Fake flame, p.7
Fake Flame, page 7
Sean sighed. “Darren, the woman doesn’t like peanuts. You oughta know that.”
Before Darren could respond, the dean joined them. “Professor Perry, Professor Campbell. Nice to see you getting along so well.” She glanced at Sean, and Eva jumped into socialization mode.
“Dean Treadwell, this is Sean Hannigan.”
Sean stuck his hand out and the dean shook it, giving him a contemplative look. “Lovely to meet you, Mr. Hannigan. Glad you could come to our little end-of-semester celebration.”
“I’m just happy to be where Eva is,” Sean said without an ounce of insincerity or guile. How did he do that? Eva was straight up bad at lying, even about small things. But here he was, making everyone—almost including her—believe that he thought she’d hung the moon.
Darren snorted again, which turned into a cough as the dean turned her gaze on him. “Dr. Perry, I’d like to speak to you about some possible changes in the music department for next year...” And with that, she drew him away as easily as a child towing a toy boat through the bath.
* * *
Sean chuckled as he watched the dean scalpel Darren away from Eva. “That woman’s good. I was afraid we’d have him on us like a barnacle all evening.”
Eva sighed and sipped her wine. “Yeah, he’s definitely not giving up. But I fear he’s also making everything look amicable enough that the dean will decide there’s no problem.”
“Can you let her know that it is a problem?”
Eva grimaced. “I’m afraid that if I bring it up again, it’s me that’ll look like the problem—too fragile, overreacting, the whole nine yards.”
Sean thought about something that’d happened to his eldest sister Erin a decade before. Not a perfect analogy to this situation, but all too close to it. An echo of the helpless rage he’d felt at the time rippled through him. “So we just have to keep on keeping on,” he said, placing a hand on the small of her back in a tiny show of possessiveness. The heat of her skin radiated through the silky fabric of her dress.
“I’m sorry you have to keep pretending like this,” Eva groaned.
“I’m not.” And I’m not really pretending, he didn’t add.
“Seriously? I’d think you would be eager to be shut of me by now,” she said.
Sean took a sip of his beer, playing for time. Was she kidding? “Why would I want to be shut of you?” he asked. “You’re fun to spend time with and easy on the eyes.” Especially in that clingy, sexy dress. The one he wanted to take off her. Maybe with his teeth.
“It’s that simple for you?”
He shrugged. “I’m a simple kind of guy.”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving his face. “But you’re not. Not by a long shot.”
Celia joined them then, her face alight with interest in one of the few strangers this evening would contain. “Eva, I’d heard you’d brought someone new,” she said, eyeing Sean with appreciation.
“Let me guess, Bill Ellers is maintaining his title as the faculty’s biggest gossip?” Eva nearly groaned. She supposed the focus on her was inevitable given the past couple of weeks, but she hated it. After battling her parents’ efforts to make her a reflection of themselves, she preferred either to be entirely unseen or to be able to manage how people perceived her. To be the subject of gossip was to have no control over her image and reputation.
Her colleague merely grinned and thrust a hand at Sean. “Celia Petrov. Russian studies.”
“Sean Hannigan. Fire and rescue,” he responded with a twinkle, shaking the woman’s hand.
“So it’s true? You turned my lighter into a date?” Celia looked positively gleeful.
“Oh, so the pink Bic was yours, huh?” Sean shot Eva a mischievous sideways glance and she wanted to drop into a hole.
“Indeed it was. I thought Eva’d taken up smoking like me, but instead she merely wanted to exterminate some vermin. Where is the weasel anyway?” She glanced around the room but didn’t seem to spot Darren.
“He’s already made his play to annoy Eva and was neatly removed by the dean,” Sean said.
“Good for her,” Celia said.
“I didn’t know you didn’t like Darren,” Eva said. In five years of being office neighbors with the Russian studies professor, she’d gotten to know and respect the woman, but they weren’t that close. That she’d have an opinion about Darren was a surprise.
Celia shrugged. “I didn’t really feel one way or the other about him until he pulled that stunt on the quad. If I’d found out about it before you, though? I honestly would have punched him in the head. I have a cousin whose ex proposed to her via the jumbotron at a Nationals game.”
“Ex, huh?” Sean looked amused.
“Yeah. As a result of being publicly put on the spot like that, he immediately became the ex. I have no patience with this kind of public pressure.”
“Good for them,” Eva murmured. It was nice to know that not only were there people in the world who felt the way she did, but one of them was occupying the office right next door.
At that moment, a utensil rang against a glass and the dean stepped up to a lectern set up at one end of the room. “Pray for brevity,” Eva muttered under her breath.
* * *
Sean had to say he was enjoying himself far more than he’d thought possible. But just being with Eva was rapidly becoming one of his favorite pastimes. If he could annoy that jerk Darren at the same time? Bonus.
As Eva’d predicted, the dean’s speech was short and to the point. She thanked the faculty for another great year, noted some of the achievements that had occurred, touched on admissions for the coming academic year and then told everyone to enjoy themselves. All in all, maybe five minutes. Go, Dean Treadwell.
