Ten Thousand Words (8 page)

Ass.

Deciding to take my time making my way over, I messaged Rex, who was having dinner with Jaime and her husband, Ricki. Great-Aunt Ellen would be joining them soon.

A piercing whistle sounded, and I looked up to see Ollie standing in front of the café with two large to-go cups in his hands and a camera bag slung over his shoulder. He looked fantastic in tight dark denim molded against his thick thighs—
the man must do squats or something
—a heavy red-and-black plaid flannel jacket, and a black beanie on his head. Silver aviators covered his eyes, but he was grinning, so I knew he wasn’t put out because I’d been dragging ass.

When I made it across the street, he handed me my cup.

“I hope you like it sweet,” he told me.

“How sweet did you make it?”

“I don’t know.”

I took a sip, finding it just right. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

“I thought we could maybe go check out Central Park. I’d like to get some shots.”

“Sure.”

“Do you mind walking?”

“Not at all.”

He smiled. “I missed you at breakfast.”

Okay, this guy is good.

My cheeks heated up, and I couldn’t look at him. He’d reduced me to a schoolgirl with her first mad crush, and that was not cool.

“Where did you go?” I asked, attempting to be nonchalant.

“I ate in the hotel dining room. They had this huge buffet with just about everything one could want for breakfast.”

“What did you have?” I asked.

Heading for the north entrance of Central Park, it was a good twenty-minute walk, but I didn’t mind. I walked everywhere back home. The fresh air and exercise were invigorating.

“Eggs Benedict and potatoes.”

Ollie’s knuckles grazed mine as we walked side by side, and my heart tripped. It reminded me of the kiss he’d planted on me the night before. Confusing in its nature, he’d made me think that he was actually going to
kiss me
, kiss me, and I was disappointed when he hadn’t followed through. In fact, I’d been embarrassed.

But then he’d called our dinner “an amazing date,” and somehow that had made up for it. I didn’t know what to make of him.

Does he really like me?
Or does he just find me interesting in the sense that I could provide him with some entertainment and company while in New York?

I could find some courage and just ask, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate that. I wouldn’t, especially if all I was looking for was some company to help pass the time.

But I was
dying
to know what the hell was going on.

His knuckles grazed my hand again.

I slid a glance his way, and he was casual, acting as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. It was just a couple—okay, that was the third knuckle scrape, and that couldn’t have been just an accident. If he thought it was awkward, then he’d put some damn distance between us to prevent it from happening.

Stopping at a crosswalk, we waited for the signal to turn green.

Four grazes are just three too many!

Acting all blasé and whatnot, I looked down at the ground…and slipped my fingers into his hand—just to test my theory. He sucked in a sharp breath, and my face went red.

Damn it. How do I pull this off as an accident now? There’s no way—

His fingers curled around mine, squeezing lightly, and then laced with my fingers, firmly gripping my hand. How I found the courage to look up into his face, I’d never know, but when I did, he was grinning.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

“Twat.”

His grin went full-on smile. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back even if I’d wanted to.

“I read
Haunted Bonds
last night.”

“Oh, yeah?”
I just might drop dead from heart failure on a Manhattan sidewalk.

“Yeah. I made it to chapter seven.”

My heart wedged into my throat, threatening to gag me.

“I really, really like it. It was hard to put down.”

Relief coursed through me, so profound that I might just faint.

“It’s a bit creepy though,” he stated.

“It’s supposed to be. It’s
paranormal
,” I dryly told him.

He glanced over at me. “I meant, the description of Donovan. I guess I can see why I was asked to be on the covers.”

“Right?” I blurted. Then, I composed myself as quickly as possible.

“And Lindsey Sparks kind of reminds me of you.”

If my face got any redder, it would burst into flames. I had to be shimmering with my own personal mirage. “Really?”

“Yeah. Except your eyes aren’t green.”

Well, I had always wished my eyes were greener than the mud-and-algae mix I had going on. As the author, I’d taken the liberty of making Lindsey everything I wished I were—like the fact that she had killer abs that had come from wrestling with vampires, not the muffin top I had going on from sitting at a computer for hours.

I took a sip of my coffee.

“What chapter do they have sex?” he asked.

Choking on my coffee, I managed to splutter, “El-ele-”—
cough
—“eleven.”

Ollie released my hand to pat me on the back. We stopped walking in order for me to wheeze the coffee from my lungs.

“If Elaine’s sex scenes are as crazy as the rest of her book, I might not be able to look her in the eyes on Friday.”

There it was—the berating of my mental faculties once again. A fiery flash of anger blazed through me.

Haunted Bonds
was
mine
, my baby. It was my absolute victory over all the reasons I had felt I shouldn’t publish.
It’s stupid. No one will like it. No one will understand it. People will laugh at me.

Some had. People had called Elaine H. Ford a freak, sick in the head. My therapist in Oxford had earned quite a bit of money after it had released. Plus, I had paid for the long-distance calls to her while I’d been living in Amsterdam. But they could never take away the simple fact that I had had the balls to put my brainchild out there.

Nevertheless, my readers enjoyed the sick, twisted inner workings of my mind. Apparently, Ollie was now one of them, too. A part of me wanted to rub it in his face. He was hanging out with someone he thought was mad.

“You all right?” he asked, pushing his sunglasses up his forehead.

I raised my watery gaze to his and nodded. Then, I washed more coffee down my throat. “I’m good.”

We started walking down the street again, and I was disappointed that our hands were no longer clasped.

