Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (48 page)

Correction, he had caught her in a lie, only it was Saturday’s lie. But she wasn’t about to admit it. How could she? “What I had was crap, I wrote a new one, about us. I meant to call you at seven, but I got caught up.”

Walt gave a little non-committal grunt and reached for the glass of Courvoisier again.

“Damnit, why’s it so hard for you to believe me?” She looked through the patio’s sliding glass door. “Hell, your easel is still on the patio from Friday afternoon, don’t tell me you don’t occasionally get caught up?”

He looked at the easel for a second before turning his dark gaze on her. “I think, the difference is, Bryce, that I got caught up in you.” He shook his head, his expression reluctant but determined. “Not that it matters now. I don’t want to hear your excuses, Bryce. I hope the story means a lot to you.”

“It did mean a lot to me,” she shot back. “I said it was about us—now I guess it’s just about a grade.”

She tossed the tube of paper at the floor in front of him, the individual pages scattering when the roll hit the coffee table. She had the door halfway open and was stepping through it when his cold voice cut in front of her, blocking the way out.

“Why’d you take the check, Brycie?”

Her body refused to turn back to him, allowing only a stunned glance over her shoulder. He wasn’t joking, the hurt in his eyes burned bright. “What do you mean?”

“I know Artemisia was in your apartment, I know she gave you a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“I didn’t take it.” Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. He thought she’d accepted that bitch’s bribe? “Why do you think I did?”

“I woke up a little while after you left, you weren’t here.” He took his first drink of the alcohol. “I heard shouting. By the time I was to my front door, she was outside your apartment—gloating.”

He did think she’d taken the money! She could see it in his expression, in the way his mouth trembled as he swallowed another mouthful of the Courvoisier.

“She showed me the checkbook…offered to dump her purse out.” He refilled the glass, twisting it in his hands as he refused to look at her. “What did she say? ‘Dear girl certainly didn’t tear it up and throw the pieces in my face.’ And when I knocked on your door—banged on the damn thing, you wouldn’t answer.”

Bryce thought back to last night. She’d been in the bathroom by then, pulling glass from her throat and running water. “You don’t understand—”

“You’re right, Bryce, I don’t understand!” He slammed the glass down, amber fire sloshing over the rim and wetting his hand. “With Chelle, there was only this big ‘what if?’ What if she’d really been carrying my child? I’d never contemplated the possibility of sharing something like that with her.”

He shoved the coffee table away with his foot and twisted on the couch until he was staring hard at her. “You, Brycie, I wanted that with you—or at least with the person I thought you were.”

She was crying, she could feel the hot tears running down her cheeks, smearing her mascara into black streaks of heartbreak. “Your mother…” she started, trying to keep her voice even despite the pain. If anyone had the right to be disillusioned, it was her. “Your mother, barged into my apartment, slammed that damn check down and then broke a bottle of perfume half an inch from my head.”

She whipped the door the rest of the way open and ripped the bandage from her throat. She felt fresh blood weep from the edges of the scab as she flung the bandage behind her. “When you were knocking on my door last night, I was in the shower, cleaning off the blood and perfume.”

Stepping outside, she grabbed the door, her hand wrenching the knob. “And I didn’t rip that goddamn check up until this morning when I realized it was still there. I didn’t know how much it was—nor did I fucking care.”

With that, Bryce slammed the door shut, stalked across the courtyard and out the entry gate. Tears blinding her, she stumbled to the sidewalk and headed east.

*****

Walt stared at the door for a few minutes, wondering whether he should chase after her. If she was telling the truth, he’d just made the biggest mistake of his entire life. He started to stand up and his foot brushed against one of the pages she had thrown at him. He scooped the pages up, put them back in order and then placed them neatly on the coffee table. As he pulled the coffee table back into place, he glanced over the cover page, the title catching and holding his attention.

Curve Muse.

Turning to the first page of the story, he started reading. At the end of the first page, he glanced at the clock and then at the cover page again. The turn in date and time, as well as the location and professor, were typed in a tight block at the top right hand of the page. He looked at the clock again—twelve thirty.

Shit.
Even if he’d been all smiles and sunshine when she’d shown up, getting her to campus during the afternoon rush hour would have been a feat. He jumped up, took the stack of paper and grabbed his keys. He knocked on her door at the same time he locked his. Was she even inside? He hadn’t heard her door slam. Walt knocked a little louder, calling to her, and then he gave up and ran through the gate.

It was less than twenty miles to campus but twenty miles could take three hours on the wrong day in L.A. After parking and finding the right building, he ran up to the classroom door with less than three minutes left. Students were already filing out, clutching slips of paper bearing a blue date stamp in their hands.

Nervously tracing the edge of the paper, Walt waited until the last student had left.

“You’re not one of mine,” the man behind the desk said.

Walt glanced at the cover sheet to Bryce’s story. “Uhm…no, Professor Hardy, this is Bryce Schoene’s paper. She…uhm…couldn’t bring it herself—is that okay?”

“As long as you’re here on time and,” he stopped and checked the clock. Less than a minute remained. “And you are.”

Taking the pages from Walt, Hardy folded the bottom quarter of the cover sheet where the student information and title were repeated. He ran his nail along the seam he had created and then tore the section loose and stamped and initialed it. He handed the slip to Walt, who put it in his wallet.

Hardy pursed his lips and studied Walt for a second. “Was there something else, young man?”

“It’s just, well,” he glanced at the polished tile flooring, bewildered at the blush he felt spreading across his face. And the need tightening in his chest. He didn’t doubt that he loved Bryce—the paper might tell him whether she loved him, too. “I didn’t get to finish reading it.”

“I suppose if she trusted you to deliver it…” Hardy started and pushed the paper back across the desk. “But you’ve only got until a quarter to three, I’m not driving on the Four-Oh-Five any later than that.”

