Unmistakable

  “I’m not a child.”

  His eyes don’t yield. Where’s my Holden, my laughing, teasing Holden, who never makes demands?

  He sighs. “You can stay with me. For tonight. You should call your parents and let them know, though, just in case they were secretly keeping tabs on you. Caroline is probably panicked.”

  Caroline? How does he know my mother’s name?

  “How…”

  His words come too fast, pouring out in a stream that belies his firm demeanor. “Your last name isn’t Walton. You’re Stella Granger. Your mother, Caroline, is a professor at Berkeley. The same professor that I’ve been moaning on about all semester.” He gives me a pointed look before his face slackens into an apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. She was a professor. Is. I don’t know if she’s still there.”

  “How did you…” I start to ask a question, but it’s the wrong one. “When did you know that? When?”

  “Just now. On the airplane.”

  His revelation fills me with an overwhelming sense of relief. If he had known this entire time, all the days that we had worked together, side by side, without saying a word, then everything is a lie, and I just don’t think I can take that on top of everything else.

  “But…”

  He turns his head towards me. “Your mother was my advisor at Berkeley. Before Jack died.”

  The sound of my brother’s name on his lips seizes all of my breath. It also reminds me that my parents are all alone, in that huge house, waiting for me to come home. I’m the only child left, and I’ve done nothing but hurt them over and over again. It’s time to grow up. I reach into my bag and pull out my phone. As soon as it turns on, I punch the keys.

  “Stella! When…are…you…here…” My mother sounds absolutely terrified.

  It’s my fault. I’ve done that to her.

  “Hi, Mom,” I squeeze out. My throat constricts, but I swallow and force myself to regain control.

  “Baby, are you okay?”

  “I’m definitely fine, Mom. I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “Where are you, honey?”

  I don’t answer the question, at least not directly. “I had some schoolwork to finish. Remember, I had that project I told you about? Plus, I needed to finish my Fulbright application.”

  My mother’s sigh of relief causes the little knot of guilt in my belly to grow exponentially, but I ignore it. I can’t go home. Not quite yet.

  “Did you change your flight? What time do you get in? Do you want us to meet you at the airport?”

  “I’ll just take a cab. I might get delayed and I don’t want you to worry.”

  I need to get off the phone before the tremor in her voice forces me to confess everything.

  “I love you, baby. Travel safely, okay? Your father and I are waiting for you. I even made your favorite, jello salad.”

  I hate jello salad. The bubbling sound of my own laughter catches me unaware. “Can’t wait, Mom.” A beat. “I love you.”

  Click.

  I glance at Holden, but his expression is indecipherable.

  “Come on,” he says, hefting both of our bags over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  In a matter of minutes, we’re in a rental car, snaking our way through the hills of San Francisco. Holden turns the music on full blast and while I’m grateful that I don’t have to explain anything else, I’m also confused. He’s a shrink. He likes to pry. Why isn’t he asking eight million questions?

  The answer comes swiftly—he doesn’t want me to fall apart on him again.

  I open my mouth to apologize. But he hates apologies, so I close it again. I stare out the window as the city that used to be my home passes me by. Mark Twain once said that there are only three cities in America—San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans—and everything else is just Cleveland. He was right. I don’t know how I could have forgotten how beautiful it is.

  When Holden pulls up to a tiny bungalow on the edge of a park, I wait for the panic to creep in. I don’t know what triggers the attacks. I just know that they happen. Being here, actually setting foot in the city and not in the airport, could bring one on. Thankfully, my breathing remains even.

  I don’t protest when Holden hauls both of our bags up the stone steps. Ever the gentleman, he waits for me to get inside before locking the door behind us. I start to say that locks won’t keep the danger out, but it’s a foolish thought, so I smother it.

  I take stock of my new surroundings. The house is beautifully decorated—no kitschy knick knacks, just the clean lines of modern furniture and splashes of brightly colored abstract art.

  He sets the bags on the sofa. “It’s not exactly the Ritz, but it will do.”

  “This is really nice. I appreciate…”

  He brushes away my gratitude with his hand, and instead glances at the neatly arranged bottles of alcohol on the counter in the kitchen.

  “I think I could use another drink,” he says, grabbing one of them.

  I nod. I could certainly use a drink. Or twelve.

  He doesn’t bother with glasses. Instead, he takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to me across the table. I follow suit, letting the warmth bathe my throat, and I say a silent thank you for moonshine. It washes at least some of my embarrassment away.

  “Stella, I…”

  “Holden, I…”

  Our voices mingle at exactly the same time. He motions to me silently, indicating that I should go first.

  I try desperately to make my voice as light as possible. “I never meant to burden you with any of that. The whole story just kind of came out. Airplane questions, I guess.”

  “You never would have had to burden me, as you erroneously stated, if I had just put two and two together. All of the pieces were right there…”

  The hard edge in his voice fades away as he glances up at me with a small smile.

  “Your mother talked about you constantly. I worked with her for two years, but it only took me two days to recognize the beginning of a story about Stella’s latest exploits. She used to barge into the office in the morning, with this look on her face, and she would sit on the edge of my desk and say, ‘You’ll never guess, Holden, what she did this time.’ I could never get her to stop talking about you.” He looks at me ruefully. “I didn’t want her to. I loved those stories. You were real to me. Your family was real to me.”

