Calculated Exposure (17 page)

He put up his hands. “The company is aware. They know we’re going to try to do it and that we’ll probably succeed. From there, we figure out ways to prevent other people from doing it to them.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.” He scoffed. “Not really what I thought I’d be doing when I grew up.”

And how ironic was that being his first assignment? It seemed custom-made for him, given he’d recently unraveled a similar real-life theft.

“How do you even go about instigating something like that? You’ve got to have intimate knowledge about the company, don’t you?”

“I don’t, personally, but my brain works in a weird way. I compartmentalize and sort things other people tend to lump together.”
Like love and sex.
He turned away to cringe. “I just need to look at the numbers. The organization’s structure is just tangential for me.”

“How do you get experience for that?”

“Uh…” He blew up a breath upward to clear his hair from his glasses.
Go ahead and tell her. That’ll test her mettle. Show her the chap she’s dealing with
. He pulled his left leg under him and turned his body toward hers. “Uh, do you follow much Irish news?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“British?”

“Other than television and gossip reporting?” She shook her head again. “I hardly even follow local news. Stresses me out.”

His shoulders relaxed
.
“Okay, try this on for size, then. Four years ago my mother was convicted of embezzlement and money laundering and sent to prison. That’s why I was in Ireland a few weeks ago. They finally let her out because I proved she didn’t do it.”

Her lips parted and eyes widened. He waited for her to say something, but if he’d been in her shoes, what would he have said?
“Oh, that sucks”?

Finally, she sat back and shook her head. “That is super-crazy. And, don’t hate me for asking, but–”

“Why did I think she didn’t do it?”

“I guess you’ve been asked.”

“Dozens of times in the past couple of weeks. I’ll tell you the same thing I told all the news agencies who’ve been calling. If you met my mother you’d understand it’s just impossible. She’s the reason I’m a mathematician. She’s so bloody good with numbers it’s scary. They’re like playthings for her. But, she’s the least self-assured genius I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes she does stupid shit because she wants to make people happy and I assumed that’s what happened. She let down her guard and got used.”

For some reason he didn’t understand, she suddenly looked very sad with the way she worried at her lip and averted her gaze from his. “Coworker?”

Some Canada geese fluttering on the opposite end of the pond stole his attention a moment before he answered. “No. My father.”

He waited for her to react in some significant way, but beyond a furrowing of her forehead marking her confusion, she said nothing. Did nothing. He figured it was better than her fleeing with some excuse, so he continued.

“He used her credentials and let himself into the system.”

“Why would he do that? Betray her that way?”

He shrugged. “Because it was convenient.” The painful truth.

“And this was a big deal in Ireland?”

“Fuck, that’s an understatment.” His head swam as all the memories flooded back. It’d been such a chaotic time with all the exposure–all the unwanted attention. He closed his eyes and tipped his head over the bench back again. “The
Post
,
Tribune,
the fucking
BBC
,
Daily Mail
, all that lot caught wind of it. She worked for a company that manufactured specialty components for military weapons. Their systems were supposed to be unbreachable, but obviously not from the inside. Not from behind the desk of the accountant. And she’s this cute little thing, you know? Everyone was so shocked. Acted like she was a fucking serial killer with all the commotion.”

“Explain to me how you figured out what he did.”

“It was a matter of following the money. As far as crimes go, it wasn’t all that intelligent of one, but the police didn’t investigate it that hard because they were complicit. I had some help, obviously, or I’d have never been able to access the records. I had to convince a bunch of people to let me look, and it was tough to do under my father’s nose. He was a sergeant, after all. He nearly caught wind of what I was up to, a time or two.”

When she squeezed his thigh he sat more upright and looked at her. The expression she wore wasn’t disgust, but still one he couldn’t quite interpret.

“Were they ever in love?”

Now
that
he hadn’t expected. Were they? Fuck if he knew. Wasn’t that a two-sided thing? Didn’t both
parties
have to fall head-over-heels?

