by Holley Trent
“Hey, so, where were you heading to in such a hurry earlier?” he asked during a quiet transition between two songs.
She put her hand on top of his and turned in her seat to put her legs under the table again. She pressed his hand between her two atop the table and stared down at the contrast of their skin. Her olive to his fairness. Her parents had been that way. Her father had always teased he’d married dark so his kids would inherit some sun protection.
Feeling suddenly brazen, she dropped her hands to her lap. “I wasn’t…well. I–I wasn’t actually in a hurry. I thought you were, I was just–”
Grant’s grin widened.
“You’re fucking with me.” She swatted ineffectually at him and buried her face in her hands.
“Yeah, I’m just messin’ with ya. Why were you hanging out on campus? Are you in a graduate program?”
“No, I had some work to do on campus today.” She sat up again and willed the heat to recede from her cheeks. “I do police sketches and got called in to meet with a student who witnessed a break-in.”
“Oh, really? Wouldn’t have expected that. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the technical type.”
She didn’t see herself that way, either, but still–she wanted to know why she didn’t put off that vibe. “Why not?”
“You don’t look the sort.”
She swirled the little plastic straw around in her drink, fished the maraschino cherry off the cup and plopped it onto her bar napkin. “What sort do I look like, then?”
Grant reached over and picked up the cherry by the stem. He studied her face for a few seconds before pulling the fruit off the stem using his front teeth. His eyes never left hers. She made a little whinnying noise at the back of her throat as some base part of her thought about her nipple being trapped inside that pearly white clamp. If he didn’t leave soon, she’d need more to drink than what was in that glass.
His tongue made a slow lap around his lips. “Pretty sure that’s Irish whiskey.” He dragged her glass across the tabletop and tested his theory with a sip. “Yeah. I’m willing to bet it.”
She clamped her thighs together and tried not to think of the aching need at their apex.
“What do you think?”
She sucked in some air. “It is. I always ask for Irish whiskey if it’s available.” She rescued her drink and downed the remnants in three swallows, letting the eighty-proof stuff warm her belly and bolster her fortitude.
Grant winked. “Good girl. Anyhow, I dunno. Pharmaceutical sales, maybe. They always hire for looks. Makes the doctors more likely to take their samples.”
“Yeah, I do believe you’re full of shit.” She laughed heartily and shook her head with bewilderment, which earned her a beaming smile.
He had opened his mouth when Megan pushed her way back through the sweaty grinding bodies at that exact moment and idled at the table to chug her soda. “Oh my God, it’s hot as hell in middle of the crowd,” she said, fanning herself with her hand.
“Why don’t you dance on the outskirts?” Grant suggested. “You’ll probably be more likely to catch some of the air coming off the fans. Can’t be good for you to be getting overheated in your condition.”
Megan’s brown eyes grew to the size of saucers. She put down her soda, made a “squick” noise and excused herself to the bathroom.
Grant knitted his eyebrows and hooked his thumb in the direction of the fleeing maternal waif. “Did I say something wrong?”
Carla closed her eyes and shook her head. “She’s a complicated lady. You can offend her without even trying, so don’t get too upset about it if you manage to.”
“I’m pretty sure I taught her once.” He crossed his arms over his chest and knit his brows. “Aren’t you all? Complicated, I mean?”
“Fair enough. Although, I believe the serpent in the garden is the one to blame for our beguiling natures.”
That smile again. She scrambled to find some snippet of conversation to offer up, anything but to sit there like a dummy staring at his face. “So, what did you do your dissertation on? You were only teaching composition as a TA, right? You weren’t a part of the English department.”
He leaned forward, looked across the tables to his friends, who were making somewhat crude gestures at the woman at the bar. He cringed, leaned back again and revived his smile. “Right. Part of my financial-aid package. The school had a shortage of teaching assistants in the English department that year for some reason and graciously offered me a spot there. I wouldn’t have been able to take it except my first master’s degree was in comparative literature. It actually worked out well. The history department teaching assistants weren’t doing any actual lecturing. They were just hanging out in the big lecture halls handing out course materials and doing grading. Being in the English department, I got teaching experience.”
“Oh, you have more than one master’s degree? Is that why it took you so long to get your PhD?”
“Well, I earned that first one at…well, in the UK, then got really interested in culture and Irish history. I guess because my mom was so interested in all the folk arts and such. We used to spend a lot of Saturdays exploring. Anyhow, I came to the US when I was twenty-four and started my second master’s degree. Took me until thirty-one to earn my doctorate since I’m not independently wealthy, which you could probably intuit by the state of my teeth.” He gave her the full intensity of his smile yet again, to point out the very slight crowding of the bottom row.
“Funny.”
“Hey, it’s true. I’ve gotten grants and stipends mostly due to my serendipitous capture of a few leprechauns and shaking a few wishes out of them.”
She laughed until she snorted and covered her face yet again. “Know the feeling,” she said from behind her palms. “Oh, God, I’m such a dork.”
