by BETH KERY
Too intimidating.
If she started to talk about it out loud to Jimmy, maybe it’d become more real. She’d potentially have to acknowledge that given their mutual agreement at the beginning of their relationship, it was impossible to know exactly how intense or permanent things stood between Trey and her. She might have to admit to herself that she wasn’t precisely sure what the future held for them . . . or have to concede everything could disintegrate to dust at a random flick of fate or a turn of mood.
Picking it all apart in a conversation with Jimmy might dim the magic, and that was something she just wasn’t willing to do yet.
“Speaking of which, since we did get everything done for the Mary Todd Lincoln exhibit, is it okay with you if I retreat down below for the rest of the afternoon?” she asked Jimmy, circumventing his fishing-for-gossip expedition. “We just received that private collection that includes the Margaret Harrison inaugural ball gown, and I only have Betsey until four o’clock today to help me start to unpack it all.”
Jimmy agreed.
Betsey and she began the unpacking, cataloging and storage process of costumes, photos and ephemera. The collection was all from the last twenty years of the nineteenth century and was associated with the Chicago political and social scene, a favorite topic of Eleanor’s. It was a ripe opportunity in which to completely lose track of time.
The next thing she knew, Betsey was long gone, and she heard Jimmy’s muffled voice calling out to her in the far distance. She blinked and rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses, coming back to the present moment dazedly.
“I’m back in Room D, Jimmy,” she yelled out the door. Her basement workplace took up nearly an entire city block beneath the museum, and included dozens of temperature- and light-regulated storage facilities, workrooms and art studios. She checked her watch and cursed disbelievingly under her breath. She’d done it again, lost herself in history. She began to carefully repack the fascinating photos she’d been studying, all of which related to popular Chicago mayor Carter Henry Harrison’s assassination.
It was now six twenty, and she’d wanted to be out the door by six. Thank goodness Jimmy had interrupted her. She straightened her glasses, which had fallen down on her nose. Room D was a storage room for original photographs, so it was kept cool and dim. The chill had penetrated her clothing, although she hadn’t been aware of it while she’d been so preoccupied in her study. It hit her now. Shivering, she wrapped the old nappy wool sweater she always kept in her office around her more tightly and hurried over to the closed door.
“Jimmy,” she yelled, swinging the door open. “I’m down he—”
She halted abruptly. Jimmy walked down the hallway toward her. Trey was right beside him. What the hell is he doing here? It jarred her, seeing him, of all people, in her subterranean domain. The lights in the hall were brighter than the storage room’s had been. She saw his blue eyes fix on her. In a split second, it flashed into her brain how he must be seeing her at that moment. Her hair was falling down from the haphazard bun on her head. She wore a shapeless, gray dress and clutched an old-lady sweater around her.
Great. She was basically at her basement-dwelling, distracted, mousy-librarian Eleanor best.
It felt like she had a sudden allergic reaction. Her throat and tongue seemed to swell up. She’d never corrected her spontaneous lie to Trey about being some kind of high-powered sales executive for the museum.
He was going to realize she’d lied to him.
And you know how much he hates dishonesty.
It felt like the floor had dropped from under her. It was going to end with him, and she wasn’t ready.
“Look who I found asking for you at the information desk,” Jimmy said, grinning. She flashed Jimmy a helpless “I’m going to skin you alive later” glance. The two men came to a halt in front of her. She glanced at Trey furtively. He looked incredible. He must have had some kind of meeting today, because he was wearing a gray suit beneath his long wool coat. Or maybe he dressed that way for work all the time? What the hell she did she know about the most basic routines of his life, after all?
Not only that . . . he’d gotten his hair cut. She’d have thought she’d hate seeing his hallmark wavy, sexy hair shorn, but in fact, the alteration made him look even more arresting and attractive. Older, somehow. Distinguished. Almost like someone she didn’t even know . . .
Or was her impression coming more from her near-panicked state? His brow furrowed as he studied her narrowly.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Trey said. “I thought maybe we could get something to eat before the reading event instead of after.” He glanced down to where she clutched at her sweater. “But I’ve obviously caught you in the middle of something.”
She looked down stupidly at where he looked. “Oh,” she mumbled through a thick throat. She hastily took off the cotton gloves she’d been wearing to handle the photographs. “No, I was just finishing up,” she managed through numb lips.
There was an awkward pause. Jimmy cleared his throat.
“So I’ll just be going, then,” Jimmy said, gesturing down the hall.
“Thanks for bringing me down,” Trey said.
“Sure, no problem.” Jimmy’s smile froze when he glanced at her. She must have been shooting desperate darts at him with her eyes, because he looked a little contrite.
“I’ll see you guys later at the reading event?”
“You’ll be there?” Trey asked him.
“Yeah, I was just out of town last week,” Jimmy said, giving them a quick wave. He suddenly seemed very eager to be gone. They both watched him walking away down the hall, the pressure at Eleanor’s throat and chest mounting by the second. Trey finally turned to her and met her stare.
“This is where you work?” he asked her quietly.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Yes.”
He glanced around at all the doors coming off the vast main hallway.