He pulled his collar away from his neck, feeling suddenly very claustrophobic, and cleared his throat. “My dad said he didn’t mean for it to fall back on her, but I don’t buy it. And Mum…I suppose she thinks she can’t do any better than him and hasn’t tried. They got divorced ten years ago. He’s moved on. Repeatedly. He swoops back around whenever he needs something, and she just hands it over. If that’s what love is, I don’t want it.”

Erica gathered up their paper trash and tossed it into the nearby can, her jaw set with her resolve or disgust or what, he didn’t know. After brushing her hands clean on her pants, she turned to him. “So, what now?”

He didn’t know what she meant. Who was she asking about, his parents? His mother’s ordeal? He and Erica?

He hedged. “I’ll let you know.”

“I’d like that.” She hooked her arm through the crook of his and they ambled around the lake toward her building. As they passed the mailboxes, she gave his arm a squeeze.

He was glad to see her expression had brightened somewhat. “Up for dessert?”

“Are you kidding me?” He laughed and was glad for the levity, even if it was forced. “No way. Hope you didn’t have anything complicated prepared.”

“Oh, I’m not going to guilt you this time. Just some more cake from the freezer. Maybe some coffee.”

“Yes to the coffee, then. Maybe we can Irish it up a bit and spend the night singing Celtic dirges in our drunken stupor.”

“I can think of things that are far more fun than that.”

“Woman, you are
insatiable
.”

She giggled and slid her key into the lock. “First time I’ve ever been told that.”

“Hell, I’d hope I’ve been the only man afforded the privilege of screwing you wordless. A guy’s gotta keep his self-esteem intact.”

She leaned on the doorknob and opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it. “I’ll make the coffee. I’ll be up late editing photos, probably.”

He followed her in and locked the door behind him. “Then I’ll get back to my numbers.”

“I love that you can entertain yourself.”

“Most men can.”

“Sure about that?”

* * * *

Curt had fallen asleep in the middle of Erica’s bed with a stack of documents on his chest and his glasses at a slight angle. She clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle, padded out the room slowly, and turned the hall light back on to see her way to the living room. She took her personal camera out of its case and returned to the bedroom. As she shed the lens cap, she knelt at the bedside, admiring the good work Mother Nature had done in sculpting his features. One more small blast of estrogen
in utero
and he might have been born pretty instead of handsome. He hid it well enough, though, behind those god-awful plastic frames and under that shaggy haircut that he probably thought had been a good idea at the time. Or was it even a haircut?

She focused her lens on the parted lips moving as if he was reciting mathematical theorems subconsciously. Hell, maybe he was. Maybe he was solving world crises in his sleep.

Although he was so damned guarded, with each heavy conversation they trudged through, she understood better the type of man he was. Even as he tried to hold her back at arm’s length–and she let him because that’s the game she was playing–she fell deeper, more wildly, more inescapably in love with him.

And he couldn’t love her back, and she fucking understood why. If she’d had a son with Tate, he’d probably be just as cynical as Curt. She understood his mother on a very basic level and didn’t fault her for her desire to trust. It felt good to trust. On the other hand, having the person you’ve forgiven repeatedly puts his needs–no,
wants
–above your wellbeing...

Well. It was a hard thing to wrap one’s head around.

She knelt on the edge of the bed and focused her camera on his cocked glasses and the aquiline nose holding them up, more or less. She scooted backward and widened her frame to take in his fingers, those gentle talented digits that had brought her to pleasure so many times, draped over his pile of accountancy records.

For the first time she noticed the small, tan, heart-shaped birthmark just beneath the hair on the knuckle on his left fourth finger, in the exact spot a band could cover. It was a funny thing that if he ever managed to let that wall down, he would hide his heart beneath a ring. Love covered up by a symbol of institution.

She didn’t have anything against the institution of marriage for other people, but she thought some people hid behind it. Used it as a shield and held it in front of themselves long after the affection was all gone. That’s the way her parents were. She couldn’t tell if they’d
ever
loved each other. They’d made a commitment on paper and had it filed away in some dusty municipal office back in Havana. That made it forever in their views.

