“No,” Wes resettled his backpack “Thank you.”
Rebecca sighed. “I was kind of hoping…maybe we could talk you into a second formula? You know, if we can’t figure out the first.”
Folding her arms, Meredith eyed the students. Every class always possessed at least one student who thought she’d change the rules just for them. “Sure, I can totally give you a second problem, however, you’d have to solve both for it to count.”
The color drained from Rebecca’s face. “I think we can stick to the first one.” Tugging on Wes’ arm, she led him from the lecture hall.
“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 andasked 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. Theirmutual 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 howpassionate 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?”
