Private Research: An Erotic Novella

Private Research

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SABRINA DARBY

Acknowledgments

F
EW STORIES ARE
ever completed without the wonderful input and advice of others. I’d like to thank my editor, Tessa Woodward, and all the people at Avon Impulse who worked on this book. I am indebted to everyone who helped, and in particular to Brenna Aubrey, Amber Anderson, Moriah Jovan, Katharine Ashe, Kate Pearce, Sarah MacLean, Jullie, and, of course, my mother and sister, who are the first readers of nearly everything I write.

Contents

Chapter One

I
T WAS THE
most innocuous of sentences: “A cappuccino, please.” Three words, without a verb to ground them, even. Yet, at the sound, my hand stilled midmotion, my own paper coffee cup paused halfway between table and mouth. I looked over to the counter of the cafe. It was midafternoon, quieter than it had been earlier when I’d come in for a quick lunch, and only three people were in line behind the tall, slim-hipped, blond-haired man, whose curve of shoulder and loose-limbed stance struck a chord in me as clearly as his voice.

Of course, it couldn’t be. In two years, surely, I would have forgotten the exact tenor of his voice, was confusing some other deep, posh English accent with his. Yet I watched the man, waited for him to turn around, as if there were any significant chance that in a city of 8 million people, I’d run into the one English acquaintance I had. At the National Archives, no less.

At the first glimpse of his profile, I sucked in my breath sharply, nearly dropping my coffee. Then he turned fully, looking around. I watched his gaze pass over me and then snap back in recognition. I was both pleased and terrified. I’d come here to London to put the past behind me, not to face down my demons. I’d been doing rather well these last months, but maybe this was part of some cosmic plan. As my time in England wound down, in order to move forward with my life, I had to come face-to-face with Sebastian Graham again.

“Mina!” He had an impressive way of making his voice heard across the room without shouting, and as he walked toward me, I put my cup down and stood, all too aware that while he looked like a fashionable professional about town, I still looked like a grad student—no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail, jeans, sneakers, and a sweater.

“This is a pleasant surprise. Research for your dissertation? Anne Gracechurch, right?”

I nodded, bemused that he remembered a detail from what had surely been a throwaway conversation two years earlier. Of course, I really shouldn’t have been. Seb was brilliant, and brilliance wasn’t the sort of thing that just faded away.

Neither, apparently, was his ability to make my pulse race a bit faster or to tie up my tongue for a few seconds before I found my stride. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, at least not in an American way. Too lean, too angular, hair receding a bit at the temples, and I was fairly certain he was just shy of thirty. But I’d found him attractive from the first moment I’d met him.

I still did.

“That’s right. What are you doing here? I mean, at the archives.”

“Ah.” He shifted and smiled at me, and there was something about that smile that felt wicked and secretive. “A small genealogical project. Mind if I join you?”

I shook my head and sat back down. He pulled out his chair and sat, too, folding his long legs one over the other. Why was that sexy to me?

I focused on his face. He was pale. Much paler than he’d been in New Jersey, like he spent most of his time indoors. Which should have been a turnoff. Yet, despite everything, I sat there imagining him in the kitchen of my apartment in nothing but boxer shorts. Apparently, my memory was as good as his.

And I still remembered the crushing humiliation and disappointment of that last time we’d talked.

“So what have you been up to?” I asked in what I thought was an upbeat tone. Better to take control of this little reunion, keep it to safe topics.

He shrugged. “Work. Quantitative Analysis.”

He was downplaying it. Two years ago, far more cockily, he’d shared his future plans to work in finance, to make millions despite the state of the economy, to become one of London’s power brokers. (It was why a PhD in mathematics had gone back to school for a one-year Masters in Finance.) But considering how things had been left between us, I didn’t feel comfortable teasing him, asking him if he was on track to fulfill his goals of taking over the world, or at least being able to buy it. If the quality of his clothes was any indication, he was. Of course, even back in the States, he’d been well dressed, if more casual.

“And no work today?”

“Saturday,” he said simply, and my cheeks grew hot. I’d lost track of time frequently during my research, sometimes startled by a closed business on an unexpected Sunday. “I’m just astounded to see you again,” he continued. I didn’t miss the way his gaze ran over me, taking everything in. “Two years. Are you still living with Tanya?”

