by Lori Foster
How’d he find out? And why the hell was he so angry about it? She shifted so her skirt fell back down to cover her bare assets. Seeing the ice-cold anger on his face, she desperately wished she had her underwear back.
Suddenly the crowd, so distant moments before, seemed to be pressing in on them from beyond the stage curtain. When they’d arrived, she’d been sure of herself, ready to embrace the sensuality of the event and to show Nick the passion between them. Now she just felt confused.
“I realize it’s semantics, but I didn’t hide my occupation. I simply didn’t share it.”
“Semantics, my ass. You know everything about me. The ins and outs of my career, my family, my life. All you shared about yourself was a carefully presented sham created to snag you some promotion.” He bit the words off in a low growl.
“Sham?” Delaney knew her laugh was bitter, but she didn’t care. Her shock was fading, leaving behind the realization that he’d done this on purpose. He’d deliberately tried to make what they had into something ugly. Anger sputtered in the back of her head.
“I didn’t seek you out, Mr. Famous Author with a point to prove. You came after me. You proposed not just the first bet, but the second as well. Don’t try and claim I used you, since you’re the one who walked in with the self-serving agenda.”
“Oh, no,” Nick said, his face a rigid mask of ice. “You’re not turning this around. You’re the one who pushed emotions, left and right. Harping on and on about how they make a relationship, how important they are. What a bunch of bullshit, considering the whole time you were using me. Using our bet, our relationship, to further your career. We won’t even get into what you did to my writing—”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she interrupted. “Whatever changes are in your writing are from discoveries you made. It has nothing to do with the fact that I teach English.”
“Discoveries? You mean lies, don’t you?”
The anger, flickering embers just moments before, flamed to a blaze. “Lies? You couldn’t write a lie if someone held a gun to your head. You wrote that story. My review, our time together—even the sex we had, as incredibly amazing as it was—had nothing to do with what you put on those pages.”
Self-righteous fury coated her words, but Nick wasn’t listening. He glared and held up his hand.
“I don’t want to hear another thing about my writing. Forget I mentioned it. Forget you’ve ever read my work. I refuse to hear another one of those cries for emotion from someone who can’t even be honest about her own.”
She wanted to refute his words. To throw them back in his face. But she couldn’t. Because, for all that he was dead wrong about her honesty about emotions, or about his writing, he was still right. She’d hid behind the makeover, tried to manipulate the situation to keep his interest. To keep from losing him.
And now? Delaney realized trying to tell him differently was pointless. Unlike her father, who was simply unused to expressing emotions, Nick refused to open his heart. He was using her job as an excuse to destroy any possible bond between them.
She might have worn a mask, but at least she’d realized who she was under it. He couldn’t let his go.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded miserably, bending down to pick up her purse from where it’d fallen on the cement floor. “I didn’t tell you about my job. Not for the reasons you think, although you probably won’t believe that.”
She met his eyes, her heart aching at the anger in their blue depths. “To be honest, I don’t know that I’d do it differently, either. Because I was afraid. Not of your reaction to my occupation, but of your reaction to me. I was afraid you’d look right through me. That I wouldn’t measure up, that I wasn’t enough of a woman to hold your interest.”
She was naked now. Mask off, emotions bare and wide open for his inspection. For the first time, Delaney wished for even a portion of that invisibility she’d spent her life hating. But she’d asked for this. Her stomach churned. She wanted to be seen, which meant she had to let him look. And to accept his reaction.
Except he didn’t say anything. Nick just stared, stone-faced, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans.
“As hard as I pushed for emotions, I was afraid to trust them,” she admitted. “But I’m willing to try, now. Are you?”
His glare was answer enough.
“Too bad,” she murmured, trying to keep the sound of her heart breaking from seeping into her words. “You have so much to offer, and I’d bring more to your life than you can imagine. If you get over this fear of yours, come find me.” Delaney took the risk, put it all on the line, even though she knew rejection was inevitable. “I’m the best thing that could ever happen to you, Nick. And you know what? I’ll bet if you gave us a chance, you’d be amazed at how awesome we are together.”
