Talk Dirty To Me (9 page)

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Authors: Ginny Glass,Inez Kelley

BOOK: Talk Dirty To Me
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She’d expected a possible cold shoulder. She’d expected tense silence. She had not expected that gruff, husky, just-out-of-bed voice that flooded her panties with erotic warmth. Jarod was James?
Oh God.
Numbed shock faded, replaced by blistering anger. Jarod was James, the lying son of a bitch. He knew. He’d known the whole time. He’d played her like a hot tip on a race pony. Did he laugh at her? Was he chuckling under his breath at the frigid little phone nympho he’d thawed with a few whispered eroticisms? Did he sit across from her over burgers and coffee, wondering what sexual twist he could titillate her with next?
A teardrop hit her thigh. She swiped a vicious hand across her wet cheeks. No, she was not going to cry over that asshole. He was cruel and petty and…God, it hurt. How could he do this to her? Was everything a lie? The notes, the sweet kisses, the conversations, were they
lies?
Her watery gaze fell to the lone rose in a cheap bud vase on her kitchen table. Was that a lie?
She needed to move, to do something. There was no way she could concentrate on her paper today. There was no way she could calmly and logically write about sex and the modern educated woman. What a joke. He’d made a fool of her and she’d allowed it.
Determination fueled her and she spent hours cleaning her tiny apartment from ceiling to floor, including weeding through her closet and drawers, a task she despised. Her brain bounced in her skull, tumbling from one emotion to the next. Lysol, bleach and Pine-Sol worked to leave her apartment sparkling, but Nora still felt tarnished.
Bits of conversations blurred in her mind, blending, weaving, mixing until her head pounded. Logic said walk away—no,
run
away—as fast as she could, with her tail tucked between her legs. Legs she’d spread for a seductive voice on the phone. Legs that trembled in anticipation as she wondered if Jarod was going to kiss her on the pathway. Legs that had deliberately brushed his last night beneath the table.
The rose mocked her. She snatched it from the vase and threw it in the trash. Hot tears leaked over her lashes and she succumbed, curling into a knot of humiliated shame. She should have known. There had been enough signs. Jarod taught English Literature, studied the Romantic Classics, of course he would know all about James Joyce’s letters. That right there should have been her first flaming clue upside the head. Of course she’d gotten turned on when he growled at that student. That was the same voice that dirty-talked her to orgasm at night. Why hadn’t she recognized it then?
The truth turned her tears bitter. She didn’t recognize the signs because she didn’t want to. She’d felt desired and pretty and wanted by two men. Two men who didn’t exist. The sweet-natured Jarod who had delighted her heart was a cruel liar. Spicy, wicked James was nothing but a figment of his twisted imagination. She’d been suckered. The linoleum under her cheek was scented with cool pine but she smelled only deceit.
Jarod-as-James was right all along. She was never broken. But she was now. At least her heart was.



MONDAY 7:45 a.m.


Will request extension and collect new interviews.
I hate this damn paper.
Called off sick from work.
I can’t face him.



