose.”

She whistled again. “An astrophysicist, huh? You and him and Grant must make up some kind of geek collective.”

Curt didn’t say anything for a moment because of airport announcement booming in the background. When it stopped, he asked, “You make it sound like a pejorative. You have something against geeks?”

“Don’t know. Never been with one.” Understatement.

“I’ll probably regret this, but let’s rectify that. I’m teaching all week, but I’m free this weekend. I can go to you or you can come visit.”

She straightened up and stood in time to find the top of Tate’s dark head moving on the edge of the cube farm. He’d wind his way around to her soon. Hurry. “Why regret?” she asked.

“Darlin’, I am absolutely swamped.”

“Oh…uh…”

Shit. Is that a kind let-down? Is he waiting for me to say, “never mind, maybe some other time?”

Her fingers wrapped around her lens cap as she thought on it.

“Hey, how about I come to you? I figure you should be the hospitable one since you owe me a favor,” he said with a dry chuckle.

Her cheeks burned. She lowered her voice, cognizant of the ears around her. “A favor, huh?”

“A pretty tawdry one, if memory serves.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen tawdry yet.” Whoa. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. What if he’s into kink?

“Promises, promises,” he cooed.

“Boarding pass, sir?” a woman near Curt asked.

“I keep my promises,” Erica said while scanning the student directory listing for his email address. She copied it and quit the browser as Tate approached her cubicle. “Sir, I’ll send you a follow-up email with some information. Just reply with your thoughts.”

“Boss?” Curt surmised.

“Yes, sir. I’ll send that message shortly.”

“Alright, darlin’. I’m boarding now. I’ll look for that message when I have two feet on the ground in Morrisville. I want to know more about those promises you’re going to keep.”

“Thank you very much, sir.” She ended the call and swiveled her chair around to face the sniffling chucklehead.

“Hard at work already?”

“Just responding to some messages.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and crossed his arms over his argyle vest-covered chest. “From your cell phone?”

“Yeah. That way, the numbers are programmed if I have to call when I’m en route.”

“Smart. I knew your brain would activate eventually.”

She turned her head toward her monitor and rolled her eyes. It activated the minute I left your sorry ass.

He dropped a sheet of paper with two names and addresses printed in block lettering onto her keyboard. “One before lunch, one after.”

“Super.” She unclipped her camera bag’s fasteners, drew out the spare battery, and plugged it in.

Tate lingered.

With a sigh, she turned a few degrees to the right and assessed him in her periphery. He had his arms crossed over his chest as if she were the one inconveniencing him. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Want to have dinner tonight?”

Is he on drugs? Oh, yeah. Forgot. “Sorry, I’ve got a crap-ton of trip laundry to wash.”

He squeezed her shoulder and lowered his lips to her right ear to whisper, “See, that’s why you should have stayed home.” Finally, he left.

“Prick.”

She flicked her ear, trying to shuck off the psychosomatic tingling his touch had created. She was still rubbing her ear against her shoulder when she woke her computer and pasted Curt’s email address into webmail.

“Rubio, you better not be fucking with me,” she muttered to the screen.