  I am horrified. I can only imagine the things she told him. Probably the one about…He brushes his hand against mine.

  “Nothing too dreadful, I promise.” He puts his head in his hands and groans. “You even have the same disgruntled face.”

  He’s being too hard on himself. Besides the blond hair and green eyes, I am nothing like the rest of my family. I’m nearly a full head shorter than my cousin Rachel, the former butt of all of the short jokes. I lack natural athleticism. I possess cruel sarcasm in place of innate warmth.

  “I didn’t know my mother could ever be disgruntled,” I say finally, out of a lack of anything better to say.

  He begins to pace back and forth across the kitchen, seemingly no longer aware of my presence. “So-called naïve psychology theories. That hair. The stupid insistence on not being in that classroom. All of the clues were there. If you hadn’t blindsided me, if I could string a half-coherent sentence together around you, if my brain would work, I would have been able to figure it out.”

  I know that he’s talking to himself. His hand brushes against his hair, like it always does when he’s deep in thought and ignoring the rest of the world. But I did hear. And I don’t understand what he’s talking about.

  “Blindsided?”

  He throws back another quick swig of whiskey. “God help me,” he murmurs, slamming it back on the counter with an ungentlemanly grunt.

  A sneaking remembrance creeps into my consciousness. He’s angry. For what?

  I was a total bitch when we first met. I called him a douchebag. But it’s been months, and I’ve done everything I c
ould to make up for it, including working my ass off on his stupid project that I don’t really think is stupid anymore. I told him a lot of dumb stories, but he seems to enjoy them. I guess he might just be too polite to tell me to stop.

  He said I blindsided him. What they say about first impressions must be true. All it took was a little thing like a mental breakdown for him to remember what a brat I am.

  “I’m so sorry, Holden. After everything you’ve done for me, I can’t even believe I said that you were a douchebag. To you. In front of you. You’re not a douchebag at all. You were kind of acting like one right when we first met, though, so I couldn’t really tell the difference between a lifelong douchebag and a temporary one. It wasn’t your fault that you had all of those students clamoring over you, and you lost your patience with me. I mean, it was your fault, but I was the one who was causing trouble, so…”

  I could keep going, but he shoots me a look so incredulous that it stops me from digging a deeper hole.

  “The fact that you called me a douchebag is not what I’m talking about here.”

  I’m confused. “Oh.”

  “The female mind baffles me.” He rolls his eyes, a gesture so uncharacteristic that I can do nothing but stare helplessly at him. “Come on, Stella. Try a little harder.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you?”

  How the hell was I supposed to know that he knew my mother, knew my whole story already? Besides, I didn’t lie. I omitted.

  “You didn’t lie. You omitted. I would have thought a shrink’s kid would know the difference. But that’s not it.”

  He throws his hands up and utters a long string of curses that I’ve never heard put in the same sentence. If I didn’t know better, I would now be fairly certain that he had devoted most of his waking hours to learning how to use all of the most obscure expletives to dramatic effect.

  His voice is a furious growl. “You have to know what you do to me, Stella. What you must do to any member of the male species with a pulse.”

  The words don’t register. I don’t understand.

  “I make them angry?”

  He raises a sardonic eyebrow, and I stare back at him in shock. His next words come out in one long stream, like he’s been holding them in for too long and can’t bear to keep them bottled up.

  “Obviously, the indirect approach isn’t getting through to you. I want you. I’ve wanted you since you marched into my office, all blustering anger and self-righteous indignation, begging me for a schedule change. You were so tough, so self-contained, and so…annoyingly beautiful, even with those ugly boots and ugly hair.”

  “Um…”

  Holden, who never loses his temper, who never gets upset, looks like he’s going to blow right through the roof. “You’re my student, for chrissakes. Your mother was my advisor. You’re obviously still dealing with a lot of bad life shit. This is fucked up on so many levels. I had no business bringing you here. I have no business telling you any of this. And yet, here we are, and I’m making a total ass of myself by telling you that you’re absurdly gorgeous, brilliant, and completely infuriating. And I want you. Shit.”

  “Say it again.”

  “What? You want to hear that I’m a cradle-robbing, grown-ass man who wants to take advantage of you? No, I don’t think so,” he mutters. “I won’t say that again.”

  He runs his hands over his face before taking long strides through the kitchen, towards the living room.

  He’s obviously intending to flee, but I am not going to let that happen.

  I catch him just before he makes it to the door. I run my fingers over his golden strands of hair, brushing the back of my hand against his cheek and running my tongue over the contours of my lips.

  “No, Stella,” he says, his voice cold and unwavering. He tilts his head before raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Hell no.”

  There’s a fire alarm in my head, clanging so loudly that there’s only one reason I can ignore it—I need this.

  Holden is perfect. He is the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, inside and out, and by some miracle, he thinks that he wants me.

  I may be a world-class idiot, but I’m not foolish enough to ignore that. If there’s a chance that maybe some of his goodness, some of that sweetness, can chase my demons away, then I have to take it.