“Another bet?” He gaped at her, clearly shocked. “You’re shitting me. How stupid do I look?”
“From where I’m standing?” Delaney gave him a pitying look. “You really don’t want to hear my answer.”
His sneer slapped at her heart, but she lifted her chin anyway.
“Since I met you, I’ve come to realize I used to be afraid,” she told him softly. “Not of sex, but of rejection. Of opening myself, my real self, to you and having you turn your back. But as hard as that would have been to deal with, it’s even harder realizing you’d rather reject emotion for its own sake than take a chance and see what we could be to each other.”
She checked her purse to make sure she had cash, then gave Nick her best TV smile. The plastic one that said she knew he didn’t give a damn what she said and she didn’t care.
“Well, it’s been lovely, then. Thanks for the evening. I’d say I proved my point here and won our side bet, but I realize you’re too much of an emotional chicken to admit it, so we can call it a draw.”
She ignored his growl and turned to leave. She knew her heart was in her eyes when she looked over her shoulder, but she didn’t care. If he wasn’t smart enough to treasure the love in her gaze, he wasn’t worth it. “I’ll take a taxi home. Give me a call if you’re up for my bet.”
She swept the curtain aside, the pulsing lights momentarily blinding her. Delaney blinked and kept going. She made her way through the crush of bodies, skirting around the occasional extra-large dildo in her way, and hurried to the exit.
It took all her courage, and a constant stream of mental lecturing on her self-worth, to get Delaney out of the Cow Palace and to the taxi line. It wasn’t until the cab driver gave her a questioning look that she realized her face was covered in tears.
And that she’d lost her mask somewhere inside.
*
TWO DAYS LATER and Nick was still reeling from the intensity of their encounter and Delaney’s audacious parting shot.
He’d bounced from anger to disdain and back again so often, he felt like a Ping-Pong ball.
Emotional chicken, his ass. Just because he’d called her on her lies and refused to keep playing her game, that didn’t mean he was afraid.
“Nick, what’re you going to order?”
He glanced across the table at his mother, then at the waiter.
“The fried chicken,” he ordered with a self-derisive sneer.
The last thing he’d wanted to do today was meet Lori for lunch. But he’d reasoned that her drama might help banish his memory of that heart-melting look in Delaney’s eyes as she walked out on him.
“Nicky, you keep spacing out,” Lori accused with a frown. “Are you thinking of one of your stories again?”
He shrugged and tried to focus on the woman across from him. She looked good. Hardly anyone’s vision of a mother, she was slim, toned and sporting platinum curls that swept her cashmere-covered shoulders. Moneyed and pampered, she definitely didn’t look old enough to have a son his age. She’d love hearing it, so he kept it to himself.
“You don’t look anything like the crying mess I talked to on the phone a couple weeks ago,” he said
instead.
Lori gave him a dirty look. “Just because things like betrayal and an ugly divorce don’t faze you doesn’t mean they don’t hurt real people who have hearts. I was having a bad time, but I’m over all my issues, now.”
Nick sneered at her comment about his lack of a heart. Didn’t he wish that was true.
“Sure you are.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Nicholas.” The pouty look on his mother’s face let him know she’d start crying next.
“Fine,” he muttered the empty word, simply to keep her from tossing a fit at the table. “I was wrong, I’m sure you’re in a great place and don’t have any relationship issues to get over.”
As if.
“No.” Lori looked down at her lap, then gave Nick a shamed look. “You were right. I do have issues, of course. But when I called I was being unreasonable. I was afraid of Jeremy’s daughter’s hold on him, that he’d pick her over me. But I love Jeremy. I don’t want to screw this up. I took your advice and unpacked my bags. We talked. Things are good.”
