Unwrapped by The Billionaire

by Joanna Nicholson

  She giggled at that, her eyes gleaming as she looked up at the man that would one day be her husband, heart fluttering happily in her chest. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  10. Keeping His Secret

  By: Claire Stonewood

  Keeping His Secret

  © July 2017 – All rights reserved

  By Claire Stonewood

  Published by Passionate Publishing Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. All names and characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  This book is for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Warning

  This book is intended for adult readers, 18+ years old. Please close this e-book if you are not comfortable reading adult content.

  Chapter One

  Emily Pratchet wasn’t in love.

  At least that was what she told herself every time she knew she would have to see him. Every time she walked down the stairs from the lecture room to Kurt Schmidt’s office, student papers or attendance records in hand, she tried to calm her wildly beating heart and leaping stomach.

  ‘He’s just a friend,’ she told herself. ‘You’ve had plenty of male friends before and you’ve never been stupid about any of them. Besides he’s also your boss. Sort of. And he’s married!’

  No matter how many times she told herself she shouldn’t feel the way she did. No matter how many times she told her stomach not to flip when he smiled at her or told her heart not to leap when she heard the click of his pen that signaled him working on something important.

  Now, she stood outside of his office, taking deep breaths and telling herself the same thing. She was not in love with the professor. It was an infatuation, a school girl crush nothing more.

  Emily chuckled a bit at that thought. The fact that she was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student and still going through a school girl crush on a professor was more than a little pathetic.

  Setting all self-deprecation aside, she knocked once on the office door before letting herself inside.

  As expected, professor Kurt Schmidt was seated at his desk, art prints, books and papers scattered all about him.

  His tall and rather thin frame bend over the desk and his longish, light brown hair fell haphazardly into his face as he stared, transfixed at a large book in front of him. To his right side sat a small, note book covered in black scrawl that, Emily knew, wouldn’t look any more decipherable up close.

  The pen in his right hand was clicking frantically and he was mumbling to himself. Emily couldn’t help but smile as she listened intently to what he was saying.

  “…It doesn’t sound right. But, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sound right…”

  “Do you want to know how your students did on the papers you gave them or should I just give them all B minus’s?”

  Kurt lifted his head with a start and turned around, eyes wide in surprise. As usual, Emily had to stifle a chuckle at his reaction. This was also common. The professor was usually so absorbed in his work that he didn’t notice when his office door creaked open.

  When his grey eyes landed on her, his face immediately relaxed and he sank back in his chair.

  “Emily, you scared me!” he said. “Why didn’t you knock?”

  “I did,” Emily said.

  A small, embarrassed blush came into his pale cheeks and he looked down at his hands for a moment before straightening up in his chair.

  “Well, you could’ve said something. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not too long,” Emily said. “But, I didn’t feel like interrupting the conversation you were having. Sounded fascinating.”

  He heaved a sigh and took off his reading glasses rubbing the bridge of his nose as he did.

  “More like frustrating,” he said.

  He leaned forward in his chair and Emily could see the strain in his face. This project that the University president had commissioned was clearly weighing on him.

  “If you like, you could take a break and help me grade these papers. You might as well. It is your class, after all.”

  She set the papers on top of the book he’d been looking through. It was a thick text, filled with prints of Paul Gaugin and Vangoh paintings.

  Post-impressionist art work was the professor of art history’s forte. He’d written numerous academic papers on the subject. Now, the president of their small university wanted him to write an ‘accessible’ book. One that could be published and potentially make the New York Times Bestseller list.

  This was certainly not the Professor’s forte.

  Maybe that was why he looked relieved when he picked up the first in the stack of papers Emily had set down on his desk. Before glancing through it, he looked up at her with the heart flip inducing smile.

  “I think we both know it’s more your class than it is mine.”

  “I just let you take all the credit for it,” Emily said with an accompanying smile. “And get the salary while I have to work at a bar just to make rent on my little apartment.”

  “Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you,” he said bringing his pen down on the first page of one of the five page papers. “Not many people get a full scholarship for Art History here. If the most you have to do is grade a few papers and give some lessons, I’d say you’ve got it pretty easy.”

  “Says the man who holes himself up in his office during the school day,” Emily quipped. “I wonder if the board of directors would pay you as much if they knew you spent your time writing books instead of teaching classes?”

  “They already know how I spend my time,” Kurt said, his eyes still focused on the page in front of him, circling an apparently unsatisfactory paragraph. “That’s why they pay me a salary. I’m more valuable to the University when I research than I am when I teach.”

  Though Emily would never admit this out loud, she could see the reasoning behind that. Kurt, while he was very knowledgeable about his subject and didn’t give terrible lectures, had very little interest in them. He had even less interest in the students taking his course.

