Her Insatiable Scot (13 page)

Her eyes popped open and she grabbed the phone out of his hand. He rose from the bed, caught between concern and his plans to leave. She scooted to the end and pulled the comforter up to cover herself.

She met his gaze and mimed writing. He grabbed a pen and paper from the small desk in the corner. She nodded her thanks as she took them. “What do they need tested?” She scribbled down the answer, nodding some more as she wrote. “What’s the timeline I need to get this done?” Her brows rose. “Okay. Won’t be a problem.”

A few more minutes of bobbing her head and then she returned the phone to its cradle. She ran a hand over her hair. “I’ve got to go.” She blinked, looking as shocked as he felt by the announcement. “Ian needs me to head to the Langston Museum and do testing.”

“Isn’t that where Jocelyn works?”

“Yeah. Maybe an hour from here.” She rose, her hand like a vise on the comforter. “I need my clothes.”

He gestured toward the closet. “I’ve hung them up.”

“You what?” She fought with the cover, trying to face him.

“Before you went out today, you’d strewn your clothes over the bed. I hung them up.”

She bit her lip for a second. “Your socks are paired, so I shouldn’t find that surprising.”

He snorted. “Are you calling me fussy?”

“I’d say no such thing.” She dragged the cover with her to the closet. “I can’t wear this stuff to the lab. They’ll think I’m crazy.”

“You’re going right now?”

“Yeah. It’s a rush order they need, which is still slow for the test they want me to do.” She flicked through her selections, shaking her head at each one. “I can’t show up dressed like this. They won’t take me seriously.”

Just moments before he answered the phone he’d planned to walk out the door and not look back. But there’d been a possibility that she’d wake, look at him with her doe eyes wide and vulnerable. He could and would have likely changed his mind. It wasn’t like he
wanted
to leave. It was just best if he did. His gut twisted. This was the end. His out from attempting to be a better man and failing. Much worse, hurting her in the process. “How long is it going to take you?”

“Maybe a day. So make excuses for my absence. We still have to suffer through this charade.”

A thought, a need, took hold and he couldn’t shake it. “We are stuck with each other for the next few days. I’ll keep you company and we can come back together.”

Her hand dropped from the dress. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s our honeymoon. I’d rather not chance it that folks see us leave separately.” He jerked one shoulder. “If I get bored, I can go to my brother’s flat for a while.” He paused. “Call me curious. I want to see what my brother does.”

“He’s never taken you for a tour?”

He’d kept his distance from his brother for his own good too. “We aren’t close. Anymore.”

“Oh.” She bit her lower lip. “What happened?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Long story.”

“One of those.” She yanked a dress from a hanger, glanced down at the comforter and let it drop.

Whatever thought he had vanished. Her brown skin defined perfection. Smooth, supple, and he wanted to lick her all over again. What had he been thinking of walking away? Who cared if he had a past? She didn’t need to know he used to fuck women for gain. His actions had fed an insecure beast of a man he used to be. A boy abandoned by his mother and just looking for an explanation, and any one would do.

But you’d know
.

Was he still that man? No. He used to look at every woman—
everyone
—as a potential mark and catalog what the mark could do for him and the best way to get it. A hard habit to break, but he had. Yet he still had that skill. It’s why he had flings instead of relationships. No woman stuck around for long the moment he confessed the full truth.

“Aye. One of those.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “Well, we have a few hours if you feel the need to confess.”

He looked at his luggage still on the floor. Leave or stay? Staying meant he’d have to tell her all of it. All the ugly. Omitting the truth was as bad as lying, and he wasn’t that man anymore.

Fuck.

He told himself to step forward, grab the luggage, but couldn’t seem to leave her. That meant he had to confess eventually, but not now. Not while she still looked at him with such vulnerability. He sighed and opened the drawer to get dressed, turning away from her questioning gaze.

*****

Tristan had never been in a museum in the middle of the night. Mannequins, statues, belongings of the long dead on display just didn’t give off an educational or interesting vibe. They stood as a reminder that those who once lived were gone. It made him think of his own mortality.