After, it seemed like an awful lot of people wanted to come and say hi to Eva. He wasn’t sure if she was just popular with her colleagues—which wouldn’t surprise him—or if people were curious about his unfamiliar mug hanging around the place.
That wouldn’t be a surprise, either. He knew what novelty could do in terms of attracting attention. And it seemed that the news had spread about how they met. He fielded questions about the fire department, his schedule, their training—basically, anything to do with being on the squad. They seemed surprisingly interested in the answers. In his turn, he listened to linguistics professors talk about how many languages they knew, history professors about global events he’d never heard of and everybody on the real subject of the evening: university gossip.
When they finally broke away from the party, Eva looked wrung out and more than a little annoyed. “I’m so sorry,” she said as they approached his truck. “I thought for sure we could slip out a lot earlier than that.”
“Don’t be sorry. It was a new experience.”
“I should have known that having you there would mean you’d become the topic of the evening. We’re all like rats in a too-small cage. We know everyone else, know more than we want to about their lives and their work, and anything novel is like tossing feed into a fish pond: immediate feeding frenzy.”
Sean made a show of checking his body for injuries. “I seem to have come out without a scratch. Damn. I’m good.”
She swatted weakly at his arm as he opened the truck door for her. “Social carnage. The scars are invisible.”
He shut the door and thought about how to proceed with her as he rounded the truck’s hood and took his place beside her. Loosening his tie before he started the engine, he turned to her and said, “You really don’t have to take things all that seriously. I had fun tonight. It was as new to me as I was to them. It was interesting.” It was especially interesting to see some surprised faces when he made a reference to Dickens. Hey. Not just a pretty face, he’d wanted to say.
She swallowed, her throat convulsing as she stared through the windshield. “You sure?” she asked, her voice a tiny squeak. “Because I thought it was kind of awful. I felt like we were on display, that you were on display. And I hated that.”
He touched her chin, asking but not demanding that she turn to look at him. She responded, but not in the way he expected. She turned her face so that her cheek touched his fingers, an almost catlike caress. It made his heart rate kick up and a surge of desire arrow through his body. “I didn’t feel on display. I felt like your colleagues cared about you. That they were rallying around you. That they were interested in me because they cared about you.”
Her eyes finally lifted to meet his, her soft cheek moving away from his hand. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.” His voice sounded like gravel rattling through an iron pipe. “Anyway. Let’s get you home.”
Nine
Eva sat bolt upright in the passenger seat of Sean’s truck. She felt a little exposed and raw after having practically nuzzled his hand. But he was so solid, so kind and reliable, that she’d indulged in a moment of weakness before she even knew what she was doing.
At least his truck didn’t have an old-fashioned bench seat. She would have been tempted to slide next to him, to sit with their legs touching like he’d done with her in the banquette at the pub. How warm and near would he feel with just the thin fabrics of her dress and his suit pants, rather than two layers of thick denim? Would the heat from his leg actually scald her?
“That’s a very nice suit, by the way.” It was an inane statement, but at least it was neutral. The suit fit him so well it must have been tailored. With a physique like that, he would have looked like Herman Munster in an off-the-rack suit, but the jacket tapered nicely from his broad shoulders to his waist. She could only imagine what the pants looked like under that jacket.
Neutral? She thought his tailoring was a neutral topic? She was the one who was inane.
“Thanks. When my sister Caitlin got married, I was her best person. She insisted I get a good suit to stand up with her.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah, except she got an even nicer suit that was even better tailored than mine.”
“She got married in a suit?” His family seemed awfully traditional. A suit for a bride seemed out of character.
He shot her a sideways grin. “Yeah. Her wife, Nicole, wore a dress. There was some debate on either side about whether they’d both wear dresses or both wear suits or do the heteronormative thing. I think they finally decided on the dress and suit approach to appease my folks.”
“And did it?”
“Nah. They still had a litter of kittens apiece. So much for heteronormativity all the way around.”
A startled snort-laugh escaped Eva at that. “Are your parents better about their relationship now?”
He shrugged and tilted his head to the side. “It’s kind of a moving target. They wished Cait wasn’t gay, but they’re happy she’s in a loving relationship, but they wish if she wanted to get married that she’d marry a man because they think marriage is between a man and a woman...blah, blah. Being Catholic and not being able to have a ceremony in the church made it all the more complicated.”
Eva, raised with the occasional visits to Congregationalist churches on major holidays but nothing more in terms of a religious upbringing, boggled at the complicated nature of his explanation. “Are they upset that she didn’t get married in the church or that she couldn’t?”
“Both? I don’t know. I think my mother especially is pretty muddled about it. Like, she doesn’t want the church to recognize gay marriage, but she also loves her kid. It’s a mess.”
Sean’s seemingly easy acceptance of this didn’t quite tally with standing up for his sister at her wedding. There were more undercurrents in this situation than she would have suspected previously. And for someone who described himself as simple, Sean had quite the capacity for nuance. “You’re close with Caitlin?”