“Oh, stop it. You’re perfectly lovely.”
She felt gentle fingers on her wrists, then Grant eased her hands away from her face. He let his smile reach his eyes.
“My dissertation was on cultural assimilation in the Irish Diaspora. I was studying Irish-American influence in the mid-Atlantic Colonies–Virginia, North Carolina and so on.”
She dropped her jaw so fast it creaked. “Really? That’s interesting.”
“You’re bullshitting me. Most people just nod and smile. Feel free to do that. I won’t be offended, love.” There was a whoop followed by the sound of shattering glass near the bar. Grant released her hands and stood to assess the ruckus up front. He whispered, “Thank fuck” and sat again.
“No, I mean it. I’m working on my father’s family tree and the whole damned lot of them were Irish. I’m surprised they didn’t integrate more for so long after immigrating.”
Grant shook his head. “That’s not atypical for immigrant groups. There’s strength in numbers and people want to feel connected to something larger, especially in the face of adversity. The Irish weren’t exactly universally liked here.”
He made sense, and she told him so. “I’m really interested in the first one who came here. I’d love to know more about how and why he immigrated and where he came from. I know everything about my mom’s family. We spent almost every summer with them as kids. It’s this huge sprawling thing on both sides of the Atlantic. I feel really guilty about knowing so little about my Irish side, especially since my dad…well.”
“Yeah.” He reached across the table and folded her hands into his. It seemed almost an instinctive action from the way he looked down at them. When she rubbed the tops of his hands with her thumbs to encourage him, he reached over and cupped her chin with his freed hand and tilted it up. “You don’t have to look down around me. I don’t bite.”
How strange to be experiencing that moment of tenderness in the middle of a loud, crowded nightclub, but at same time something about having an audience made her feel less awkward. She put a shaking hand up to push his hair back from his eyes, which earned her another smile.
“I’d be happy to–” Yel
ling near the bar again. Grant actually climbed up onto his chair to see.
She made do with leaning sideways and staring down the aisle between the tables. The bald man was flailing his arms around with wild gesticulation and arguing with one of the club’s dinosaur-sized bouncers. The tall, dark-haired woman was wagging her finger in his face.
“Fuck.”
Grant hopped down and pushed Sharon’s chair back under the table. He got halfway to the altercation, froze, and turned around. When he returned to the table, he bent into her to block her view of the bar. “Hey, give me your phone.”
“Huh?”
He held out his hand. “Your phone. I’m supposed to already know your phone number since you’re my girlfriend.”
She arched one eyebrow up into a question mark. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say it has to do with those loudmouths at the bar and the chick who’s squawking at them.” He held out his hand.
She studied his face and upon finding he looked absolutely mortified, gave him the device.
He punched some information into her contacts list while occasionally glancing back over his shoulder to watch the mounting fracas. “Here. That’s my stuff. Come over in the morning and I’ll help you with your project. I live at Hillside.”
“Um…okay.” She studied the screen. Grant Fennell.
“And one other thing.” He bent down and put his lips next to her ear. “Listen, I hate to drag you into this craziness, but I have to do this.”
“Do what?”
When his gaze darted over to the bar yet again, she followed it with her own. The tall woman had stopped yelling at the bouncer and Grant’s friends. Now she was glowering at Grant.
She suddenly understood. “You want me to pretend we’re…together?” Hardly an inconvenience.
“It’ll either make things worse or better. I’d certainly feel better.”
How could she refuse? She laced her fingers through his hair so the tips met at the crown, and pulled his face down toward hers. His green eyes closed as their noses touched, then there was the press of lips. It wouldn’t have taken much to make it look like a good show from a distance, but she wanted to put everything she had into that kiss. She needed to redeem herself with it. She needed redemption for being so damned clumsy and awkward, for not remembering his last name and for the fact that once he walked away, she would probably be too chickenshit to call him.
She wound her tongue around his, searching his mouth, emboldened by his moan and the tightening of his fingers around her thighs.
The noise at the bar escalated. When she drew back, she wasn’t finished; she could’ve sucked on his lips all evening.
He drew back panting. “That was like a going-off-to-war kiss. I’m not going to die, love. Might go to jail tonight is all.”
Love. A careless use of a pet name and she was smitten. And when he dragged pad of his thumb over her cheek, spontaneous human combustion suddenly seemed like a feasible phenomenon.
With one last smoldering smile, he straightened up and moved with graceful ease through the tables to his friends.
She felt a tinge of arousal watching his agile form skirt away, thinking of how strong and forceful his tongue was, but quickly drowned it with the remnants of Sharon’s Long Island Iced Tea.
Chapter 5
It had been a rough night for Grant. His friends and ex-girlfriend managed to get him banned from a club he had no intention of ever stepping foot in again, but that hadn’t minimized the embarrassment. After driving the drunken geniuses home to their shared apartment, he lay in his unmade bed a full fifteen seconds before getting right back up. He had tedium to plow through and a deadline to do it in. It could have been worse. He could have had a Friday exam to administer.
