Calculated Exposure (22 page)

Curt rubbed his bleary eyes, depositing a fresh coat of dirt to his cheeks in the process. “Sorry.” He scanned the cluster of men huddled nearby and found them all giving him death glares. “Whoops.”

He’d taken up Seth’s suggestion to join in with the old intramural rugby team for an afternoon game, thinking he’d burn off some frustration, but instead, he mostly stood on the field with his arms crossed, grinding his teeth, and studying the wear on his cleats. “I’ll just sit the next one out.”

“You’d better. If we lose this match, we have to cover the other side’s beer tab. We’ve got rent due soon, and they drink like whales.”

“Like fish, you mean.”

“I like my way better.” Seth ran off to rejoin the squad and Curt made his way to the sidelines, plopping onto the ground near the water cooler like a disjointed rag doll. It’d been two weeks since he’d heard a peep from Erica and it’d taken every ounce of restraint he had to not pick up his phone and call like Sharon had been needling him to do.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she kept asking.

“Why can’t it just be casual?” he kept asking.

“You don’t want casual,” she kept retorting.

“That’s all I can give,” he kept explaining.

He wanted to call. Hell, he even wanted to
apologize
and maybe explain why he was the way he was, but what woman in her right mind would tolerate that? For his mother, staying away from his father was a daily struggle. Jenny checked in with Curt each morning and let him know how she was faring. So far, Mum’s innkeeper friend was keeping Mum suitably occupied, and was probably saying more than her fair share of prayers about the situation.

Curt, not a praying man by any stretch of the imagination, had said a few prayers of his own.

Dear God. If you’re listening, please set her free. She can’t help the way she is, and neither can he, I guess, and that’s why they shouldn’t be together.

He struggled to his feet and walked toward his car at the edge of the field.

“Where are you going?” Seth called out from the formation their side was making. “You can’t quit now. That’s like automatic default. They’ll
make
you buy them booze for being a welcher.”

“I have to make a phone call.”

“It’d better be for work.”

“Yep. Work.” Curt kicked off his muddy cleats beside the car door and slipped behind the steering wheel. He found his phone in the center console and checked the time on the display. Four. Not naptime. He dialed Sharon’s number.

“Yes, dear?” she answered on the third ring.

“Tell me how to fix this.”

“Call her.”

“You keep saying that, but it can’t be that simple.”

“I know you’re a geek, but quit overanalyzing. By the way, she’ll be here in about five minutes, so unless you want me to hand the phone to her, spit it out.”

“What’s she going to be there for?”

“She’s moving in for a little while. Yay.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Yep, that’s something you’d know if you called her.”

He groaned and closed his eyes. “Explain, please. No riddles.”

“Okay. It’s just until she finds her own place. She picked up a part-time gig in Carrboro and is doing some party stuff for me.”

“Like what?”

“Ask
her
.”

“Maybe I will.”

“That a threat or a promise? Can’t tell from your tone. Either way, please deal with this. The two of you are causing me skin issues. Zits and wrinkles are not so becoming on a twenty-eight-year-old.”

Curt looked through the windshield to find Seth walking toward him wearing a scowl and holding up his arms in a
What the fuck, man?
gesture. Curt rubbed his eyes and blinked hard to re-seat his contact lenses.

“Erica’s here and you’re a coward, so goodbye.” She hung up.

“I need better friends,” he mumbled to himself.

Seth smacked his fist against the roof of the car and bent down into the open window. “Yes, me, too, coward!”

Chapter 18

“What’s gotten into you, Erica? When’d you learn to take pictures?” Jean asked.

The two women stood back from the monitor and assessed the photograph of the steaming hot burger dressed with everything queued up on the editor’s computer. They were setting the hamburger issue, and Erica’s shot of a local diner’s college special was the kind of photography that made people want to reach through their computer screens.

“I dunno. Something just clicked. It’s gotta be something I want to take a picture of, though, so having creative freedom helps a little.”