Erica wanted to believe in forever. She wanted to believe Curt was her forever. Sure felt like it, but at the same time her innate skepticism gave her pause. One part of her psyche wanted her to be aggressive, to move forward and open up. The other part of her told her she deserved a loser like Tate who thought of her as little more than some pantry staple he could swap out whenever he was in the mood for a substitution, a different flavor. Someone he could use, and throw under the bus if necessary.

“What are you doing, darlin’?” Curt sat up and straightened his glasses. He groaned and relocated his pile of paperwork to the nightstand.

She gave a small shrug and turned off the power on her DSLR. “I always want to take pictures of you.” She changed her mind and turned the camera back on. “I’ll show you.” There were only a few shots left on the memory card, but she lingered on one in particular. “Here.”

He did an odd half-smile, half grimace upon examining the photo.

“That picture is why I called you that day when you were flying home.”

“I look pissed. I thought you were playing with me.”

“You know better now.”

He scrolled through the rest of the images and handed the camera back. “Why do you look so sad? They’re good pictures, regardless of the asshole you’ve made your subject matter.”

“You’re easy to take pictures of. In fact, it’s
too
easy to take pictures of you. No matter what you do, whether you pull your face into a grimace or flip me the bird, it’ll be a usable shot.”

“So what are you saying, try harder at being ugly?”

She swatted at him and laughed. “No, I’m saying I’m not a prodigy. I’m not going to win awards. I don’t have the eye, but I guess I can still be happy with the pictures that remind me of things I like.”

Boom
. That was it. Things she
liked
. There had to be more, beyond Curt.

He caressed her knee closest to him. “So is this end of your quarter-life crisis?”

“No fucking idea.” She rested her camera on the dresser atop his paperwork and stepped next into her walk-in closet. After brief deliberation of the available sleeping attire, she shrugged into a Betty Boop nightshirt.

“Cute.” He ditched his jeans and t-shirt and turned off the lamp near him. When he found her body beneath the blankets, he pulled her against the warmth of his chest and nuzzled her hair. “What’d you want to be when you grew up, if not a photographer?”

She scoffed and worked her lips side to side against the satiny skin of his chest. Hell, before leaving Cuba, she’d wanted to be a baseball player because her grandmother had never told her such a thing wasn’t possible. As a young girl in Miami, she’d had ambitions to maybe open a bakery like her grandmother had, but her mother had scolded her, saying she was pretty and she’d probably get lucky. That she’d find some man to marry who’d care of her.
“You forget about all that, huh?”
she’d said. That was pretty much the extent of all the attention her mother gave her.

Time to fess up, she figured.

“Uh, I don’t know. Just pipe dreams now that I think back on it. I was never really serious about school. I dropped out when I was seventeen.”

The hand that had been skimming up and down her back stopped moving. Of course that’d be a red flag for him.

“Why?”

Why did anyone drop out? They had to go to work to support their family. They got knocked up. They couldn’t hack it and figured why waste their time. She wondered what Curt thought, because none of those reasons applied to her.

She sighed and wished he’d keep rubbing. If he touched her, it meant he wasn’t disgusted. “I had a very complicated home life.”

“Abusive?” His voice had taken on an edge.

“No. Just…suffice it to say I ran away a few times. The last time stuck.”

“What did you think you’d find out here in the world?”

She didn’t know the answer to that. She hadn’t known where or what she was running to, only what
from
. And now that she’d stopped running, she still wasn’t sure what she’d found and whether it’d been worth it.

Chapter 13

“I’m sorry to be doing this again. I feel like such an awful hostess. I swear I’ll make it up to you. Next weekend?” Erica hitched both camera bags onto her right shoulder and offered her lips up for a kiss.

Curt obliged her. “You gotta work. It’s a grown-up thing. I understand. I should go, anyway. Grant’s flying out tonight, so I should spend a couple of hours with that guy. Closest thing to a brother I’ve got.”