Her name made me wince. In many ways, my old roommate had made my second year of grad school miserable long before Sebastian came into the picture. He didn’t know that, but he did know that by saying her name he was hinting at the past.

Did he want to make things even more awkward between us? He had to know it would.

My coffee was done. There was an hour and a half left until the archives closed for the day, and I still had tons to do. Two years ago, I might have been happy to while away the hours discussing everything and anything as I stared into his beautiful pale blue eyes. Now life was different. I was not going to waste away this chance in order to talk for a few more minutes to a guy. Especially this guy.

“No,” I said simply, and then slid my laptop from the table and started to stand. “As fun as catching up is, I have to go back to work.”

He stood as well, unfolding himself so effortlessly and elegantly despite being all long limbs. “Listen, I shouldn’t have . . .” He stopped talking, and I looked up at him in inquiry. Met his shockingly intense gaze. “Dinner then,” he suggested instead of whatever he had been planning to say.

A tremor went through me. Longing. Even desire. He wasn’t just some stranger. He was Seb, with whom I’d spent a half dozen or more afternoons talking about all the sorts of things people discuss when they’re young, idealistic, and flirting around the attraction they feel. That I had felt.

I could have dinner with an old . . . friend, or I could spend the evening at the inexpensive Indian restaurant around the corner from my cramped, shared flat. They had free wifi and hadn’t minded last night when I’d set up shop at one of their back tables as long as I kept ordering appetizers and lassi.

But again, maybe this seemingly chance encounter had happened for a reason and I needed to be a little more open to the vagaries of fate. Maybe it was my opportunity to make some new choices about my life.

“All right,” I agreed, embarrassed at the adolescent anticipation fluttering in my belly. “Dinner.”

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER,
ensconced in the private research room with the items I’d requested from the librarian, I stared through the glass wall, barely registering the movement of people—of shapes and colors—across my field of view.

Instead, all I could see was that moment in the middle of a long-ago April, in the kitchen of the grad apartment that I’d shared with Tanya. I was in a tank top and shorts, ready for a late night of studying in bed, or rather, getting ready by preparing a snack of apple slices with almond butter.

“Mina.” I could still hear the surprise that had been in Seb’s voice when I turned around to find him in my kitchen, in nothing but his blue-and-green-striped boxer shorts. For a moment, I just stared at his chest, at his legs, at a body I had often fantasized about seeing in some distant future. Although, considering the school year was ending in just over a month and he’d be heading back to England, distant could easily have become never.

But there he was in my kitchen, practically naked, with only one possible reason why.

I crumpled a bit inside, disappointed of my vague romantic hopes by his mere presence.

“I didn’t know you and Tanya . . .” I trailed off. It was a stupid, revealing thing to say.

We stared at each other silently. He looked almost as shocked as I felt.

“You’re taking too long, Seb!” Then Tanya was there, too, totally nude, which wasn’t really unusual for her at all. Although I’d only met her in August, by that point in the school year, I’d seen her in all stages of undress. Part of it was her natural nudist tendencies and part was her desire to continually shock me. I was very much looking forward to moving.

His expression had shuttered and he’d turned toward her, reached out an arm, and brought her close. “I didn’t realize Mina was your roommate.” Which had made it clear to me that, while we’d had some sort of flirtation when we ran into each other on campus or in town, he’d been dating other girls, sleeping with them. I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I’d been so innocent back then, so overly romantic.

She looked surprised. “You know each other?” She laughed and looked over at me. “You must spend more time in the library than I would have imagined. Wouldn’t think a bookworm like Mina would be so hot, would you?”

I could still remember the heat of my embarrassment, and Tanya doing her usual teasing about my lack of a social life in front of Sebastian. She pulled away from him and came closer to me and to the counter, where she reached up to pull a glass out of the cabinet. Despite myself, I’d stared at her breasts with their pale pink nipples that were practically in my face.

“I’ve known she’s hot for a while.” At his words, my gaze snapped back to Sebastian. His familiar face turned foreign. The shared awkwardness was one thing, but with that smirk on his lips, everything had suddenly changed in the room. I felt surrounded, trapped, like the world I knew was spinning out of control. Had he really just said he thought I was hot? Something odd and buoyant simmered in my chest, despite my confusion. “In fact, I was just about to ask if she wanted to join us.”