“Well, praise the lord. I’m proud to witness your renaissance.”

“Thanks, I think. You need anything else from me today?”

Jean shook her head. “Nah. You can head out. We need to start compiling images for next week, though. How’s that going?”

Erica shifted her weight. “Slow.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. See you later, huh?”

Erica forced a smile onto her lips and nodded. When Jean was out of earshot, she mumbled, “Fuck,” and retreated to her desk to gather her things.

She drove around for a while, ruminating on her next assignment and trying to figure out where to source images beyond the obvious person that came to mind. The issue was about white-collar crime.

Jean wanted to piggy-back on a recent government scandal and was doing an entire spread about get-rich-quick schemes, famous extortionists, scam avoidance, and so on. She left it up to Erica to find suitable imagery. She was running out of ideas.

Finally, she gave in. She parked in the visitor lot at Curt’s university and walked slowly across the quad to the math department. She climbed four flights of stairs to the graduate studies office and offered the administrative assistant a smile when she looked up from her keyboard.

“Hi, I don’t have an appointment, but I need to speak with Curt Ryan. Is he on campus today?”

The young woman chewed her gum a few beats and resumed her typing. “You a student? I think he holds office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“This is professional, not academic.”

The admin cut her gaze to Erica once more and popped her gum. She narrowed her eyes and Erica wondered if there was something between her and the Irish asshole. “317-B,” she finally said. “He may or may not be in there.”

“Thanks.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Erica walked around the corner and down the long corridor, studying room numbers as she passed, and finally stopping in front of the closed door of 317-B. She knocked and took a step back.

“Yeah?” came a nasally Boston twang that was most certainly not Curt’s.

She put her hand on the knob and pushed the door in. The office was small and cramped, with the owner of the twang being just inside the door on the left-hand side.

His eyes widened as she took a step in. “Well, hello. I hope you’re not a student.”

That made her raise a brow. “Nope. Uh, I’m sorry. The lady in the office told me this was Curt Ryan’s office.”

The man sighed and crooked his thumb to the space on the other side of the door. “Figures.”

She took another step beyond the threshold and found Curt on the other side.

He spun his rolling chair and faced her. If he was pleased to see her, it didn’t show. He raked his hair out of his face and crossed his arms over his plaid-covered chest. She knew that shirt. Had wrinkled it against a garden wall in Maynooth.

“Hi. I should have called, I guess, but it seemed just as easy to stop in.”

“What’s up? Don’t want to rush you, but I’ve got a class in half an hour.”

She cringed.
I see how it is.
“Uh, I’m working on an assignment for the magazine. I need some financial crime content. Pictures, video.”

He raised one thick brow. “Financial crime?”

She nodded. “I thought perhaps you could connect me to someone at Prizm or if you have any other contacts, it wouldn’t take very long. We’re really just looking for encyclopedic information.”

“I could give you that!” officemate said.

Erica offered him a grin. “What do you know about white-collar crime?”

“Not much, but I can tell you all about counting cards. How do you think I’m paying for my education?” He wriggled his brows, but somehow Erica knew he wasn’t joking.

Curt stood, wrapped his fingers around her forearm and led her toward the hallway. “We can go in the lounge. Less crowded.”

“Should I come, too?” officemate asked, also standing.

Erica opened her mouth to tell him to come along, but Curt intercepted with, “We’ll call you if we need you, Bobby.”

Bobby shrugged.

They didn’t say anything until they were in the deserted graduate lounge. He tapped on the light switch and waited for the door to swing shut before looking at her.

“I’m sorry to drop in out of the blue like this, but I figured you would know who to refer me to and–”

Before she could eke out another word, he had her back pressed against the door and his lips locked on hers.

She was nearly paralyzed as he nipped at her mouth and teased the seam between her lips with the tip of his tongue.
What the hell?

And then hands–those hands that knew every part of her and had so skillfully brought her pleasure in the past–were under her shirt, grazing up the sides of her waist toward her ribs and higher. She gasped as the pads of his thumbs skimmed over the lacy peaks of her bra.