  The fire alarm wails and screams. It fades away before coming back again, this time with a loud, booming voice: It’s not going to work, Stella.

  I close the distance between us with a single step. I lick the corners of my lips and lean into his rigid body. A kiss should do the trick. It should silence that stupid alarm. Maybe I’ll even find some fireworks.

  I brush my lips against his tightly pursed mouth. His skin is so soft and so smooth that the sound in my head loses a few decibels, but he still doesn’t move a muscle or offer any help or encouragement. I tilt my head to the side, give him my best attempt at batted eyelashes and slide my mouth over his again, with even more determination this time.

  “Oh, hell.”

  With that, he crushes me to his chest.

  Chapter 19

  His lips are everywhere, tracing the line of my collarbone, dancing across my neck, moving over my face and eyelids and nose.

  I’ve thought about this kiss, obviously. If you’re going to manufacture a crush, you really ought to do it properly.

  I knew what to expect. He would be a proper kisser. He would be sweet and chivalrous and gentle. I examined it from every angle, and there was nothing in his behavior towards me to predict anything else.

  It was by far my most serious underestimation yet.

  His technique is as flawless as he is. He’s so damn good that I’ve forgotten my name, all sense of propriety, and the fact that he should be a boring, buttoned-up professor who kisses only his precious books.

  He’s a kissing god. And we haven’t even made it past the couch.

  If I were any kind of smart, I would let this man kiss me into oblivion for the next ten thousand years or so.

  But like his lips, the fire alarm is ceaseless. And despite his meticulous ministrations, despite the perfection of his sun-kissed skin and hair and beautiful silken body, I haven’t felt the beginnings of any explosions.

  It’s not going to work, Stella.

  I try to lose myself again in his skin. Maybe we need to be wearing fewer clothes. Maybe I just need to get an exorcism and be done with it all.

  Time. I need time.

  He releases me instantly.

  I must have said it aloud.

  My breathing returns to normal. It only takes five, or ten, minutes.

  Hell, I’m female. And he is most certainly, one thousand percent, male. Maybe those fireworks are coming. Any time now.

  When my head clears, he hands me a glass of water. His eyes twinkle mischievously when I drink it all in one long gulp. How long had I been out of it? Geez. Seriously. Get a grip, Stella.

  “Someone was thirsty,” he teases.

  Where’s the censure? It has to be coming: Stella, I know and like and respect you, but this was all a huge mistake. We can never do that again.

  “Forget that ever happened.”

  I’m armed and ready for his rebuff. I’ve had almost three months to come up with the perfect comeback for Luke, so I have a wide array of choices, even if the target is different. I prepare the assault.

  His steady gaze sticks to my face, until it doesn’t, and his amber eyes instead begin a slow perusal of my body. I’m wearing sweatpants, but his eyes give no indication that I am anything less than desirable.

  So, maybe I didn’t prepare for everything. I lift the empty cup to my lips and try desperately to be seductive. I suck down air. Lots and lots of pure, unadulterated air.

  He takes the glass from my hand and sets it on the table. He definitely deserves some extra credit for holding back his laughter. My hair is matted with sweat, I’m wearing the ugliest outfit ever known to mankind, and I now have blowfish lips. No wonder th
ere weren’t any fireworks. He’s not even attracted to me.

  “You should get some sleep,” he says softly.

  He gently takes my hand in his. Because I’m basically in a trance, I allow him to deposit me before an empty bedroom. His meaning is clear—I will be sleeping here alone.

  I wanted time and now that it looks like I’m going to get it, I don’t want it anymore. Why does everything have to be so confusing? All the time?

  I think about laying one of those insults right on him, because even though he didn’t say kissing me back was a mistake, he must be thinking it. He has to be.

  I let out a huff of annoyance as I slide into the bed, but the unmistakable sound of his body rustling in the darkness keeps me from saying anything really stupid. He leans over me and presses his lips firmly to my forehead. A chaste kiss. Like he would give his freaking sister.

  Like he’s tucking me in!

  The alarm has finally been drowned out. By righteous anger.

  “Don’t you dare think that I don’t want you,” he says, in a voice that is soft and low and bold and seductive and wholly American.

  Mind reader.

  I fully intend on fighting back, but before I can do it, he slides his lips over mine, parting my mouth with slow circles of his tongue. Oh, that feels nice. Whiskey kisses, soft and sweet.

  He nibbles my bottom lip before pulling himself away.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  There’s no trace of a British accent. No resemblance to the clipped tones that haunt even my deepest dreams.

  Blaring. Screaming. Wailing.

  It isn’t going to work, Stella.

  Oh, but wouldn’t it be lovely to think so?

  * * *

  My dreams are a tangled, confused web, and I wake up angrier than I have any right to be.

  I threw myself at him. I felt how much he wanted me. Yet he broke away like I was a piece of poisoned fruit.

  I would have done anything to silence that fire alarm, and honestly, sleeping with Holden wouldn’t have been much of a sacrifice. I’ve never tried to chase away demons with flesh that perfect. Maybe it would work. Maybe we would work.