Nick could only stare. Had all the women in the world gone crazy? His mother making mature relationship decisions? Delaney screwing his brains out in public, then daring him to man up and face his emotions?
Was eleven-thirty too early for Scotch?
“When did you get so smart about all that emotional stuff, Nicky? For a guy with no heart, you definitely know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not heartless,” he said, unable to stop himself.
Two months ago, Nick would have shrugged the comment off with a vague agreement. But now the idea that his own mother thought him heartless hurt. He rolled his eyes. Chalk another win up to Delaney—now he was a whiny prissy-boy getting his feelings hurt.
“I didn’t mean heartless,” Lori said absently, her attention on the lunch their waiter was setting in front of them. “I meant you don’t let things hurt you. You’ve always closed yourself off. You don’t get all emotional or invest yourself in relationships. I’d go crazy if I were that lonely. I’m afraid to be alone, of course. But you? You embrace your solitary life.”
Nick barely heard her, focused only on the phrase afraid to be alone. Was that why she ran from relationship to relationship?
Nick frowned as Lori dug into her pasta. Why hadn’t he ever seen that before? He’d been so busy blaming her for his emotional scars, he hadn’t bothered to notice she was sporting her own.
The realization did nothing to ease his frustration, although it did numb his anger. He was empty without Delaney, but he couldn’t risk reaching out. He’d opened up and gotten screwed over. Why did that just make him sad now, instead of pissed? Pissed had been a lot easier to handle.
*
STILL MULLING OVER his lunchtime epiphanies, Nick arrived home and headed straight to his office. There, he tossed the large envelope he’d found on the porch to his desk and booted up his e-mail.
Nothing.
He checked his answering machine.
No calls.
For a woman so devoted to emotions, you’d think she’d try harder to force him to work through his. Sure, he’d shoved her away. And if she’d tried to reach him yesterday, he’d have probably made a show of hanging up on her. But dammit, why wasn’t she calling?
Nick rolled his eyes and dropped his head against the leather back of his chair. God, this emotional crap was turning him into a teenage girl.
He eyed the envelope he’d brought up with him. No return address. He ripped open the packaging and read the note paperclipped to what he recognized as the manuscript he’d left with Delaney.
You asked me to read it as if I were reviewing. I thought you’d like to see the results.
He stared at her handwriting. It was surprisingly simple for such a feminine, sensual woman. He traced his finger over the loopy D she’d used as a signature.
Realizing what he had done, Nick snorted. Oh, yeah, total teenage girl. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be getting himself a subscription to Seventeen and watching Orlando Bloom movies.
To torture himself, he took the rubber band off the manuscript and started reading. He left the yellow legal papers filled with notes for last, focusing instead on the comments she’d made on the pages themselves.
An hour later, Nick read the last page and realized he was a total dick. Whatever Delaney’s reasons for not telling him about her job, they hadn’t had a damned thing to do with her bet to add emotional depth to his writing.
He’d been so paranoid, so worried his words and his emotions might be found inadequate, he’d done exactly what Delaney had accused. He’d run away. Rejected her before she could reject him.
Pretty sad.
He looked at the notes she’d scrawled in the margin, each page filled with insights, comments, reflections. Delaney had found depth in his words. Interspersed amongst the analysis were sexy propositions, suggestions of things she’d like to try with him, and once or twice she’d even offered ways to make a scene even kinkier.
Was it any wonder he loved her?
Love. Nick puffed out a breath and accepted the truth. The realization, instead of making him feel suffocated, was freeing. All the anger, the doubts, dropped away. Delaney and his feelings for her, made him feel like he could do anything.
Nick flipped to the last page of her notes. Instead of comments, it was a copy of the Risqué magazine makeover story he’d read the month before. A small paper fluttered to the floor. He retrieved it and stared. A photocopy of her teacher ID card.
Dr. D. M. Conner, PhD. Rosewood College. He eyed the hire date on the card and raised a brow. Obviously she’d put that brainiac tendency of hers to good use to be a fully credentialed professor so young.
