Calculated Exposure (23 page)

She sounded way too chipper, but Curt decided to reserve his judgment. “What’s going on?”

“I think I have a job!”

“Really?” He stood and left the television to Seth, opting to pace in the kitchen instead. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, it’s all because of you.”

“Me? How so?”

“The woman, Bridget Rose her name is…”

Curt closed his eyes and eked out a groan. “Seriously, Mum?”

“The money’s good and I could live anywhere.”

That had potential. He perked up. “Where would you go?”

“Me and Jenny were talking about it earlier when she brought me some clothes and things. She said she won’t say anything to your father until I’m all set. Can you take me in for a while?”

He blinked. “Did I hear you right?” Had his sorry little prayer been answered? Was she really going to walk away?

She laughed, a lilting bell-like chuckle that always had reminded him of wind chimes. He was so glad to hear it.

“Yes, I’m going to do it! I can do it, right?”

“Of course you can. You can stay as long as you like, though you probably won’t be very comfortable. I just gotta ask, Mum. Why?”

“I’m not brave, Curt. I’m not. I’m scared. I know I’m running, but I’d rather be ignorant and someplace I don’t know with a life I don’t recognize than to be safe and used up. I don’t want to be that woman anymore. I’m tired of being a laughingstock.”

“He made you one.”

“I
let
him. Look, it’ll be easier for me to brave when there’s an ocean between us, right?”

Wordless at her response, he grunted agreement and ended the call. Twirling his phone between his fingers a moment, he ruminated. In the past, he would have thought Mum was a coward for running. But, the past few months had taught him that stepping into the unknown was perhaps a far braver thing than staying put to fight the same battle again. Maybe his genius mother’s lesson for him this time had nothing to do with math. The geek in him who liked structure and order hated this lesson: that sometimes, getting to happiness required a person to make themselves uncomfortable first.

He’d never been so fucking uncomfortable.

He ground his teeth and worked his thumb over his phone’s touchscreen. Taking a deep breath, he dialed.

Erica answered on the fourth ring. “You know what, I can’t remember you ever calling me.”

“You’re exaggerating. I’m pretty sure I have.”

“Mm…maybe once.”

Sounds about right.
“What are you doing right now?”

“Looking over a shot list for a wedding reception Sharon’s coordinating tomorrow. The couple has a photographer for portraits, but wanted someone to take pictures of the things no one pays any attention to. Candid stuff.”

“Right.” He lifted the lid off the coffee maker and plucked out the spent filter from earlier in the day. “What are you doing after that?”

“Dunno. Why?”

“Let me buy you dinner. I’d offer to cook you something, but I don’t think that’d be much of a favor for either of us.”

“I don’t know. I’ll probably be stuffed from all those wedding
hors d’ouerves
.”

Ouch.
He normally didn’t have to work this hard. Asshole Curt would have ended the conversation with that, but try-harder-Curt knew he hadn’t even begun to test her boundaries. She may have been the typical woman when it came to emotional neediness, but she wasn’t one who was going to roll over. She wasn’t going to let him get away with anything. She wasn’t going to forgive him unless he earned forgiveness. And that’s what set him apart from his father. Curt was willing to earn it.

“How about drinks afterward, then? I’ll be honest. My schedule is about to get really shitty. I go full-time at Prizm after I present at this conference next week as that’ll be the end of my PhD work. I still have two classes to teach, and my mother is relocating here sometime in the coming weeks. And darlin’, she’s a bit clingy.”

She laughed. “Like me?”

“No. Not like you.”

“I might be too tired for drinks. How about breakfast?”

“What, Sunday? Tell me where.”

“No. Tomorrow. You got groceries there,
rubio
?”

He scoffed. “We’ve got cereal.”

