Enemy of Mine (17 page)

“I—I rushed things. I’m sorry. I came at you like a charging bull.”

She shook her head. “I never do this kind of thing.”

“I’m sorry, darling.”

She stared at him, trying to ascertain if that word was so sweet because he’d said it to many other women before. Was it a well-worn word, one that he knew how to say with the perfect amount of vulnerability and masculine possessiveness?

She backed away from him, but he followed.

“Erva, mayhap you could—”

“I never do this kind of thing.” God, why couldn’t she find something else to say?

He nodded. “I—I understand. I—”

She backed away even more, feeling her mother’s disgusted sneer from more than two hundred years away. Shaking her head, she receded her way to the door, then unlatched it and raced to her own chamber, slamming her own door behind. It was cold and so dark in the room.
Slut
, raced through her mind. She stood not far from the entrance, beginning to cry.

A soft knock sounded.

“Erva, please, can we talk about this?”

Will’s voice was patient, but strained.

She shook her head, tears flicking to the floor. “No.”

“Please, darling.”

“Not—not right now. I can’t talk right now.” And she couldn’t. Her throat had tightened to the point where she wondered if she would ever breathe again.

He sighed. “All right.” Something softly thumped against the door, and she thought it might be his forehead leaning against it. “I’m sorry, darling. I—I—we’ll talk in the morning then.”

She wasn’t sure if she could. All she could do was stand there, staring at the door with a torn dress for a covering, a dress she’d asked to be ripped apart. It was a fitting metaphor, she thought, for how she’d shed her coverings, her shield, given away so much to man she didn’t really know. She’d asked for it too. Deep shame had set in by then, and she could only struggle with the word, “Okay,” for a response.

He softly chuckled. “I have yet to learn what that means, my darling.” There was a brief pause, but then he said, “I wish you a good night’s rest. Good night, sweetling.”

She melted into a puddle of self-incrimination, embarrassment, and far too old emotional baggage in the middle of the floor.

Chapter 16

R
olling over in her feather bed completely without Will, feeling too cold to sleep even though piled high with blankets, Erva thought of her past. Her reaction, what she had done with Will...all of it sent her reeling back as if she’d fallen in an Alice in Wonderland hole. She couldn’t help but think about when she’d been so small, a child herself.

She hadn’t meant to be a tomboy while growing up; hadn’t played football with her dad to impress him; hadn’t clung to him when he was home because he was her favorite parent. On the contrary, she worshipped her beautiful mother. But her mom, Judith, had never let her close.

When Erva was six, her father had been deployed to the Middle East, close to Beirut. At the time, the civil unrest made it impossible for families to come with their soldiers, so Erva and Judith were to stay stateside. Erva was actually excited to be alone with her mother. Maybe, her young mind had worked out, Judith would finally pay attention to her, now that they had only each other. However, Erva saw even less of her mother than if her father had been home. It had been the loneliest year of her life. Until her father had died.

Erva never understood why her mother didn’t love her. Well, her mother had said she loved her a few times, when her father had been alive. But not since then. In high school, Erva had juggled how to please her mother with precision. She’d watch for any sign of discontent then abandon whatever she was doing—all to gain some sort of acceptance, some love from her mom. Long jumping and shot put were easy to give up. However, as the years passed, and if Erva enjoyed the activity enough, if it gave her comfort, like skeet shooting had, then she’d keep it a secret. Secret keeping was as normal to Erva as chocolate chip cookies would have been to any other kid. She didn’t view her secrets as lies, not until later in her life. While she had been young, secrets were the only way to survive.

Killing herself in ballet classes, piano, and voice rehearsals were just a couple balls to add in the air. Erva knew her mother approved of those things. Being good in school wasn’t required, but her mother didn’t sneer at it either. Schoolwork, not socializing, became so precious to Erva that excellent grades came naturally. Yet when her mother raised an eyebrow at all As, Erva changed her report card to reflect a few Bs too. Ben, Erva’s best friend, had laughed and said she was the only kid in America to change her grade point average to something less than what she had actually achieved. This was the pattern of her life—she could only excel at things Judith approved of, nothing else.

