Chapter 1 #3
“That’s what I thought. Have a nice day.
” She turned away because even what brief amount of amusement she gained from the interlude proved fleeting and she blinked back a fresh wave of tears.
Gathering her notes together, Meredith glanced at the schedule on her phone.
She held office hours in the afternoon and her schedule included two meetings with doctoral candidates to go over their theses.
Retrieving her purse, she felt the vibration of a second phone and sighed. She’d meant to leave it home when she came in for the early class, but some habits were impossible to break.
But I need to break them. Carrying the private phone, to which only Sebastian knew the number, was one such habit.
Her heart twisted and her lungs felt like they’d seized.
The hiccup in time couldn’t have lasted more than a bare few seconds and yet she wanted to curl into a ball and cry all over again.
Her fingers itched to unzip the inner pocket and pull the phone out. Any other day, she would have rushed to do so and asked him to hold on while she jogged across campus to her office. Once inside, she’d have locked the door, settled down behind her desk and—Stop it.
Just stop. Slinging the purse over her shoulder and stuffing the last of her things into her backpack, she refused to answer the phone.
It wasn’t any other day. Last night, after blogs broke the news of his ‘secret’ engagement, all the while another news channel featured his arrival at a posh event in Los Angeles, Meredith found she couldn’t do it anymore.
Five years of passionate interludes when he could steal away from his life, of being at his beck and call and never knowing when his security would show up to smuggle her away, it was too much.
Under her arm, the phone kept vibrating.
It would pause for a few seconds and then resume.
A brisk wind cut through her thin sweater and she cursed herself for forgetting a jacket.
This late into autumn, winter was a promise delivered at sundown.
Though today it felt colder than when she’d walked to her class.
She was frozen by the time she reached the building housing her office.
Bypassing the elevator, she jogged up the three flights of stairs in a vain attempt to alleviate her shivers.
The news forecasted a cold front moving into the area later in the day, but Meredith suspected it already arrived.
Exiting the stairwell on the third floor, she spotted Terry O’Connor leaning against the wall outside her office.
The retired soldier straightened the moment he caught sight of her and a look, akin to relief, rippled across his face.
“I missed you at your class and you took a different route to the office today.” Meeting her halfway down the hall, he tugged the backpack from her nerveless fingers and held out his hand for her keys.
“I didn’t realize.” Not really. She varied her routes depending on which lecture hall she needed to use, but they were all predetermined so Terry could track her as needed.
Trailing him to her office door, Meredith shivered with an unexpected dread.
The last time he’d shown up unannounced was after someone plunged a knife into Sebastian… “Did something happen?”
She’d made herself turn off the television the night before.
A clean break was better all the way around, but what if something happened afterward?
The attempts on Sebastian’s family continued to increase and worsened in recent months and, while he didn’t share the specifics, she was perfectly capable of reading in between the lines of news stories to speculate at what they didn’t say.
Terry unlocked her door and glanced inside her office before allowing her to enter. “Nothing’s happened, though I was instructed to pick up your detail today.”
Instructed? Meredith deposited her purse on the desk.
The crowded room boasted a variety of texts, some stacked ten and twelve deep on the floor next to her desk along with multiple white boards covered in equations.
To the untrained eye, it probably looked like a lot of gibberish—a fact Terry pointed out on more than one occasion.
Of course, he’d been to her office so many times at this point, the boards didn’t earn more than a brief glance. “By whom?”
Instead of answering, he secured her door and prowled around to the window overlooking the quad below. With two quick twists, he closed the blinds before turning to face her. “By our mutual friend. Did you misplace your cell phone?”
Relief swamped her. Their mutual friend. Sebastian sent Terry to check on her—most likely because she wasn’t answering her phone. If he’d called Terry, Sebastian was all right, at least physically. On the heels of her relief came resentment and its cousin, anger.
“No, I didn’t misplace my phone.” After circling her desk, she sat down then pulled her laptop out of the backpack. “I’m sorry he bothered you, but I am not planning on traveling anywhere. You don’t really need to be here.”