And it was doubly interesting to see this as Keri’s element. The moment she accepted the visitor’s pass and donned the white lab coat, she walked differently. Not once had she fidgeted or rambled. The security didn’t bat an eye at him following along. He knew his brother had worked here for weeks. What kind of impression did Ian leave behind that they didn’t question Tristan’s presence?

The thought shifted something inside him as they settled into the laboratory. White walls, with blander and uncomfortable chairs decorating the space. No personality to the room except for the woman commanding the tools in it.

He tapped his fingers on the countertop, content to watch her at work because his mind kept running through all the ways he could confess, and why he suddenly wanted to. Only one explanation came to mind—his brother had turned him daft and soft in two conversations.

Not surprising. Before Ian’s marriage to Jocelyn, Tristan had worried his choice to stay away from his brother had been an exercise in futility. They both were doomed to be the kind of men women fucked. A kind of existence that was okay for him but not for Ian, who had craved more. He’d never spoken the words, but his brother’s actions told Tristan the truth. So he cut himself off from Ian, hoping the less contact, the less his brother could admire bad habits.

Keri shook a test tube and then placed it into a machine. “You’ve been very quiet.”

Exhaustion should have pulled at his limbs. It was well past three. But his thoughts refused to let sleep settle in. “I’m taking it all in.”

The lab was filled with beeps, whirs and the tapping of computer keys. It was cold too. Storage bins covered one wall. He was sure they were filled with relics.

“Not what you expected?” she asked.

“It’s exactly what I expected. Somewhat quiet and cold.”

“Cold?”

“Heat is known to ruin certain relics, screw up tests.”

She looked impressed. “What else do you know?”

“My brother would get smashed and start waxing poetic about everything he’d done or seen whenever he visited.” He hesitated. “My mother was also an archeologist. I didn’t pick up the relic bug.”

There was the faintest interest in her gaze at the mention of his mother. “And your father runs a pub. Huh. Interesting family.”

He wondered how long it would take her to get the courage to ask about his mother. “I used to own a stake in it until I sold my half.” He’d sold it to Ian so he could pay back the money he’d taken. He shrugged. “Learned everything I know from my da. He’s a cheapskate. Didn’t see the need to hire someone to fix or build this or that as long as his hands still worked.” He smiled and leaned forward on the table. The chair was uncomfortable as shite, but it’d do.

She frowned, looked hesitant. “I don’t remember Jocelyn ever talking about her mother-in-law. Or complaining about her.”

His heart grew as cold as the room. “My mum’s not around.”

“Another long story?”

His jaw hurt from the sudden clenching of his teeth. He breathed out, relaxed. “That one’s short. She left. I made sure of it.”

Her hands never lost their steadiness, but she appeared shaken by his confession. “You don’t seem like the homicidal type. I’m going to guess she’s alive, just not…active in your lives.”

Aye. He accepted his mum was shite. Didn’t make it any easier to talk about her. “My brother, I think some part of him still wishes she was the mother we needed. I know better. I knew better even as a kid. She wanted an out so I told her we didn’t need her around, much less want her. She’d come home after some trip.”

He rolled his shoulders, disgusted with the memory, disgusted with what he let himself become over someone who’d walk away from her child. “She listened to me,
her son
, who was being a little shite. She left and made another family. I consider her my first con job and it was all downhill from there. To answer your question, you can call that not active.”

He could see her brain working, cataloging his words behind her gaze. The woman and the scientist wouldn’t be able to do anything else. He felt stripped of everything and all he could do was wait for her reaction.

“I don’t say this word often, but I think it fits. Your mother is a foul bitch.”

He laughed, surprised at her frankness. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.” She grinned at him. “Her choice says more about her than it does you.”

“Maybe.” His shoulders tightened, because despite his shite mum, he had still chosen to hurt people and justify it. “Your mother?” he asked to head off any questions she might have.

“My mother? Huh.” She pressed a button on a round metal machine. It began to twirl at the speed of light. He knew it was separating particles and that would take a few minutes at best.

