Chapter 4
CECE
T he beer was blessedly cold. After running errands and getting my mom and daughter back home, the frosty drink was exactly what I needed to unwind some of the tension from my shoulders.
I knew it wasn’t the girly thing to do. I should be drinking a vodka soda or a fruity cocktail. That was not my style. Sometimes but not tonight. I needed a beer and I didn’t care who thought what. I could drink whatever the hell I wanted.
I sat alone at a table tucked into the far corner of the bar, The Library.
It didn’t even dawn on me how clever the name was.
Whoever had named it had clearly been a smartass.
Someone who was helping out the college kids that were terrible liars.
How could anyone be bothered by students hanging out at The Library ?
No one would realize the two words were capitalized.
I couldn’t help but smile faintly at the play on words.
I looked around the place. It was clean.
Not quiet but not loud. There was music playing loud enough to provide some cover for conversations and to give the place a bit of an upbeat vibe.
When my eyes landed on a mural painted on the wall, I almost burst into laughter.
It looked like a library. The artist had done a 3D rendering with bookshelves and a table complete with one of those green reading lamps.
The floors were clean, with no peanut shells or sticky substances.
It was like an adult bar without being too stuffy and lame. I dug it.
I exhaled, long and low before taking another drink.
After the day I’d had, I was amazed I’d made it through dinner without face-planting into a plate of lasagna.
Mom had insisted pasta was the answer to my bad day.
Unlike her body, my metabolism and pasta didn’t get along.
I loved pasta and pasta loved to sit right on my ample hips. But that didn’t keep me from indulging.
The Italian restaurant had been nice. The lasagna was good.
The bread was better. My two weaknesses.
The bread contributed to the slight pooch I would never be rid of.
I honestly didn’t care enough to worry about it.
I had made plenty of sacrifices in my life but I would give up my right arm before I gave up bread.
Mom also insisted I go out and relax. I used to feel guilty about leaving Sophie but my daughter was in bed.
My mom was perfectly capable of watching TV and keeping an eye on things.
And she would have called an Uber and forcefully pushed me into it and ordered the driver to take me to whatever hot spot the driver thought was suitable.
I was supposed to be blowing off some steam after that meeting earlier.
Dean Carver’s words had been on a running loop since I walked out of her office. You’re being given a rare opportunity. But you have to be smart. You have to be discreet. And you have to keep an eye on Professor Grady Stone.
What was I supposed to do with that?
Grad school was already a hell circus of caffeine, endless reading, and constant imposter syndrome.
I was not prepared to sprinkle spy games on top of that mindfuck.
I came here to get a degree. Make connections.
Maybe publish a paper or two. Not get wrapped up in whatever academic soap opera involved a tenured professor who may or may not be using his office hours for extracurricular activities.
Like he’d be the first. Hello? Wasn’t that exactly the fantasy so many young co-eds had? Fucking the naughty professor on his desk. Wearing short skirts and no panties while sitting in the front row. I had friends that did exactly that. Not good friends, but still.
My eyes drifted over to the tall drink of water that was now sitting at the end of the bar and sipping on a drink.
He was hot. Very rugged. I had obviously noticed the green eyes that landed on me the second I walked in the door, but I didn’t pay him any attention.
A man like that would never look at me. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t admire him from afar.
He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt. It was impossible not to notice the dark tan and toned arms. His dirty blond hair was a hot, sexy mess. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Or maybe just tussled with a young co-ed in the bathroom.
I pulled my gaze away when he looked my way. I didn’t want him to know I was staring. Although I had a feeling the guy was used to be stared at. He was a cross between a young Brad Pitt and a Hemsworth.
“Sex on a stick,” I muttered under my breath. Maybe in a different lifetime, a man like that could be mine. But not this one.
I was a red-blooded woman with eyeballs. Yes, I would absolutely climb that man like a tree and let him do whatever he wanted with me. And a man that looked like that probably had a lot of really good ideas. And the experience to pull it off.
Get it together, Cece. You don’t have time to drool.
Dean Carver had dropped a nuclear bomb on me like it was no big deal.
After mulling it over all afternoon, I finally understood what was really happening.
The dean wanted someone she could pressure into helping her.
Someone that needed the position and someone with things to lose.
She could have asked anyone to do the work, but she asked me.
I had no doubt the woman had dug into my file.
She knew I was a single mom without money. The bitch had leveraged it against me.
Grad school was difficult enough without being caught in the middle of some secret agent stuff.
I just wanted to learn, do my research, and maybe network with some future colleagues.
The last thing I wanted to do was spy and sneak around.
It wasn’t just the spying thing that made me uncomfortable.