When Erva received news that she had gotten a full scholarship to West Point, she lied to her mother and said that an upstate New York college had taken her. Her mother would go to The City, but never venture to where Erva went to college. Erva should have known better than to worry about that, but she had, and had taken great precautions to prevent her mother from knowing that she was graduating from a military organization, even if it was one of the top schools in the nation. She joined the Army, in which she told her mother she was living in Monterey, California trying to make it in a small town ballet company, when in reality she’d been in her language classes. While Erva had been assigned numerous Middle-Eastern countries during her time in the Army, she’d told her mother that she was trying to make it as a piano accompanist abroad. Her mother never visited her, never asked to. Annapolis for her Master’s, then Harvard for her PhD, all the while Erva had tried to keep her life a secret from her mother. Finally, when she reached thirty, Erva had had enough of the lies and thought she was grown up enough to tell her mother the truth. She lived in Boston while she worked through the PhD program. Judith had been quiet for several moments, but then sighed wearily on the phone, saying, “God, Erva, when are you going to do something special with your life?”

It had been one of the balls in the air: Erva had never known what it would take to win her mother over, what was special enough, and lastly what it would take to make her mother love her. She’d thought being her mother’s clone would work while in middle school, but Judith would scoff at her choice of clothes and makeup. Erva had thought that by being a ballerina she could at least get a hug. But she’d broken three of her toes for nothing, no sympathy from her mother. She’d kept the skeet competitions a secret, which had helped her get the full ride scholarship to West Point. Only, when Judith had found out from Ben’s mom that she’d won a competition, many competitions, Erva’s mother had been beside herself, screaming at Erva that she’d never marry, since men didn’t like that sort of thing.

Judith’s words had become a curse for Erva. Granted, she’d married. Unfortunately, she’d married a man who didn’t approve of women doing “those sorts of things.” Cliff had been everything Erva’s mother had warned her about—a womanizer, a man who hadn’t appreciated her, or even respected her, a man whom Judith had approved of.

Through the years Ben had worked at his art, then became an interior designer, where the worlds he’d created on paper would come alive. He’d also gone to therapy, because of bullies that haunted him, and he talked Erva into going too. She’d learned to identify her patterns, like finding a husband who would disapprove of her and ultimately reject her. She’d learned how to stop making friends who wound up so much like her mother. She’d learned to trust the people who had proven themselves to her, like Ben and his partner Bill who had become her family. She’d absorbed so much, but applying everything she’d learned was still new.

Her instincts had roared to let Will in, to trust him. But she didn’t know him. Further, everything in the books she’d read indicated he was not a man to trust, not with her heart at least. Ben had once asked after her divorce if she would like to have a fling with a man, just use him for sex. But she knew she wasn’t built for that. She didn’t judge others who would, but she knew once she took off her clothes, she’d fall in love. Oh God, what had she just done?

Tossing again on the bed, she finally huffed and threw off the covers, then strode toward an open window in her white nightgown. A tear cascaded down her cheek. All her life she’d struggled and fought for love. But this had come so easily. Naturally. That had to be wrong. But why did it feel so right then?

She wished Clio or Erato would show up and take her away. This hurt too much. Why did she let herself care so much about Will? He would die! In just a couple days now.

Unless...unless she did something about that.

Vaguely remembering something about changing history, how it would lead to catastrophe, fluttered through her mind. But that was from the movies. This was—what had the muses called it? Her
glimpse.
She could do whatever she wanted here. Hell, the muses had tried to pressure her to do exactly that, whatever she damned well pleased.