Whoa whoa whoa.
She nudged him away and fought to catch her breath. “Stop it. You
stop
it.”

He pressed his body against hers, erection probing her belly, and nudged the cups of her bra down. “Hmm.” His gaze met hers, and where it had been cold before, now it was obvious that iciness had been only a mask. “You don’t want me to stop.”

“I thought what I wanted didn’t matter.”

“What makes you think that?”

She scoffed. “You pretty much said so.” She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate amidst the press of his body against hers. Wasn’t working, so she opened her eyes and said to his chest, “I believe your exact words were that you didn’t have to check in with me.”

“Yeah, that sounds like something I’d say.” He gave her nipples a squeeze between his thumbs and forefingers and a noise escaped her throat that sounded a lot like a dolphin’s keen.

She batted his hands away.

He relocated them to her waist.

“And I’m pretty sure I said I was through being fucked,” she said.

“Yeah, you said that.” His mouth found the hot, throbbing pulse point on her neck and his tongue glided along the sensitive crook just behind her ear.

That damned spot. Like always, her sex clenched.

She shuddered. “I’m not going to let you use me, Curt. I’m not going to be anyone else’s whore.”

He lifted his head and looked at her, brow furrowed and mouth slightly agape. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.” She tried to shimmy out from his hold, but his grip around her hips tightened.

“You got somewhere else you gotta be, darlin’? After all, you came to
me
.”

“And you’re taking advantage.”

“Some advantage. I get to go walk off a hard-on before teaching a class. Pretty sure that’s professional.” He slipped his fingers beneath the elastic waistband of her skirt.

Her lips suddenly felt very dry, and she dragged her tongue across them, her body tensing, her fingers tightening around the strap of her camera bag, as his fingers dipped into her panties.

“This doesn’t make up for you not calling,” she said.

“You could have called me. Maybe I like you doing all the work.”

“I hate it. I hate feeling like I’m just a distraction to you.”

He cringed, then grazed his lips over the lobe of her right ear before biting it. “You are distracting.”

His fingers parted her lips below and she found herself hooking her leg around his to further his access.

Brazen hussy
. She didn’t even care. She wanted it, wanted him, even if she would regret it later. Somehow she didn’t think she would, though. She never regretted anything she did with Curt, and she didn’t know what that meant. She should have regretted some of that stuff, shouldn’t she?

His fingers teased at her opening, swirling around the quivering muscle but never breaching it.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and let out a breathy anticipatory sigh, eager for him to work her over.

But he didn’t. He slipped his hands out of her skirt and took a step back, smirking.

“What the fuck?”

“I wish I could take a picture of the way you look right now,” he said, smirk now an all-out grin.

She groaned and rolled her eyes. “I guess you owed me that.”

“Mm-hmm.” He leaned back in and kissed her, but this time she was ready and kissed back.

He drew away first and tapped the face of his watch. “Gotta go. If you need help with your assignment, you know where I live.”

“Why can’t we just meet at Starbucks like normal people?”

“No privacy there.”

“We don’t need privacy.”

He sighed and scraped his hair out of his eyes again. “Are you really going to make this hard for me?”

She narrowed her gaze at him and shifted her bags to her other shoulder. “Make what hard, exactly?”

“Never mind. I can stop by the magazine office if you want.”

“I do want.”

“Just email me.”

She nodded.

He slipped out.

She stared at the door for a moment and breathed out a long sigh. “What am I supposed to do with him?”

Her grandmother probably would have told her to use him before he used her. That wasn’t what she wanted, though. She’d never been able to take without giving as much back in return. But what did
he
want?

And was she willing to give it?

Chapter 19

“Curt?”

“Mum?” Curt pushed himself upright and grabbed the remote control from Seth to lower the television volume. His stomach dropped as if he’d swallowed a stone. Had something happened? Was it his father?

“Guess what?”