She clucked her tongue. “
Pobrecitos.
Tell you what. I’ll make you breakfast in exchange for telling me about embezzling. Tonight.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He disconnected, and suddenly felt very much like a rugby ball had hit him in the face again. Feeling ignorant about something wasn’t usual for him, and this was new territory. Uncharted. If he wanted to have it all–that woman to give him the warm home he hadn’t known he wanted–he had no choice but to open the shutter and expose his heart to her light.

He pressed his face against the table and groaned.
Good luck, player.

* * * *

Erica stepped into Curt’s living room and scanned the abode while he closed and locked the front door. “Where’s Seth?”

Curt slipped around her and leaned against the kitchen archway, his posture stiff and face unreadable. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I would have thought you’d prefer to see just me. Am I not entertaining enough?”

“You know better.” She set her purse on the floor beside the sofa. “He’s kind of like an institution. It’s noticeable when he’s not around.”

“I guess you’re right about that. Anyway, I bribed him with a hotel room and a case of cheap beer. He’s out for the night.”

“Oh.” She pulled back a chair at the kitchen table and sat, studying the brand insignia on her camera bag for a moment before she looked up at him. “Curt, I want to tell you a secret. Only a handful of people know this, but I’m telling you because like I said before, I’m tired of trying to keep track of what’s a lie and what’s real.”

His expression was wary as he took the seat across the table from her. “Okay.”

She took a bolstering breath. “Okay. Do you know how I got to North Carolina as a seventeen-year-old high school drop out?”

He shook his head. Judging by the way his eyebrows shot up, he’d probably never given that part of her history much thought.

“I ran away from home because my parents were trying to hook me up with some guy. I would have been married a week after high school graduation if I’d stuck around. I didn’t want that.”

“Nor would I.”

Oh, it gets better, rubio
.
Just wait.
“I left home without a plan. I just tossed some shit in a backpack and got on a bus headed north. I suppose I had a pretty vague recollection about some cousins in New Jersey who I could look up, but I didn’t get that far. I ran out of money.”

He made a
go on
gesture with his hand.

“I didn’t want to go home. So there was this man who helped me. And because of him–well, I guess I was dumb enough to let it happen, but I had couple of criminal charges. The first was–”

“Darlin’?”

She lifted her gaze to him with a cringe. “Yes?”

There was still no readable expression his face. “Did you hurt anyone?”

“Other than myself? No.”

“Did you take something that didn’t belong to you?”

She shook her head.

“Then I don’t want to know.”

Her expression must have been quite telling because he stood, walked around the table, and wrapped his arms around her neck. “Erica, don’t think I don’t care. I’m a mathematician. I like to compartmentalize, remember? I need you to help me do that. If it’s not important, leave it in the past. Don’t go dredging up skeletons. Is it going to affect your future?” He wound his fingers through a length of her hair, just like he had that first night they’d met.

She had to think about it, and thinking was very hard with him being so close and smelling so good. Would they affect her future? Sharon knew and didn’t care. Obviously Jean knew. But what if she should move on?

Curt pressed his lips against her ear and whispered. “Is it?”

Leaving the paper in Charlotte, even under duress, had taught her something. She could
trust
herself. That modicum of confidence was what made her say yes to Jean. It was what made her proposition Sharon for contract work. It was the difference between her being a stupid seventeen-year-old and a grown woman with a mind toward stability, rather than chaos. Her gut made her realize that although she really didn’t understand Curt, she loved him. She wanted to be that woman, the caretaker her mother had tried to mold her into, but on her own terms. Her gut told her those two misdemeanor charges would only be an albatross if she didn’t own up to them. Yeah, she’d fucked up, and the world was no worse for it. So there.

“No, I don’t think so,
rubio.
”

He nestled his nose against the crook of her neck and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is it going to affect
my
future?”

His?
She grinned and rubbed her cheek against the top of his head. “No. Shouldn’t.”

“Good. Now I want to tell you something only a handful of people know.”

“I thought you didn’t want to dredge up skeletons.”

