Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  The counselor looked slightly incensed by the second option. Will smiled.

  “I just mean that, at this point, I’m not sure what I want. I like the idea of falling in love, but I’ve never—” Her gaze flickered up to Will before looking down again. “I’ve never met anyone I wanted to be with for longer than a night, never mind forever.”

  And then Will shocked himself by thinking, I want to change that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Will spent a couple hours typing up notes and singling out the creeper for deeper analysis. He left out his grumpy beauty’s contribution to the meeting. He still felt like a jerk for writing about their problems and then outlining the numerous reasons why the counselor’s methods weren’t working, but at least it was entirely anonymous. And he’d already decided that he would explain to James what was going on.

  He spent another hour finishing up his research on actual, approved treatment plans for hypersexuality. He found the fact you could become a Certified Sex Addict Therapist most interesting. At the next group session, he’d have to ask the counselor about his credentials.

  Once he finished, he checked his phone to find a text from Finn telling him how their opening night had gone off without any major problems. One of the supporting actors forgot his lines, but they were able to push through it. Naturally, Kat had ignored everyone when they weren’t on stage performing, and she left the moment it was finished. Will could just imagine Finn’s dejected expression.

  He felt for his friend, but kissing Kat’s boyfriend—even if he had kissed Finn first—was crossing a line. If Finn expected Kat to ever speak to him again, well … that might be asking for too much.

  He texted Finn back with an apology for not being able to make it and a promise to make the next performance. Then he cleaned up and joined Bonny on the bed where she was curled into a furry ball on the blanket.

  Sleep was slow to come, his thoughts too busy tripping over each other to settle down and let him rest. When he closed his eyes, he saw her face as she was telling the group what she wanted—to be happy—and he could hear the resignation in her voice, as if she already believed that it wouldn’t happen.

  Fortunately, not only was happiness subjective, but its cause could change. Will was an optimist at heart, and he knew he could make her happy if she let him.

  Now, he just needed to know her name. Since she’d hinted about working for the University web developers—or at least being connected with them—it would simply be a matter of locating where they were on campus and then either asking the staff or waiting around for her to show up.

  But a slightly irrational part of him felt like this would be cheating. He didn’t want to weasel his way into learning the information. He wanted her to tell him her name because she wanted to.

  It occurred to him then that he’d never told her his name either. Maybe that was why she’d held back that day at the theater. He’d have to rectify that the next time he saw her, hopefully before the next meeting.

  By the time his alarm clock went off, Will had gotten a grand total of four hours of continuous sleep. Bonny was curled into his side, and her head popped up to give him a resentful look for getting out of bed and depriving her of his body heat.

  He set about his usual morning routine—cleaning up and feeding Bonny before having eggs and toast for breakfast. He made it to work with five minutes to spare.

  “Feeling better?” James asked from behind the mountain range of books stacked on his desk.

  Will winced. He’d lied about being sick to avoid coming into the office and having to deal with his substandard work on the case study.

  “I’m fine,” he said. He settled into one of the chairs in front of James’s desk. Then he stood again because sitting resulted in not being able to see his boss over all the books. “James, I need to talk to you.”

  James leaned back in his leather chair, which creaked underneath his weight. Opening a textbook in his lap, he said, “Good. I need to talk to you, too. I’m guessing it’s about the same thing, namely the fact my ten-year-old could have taken better notes than what you turned in last week.”

  Will tried not to look guilty, but probably failed. “I don’t think I can complete the case study.”

  “You ‘don’t think’?”

  “I’ve been avoiding the work because I have a—” He considered his words. “—conflict of interest.”

  James’s brows rose. “Are you a real sex addict?”

  “Uh. No,” he said with a crooked smile. “There’s a girl who attends the meetings, and … I like her. I would prefer not to have to continue lying to her.”

  The book in James’s lap snapped shut, and he gave Will a small, indecipherable smile. Will couldn’t help straightening his shoulders a bit.

  “So what you’re saying,” his boss said, “is you’re giving up on the case study—the case study I’ve been paying you to work on for the past several weeks—because you have a crush on one of the addicts.”

  When he put it that way, it did sound rather immature. But it was true nonetheless. “Aye.”

  James nodded. “Congratulations.”

  Caught off guard, Will’s brows narrowed in confusion. “What?”

  “Congratulations,” he repeated. “I’m assuming you’ve asked this girl out.”

  Will looked away, and James threw up his hands.

  “You’re risking your job for her, and you haven’t even asked her out yet?”

  “I’m working on it,” he said, disliking how defensive he sounded. It wasn’t his boss’s business whether he’d asked her out or not.

  “Right. Well. You do realize I’ll have to punish you,” James said, sounding perfectly serious.

  Will angled him a wary look. “What do you mean?”

  James stood, his mouth stretching into a smile that was alarmingly self-satisfied. “I have a task for you. It’s a very important task. You may refuse, but if you do, you can consider yourself removed from this position.”