Grinning, Walt took the paper and sat down at the nearest desk, quickly re-reading the first page as Hardy opened a grade book and started checking off names while he shuffled through the papers.

Chapter Nineteen

Bryce sat at a sidewalk table at an outdoor café a few blocks from her apartment building. She hadn’t gone home yet, wasn’t sure if she would until evening. It would be easier then, the courtyard darker. He might not, if he was looking, catch her sneaking in. If he did, the shadows might keep her hurt hidden behind the brave words she’d practiced on her tear-filled walk around the neighborhood. For now, she held a newspaper in one hand and a red felt-tipped pen in the other. The paper was open to the classifieds section and she had already drawn three big circles on the page.

The waiter came over to her table and she tried to wave him off. When he wouldn’t leave, she looked up at him. His face a study in disinterest, he slid a slip of paper onto the table.

“Gentleman left this for you.”

He had placed the paper face down and she flipped it over as the waiter walked away. It was a blue date stamp with the initials ‘T.H.’ in small script. To the right of that were her name and the title of the story she had written.

Wadding the paper into a tight ball, she flicked it off the table. So the jerk had turned her paper in. So what? He was still a jerk—and a chicken, apparently. Leaving the date stamp with the waiter and running off.

Bryce picked the newspaper back up and gave it a sharp snap. She continued scanning the column and started to circle another brief ad. “Learn Japanese culture while teaching English!”

“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

At the sound of Walt’s voice over her shoulder, Bryce dropped the pen, the circle unclosed. He bent down, brushing against her and filling her nostrils with his scent. Almonds and guava. Seeing the golden brown patch of skin on his neck, she wanted to lean down and lick it but kept both hands on the paper, ignoring him when he tried to return the pen to her. It didn’t matter that he had turned her story in, or that he hadn’t just given the slip to the waiter and run off. In fact, he was even more of a chicken, having hidden to see what her reaction would be.

Walt placed the pen on the table and went searching for the grade stamp she’d thrown away. Finding it, he came back to the table and sat down. He smoothed the wrinkles out of it while he waited for her to say something.

“I mean—even as mad as I was at Artemisia, I only moved across town,” he said after another minute had passed without her acknowledging him.

Her gaze flicked up and over him before she took the pen, finished the last circle and made another one a few ads down.
Chicken.
“I’m not mad,” she said, a sharp smile cutting across her face.
Chicken, chicken, chicken.
“I just don’t want to be on the same continent as you are.”

“Brycie—”

“Don’t. Call. Me. That.” She said each word separately, with a full stop. The newspaper trembled in her hands, the bottom edge threatening to rip from the stress of her tight grip.

“Bryce, couples have arguments—huge ones, sometimes.”

She stared at him. The muscles around her eyes felt so tense she was sure her gaze could scratch diamonds. It didn’t seem to faze him.

“But one of them usually doesn’t pick up and move to another country.”

“We aren’t—weren’t a couple.” Picking up the pen and date stamp, she shoved them in her pocket and folded the newspaper.

“Yes, Brycie, we were—we are,” he corrected, clearing his throat before he placed a restraining hand on her arm. “I know we’ve only had a short time together, and that I said some terrible things.” He fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve, gripping the fabric but not otherwise touching her. “I believed some terrible things, that’s the worst of it.”

She wanted to nod, to agree that it truly had been the worst of it, but she forced herself to remain cold and distant.

“I read your story,” he said, his fingertips daring to touch the back of her hand. “It was weird, having to read it with Hardy there, knowing that he would soon be reading it.”

Bryce pulled her hand away and dropped it to her lap where it twisted wildly against its mate. Before the fight this morning, she’d certainly hoped he would read it at some point. Now it just felt like he’d pried open a window on her soul, reading her secrets without revealing any of his own.

“In some parts of the story, it was like you had read my mind,” he said. “Like when we were in the loft.”

The top button of her blouse was undone, the spread of her collar starting just above the spot where he had placed his artist’s mark. She could feel the fabric, feel its flutter as if Walt were drawing the mark all over again.

“I really did think those things when I was drawing on you.” He paused, a layer of moisture making his olive green gaze shine bright. “And I don’t know how, with your being in my head like that, you can be so sure that you have an exclusive license on insecurity.”

Bryce stiffened and pushed away from the table, the chair’s metal legs scraping across the concrete sidewalk.

“Brycie, please.”

He was holding her there with just his voice and those two words. She brushed an angry hand across her cheek, erasing a tear almost before it escaped.

Walt reached into his pants pocket, palming something before he put his hand on the center of the table. “I know, I really, really know how hard you had to fight your fear to trust me, and how it must have torn at you this morning when I couldn’t offer you the same trust.”

She put one hand on the chair’s arm, ready to rise and walk out forever. It was, she thought, worse that he understood—and that he understood too late. Walt jumped up before she could leave, swiftly circling the table and dropping to one knee in front of her. He turned his closed fist palm up and slowly opened it to reveal the bracelet with its dove done in mother-of-pearl. Next to the dove was an ivory swan.

Unhooking the clasp, Walt threaded it between her arm and the chair she still clutched. Securing the bracelet around her wrist, he gently grabbed both of her arms just above the bend of her elbows. He looked, for an instant, like he wanted to shake some sense into her, but then he smoothed his palms along the side of her arms. Taking hold of her shoulders, he stretched up and placed his cheek against hers.

“I can’t promise you that I won’t ever be that stupid again,” he said, kissing where his cheek had brushed against hers. “But I love you, and I’ll do everything I can to erase the hurt I caused you this morning.” He brushed against her other cheek, following it with another kiss. “Everything but let you leave without a fight.”