“Aye, your mum.”

“Is this some—” She abruptly stopped and leaned on the other side of the table. “My mother didn’t screw me up. She was eccentric, flighty. She dated a ton of men but I never met them.”

“Your da?”

She laughed. “I feel like I’m being interrogated.”

“I’m curious about the woman standing in front of me. She knows her place in this room, detailing facts and figures, putting them into compartments. She has the patience to write out a long report about her findings and has the balls to state them based on what she’s found.”

He shifted, uncomfortable. He wasn’t ready yet to talk about himself, every ugly confession. But this wasn’t a con. He wouldn’t leave her heart in shambles.

“Well, I’m normal,” she said, seeming to notice his discomfort. “My parents split. My father was there. He always seemed the happiest when I was winning this or that award for science.” She swallowed and then busied her hands.

A sore spot. He had more than enough so he avoided the subject for her. “But why science?”

“No idea, but I think it was the experiments that swayed me the most. Scientists always seemed to have fun. What does it take to blow up something? A scientist knows. If they don’t, they figure it out. In the process you get to blow up something.” She laughed. “I had a head for math so that worked out in my favor.”

Made sense. “Why relics?”

“I love stories too.” She picked up the bronze statute that forced Jocelyn to call her in the middle of the night. She gestured to the box of latex gloves.

He slid some on without much more encouragement and took the offered statue. After getting a decent look, he said, “Looks to be about seventeenth century, but it reminds me of Rodin’s work because of the nude woman.”

He flipped the statue over to look at the bottom. He ran his hand along the small scrapings. “That one’s yours because it looks fresh. These other two are older. The outcome of those tests should be in the paperwork you received. You’ll confirm what you’ve found and if it’s not a fraud, the results should match up.”

“But what’s the story?” she pushed.

“You tell me.” He handed the statue back to her.

“You’re right. The method does mimic the seventeenth century, but it was made by a student in the late nineteenth. No one famous, just passionate about the time period. Since it’s a naked woman doing something vaguely racy, apparently the student was a fan of Rodin.”

He wondered how much of the story came from the files and how much she made up, but that wasn’t the point. Every relic had a story. It wasn’t just facts in a report or placard in a museum. “Why only a passionate student and not someone famous?”

“Why?” She smiled. “There’s over 160,000 members of SAG. How many of those actors do you actually hear about? Not all of them are talented or passionate, but you hear about them. There are many �Shop Girl Number Ones’ but you’ll never know their names. Doesn’t mean they aren’t talented or passionate. They haven’t had a lucky break or never will.” She tilted her head. “But you know stuff like that. The con man, who needs to know a little bit about everything. You just wanted to hear my answer. Why?”

This woman wasn’t pretending to be vivacious, funny and open. She had intelligence, wit, and that made her sexy right down to her pristine lab coat. She wouldn’t buckle beneath the truth. She’d take it, notate it and file it away. It made him want her in just her lab coat. And heels. He’d grown a terrible fondness for her dainty feet in heels.

Cons involved lies and he never wanted to tell her any. “You know I planned to leave this afternoon. I had…reservations.”

She blinked. Her way of taking, notating and filing. “About me?”

“About what you—”
Made me feel
. “About what we were getting ourselves into. I’m not a man you should invest a future into.”

“You are a different breed of man,” she said slowly. “I’ll admit that, but—I don’t know.”

His gut tightened. “And what do you need to know about me?”

“I get a say?”

“This goes both ways or it’s no fun.”

“So do I want to have more sex with you?”

He hadn’t meant sex, but of course that was what she’d want from him. “Aye,” he said low.

“That’s a hefty question, especially after learning you planned to leave without so much as a bye.”

He balled his fist against the table. “Now I’m worried again I might break you, no matter what we do. You deserve better.”

“Now I’m worried that you think saying goodbye means something much deeper and profound. It’s…polite. You did it well the first time…in the stairwell. Or, well enough that I wouldn’t have questioned it until a few weeks down the line.”