“Yeah. She and I are the youngest. There’s a five-year gap between her and Maeve, and she’s pretty tightly bunched with the Irish twins at the top of the leaderboard.”
“Irish twins? I’m not familiar with that term.”
“Erin and Bridget were born ten months apart. They were in the same year at school. Irish twins.”
“Oh,” Eva said, feeling a little like she’d just been swamped by a wave. She’d known families with more than one kid. Of course she had. But she’d never met someone with so many dynamics. She was drowning in novelty. Or maybe just drowning. She hadn’t really thought explicitly about how the various personalities of that many people could create complications upon complications. So many potential alliances and conflicts.
It was honestly a little scary to contemplate.
* * *
Pulling into Eva’s driveway, he wondered if he’d overwhelmed her with his family. She looked a little shell-shocked and pale.
Wait until she actually met them.
“Can I walk you to your door?” he asked, getting a recurrence of those first-time, first-date nerves he’d felt earlier in the evening.
“Um. Okay.” But when he went to open her door for her this time, she was already sliding down from the seat.
“Hey there,” he said, catching her waist as she dropped toward the driveway. “Those heels and this truck are a bad combo.” He should let her go now, shouldn’t crowd her.
He didn’t move. Her dress was so silky, and the curve of her waist fit so nicely in his hands. Her blue gaze was locked on his face. The moment stretched as he dragged air into his lungs.
A dog began to bark wildly, apparently from her house. She turned to look at her front door, breaking the spell of the moment between them. “Timmy,” she groaned.
“Timmy’s your dog?” His hands were still on her waist. He really should release her. But he still couldn’t seem to move. Her hands were on his biceps. When had that happened?
“Yeah. He’s very protective of me.”
“I think I like Timmy.” After all, they had the same mission.
“Do you want to meet him? Do you even like dogs?” There was a compelling vulnerability in her expression that made him want to scoop her up in his arms and carry her into her house.
“I love dogs. I’d love to meet Timmy.” I’d love to spend more time with you. Alone. No audience, no faking.
“Okay.” She seemed to realize that her hands were on his arms and also did not know how to get from next to his truck to her front door. Well, that made two of them.
Think, thickhead. He berated himself, then took a deep breath and moved her gently to one side so he could close the door to his truck. Then he offered her his hand as if they were fourteen. She took it with a tiny, secretive smile and led him to the front door of her house where the barking and scrabbling sounds grew louder.
“I’m here, Tim. Settle down,” she said as she turned the key in the lock and pushed the door inward. A small mass of silky white fur with black spots came barreling out, wiggling and barking and not seeming to know what he wanted to do with himself.
Honestly? Sean could understand where the pup was coming from. Eva made him want to wiggle and bark, too.
She squatted then and half petted, half massaged the little dog’s sides. He calmed at that, emitting a little doggy groan and looking at her with eyes of liquid love.
“Looks like you have the magic hands,” Sean said. Wow. He’d never considered that he might be jealous of a little spotted mutt before. He wanted those hands all to himself. On himself.
“He was hit by a car before I got him,” Eva said. “I think he still gets stiff and sore, so he likes his massages.”
“Aww. Poor pup.” Sean squatted and held out his hand for the dog to sniff. It took a couple of moments, as Timmy’s attention was squarely on Eva, but he finally noticed and gave Sean’s fingers a sniff and a lick. Sean stroked the dog’s silky chest, not wanting to rile him up again with more stimulating head pats. “He’s a sweet little thing.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely little but sometimes I think he believes he’s the size of my neighbor’s mastiff. He’s definitely more of a burglar alarm than anything like a guard dog.”
Since the dog was calm now, Sean stroked his silky, feathery ears, massaging those lightly in his hands. He got the groan of approval for his trouble. “Awww. Good boy. You’re just happy to see your momma home safe.” And I can absolutely relate.
* * *
Eva was in so much trouble. This sweet, handsome man had just run the social gauntlet for her, pretended to be smitten with her and now he was being lovely about her small, ridiculous dog?
She was going to have to google how to protect your heart because she was in grave danger of losing hers. She’d thought she knew what she was getting into—even though fake relationships in books always ended up with the couple together, this was reality. Her life wasn’t a trope; it was hers. She was in control. Or she’d thought she was.
Sean looked up from the dog to her, lines fanning out from his smiling eyes. “Oh, hey. My sister Caitlin thinks you should recommend some more books to me. Do you think you could?”
Could she? Like any reader, she loved nothing better than to recommend books. Her cheeks heated as she wondered whether he’d enjoy the sexy ones she loved best. “Um, sure. Why don’t you send me some of your favorites and I’ll be better able to tailor the recommendations.”
“I can do that.” He got to his feet then and she rose, too. They’d been crouched close together to pet Timmy and now they were practically nose to nose. His pupils were dilated, inky blackness spreading across the green. Timmy flumped onto her shoes and sighed, seemingly just content to have her home and incidentally pinning her in place. “I should probably head out and leave you in peace. But I admit I don’t really want to go,” he said.