He frowned at the photo. They sure used lousy lighting. Her skin looked pale, her hair washed out. But the humor in her gorgeous brown eyes was clear. His gaze traced the sensual curve of her bottom lip, remembering how it felt to run his tongue over that tender flesh. Her mouth fascinated him, whether it was glistening with that glossy stuff she used or bare and tempting like it was in this picture. He wanted—needed—to taste her lips.
She was beautiful. She was smart. She was honest.
Painfully honest. If he hadn’t been so busy running, he’d have admitted it sooner. Whatever that e-mail had said, he knew she wouldn’t have manipulated him. She might have used their bet to her advantage, but hadn’t he as well?
Or, he acknowledged as he glanced at the manuscript, wouldn’t he have used it if he’d won? Except she’d won on both counts, the review bet and their debate over lust versus passion. Because passion had sucked him in one hundred percent.
Nick pulled his laptop over and with a few quick strokes, put together a note to Gary.
Lost the bet, worked in the emotions. It’s a first draft. It should work, but if not, I’ll go even deeper.
He attached the computer file containing the pages Delaney had read.
That taken care of, he fingered Delaney’s card again.
Rosewood College, huh? Maybe it was time to pay her a visit.
*
DELANEY SAT BEFORE the dean and the head of the English department, waiting for their verdict. Her hands beneath the desk were still, although she wanted desperately to twist them tighter. She’d learned in her TV stint to show outward calm, though, and it was paying off. She’d given it her best, putting every bit of presence and charisma she’d learned on the TV show into effect.
From the looks on their faces, it hadn’t done any good.
“Well,” her father began. Then he sighed and fiddled with some papers on his desk. Impatience made Delaney want to scream.
“Well,” he said again, this time meeting her eyes, “I have to say I’m actually surprised. Professor Ekco was sure you’d have something extra in your presentation that would sway the committee.”
Delaney bit her lip and debated. Then she shrugged. “He’d suggested I take a different direction with my proposal. He felt I should include
recent job experience and a new contact and possible guest speaker.”
“You chose not to,” her father said, stating the obvious. “Why?”
Was it failure to want to win on her own merits? Not in her opinion. But her father’s? She glanced at Professor Belkin. She didn’t know why he looked like he’d been sucking lemons.
“I felt my qualifications and proposal were strong enough to stand on their own. If I’d gotten the position, I wanted it on my merits alone.”
“Good choice,” her father said with a nod. His words, faint praise though they were, brought a glow to Delaney’s cheeks.
“Of course it’s a good choice,” Belkin spat, erasing her glow. Delaney and the dean both frowned at his hateful tone. “Trash books would have no influence on the hiring committee.”
Delaney’s jaw dropped. She’d be hard-pressed to decide if it was over Belkin’s angry words or her dignified father rolling his eyes.
Her father said nothing though. He just gave her a long, expectant look. Delaney knew that look and with a deep breath, took the unspoken command and stepped up to the plate.
“Could you define what you mean by trash books, Professor?”
“Oh, please, don’t play coy. Commercial fiction? Especially that romance and erotic stuff? You’ve been promoting pure trash. Everyone here at the college knows about you, Ms. Conner.”
Delaney went cold. Everyone? Her eyes flashed to her father’s. His gaze was steady, his expression contemplative. Oh, yeah. He knew.
Now what? The old Delaney would have cringed and tried to appease the people facing her. But…she frowned and took a deep breath. Not now. She was proud of how far she’d come.
“I’m aware of the snobbery that blinds many literary circles to the possibilities available in modern fiction,” she said slowly. Belkin gaped at her unapologetic words, and her father just raised his bushy red brows. “That wasn’t my reason for not including my recent ventures in my proposal. My time with Wake Up California is, in my considered opinion, a strong learning tool that’s only improved the skill set I bring to my job here.”
“Promoting fluff fiction?”