Pulling a silky blanket from her bed and the box Clio had given her, she claimed a chaise near the unlit fireplace. She smiled at her iPhone with headphones, amazed that it had been only a little more than a couple days ago she’d been back in Boston, worried that her dean would fire her, worried that Dr. Peabody was stealing her research, worried about so many things. Now, she’d—she’d fallen for a lord general who would die. Not only that, there was no proof if he was a womanizer or not. Pushing the earbuds in, she cranked her Amy Lee playlist, thinking.

Ben had always told her that she’d been brave to pursue her career in military history, considering how unsupportive her mother had been. But she’d never accepted the compliment. That hadn’t been bravery. It had been part of the air she breathed to learn more, to read the books, write the essays, thesis, then her dissertation. There might have been a little courage involved when she’d told her mother the truth of why she lived in Boston, but not much. If she were honest with herself, then she could count the number of times she’d truly been brave. Those were the times some voice inside her had screamed for her to not follow her mother’s advice, and she hadn’t. When she’d listened to herself, her instincts, she’d signed the divorce papers and gotten rid of Cliff once and for all. And while she’d been with Will, she’d kissed him.
She
had kissed him.

That had been brave. She’d followed her heart.

But where was it going to get her?

The clock over the mantle read that it was close to three in the morning. Erva’s eyes flitted closed repeatedly, but she fought it as much as she could. She thought of her wardrobe back at home, so ladylike and proper. How she’d shop with Ben and he’d try to get her to buy leather pants or a coat she really wanted. How she’d had an obsession with having blue hair before it was cool. Even the tattoos she had lacked color; they were all white. White doves, symbolic of how she wanted to fly away.

Well, she had. She’d flown a hell of a long way away. Here, she was more than two hundred years, and two hundred miles from her sad home, which she’d decorated in a drab beige, too afraid to put any color in her apartment. Too afraid to paint her own life with whatever she damned well pleased. Everything had been a secret, like beige can make stains secret, can cover them up and never reveal them. Her life was beige.

So much for that, she huffed. Okay, so she worried Will had a couple lovers on the side. She could ask him about that, rather than run away like a scared girl, scared of falling in love. No, better, she
would
ask him about Miss Emma and Miss Lydia tomorrow. She’d get to the bottom of this once and for all. And then, depending on what he told her, what would she do?

If he was a womanizer, it seemed clear that she would take her losses and return home, write a hell of an article about him, and eventually move on. It hadn’t been the first time she’d accidentally fallen for a jerk of a man. But something in her knew this was different, Will was different. Cliff had been charismatic and charming, and she’d never seen the other side of him who would use people for money, sex, or whatever he’d wanted at the moment. Cliff had been acting. Erva thought Will was just himself, a lonely widower who’d suffered through so much, yet under all of it was such a good man.

She was scared. Her emotional garbage had just gotten in the way, spiraled uncontrollably down, chaining her to the idea to turn Will into Cliff. On paper, Will
was
Cliff, or very similar. But she knew propaganda had demonized more than one British officer who more than likely never deserved the backlash. It had been war and during such conflict, as tradition, it was best to see your enemy as being less than human. She knew this psychological play had been developed eons ago. Still, it never sat right with her that Will, after his death, would be condemned so.

Now she knew why. She took a shaky breath, as she realized tomorrow would be such a big day for her, for Will too. She’d ask him about the mistresses. Already, he’d told her that the rumors had been just that during his marriage. Nonetheless he was a single man now, so he could have a couple dalliances. Well, in her time it was considered acceptable. However, she wouldn’t give her heart to a man who couldn’t give his own to her. It would hurt to find out if he was sleeping around, but—and this was what scared her the most—what if he wasn’t? What if he wanted her, just her?

With this thought, her lids finally closed and sleep gently took over. But before it did, she thought she felt a woman tuck the blanket around her feet a little more securely. She wondered if it was maybe one of Clio’s sisters, because the dark haired woman wore something like a toga and seemed to glow like the muses. Or was it just a dream, since the woman had whispered soothingly, “Be brave, Minerva. I need you to be brave for my Will.”