“This isn’t an old skeleton. This is very new.” He gave her neck one more little squeeze and retreated to his former seat. He took a long, sobering breath before confessing, “Darlin’, you scare me. I don’t know what to do with you.”

She let her forehead furrow. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t like attaching myself to anyone because I think eventually I’m going to let ’em down.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Family history. Remember what I told you about the Shakespearean tragedy that was my parents’ marriage?”

That made her laugh. “Curt, I think there are some things you can’t help but to be. I can’t help but to be a bit maternal, matronly, even in spite of the fact I fought it so hard as a kid. I want to take care of people. Of
you
.”

He grinned. “I guess I need it.”

“But there’s a place where nurture sometimes wins out over nature and we turn into something other than what we’re encoded to be. I blame my
abuela
for making me think I could be goddamned Charro if I so chose. I think they were both right, my mother and
abuela
. I don’t have to give up hearth and home to be a part of the world…find my passions.”

“And what’s your passion, darlin’?”

She lifted her shoulders into a tiny shrug and fiddled with the catch of her camera bag for a moment before tearing it open. “Took me a while to figure it out, and it’s still not even all that clear. I may not be much of an artist, but I like making people see things they would otherwise ignore.” She pushed her camera across the tabletop with the viewfinder facing him.

He picked it up and scrolled through the images, lingering longer on some than others.

“I figured out that when I started to take pictures for memories, things I wanted to keep in my brain for later, my style sort of changed. I guess my perspective did, too. When I didn’t have to take pictures a certain way anymore, I threw technique out the window.”

He pressed the camera back. “They’re great. Really. But I think you should delete those first few.”

Her jaw dropped. “I will not.” She held the camera up and grabbed a shot just as a smirk crept across his face. “Those are the only pictures I have of you.”

“You can take as many as you want, though I think you might find the subject matter pretentious and contemptible over time. You’ll probably grow weary of it and go looking for a new muse.” The grin he’d been wearing waned. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Well, you’ll probably get bored of me and my child-like enthusiasm for dumb television and fuzzy slippers.”

He shook his head. “Never.”

“I want to know what makes you tick, Curt.”

“And I want to know just how brazen you actually are.”

“Not very.”

The grin returned. “So what’s that mean?”

“It means…” She stood and went to him, straddling his lap as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “If I’m doing something like this…” She grabbed one of his wrists and brought his palm up to her chest to feel the racing of her heart. “If I’m doing something like this, it means I want your attention.”

“Oh.” He brushed a swath of hair from her eyes and locked his gaze on hers. “Never stop doing that, then, ’cause you coming to me means I haven’t made a mess of things. I don’t know how to be in love.”

“You don’t need to know how. It’s not math. You just
are
.”

He nodded and pulled her face close to his. “Are we?”

Their lips grazed.

“You tell me.”

He did.

Other Lyrical Books By Holley Trent

Saint and Scholar

About Holley Trent

Holley Trent is a Southern girl gone west. Although she currently lives in the dry, high altitude of Colorado, she sets her books in her home state of North Carolina. Her stories range from sweet to erotic, contemporary to paranormal, but no matter what, there’s always a bit of snark.

Her first book set in
Calculated Exposure
’s world,
Saint and Scholar
was supposed to be a one-off story, but the cast wouldn’t shut up after she typed “The End.” Hero Grant’s friends, Curt and Seth, were the obnoxious sort of characters that needed their own stories–their own happily-ever-afters.
Calculated Exposure
is what she calls her “modern redeemable rake” story, and Curt was her chance to flesh out an unconventional hero. He’s an alpha without all the muscle.

Seth’s story is in the works, and Holley has paired the Russian astrophysicist with a spitfire originally introduced in
Saint and Scholar
. That book may make a lot of readers see red. (Both characters have red hair!) It’s shaping up to be a hot one.

Calculated Exposure

9781616504915

Copyright © 2013, Holley Trent

Edited by Piper Denna

Book design by Lyrical Press, Inc.

Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: October, 2013