Did I even want to work for someone who bangs his students?
I mean, how gross is that? Can’t get a woman your own age to dust off that old bone, Professor Stone?
I’d met plenty of archeologists over the last few years.
None of them made me think about sex. None.
Zero. I couldn’t imagine what young twenty-something would be interested in fucking a guy that was probably an old fossil himself.
I assumed it was all about the grades and a chance to get in on a dig.
Some women were willing to spread their legs for an A. Not me.
“Who are you, Professor Grady Stone?” I grabbed my phone off the table and quickly unlocked it. I didn’t even know what the guy looked like.
He was a big name in the field, sure, but not, like, Time Magazine cover big.
Just the kind of well-respected academic whose work people cited when they wanted to sound impressive.
He was probably one of those weaselly looking guys that spent way too much time with bones than people.
No, that wasn’t true because, according to Dean Carver, the guy was plowing students.
I was one Google image search away from putting a face to the warning label when I felt it. Women had a sixth sense. It was a scientific fact. And my sixth sense was screaming red alert.
I looked up and spotted the incoming annoyance.
I wasn’t scared or worried or anything like that.
It was more of an obnoxious disruption. There were three of them.
Backward baseball caps, polo shirts, that vague aura of Axe body spray and misplaced confidence.
They sidled up to my table like sharks who’d just caught a whiff of chum.
By chum, I mean me and my very basic strawberry shampoo and the vanilla body spray I liked to wear.
I was sitting there minding my own damn business—not chumming the waters.
I knew for a fact I wasn’t giving off the “available” vibe.
I didn’t look like someone hoping to get picked up at the bar for a quick roll in the hay.
One of them didn’t even bother asking if the seat was taken.
He just dropped into the chair across from me and gave me a grin that made me want to pat him on his head and shoo him back to his mommy.
The poor boy had no idea. Yeah, they were probably a year or two younger than I was, but I had lived twice the life they had.
“Hey,” he said with what I’m sure he thought was a cute smile. “You must be tired.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Because you’ve been running through my mind all night.”
Oh God. We were doing this.
“Wow,” I said flatly. “Right out the gate with that one, huh? That pickup line is older than you.”
Another guy slid in beside me. “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together.”
I stared. “I’d put ‘F’ and ‘U’ together.”
They laughed like I’d just told the best joke at a frat party. One of them, the tall one with a neck that was doing way too much work for the size of his head, pointed at my beer. “Can I buy you another one?”
“I’m good.”
He tried again. “You got a name?”
“I do.”
“Angel,” the first one said.
“Angel?” I repeated.
“You look like a fallen angel.”
“Do you know what a fallen angel is?” I asked him dryly.
“That’s like, a sexy angel, right?” he said, his confidence wavering slightly.
“No.” I took a slow sip of my beer. “A fallen angel is a demon. Cast out of heaven for rebellion. Lucifer was a fallen angel.”
The three of them exchanged glances. I could practically see the gears grinding in their heads, trying to figure out if I’d just called myself a devil or if they’d accidentally called me one.
“So you’re saying you’re a rebel?” the one beside me tried.
“I’m saying you should probably stick to your god-awful, boring, cliche lines instead of theological pickup lines.”
The tall one laughed nervously. “Come on, don’t be like that. We’re just trying to be friendly.”
“Friendly would be leaving me alone to drink my beer in peace.”
I didn’t want to move tables. I didn’t want to escalate anything. I just wanted them to go back to whatever keg they’d crawled out of and let me think in peace.
“Look,” I said, keeping my voice cool. “I’m flattered. Truly. But you’re wasting your time. I’m finishing this beer and heading home.”
“Are you married?” I noticed the pencil neck check out my tits. Why did guys do that?
“Nope, but my kid probably wishes I was,” I replied calmly.
“You have a kid? Want another one?” The punk sitting across from me was trying so hard to be sexy.
“No,” I said sharply. “I want to be left alone. Go away. Kids like you could never satisfy someone like me.”
“Oh, come on,” the first guy said. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
My mouth opened, ready to deliver the kind of dressing-down that would make his ancestors feel ashamed, but I didn’t get the chance.
Someone grabbed him by the collar and yanked the kid right out of the chair. If he hadn’t been talking two seconds ago, I would have believed he was nothing but a rag doll.
“What the fuck?” Pencil Neck asked but made no move to help his buddy.
I really couldn’t pay much attention to the squawking frat boys. My gaze was focused on the brick wall of a man manhandling the kid that called me a bitch. A very large, very angry man. It was the guy that had been at the bar and he was even hotter up close.
Hot damn.