That nascent feeling deflated. I didn’t know if he was serious or not. I didn’t know which situation would be worse.

The glass Tanya held clattered down on the counter and she spun to face me. I turned from Sebastian’s smirk to her vicious expression. I backed up a step before I realized what I was doing.

“Yes . . . join us, Mina,” she said in a low, sexy voice. Maybe Sebastian, listening to her, had thought that was what Tanya wanted. But I knew she was taunting me, daring me, that just as she had teased me about being a bookworm, she knew I’d never go in for a threesome. She stepped closer, reached behind me, and stole a slice of my apple before lifting it up toward my lips. “C’mon, take a bite.”

I pushed her hand away and slid my plate off the counter, away from her. I forced myself not to run from the room, but as I passed Sebastian, I averted my eyes. I couldn’t look at him.

I’d holed up in my room, listening, despite myself, for sounds from Tanya’s room, lost in the sinking depression caused by an aborted crush. Maybe half an hour later I heard the front door slam shut, but I didn’t know if it was Sebastian alone or both of them. I’d spent the rest of the night trying to understand what had happened, why he’d made that pass. Why he’d done something so crude and so obviously not going to happen. Or maybe he’d thought since I was Tanya’s roommate that I’d be up for such a thing.

I’d come up with ways to excuse his behavior, like perhaps he was fronting for his embarrassment. Furthermore, it wasn’t like we’d even been dating, so how could I judge him for sleeping with someone else?

I’d even wondered what would have happened if I’d said yes. I’d wondered that frequently over the following months, and sometimes had wished I had accepted. After all, clearly sex was something he valued more than intellectual discourse. All those conversations we’d had, that slow build of shared intimacy, had been worth nothing.

I didn’t know why he’d suggested a threesome, and maybe this night, here in England, was the time to ask, to gain perspective on a moment that had so profoundly impacted my life.

In some irrational way, I’d always seen that night as the beginning of my personal dark ages. Tanya ramped up her evisceration of my life and choices until I was afraid to venture from my room during the few hours I returned to the apartment. I was a coward, she said, even as she followed that up with little details about how Sebastian was in bed. Maybe she was exaggerating for effect, but those details made me flush with embarrassment. With curiosity.

Life had been a spiral down from there to missing the fellowship deadlines necessary to fund my dissertation research and being scolded by my advisor to having to double down with TAing and an outside, part-time job waiting tables to save up enough money to fund myself. Now, here I was in London, determined to prove myself, to complete my research even if I was the only one who cared.

And here
he
was—in a city of millions, in the unlikeliest of places, of course, I’d run into
him.

I was getting my PhD in English; I knew all about symbolism and foreshadowing. I understood about themes and the way story comes back around. If that night had been the beginning of my dark ages, and this trip to London my chance to come back, then he fit in too. I’d grown so much this last year. I was no longer the naive and romantic student, and Sebastian was a challenge I had to meet.

But in what way?
All sorts of wild and ridiculous plans filled my head, but only one seemed to fit the thematic arc of my life.

A
T TEN TO
five, I retrieved my bag from the locker I’d stashed it in and slid my computer and notebook inside. Despite the mental distraction of seeing Sebastian again, it had been a productive day for research. Although, in some ways, productivity was undefinable. I was like Alice down the rabbit hole, or lost down an infinite number of rabbit holes.

Today, I’d been researching Anne Gracechurch’s publisher again and had determined to the best of my knowledge that James Mead, the other author I was researching, seemed to exist only as the author of three books. Although I had diligently pursued the other seventeen James Meads I’d found listed in various registries, I could find no further documentation of his existence .

But as much as people say writing style, syntax, is like a fingerprint, merely analyzing the text of a Mead work and a Gracechurch work side by side, or fed through a computer program (as I had), wouldn’t be enough for my dissertation. Not in the cutthroat world of academics. Not if I wanted a tenure-track position in the future, or at least the option to pursue one. For that, I needed proof. I needed at least one more link other than the fact that they had shared a publisher a good portion of writers at the time had also used.