  Emily knew he’d taken this professorship at a small but notable school in Northern California, mainly so that someone would pay him to write about the subject he loved. Namely, art from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

  The bored expression on his face as he finished his first student paper, marking it with a B, reinforced his disinterest.

  That was why Emily taught most of his classes. She didn’t mind, really. Unlike Kurt, she enjoyed teaching and she thought she was better at it than she would be at researching. Going through endless periodicals and double checking academic facts filled her with as much dread as dealing with students did for Kurt.

  She also didn’t mind helping grade student’s papers. But, that had less to do with the work itself and more to do with the fact that she got to sit next to Kurt, alone in his office while she did it.

  Again, telling herself not to get too excited, she picked up the next paper on the stack and began going through it. As she worked her way down poorly written paragraphs about the inspiration behind the impressionist movement, she couldn’t help glancing up at Kurt at various intervals.

  “Speaking of research,” Emily asked finally. “How’s the book coming?”

  “If it were going well, I wouldn’t have stopped to grade papers,” he said a tiny hint of frustration edging in his voice. “I would have just asked you to do it.”

  “You’ve done that often enough.”

  Kurt glanced up at her and gave her a superior smirk which, like his smile, caused her heart to flutter more than a bit. Once again, she told herself that after almost two years of knowing the man, she shouldn’t be so taken with him. Once again, it didn’t help.

  “You’ve never had a problem writing before,” she said mildly as she finished
the paper in her hands, marking it with a “C +”.

  “This is different,” he said. “All my other writing was for academics. It was published in journals and periodicals. This is supposed to be…accessible.”

  The emphasis he put on the word accessible told her just what he thought of having to write a book for the general public. The click of his pen as he marked his second paper, this one with an ‘A’, emphasized his frustration.

  “I’m already on the third draft of the first chapter,” he said. “Apparently, the publisher doesn’t think anything I’ve written so far will resonate with a general audience.”

  “Have you shown it to anyone besides your publisher?” she asked. He gave a humorless chuckle.

  “If it’s so terrible that my publisher rejects it, why would I want anyone else to read it?”

  Emily couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that. Kurt always talked that way about his writing. Even when he won awards for it. And, he often spent months editing a paper to death, typing and re-typing paragraphs repeatedly before he so much as let someone else glance at it.

  “Emily, you did tell them Vangoh was an impressionist?”

  She looked up to find Kurt’s expression confused as his pen was poised over another student’s paper.

  “No,” Emily said. “Well…I did say that he’s sometimes lumped in the impressionists but he’s better classified as a post-impressionist or a realist. Why? Have you gotten a lot of papers on Vangoh?”

  “No. Just this one. But it’s all this student’s really chosen to talk about,” he said. “Apparently, he’s also under the mistaken impression that Vangoh painted in the twentieth century and not the nineteenth.”

  “Whose paper is that?” Emily asked glancing over at the name on the top of the page.

  “Oh,” she said, not surprised at all. “That’s Aaron Coffee. He’s kind of an idiot. Never pays attention to any of the facts but, he’s obsessed with Vangoh. Apparently, cutting your ear off and committing suicide makes it a requirement for romantic, pseudo intellectuals to love you.”

  “Huh,” Kurt said. He stopped with his pen in hand and looked up from the paper. “I never really thought of that.”

  “What?” Emily asked glancing up at him.

  He didn’t answer right away but pushed the stack of papers yet to be graded to the side and pulled out his art book and notepad again.

  “I take it this means you’re done grading papers?” Emily asked. She knew she should feel frustrated or put upon that he was, once again, handing the grading work back to her. But, his eyes had become bright and focused once again and the middle of his nose got that adorable wrinkle that always appeared when he was focused on something important.

  He looked so adorable when he became ‘inspired’ by something that she never had the strength to be angry with him.

  “You’ve just given me an idea,” he said. “You don’t mind grading the rest of the papers, do you?”

  “Not if you tell me what this brilliant idea is that I gave you,” she said.

  “You said that people like that Aaron Coffee, people who just read books for fun, like Vangoh because of his personal life as much as his art,” he said. “That’s what the focus of the book can be about. Vincent Vangoh and Paul Gaugin’s relationship. First as roommates and then as artists on parallel journeys. That should be accessible enough, don’t you think?”

  Emily blinked in surprise. This was the first time, that she could remember, that Kurt had ever asked her opinion. In fact, it was the first time he had ever asked anyone for approval about anything. Normally he just rolled his eyes at people and called them idiots.

  Of course, when he did that with her, she just rolled her eyes right back and called him an arrogant jerk. But, this was very different.

  She looked up from the paper in her hands and across the desk. He was staring at her intently; small silver spectacles gleaming in the florescent light. Behind them, his grey eyes looked…there was no other word for it…uncertain. As though Kurt Schmidt, the great professor of art history was unsure of himself.