It was nearly four AM when he finished grading the rest of the essay exams, and as soon as he was done, he started checking items off the relocation checklist human resources had emailed with his tentative offer letter.
He stood in the middle of his living room, scowling at the furniture and electronics acquired over nearly eight years, and decided starting fresh on the other side sounded better than moving all that shit. It was a problem easily solved by filling out a quick web form to schedule a bulk to a thrift store donation. The only things that needed shipping, really, were his desktop computer and peripherals and the hardbound books he used for research. His car was at the end of the lease and he’d turn that back in. All of his winter clothes and shoes could easily fit into one trunk, which he would ship, and the rest could go in the suitcase he’d carry onto the plane. He’d need to get a better wardrobe. He couldn’t be a real professor and show up to teach in his number seven jersey and scruffy Pumas. He might even have to get a haircut.
Around six AM he plopped onto his sofa and studied the flight itinerary he’d printed off after administering the exam. He’d sent the fax at twelve thirty–or five thirty Irish Standard Time–and there was apparently someone in the office available to intercept it. They stuck around and got the ball rolling as a special favor for the department head. The school was moving quickly because of the approach of summer school and their participation in an academic conference they wanted to send him to. In order to get settled in before his first day of work, he’d be flying home to Ireland the following Monday. Just three days away.
He flicked the papers onto the storage tote he used as a coffee table and gave the plastic bin a kick with his bare heel. All those years he’d had the wrong number programmed into his phone. If he had known she was so pliable, so open to his suggestion, he would have just sent a damned email after she graduated. He knew exactly when that was and with what major, although he had pretended not to the previous evening. He’d checked her student status every semester and knew she’d needed an extra year and that she’d changed her major from Art History to Biology before her third year.
Fate was being a real bitch. He’d tried to get his mind off her after every encounter–every spotting reported by Curt and Seth–but no other girl had even come close to what he saw as perfection. He loved that she didn’t behave like the great beauty she was. As if she had a very mature understanding that she’d had no say in which body her soul came to Earth in, so why flaunt it? And then her intelligence. She wasn’t ostentatious about it, although she obviously had a good mind on her. Her compositions had always been simply worded, precise even, but not lacking creativity. She didn’t need to say much to make a statement.
Mentally and physically, she hit all the right buttons for him. That kiss had made him want to grab her up by the belt loops and toss her over his shoulder to carry home. He’d never considered himself to have an alpha personality, but whenever he thought of Carla he could feel the caveman tendencies bleeding out. He wanted to make her his conquest: tie her up and drag her back to Meath.
She could meet his helpless case of a father. She’d set up the home he’d been longing for since his mother died. Of course, he’d make her a mother several times over if he could manage it. His children would have the siblings he never had. But how would he get her to Ireland? He wasn’t so hip on going back himself after being fully indoctrinated in the cult of America. He knew one thing for certain: he wouldn’t give up on her until she gave him a flat-out “No” for an answer. Perhaps they could be pen pals for a while? He snorted at the thought and fell asleep thinking of her kiss.
* * * *
Carla gave two quick raps on the door and took a few steps back from the peephole. This wasn’t like her. She was timid–the sort of woman who spent a lot of time regretting missed opportunities because she was afraid to take risks. But where had that led her? To changing her major from what she was passionate about to something she thought would be stable. To being alone most of the time because heartbreak, no matter how temporary, seemed a worse fate than loneliness. At twenty-five, she was a cynic.
Living like that was so much work, and she was tired of feeling so empty, so she curled her
toes in her shoes and anchored herself to the breezeway. Run, her fear said. In fact, her fear had made her turn her car around twice during the three-mile drive between her apartment and Grant’s. What kept her from running home was reminding herself Grant had invited her. He’d offered to help. Beyond that, he’d asked her to kiss him the night before. To her, that meant he didn’t see her as that mortified little girl who’d bumbled into his classroom all those years ago.
While she waited for the thud of footsteps from within, she turned and looked out over the balcony railings at the complex. The morning was utterly still other than one man in a business suit walking to his car two buildings away. This early, dew still clung to windshields. She looked at her watch. “Damn it.” Barely eight o’clock. The side effect of being a raging insomniac was that she often started her days at unseemly hours. Even though she hadn’t gotten home from the club until nearly three, she wasn’t really tired.
She walked to the steps and had made it down to the landing when the apartment door opened.
“Hold on, Carla.” Grant closed the door again, slid the chain across the track, and pulled the door open wide. “Come in, please.”
She assessed him from her spot on the landing and mumbled “Shit,” at a volume only dogs could hear.
He stood in the doorway wearing a faded heather gray FAI shirt and blue sweatpants that had a few bleach splotches. He was barefooted and his cheeks and jaw bore dark shadow. His curly hair fell into sleepy eyes. He pushed it back and rubbed his closed lids with the tips of his fingers.