“It’s massive down here. I had no idea,” he said. “Do a lot of people have offices down here?”
She cleared her throat. “Not a lot, no.” Taking advantage of the fact that he wasn’t looking directly at her, she tried to straighten her hair while still holding the cotton gloves. He caught her at it, peering at her closely.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses.”
She froze at his observation. “Uh . . . these are just magnifiers, for when I’m studying something up close.” She pulled them off her head and slid them into her sweater pocket self-consciously. She sort of felt like she was under a magnifying lens at that moment beneath his stare.
“What’s wrong, Eleanor?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing.”
“Am I in the way?” he asked, taking a step toward her. She glanced up to his face incredulously.
“Of course not. I’m just . . . I wasn’t expecting you.”
He nodded. His new haircut made his face looked more angular and hard and his eyes even more striking.
He suddenly shook his head slightly, his eyelids narrowing. “How is that I can feel like we’ve known each other forever one second, and the next second, be questioning whether or not you even recognize me . . . or worse, wondering whether or not you’re wishing that I was long gone?”
His deep voice echoed in her head for several seconds after his lips had closed into a hard line.
“Is that what you think? That I wish you were long gone?” Her high-pitched squeak made him blink his eyes in surprise. His subdued reaction amplified her desperation. “I don’t wish you were gone. I’m just embarrassed to have you see me like this.” She glanced down and waved at her frumpy form in a “hello” gesture. “Plus, I told you I was an executive in the membership department,” she mumbled, her voice shaking slightly. “And I’m obviously not, working down here in the collection archives.”
He rolled
his eyes slightly. “Yeah, but you also told me you read erotica exclusively. I’ve kind of learned to take some of what you say with a grain of salt.”
She vibrated like a gong that had just been rung. Was he serious?
“I figured you’d been dodging the truth about what you did here at the museum the other night when Jimmy told us how you negotiated for the Mary Todd Lincoln wardrobe from the Smithsonian. That doesn’t really sound like something a sales executive would do. Besides, maybe a sales executive in a museum would have a degree in art history, but also one in textile preservation? It seemed a little unlikely.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, her voice ringing with shock.
He shrugged those wide shoulders she loved.
“I figured that, for some reason, you didn’t want me to know the specifics of what you really did here. I’ve been known to tell people, for different reasons, that I’m anything from a programmer to a manager to a gofer at TalentNet. In a way, all of them are true,” he added with a small smile. “What you said made sense to me, while we were at Gold Coast. Every job in this museum is associated with interacting with the public. Educating them. Entertaining them.” He leaned forward. “Getting their money to keep this place solvent and the doors open. I don’t have a problem with you not giving me your specific job description.” He seemed to register her amazement. “I’m interested in you. Not your job title, Eleanor.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice hollow with shock. She’d imagined he’d be furious when he found out she’d misled him. The amazing realization that he wasn’t going to dump her any second because of her white lie made her feel light-headed with relief. Would he ever cease to surprise her?
He glanced at all the closed doors surrounding them. “Okay, I’m lying. I’m actually really curious. This place looks amazing. So what do you do down here, anyway?” he asked, stepping closer to her, blue eyes zeroing in on her like a target. “And why did you want to keep it from me?”
—
He saw her elegant throat convulse as she swallowed. If he had to guess, he’d say that she was stunned. She set him off balance so frequently. Maybe it was selfish, but it gratified him to know that he had the ability to do the same to her.
Glossy tendrils of her brown hair were falling around her cheeks and down her shoulders, the mass of it heavier on the right side than the left. When she’d walked out of the room a moment ago, she wore that sweet, curious, intent expression that reminded him, strangely enough, of the first time he’d ever seen her at the reading event when she’d pulled out Born to Submit to read. He recalled how he’d had the seemingly random thought that she wore that expression a lot. And here was proof. He’d caught her unawares while she’d been totally absorbed in her work.
He couldn’t understand why she was embarrassed about that.
“Eleanor?” he prodded when she pursed and opened her pretty mouth, but no words came out. “Jimmy told me on the way down here that you were the conservation and preservation librarian. Why wouldn’t you want me to know that?”
“I . . . uh . . . I didn’t think you’d find it very interesting. It’s kind of a hard job to explain to people,” she finally said.
“So you thought I was too stupid to understand? Or was it too shallow?”
“No, of course not,” she said, her eyes lighting up with indignation for a second before she ducked her head. “I just thought you wouldn’t find it very exciting.”
“Well, you were wrong,” he stated matter-of-factly. He glanced down the long hallway. “I think your job sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than pushing memberships and schmoozing companies for donations. Will you show me around a little?”
Her mouth fell open. “You want me to show you around?” she repeated.
“Is it okay? All these closed doors are making me curious. It’s like some kind of treasure hallway. I’m thinking anything could be behind them.”
He blinked at the sound of her nervous laughter. Her curving lips warmed him.
“That’s pretty much true. Well . . . what would you like to see?”
“Anything.”
“Hmmm,” she considered, her brow wrinkling as she thought. All the while, her gaze traveled over his face.