  That was a hefty thing to say. Will nodded to indicate he understood.

  “It involves paddles, a gag, and a Black Room of Bondage.”

  Will blinked. Then he took a step back toward the exit. “Excuse me?”

  The stern set of his boss’s brow faded, and James broke into laughter. He slapped his hand on the cover of his textbook. “God, your face is priceless. Relax, I was kidding.”

  Annoyed and relieved, Will gave his boss an impatient look to get on with it.

  James cooperated by saying, “Professor Atwood, the department head, was invited to attend a party this weekend. Big formal affair hosted by one of the members of the University board. Since she already has plans, she deferred the duty of attending and rubbing elbows with a bunch of stuffy old people to me. Now, I get to hand the job over to you.”

  “You want me to attend a party?”

  “And talk to people. Network. This is an opportunity for you to make some valuable connections. And for me to avoid having to socialize with a bunch of people who don’t like me.”

  Will frowned.

  “Oh, don’t worry, the dislike is mutual,” James said with an encouraging smile.

  “So if I attend this party for you,” Will said, just to be clear on the terms, “I don’t have to complete the case study, and I get to keep my job?”

  “For the time being, yes. But if you aren’t going to be working on the case study, I will have to find you something else.” He looked much too delighted by the prospect.

  Given that he could have just fired Will, his terms were fairly reasonable. And he was right that it would be a great opportunity for Will to meet some influential people.

  He reached over the shortest stack of books and shook James’s hand. “Deal.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mist twirls and dips.

  Wraps around your body,

  clings to your arms.

  Ornaments your hair

  in smoky strands of silver.

>   Leah tapped her eraser against the edge of her notebook and read over that last line. She was still writing too many abstract images, and there wasn’t a single focus. The assignment had been to pick one person, place, or thing, and then to write the poem around it.

  “Urgh.” She scribbled over the whole thing and flipped her notebook to a fresh page.

  The cat sits in the window.

  Watches cars.

  Falls asleep.

  Best life ever.

  She was going to fail this class. With a sigh, she flipped the page again to the next blank one. The paper ripped in half. She winced at the sound, which tore through the silent library like a firecracker. A student at the nearby computer looked over with a frown.

  Tossing the scrap of paper on the table beside her backpack, she blew irritably at a piece of hair that had fallen over her eye and considered what to write about. Yawning, she propped her elbow on the table and rested her head against her palm, eyes closed.

  Thank goodness this was the only poetry class she had to take for her writing major. It was only midway into the semester, and the professor had already assigned the class over a dozen poems to evaluate, five poems to write, and made them buy three different books, one of them his own. That was just tacky.

  Normally, Leah enjoyed being challenged because an ‘easy A’ class was a waste of both her money and her time. But she just really didn’t like writing poetry. It came with all these different rules that writing prose didn’t have.

  She sighed again and opened her eyes, looking around the library for inspiration. She loved everything about libraries—the musty smell of old books and dusty shelves, the chairs shoved into quiet corners that were perfect for reading, the silence that didn’t have to be filled with meaningless chatter.

  Between two shelves across from where she was sitting, she could see two people sharing a loveseat, their heads bowed over a single laptop. The girl was whispering and pointing at the screen, while the guy nodded quietly, smiling as he turned his head to look at her face. They didn’t seem to mind that their sides were plastered together. The girl actually tried to scoot even closer to him.

  Leah couldn’t help staring. They were nauseatingly cute. Was that what she wanted? She had been pretty sure of the answer until that moment in the theater. The question had lingered all week, driving her back to the therapy session yesterday where she was forced to wonder about her choices and what she wanted out of love and life and whatever the hell else the counselor had talked about.

  The problem was that she still had no idea.

  Like this damn poem. Screw the assignment. She picked up her pencil and began to write whatever came to mind first.

  Carry me back to that moment

  before the wonder dies.

  I want to repose

  where the old oak grows

  amidst the fireflies.

  Someone dropped into the seat beside her. She looked up from her notebook to find Helena squinting past her shoulder at what she was writing.

  “I hate poetry,” Leah announced.

  Helena smiled and shoved her backpack next to Leah’s on the table. “That’s because you suck at it. Just keep practicing. Don’t you also hate sucking?”

  “That depends entirely.” She smothered a laugh and ducked sideways to avoid Helena’s swipe at her head.

  “Out of the gutter,” she said. “What are you doing for lunch? Want to join me and Jay?”

  “Be the third wheel on your lunch date? No thanks.”

  “It’s not a date,” Helena said as she played with the zipper on her backpack. “There’s nothing suspicious about eating lunch with a friend. And you’re not a third wheel. If anything, Jay would be the third wheel.”

  “You are way too defensive for me to take your arguments seriously.”

  Helena swiped at her head again, and Leah snickered as she took refuge behind her notebook.

  “Are you coming with me or not?” she asked.