Jarod paced, the sharp morning air knifing through his jacket and stinging his eyes.
Where is she?
If he waited in the parking lot much longer, he was going to be late for his first Monday morning class. Nora hadn’t answered her phone yesterday. He’d called four different times before finally giving up around midnight. He’d left her a voicemail, as Jarod, but she hadn’t returned his call. She didn’t answer when he called at James’s allotted time either.
Damn his pinched ego. Why had he told her he was busy Sunday? He’d done nothing but sit around the house feeling sorry for himself.
Ankar Salih whipped his pretentious little sports car into his assigned slot and climbed from the vehicle with a bounce. He nodded politely toward Jarod then clicked his automatic lock. Jarod didn’t think twice before he sprung.
“Dr. Salih!” He sprinted across the gravel. “I’m looking for Nora MacGregor. What time does she usually come in?”
Small dark eyes squinted as a frown tugged his mouth. “Why?”
“We went to dinner Saturday and I couldn’t reach her yesterday. I thought I’d try to catch her before her first class.”
There was no policy forbidding faculty from dating but a strong wave of displeasure rippled from the science professor’s body. Salih’s upper lip thinned and Jarod had to concentrate to understand his thick accent. “Ms. MacGregor is ill and isn’t working for a few days.”
Jarod sighed. It was early for flu season but maybe she was one of the first. “I don’t suppose you have her address. Maybe I’ll take her some chicken soup.”
Dr. Salih shifted his briefcase, staring hard into Jarod’s face. “Professor Reed, she requested that I tell anyone who asked after her that she was ill.” Jarod started to speak, but the older man held up a hand. “I’ve been married for thirty-one years. I know when a woman is lying. I suggest you examine your
relationship
with Ms. MacGregor and see if perhaps you are the real reason for her absence. Excuse me, I have students waiting.”
The gusting wind didn’t carry half the chill of those snipped words. They sank into Jarod’s belly like pushpins, each one a bloodless sting. His eyes slid shut as Dr. Salih walked away.
Oh shit.
Nora knew. She figured out he was James and was so furious she couldn’t stand to be on the same campus as him.
No, wait, that wasn’t right. Nora had too much grit to curl into a ball and hide from the world. When he’d sent her the Bullet at her office, she’d scorched the airwaves with her anger. Her vehemence had nearly stabbed into his eardrum. If she knew he was James, she’d come after him in full blazing fury, those whiskey eyes snapping fire and that delicious mouth thinned into a tight line. She’d hand him his balls in a test tube. She didn’t know. So why was she hiding from him?
Jarod groaned, mortified, and his hand shot through his hair. The goodbye beside her car. The kiss that had nearly exploded.
You fucking idiot.
He knew she was the careful type, insisting on public lunches and keeping a restrained distance between them. Blinded by the simple flirtations over dinner, the brush of her leg against this knee, he’d let his desire for her almost overwhelm him. He’d felt her up in the parking lot. He’d moved too fast.
A few loud, hot curses vented into the frosty air as he mentally kicked himself. At the tantalizing flavor of Nora’s kiss, James had taken control of his body. Their fledgling relationship had been following pre-set societal norms—coffee, lunch, a sweet kiss, a few more light kisses, then dinner with a longer goodnight kiss. Then he’d screwed up by shoving his hand down her dress.
Jarod hurried across the quad to the Literary Arts Building. The remembered satin of her warm skin taunted him, mocked him. He had a sinking feeling he’d better hold tight to that memory, because it might be the closest he was ever going to get to her now. Unless he could grovel and apologize enough through cyberspace.
Jarod didn’t bother removing his jacket when he strode into the classroom. Students milled around, chatting and swapping weekend tales. Every word grated on his taut nerves. He barreled straight toward his desk.
“Quiet reading. ‘When We Two Parted’ by Byron, expository quiz in five minutes.”
“Professor, one of my fraternity brothers said you promised your Tuesday-Thursday class an A on the next pop quiz. Any chance you’ll share that wealth with us?” The frat guy with a cowlick smirked at his buddy.
Jarod’s hands fisted on his desk calendar. He was in no mood to play grading games. “Nope. Get reading.”
A collective sigh whooshed out beneath the sound of opening books. Jarod jerked his chair out, yanked his laptop from his bag and powered up. He wanted to call Nora, but he couldn’t do it during class. He’d e-mail her instead.
He wracked his brain for a bit of literary magic to make his apology work. Men had been courting for centuries and royally messing things up for just as long. His hands trembled on the keyboard.