Ollie

Today, Xanthe was sweet and tempting, hesitant to flirt. When she had tucked her hand in mine, I’d thought it was fantastic how she’d radiated ten shades of red. I had to wonder if she didn’t date much.

More than anything, I wanted to take her hand again. I liked her hands. Her fingers were long, dry, and callous. She kept her nails pared short and unpainted. But, more than wanting to touch her, I wanted to let it sink in for her that I liked touching her. I had the feeling that she wasn’t used to that, and I liked that feeling, too.

When we went through the north entrance of Central Park, I couldn’t take it anymore. Reaching out, I took her hand in mine. She lightly clasped my hand in return.

I wanted to fill up my camera with shots of Xanthe in the North Woods. With the bright sunlight filtering through the dense vegetation, it was the perfect fairy-tale setting for a woman with the name of a goddess—even if she were wearing black-rimmed hipster glasses.

“Will you take your hair down for me?” I asked as we went off on a smaller pathway.

She reached up and tugged out her knot, her thick curls catching streaks of sunlight. It shone with a dark inner fire.

Earthy and natural, Xanthe was breathtaking. She was slowly revealing something incredible to me. Perhaps that was the enchantment.

The desire to see all of her was overwhelming. I wouldn’t be satisfied until she was standing before me in all her glory. I sensed that she had the power to surprise me indefinitely, and I wanted to explore this, her, all of it.

My camera was out of the case and in my hands, and I felt that thrill I always got whenever I held the weight of it. I was ready to capture the world and clutch it in my grasp.

This wasn’t a digital camera. Xanthe deserved the time it would take for me to sit in my dark room with the film and watch each photograph develop, revealing their secrets as she did. After attaching the scope, I raised it to my gaze and saw her through my beloved lens about ten feet ahead of me. I snapped a few shots before she turned her attention on me.

“Are you photographing me?”

I smiled. “I am.”

“I thought you wanted Central Park.”

“I want
you
…in Central Park.”

Yes!
I loved her blushing.

Unsure of herself, she didn’t know where to look or what to do with her body, and I found it refreshing. I wanted her as she was, showing me what was going on in that head of hers.

“What should I do?”

“Just be yourself,” I replied.

She looked off into the distance. “In this very minute, I’m not sure of who I am.”

I lowered my camera. “What do you mean?”

She faced me, and I felt her gaze like a swift kick to the gut. There was rawness in her expression. She was exposed, vulnerable, and…
dark
—not in an evil sense, but…something
inside
her was maybe more than mysterious, like a brutality, a protective viciousness that set her apart from the norm. The hair raised on my neck and arms.

“Take your shot,” she said softly.

I certainly didn’t want her uneasy with me, but the humanity in her expression was far too compelling. Raising my camera, I took a few more photos.

“What’s going through that head, Xanthe?” I asked, clicking away.

Refusing to look at the camera, she answered, “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

“I want to take pictures of my wonderful Xanthe.”

That shocked her. It shocked me, too.

She stared hard at me for a few seconds before she cracked a joyless, self-deprecating smile. “Is that how you make your models express emotion? Just say things that stun the shit out of them?”

“Sometimes,” I replied, defensive.

I hadn’t meant to say that to her at all. It had just popped out. There’d been no need to coax anything out of her. She was showing me everything, all on her own terms.

“Can we…” Her voice trailed off into the cool breeze.

“Can we, what?”

“Walk for a bit?”

I lowered the camera once more, and we stared at each other across the space between us.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked softly.

“A few things,” she replied.

That was no answer at all.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked me.

“Right now?”

“Sure.”

“Of being misunderstood.”

Xanthe flinched, looking stricken. “Am I misunderstanding you then?” she asked softly.

Slowly, I walked up to her, not taking my gaze from hers. I had to give her credit. Her spine straightened, and she stood her ground. Her courage was so sensual. I wanted to reach out and stroke it, take a little piece of it for myself.

“I hope to hell you understand me just fine,” I told her. “No one has ever engaged my attention as you have. So…just tell me you understand, so I can keep taking photos of you.”

She swallowed thickly, and my brain swamped with all sorts of wonderfully dirty thoughts of her. I stared at her mouth as her lips parted slightly. The tip of her tongue darted out to moisten them.

“I understand.”

“Good,” I stated.

For me, this was huge. Never had I felt such a strong reaction to another person before. My attraction was only growing with the more time I spent in Xanthe’s company, and when I wasn’t in it, I wished I were.

The fact was, I dated a lot. Back home, I had been keeping company with several women, both in the bedroom and out. They were all as Mandy had described—bombshell beauties. Not all of them put together could generate a fraction of the interest Xanthe inspired in me though.

“Are you seeing anyone back home?” I asked her, wanting to come clean on my end.

Surprised, she said, “No. You?”

I nodded. “Nothing serious though.”

Her gaze dropped to the ground. She looked to be mentally berating herself, and I felt like the ass once again.

“None of them are particularly special, Xanthe. Just friends. They date other people, too. It’s just easier that way.”

We started walking over a stone bridge when she stopped to lean on the railing, and she peered over the side at the stream beneath.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, hoping she understood that she was something special.

We might have just met, but I knew when something was worth investing in.

She shrugged, closing herself off.

“Tell me.”

“What do you mean by, it’s easier?”

“You know, no strings attached. Easy sex.
Meaningless
sex. A good time when we’re looking for it and no bullshit when we’re not.”

“I’ve never had a relationship like that.”

I never wanted her to experience one either. If all I had wanted was sex with a weirdo hipster, I’d have tried getting in her pants already. The fact that I wasn’t was pretty new to me, too.