  Clearing her throat, she looked back at him and nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. That sounds good. Just don’t forget about the prostitute.”

  That adorable pink blush came back to his cheeks.

  “Prostitute?”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “The girl Vangoh gave his earlobe to after he cut it off. People love a good love story.”

  “I don’t think I would call that a love story exactly,” he mumbled as though he were vaguely embarrassed. He turned back to his desk and the pen began furiously scribbling on his notepad again. Emily knew that she should leave it there. But, something inside her wouldn’t let the thought dangle. So, trying to go back to the paper in front of her, she opened her mouth again.

  “The thing is, no one’s really one hundred percent sure what it was,” she said. “Some people say she was just a friend and a model. Some say he paid her for her ‘services’ regularly. If you can claim that he was in love with her and then find some evidence to fit, you can turn it into a love story.”

  The pen stopped scratching and Kurt turned back to face her. Emily looked up from a surprisingly good essay on Degas that was still much less interesting than the conversation happening in front of her.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little…intellectually dishonest?” he asked. “I mean, I’d essentially be telling a lie for a good story.”

  Emily rolled her eyes and set the paper down.

  “It’s not a lie,” she said emphatically. “For all we know he was desperately and tragically in love with this girl. Who’s to say he wasn’t? Besides, the point is accessibility. Popularity. Even if you make a claim historians will dispute, it will get them talking about your book. That’ll get more people reading it. And, for this book, that’s the point.”

  He glanced from her back to the book in front of him, that adorable little focused wrinkle in his forehead coming back into view.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Romance is popular. I’m just not sure I’ll be good at writing it.”

  “Well, if you need any help,” she said grading the degas essay with an A+. “I’m just an email away. I can look at passages you’re having trouble with. Add a feminine touch.”

  He let out a small chuckle, looking her up and down. Emily tried to keep her heart from sinking when she imagined what he must be thinking. She didn’t look at all feminine at the moment.

  Her too thick and too curly red hair had been pulled back into a tight pony tail, her natural skin, uncovered by makeup shown with freckles and her full, curvy body looked much more full than sensual now. She’d been doing more stress eating while working on her thesis than she liked to admit.

  Perhaps this was why she crossed her arms and gave him a stern look.

  “Believe it or not, I am a woman,” she said. “And I’ve read my fair share of romance. I just might be able to help.”

  Kurt laughed again and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  “Ok, no need to get defensive,” he said. “I know you’re a woman and I know you’d be able to help.”

  “Then what’s so funny?”

  “It’s just…you seem more eager to talk about a prostitute than you do about post-impressionist art. I’ve got to wonder what that says about you.”

  She tossed the red pen in her hand across the room at his head, he dodged it, laughing as he did. This laugh wasn’t the humorless chuckle or arrogant laugh he usually affected. This one was much rarer. This was the full-throated laugh he used when he was truly happy. It was another thing about him that made Emily’s heart flip in her chest despite herself.

  “Another remark like that and I won’t help you at all,” she said.

  “Ok,” he said again. “Fair enough. I’ll let you know when I get to the romance part. You can add your feminine touch.”

  They spend another forty-five minutes in his office working, mostly in
silence, on their separate projects. Emily finished grading the student essays and Kurt kept scratching away at his note pad, occasionally clicking his pen in frustration and muttering to himself.

  It was well after five o’clock when Emily finally put a large, red “B” on the last paper.

  “Well, that’s it,” she said setting the large stack of papers next to Kurt on his desk. He didn’t look up and barely nodded in acknowledgement as he highlighted a passage in the book he was reading.

  “I should head out,” Emily said. “I’ve got work tomorrow morning and I want to get in a run before that.”

  “Have a good night,” he said absently, now jotting another note down in his note book. Emily simply gave an absent smile, too used to this absent-minded treatment from the professor to be offended.

  She moved to the chair and grabbed her purse, pausing before she opened the door.

  “Don’t stay too late,” she said. “I’m sure your wife’s expecting you home.”

  Kurt paused a moment to give another of his mirthless chuckles as his eyes absently glanced to the picture of a pretty, slim and decidedly feminine looking blonde woman on his desk. This, Emily knew, was his wife, Cheryl. Though, she had never met the woman in person.

  “Cheryl’s…out of town again,” he said. “Won’t be back for another week or so.”

  “Oh,” Emily answered. Suddenly unsure what to say to that. It seemed that Kurt’s wife was out of town more often than she was in these days.

  If Kurt had been one of Emily’s girlfriends, she would have asked if he wanted to go get some coffee and talk about it. But, she knew him well enough to know that an invitation to discuss his feelings wouldn’t be welcome.

  “Well,” she said finally. “Try not to work too late anyway. Who knows, you may want to teach a class tomorrow.”

  He paused again and turned back to her. His grey eyes gleamed with amusement.