Nora, let me use better words than my own. Lord Byron said in his poem “When We Two Parted”: “In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget.”
Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have come on so strong Saturday night. I never meant to scare you or push you in any way. I could say that I’d had too much wine, but that would be a lie. You captivated me at dinner and I forgot myself. It will never happen again, I promise you. Please, can we talk? Call me any time, day or night, (917) 555-6975.
I’m sorry. I wish the English language allowed me to express that more.
~Jarod


After calling Salih at the ungodly hour of six o’clock in the morning and faking a stomach flu, Nora hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. She’d planned on burying herself in her dissertation for a few days. She could find some way to work without those interviews. She would have to request an extension, claiming lost research files, and could only hope and pray the committee would understand. If not, she’d have to figure something out.
One hundred and forty-three games of Spider Solitaire later, the new e-mail window popping up in her browser made her stomach roll. Firming her lip, Nora clicked the e-mail. The subject line almost made her open the message. “
Forgive me.
”
Not likely.
She jabbed the delete button, sending the message to the trash folder without reading it. Jarod and James could both go take a flying leap off the nearest bridge overpass. Curiosity nibbled at her and she wondered what, exactly, he was apologizing for but she refused to give in to any more of his lies.
Still, she caught herself remembering the gentle caress of his thumb on her hand over coffee, the wind tossing his chocolate brown hair every which way, the rolling sound of his laugh. Nora slammed the laptop closed mid-game. She had to snap out of this funk. She shouldn’t be thinking nice romantic thoughts about a man who deceived her. Running a hand through not-yet-brushed hair, she decided she needed fresh air.
Maybe she would buy a self-indulgent dinner for one, pamper herself a bit. She deserved it. And if a pint or two of ice cream just happened to jump into her grocery cart, then so be it. A quick trip to the grocery store would get her moving and then she’d buckle down and get working. Once she had her doctorate, she could look for a position elsewhere.
Right now she would take any job, as long as it was far away from a certain silvered-tongued English professor.
Not even the liquor could wash the taste of self-loathing out of Jarod’s mouth. He drained the last sip of Irish whiskey and stared at his empty inbox. Nora hadn’t replied. His phone never rang and she hadn’t answered when “James” called her either. He’d spent the majority of his Tuesday Intro to Lit class staring out the window, waiting for her to traipse across the quad. Even knowing she wasn’t on campus couldn’t rip his watchful eyes from the barren pathway, hoping against hope that enough longing could conjure her from frigid air.
After the students filed out, Jarod had tried again, pulling borrowed words from literature to plead in an e-mail. She ignored that one as well. He’d rushed home to fire up his computer, only to find his inbox as empty as his apartment. His head hit the back of the couch. God, he’d really fucked up this time. He turned off the computer and the lights and got ready for bed, ignoring a stack of ungraded essays.
He’d thought his biggest challenge was going to be confessing that he was her cell-phone lover. Instead, he’d never even get that chance because he’d quit using his brain and allowed his dick to think for him. Why had he touched her like that, knowing how cautious she was? How could he have thrown away a chance with the most interesting woman he’d met in years over a momentary sexual impulse?
Because she felt so right in my arms after everything we’d talked about together.
Punching his pillow, he stared at the blurry glow of his alarm clock. Sex wasn’t the only thing he wanted with Nora. Maybe it was what he thought he wanted at first, but that was before he knew that her laugh was like church bells in the winter air or that she took three creamers in every cup of coffee. He could see the fire in her eyes over the steaming rim of that cup. The memory made his chest tighten with a deep, unreachable ache.
He wanted everything, all those courtship rituals that had spurred men throughout history to pursue one woman above any others. He wanted the heart-pounding ache of waiting for her to walk through a door, for every flirtatious smile, for every tiny, thrilling step toward more. He wanted more with Nora.
Sleep was elusive and he was dressed before the sun broke over the frost-gilded mountains. He ate out of habit, not tasting the muffin but Nora’s kisses. He drove through gray morning light but saw only the blush on her cheeks. He automatically stopped for a newspaper and coffee, but his mind never left the dark-haired Helen of his personal Troy.
Jarod paused as he handed the cashier a five-dollar bill to pay for his purchases. His gaze landed on a magazine cover. Some actress in a too-tight gown at some Hollywood party clutched a bouquet of cream roses, the tips tinged in dark blood red. Roses like the one he’d given Nora. The picture stayed with him as he drove onto campus. He pulled into the parking lot, peeled through a U-turn and headed back out into traffic.

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