  “Not,” Leah said, before laying her poetry notebook back on the table. “I have to figure out what I’m doing for this class. God, I hate poetry.”

  “So you keep saying. Anyway, since you’re not working very hard, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Not to chaperone another Jay date, is it?”

  “No, you—” Helena made a strangling gesture with her hands. Leah coughed into her palm to keep from laughing again because they were starting to get evil looks from the neighboring students.

  “Okay, okay.” She was glad for the distraction anyway. She closed her notebook and turned to face Helena. “What is it?”

  “Why are you still attending therapy?”

  Leah blinked in surprise. Helena didn’t sound upset that she hadn’t told her. If anything, she sounded happy about it. Like she had just discovered a juicy secret.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was taking the city bus last night out to the strip mall, and we passed the church. I saw your car in the parking lot.” With an impish smile, she hunched her shoulders and whispered, “You know, just because you met that guy there doesn’t mean you have to keep going. Have you even gotten his number yet?”

  Shaking her head, Leah turned away and put up her hands. “I’m not talking about this.”

  “Oh come on!”

  Leah shushed her with a hissed reminder that they were in a library.

  Undeterred, Helena giggled and gave Leah’s shoulders a small shake. “You’re actually going back there to see him even though you hate it. This is huge.”

  “What makes you think he’s the reason I went back?”

  Helena snorted. “Oh, right, you went back because you like the cookies.”

  “They make very effective paper weights. And projectiles.”

  “Would you be serious?”

  Leah rolled her eyes and shoved her hair behind her ear with restless fingers. “Fine. I went back so I could see him again. But I haven’t even worked out how I feel about everything, so even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to talk about.”

  Thinking about Blue Eyes filled her with nervous energy. It made her want to pace or shake out her hands to try and shed the impatience. She kept feeling like she needed to do something about it except she had no idea what that was.

  But she would rather write bad poetry than talk about her feelings again, so she went back to her notebook and flipped it to a blank page.

  “Ugh, you are no fun.” Helena reached for her backpack and began organizing her homework on the table.

  Several minutes of comfortable silence passed. Leah tried to focus again on her poem, but the concentration just wasn’t there.

  Then Helena said, “Actually, that’s not even what I really wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What did you want to talk about then?” Leah asked warily.

  “Since you’re beginning to have feelings like a normal person, maybe you should try talking to your mom.”

  Leah looked up from drawing lightning bolts in the margin of her blank page. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Well, you’ve got that party tomorrow. Maybe you could …” She wiggled her fingers, something she did when she was trying to find the right words. But it was more fun for Leah pretend she just enjoyed making spirit fingers. “Extend the olive branch. Work on your relationship.”

  Leah slapped down her pencil and gave her friend an incredulous look. “We’re talking about my mom here, right? You know she doesn’t care about me or Elijah or having a relationship with us.”

  “Yeah,” Helena said, her voice quiet. Careful. “But you do.”

  Leah tightened her jaw and looked away, that ache blossoming again in her chest. “You couldn’t have waited until we were home to bring this up?”

  Helena tossed her hair back and then ran her finger down her textbook page to find where she’d left off reading. “Well, I wanted to catch you before tomorrow’s party, and you know how neither of us are ever home at the same time duri
ng the weekdays except for at night when you’re either knocked out or I’m—”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “But why are you bringing this up at all?”

  “I know you, Leah. I see the way you look at your mom. And the way Elijah looks at her. For his sake, at least, just …” She gave a light shrug and pretended to look nonchalant about the whole thing. “Think about it.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Leah muttered. She picked up her pencil and began furiously doodling dark clouds above her lightning bolts.

  Helena was apparently finished because she quietly set about finishing her homework. Leah, on the other hand, could no longer focus on anything but the dull ache pressing at her ribs. She mentally rewrote her poem.

  Carry me back to that moment

  before the wonder dies.

  I want the warmth of her hand,

  for her to understand,

  and for her love to stop being lies.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Leah scooted a high-backed chair across the lobby while several people watched on in curiosity. Some even looked offended, although she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. It wasn’t like it was their chair she’d taken.

  She set the fancy chair against the wall right next to a table spread out with hors d’oeuvres and happily sank onto its plush, brocade-covered cushion. Elijah stood a couple feet away, helping himself to everything on the table. Since he’d been picking over the selection for a good ten minutes, she’d figured some seating would be nice, thus the show of dragging the nearest chair across the lobby and into the main room.

  Elijah looked over at where she was sitting and, with a questioning tilt of his brow, held out a miniature iced cookie. She shook her head—she’d already eaten half a dozen of them—and he happily popped it into his mouth.

  When she arrived at the venue, she had to admit she’d been a little awed. The old building had been an opera house in the late twenties, but now it was a multi-purpose center and a popular venue for fancy parties and the occasional wedding. Leah had never been inside before, but when driving past the building, its tall façade and Gothic spires had always drawn her eye.