“I don’t mind hanging out. You’re good company and, if we’re not traveling, I can catch up on my reading.” He settled in one of her empty office chairs. “But you should check your phone.”
Booting up her laptop, Meredith mulled Terry’s advice, but didn’t respond to it.
Oddly, his presence and the crinkling of the newspaper he flipped open offered the most peculiar kind of comfort.
Bringing up the college webmail, she skimmed the contents of her inbox without reading it.
After several minutes of pretending to work and trying to ignore the insistent vibration in her purse, she retrieved the phone.
Forty-one missed calls and a fresh round of vibration.
She sighed. Bastian wouldn’t stop. “Terry, do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Her bodyguard—despite the years of acquaintance, it still struck her as odd that she had or needed a bodyguard—rose and folded his paper. “I’m going to the coffee cart on the first floor. Do you want anything?”
“A cappuccino would be lovely.” With about three fingers of butterscotch schnapps in it, but she wouldn’t ask no matter how good it sounded.
“You got it. Lock the door behind me. Don’t leave till I come back.” It was a familiar routine, but she nodded obediently and trailed him to the door. The vibration ended and quickly resumed. After locking up, she answered the call.
She couldn’t say anything.
“Meredith?” Pure masculine sweetness poured over honeyed rocks flavored his European accent. Her pulse raced and her hands began to shake. “Meredith? Are you there?”
Falling into old patterns helped no one, least of all her.
Be strong. Don’t tumble down this familiar path, no matter how passionate his response.
The man never failed to melt her past reason.
A band around her chest squeezed all the air out of her.
“I’m here,” she managed to push out past the lump in her throat, then swallowed with difficulty.
“What part of ‘we’re over’ are you not understanding? ”
Silence and then a whoosh of breath from his end. “All of it.” His words grew more clipped in rebuttal. “I am sending the plane for you. O’Connor will escort you to the airport and travel—”
“No.” She didn’t dare let him finish, since his words already weakened her.
Her pulse picked up at the mention of his plane and heat flooded through her body.
She couldn’t see him. Maybe it was the coward’s way out.
God knew he was a fantastic lover and when they were together—yes, he focused one hundred and ten percent of his attention on her.
No woman could withstand the sheer force of his personality and devotion.
But when they were apart? They were always apart. The time they did have together shortened repeatedly while the time in between visits elongated…
“Darling, listen to me. I promise, we will talk all of it out. I need to see you.” Music to her ears, but how many times had he said the same thing before?
Yet how many nights had she gone to bed alone, thousands of miles separating them and no one, not even her family, knew about the most precious relationship in her world?
“I said no, Bastian.” Gripping the phone tighter, she tried to calm her respiration. Anger, resentment, misery, and joy tangled together in her stomach. An icy cold sweat broke out on her skin.
“Meredith, I am not engaged. I understand the false story distressed you, but this is no different than all the others the last few years. Baseless speculation on the part of the press, their attempt to feed—”
“Actually…” She interrupted him before he went down the road of belittling her upset.
He wouldn’t mean to—he never meant to—but he would because he appeared to know better.
He lived in a different world, one she wasn’t even allowed to visit.
“It is quite different. This time I don’t want to understand.
I don’t want to pretend it’s all right you spend half your life gallivanting around the world, dancing, kissing, and in general allowing all those women to be with you… ”
His voice sounded tight when he snapped, “They are not important.” Impatience fractured his normally calm and playful reserve, a first in their exchanges.
“Can’t you understand?” She almost felt sorry for him, because he didn’t seem to see it.
Maybe he couldn’t—maybe his upbringing precluded understanding the role of ‘mistress.’ “They may not be important, but they have easy access to you. You’re not ashamed to be seen in public with them, and you certainly didn’t seem to be fending off their affections.
I teach math for a living, Sebastian. Maybe I don’t understand protocol and politics, but I understand one plus one.
Please respect my wishes, and leave me alone. ”
She hung up because if she didn’t, he might keep talking and her traitorous heart would have listened. As she swiped away the tears on her cheeks, the phone began to vibrate again. She depressed the power button and held it down until the phone silenced.
It was over.
The sooner they both accepted it, the better off they’d be.