“I like your hair,” she said, surprising him.
“Thanks.”
“Why’d you get it cut?”
“I just thought it was time.”
“Time? What does that mean? Your hair was your bad-boy hallmark,” she said, arching her brows in amusement.
He gave her a droll glance. “If that was true, then I’m doubly glad it’s gone.”
“You wear the new look extremely well.”
He stilled, seeing the flash of heat in her eyes. He started to step into her—he’d been straining at the bit not to touch her since first seeing her. She’d looked so disheveled and distracted and sexy when she’d walked out of that door earlier. When she’d seen him, she’d frozen up, though. That’d restrained him from reaching out for her.
He paused in stepping forward to take her in his arms when she suddenly snapped her fingers. “Ah, I know what you might like. We just got these in a few weeks ago. Follow me.”
She led him to a closed door. She went in and flipped on a very dim light. He entered and saw a room filled with metal shelving racks with long, flat boxes stacked on them. They walked down an aisle between the shelves and he saw that the white boxes were all labeled.
“Here,” she said, pausing. “Help me with these three, on top.” He grabbed one end of the boxes and she the other. She nodded in the direction she wanted him to go. In an open area, they set down the three boxes on a long table. She started to lift off the lid, and he assisted her on his end. He paused in mid-movement when he saw what lay inside the long box.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, setting down the lid. “Is that—”
“Jim McMahon’s Bears uniform. It’s the one he wore in the—”
“Nineteen eighty-five Super Bowl,” Trey finished. “I was only two when they won it, but my brother, Kevin, was twelve. He and my dad were such a huge fans, I swear I must have absorbed their enthusiasm in the womb and been born a Bears fan. My mom insists I was too young to remember the ’85 Super Bowl, but whether it’s from me seeing old clips or Kevin talking about it nonstop or what, I swear I have a memory of sitting in our living room, watching it. Kevin won’t believe it when I tell him I saw this.”
“Tell him to come by anytime, and I’ll show him as well, if he’s interested. We’ll have it down here for quite a while. We’re doing a big sports exhibit next fall,” Eleanor explained.
He glanced up and was snagged by her smile. “Really?”
Her laugh sounded pleased and a little surprised. “Really.”
He glanced down at the boxes. A thrill raced through him when he saw the tag on the bottom box.
“No way. Is that . . . Walter Peyton’s uniform?”
“Yeah. Do you want to see it?”
“Of course I want to see it.” She chuckled and helped him move aside the other two boxes. A moment later, he stared down at his hero’s uniform laid out in the box.
“You have got the coolest job ever.” He looked up in time to see her stunned expression. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could—”
“Do you want to touch it?”
“Uh, yeah, I do. But I was just going to say take a picture.”
“Tell you what,” she said, moving over to a cabinet and pulling out a drawer. “Hold it up and I’ll take a picture of you. Then you can send it to Kevin and your dad, if you want?”
She handed him a pair of cotton gloves like the ones she’d been wearing earlier. She had him turn off the flash on his phone camera. A few seconds later, he sent off a photo of him holding up Sweetness’s jersey, a huge grin plastered on his face.
&nbs
p; “They’re going to be so jealous,” Trey told Eleanor several minutes later as they left the cool, dim storage room. She turned to him once they were in the hallway again.
“Where next?” she asked him. She’d tried to straighten her hair at some point while he was drooling over several other of the museum’s collection of many sports legends’ uniforms. Now her thick, long hair was piled on her head again in a very messy bun. He experienced a strong urge to rip apart her efforts and see it spilling all around her pretty face and down her back.
He cleared his throat and strained to focus down the hallway of treasures. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Just pick one.”
Distracted by her pink, curving lips, he stuck his hand out and pointed randomly.
“Oh, not that one,” she said. “That’s not really a collection preservation unit. It’s more of a work room and storage area for leftover junk from exhibitions and—”
“I don’t care,” he said, moving past her toward the door. He was fascinated by her work life. “Let’s have a look.” She trailed behind him. He opened the door. The room was pitch black.
“You can turn on the light. It’s to the right,” she said from behind him.
He flipped on a switch and started slightly in surprise. Eleanor snorted with laugher behind him at his reaction. He gave her a condemning glance over his shoulder.
“You were the one who barged in. You didn’t give me a chance to warn you,” she told him pointedly.
The vast room was almost entirely filled with hundreds of mannequins in various positions, some of them missing arms and heads, some just torsos lying on the floor. Seeing an army of mannequins suddenly pop out of the darkness had startled him.
“What are they for?” he asked, stepping into the large room.
“Costume displays,” she said. He heard the door shut behind them. “Some of these mannequins are more than a hundred years old and originate from the museum’s inception. I’m always telling Jimmy we could do an exhibit on the mannequins alone. Some of the faces on the old ones are exquisitely painted, and just the body size difference over the century is an interesting lesson on its own. Look at this one,” she said, walking over to a corner. He followed her and examined the vintage, but still intact figure she indicated. Unlike modern, featureless mannequins, this one had a beautifully rendered, painted female face that wore a vacuous, insipid expression.