And when Brian exited his shower, drying himself off, he didn’t feel clean.
In fact, he felt as if fate had burned a hole through his heart, and he’d never be whole again.
CHAPTER13
Despite having grownup in the halls of the university, Brian had never truly felt at home there. His father had been more than hurt that he had not chosen to study at his place of employment, like his sister had.
You never do what you are supposed to!His father cursed, his face pink and his accent slipping through.
That was the crux of everything, though, wasn’t it?
A good son lived up to his father’s expectations, made his family proud. He didn’t run in the other direction or shy away from those expectations, seeking out a different path.
Which is exactly what Brian had done, and up until this point he’d been satisfied in his decision... hadn’t he?
With his father’s current predicament, and Mercury clearly in retrograde, he wasn’t sure.
He skirted past the broad-shouldered athletes and fashionable young students that crowded the faculty offices in his father’s hallway.
Teaching was a noble profession, his father would say, and teaching at the college level had afforded his family a comfortable life, even if it meant his father was buried in his work for most of his childhood.
He was truly like the Irish Indiana Jones, constantly searching for the next great find he could exploit and put on display, while balancing a myriad of queries for grants and funding to keep the Leehan name on the university and an asset to the school for years to come.
And in the last several years, the library seemed to be skirting by on his father’s insistence, but Brian knew his concern that once he was gone, it would fall unless someone—namely his eldest child and only son—took the reigns to bring it back full circle.
Brian pulled out his key, sighing as he entered the stuffy cubicle his father called an office. Though the library itself was rather large, his father’s office was barely big enough to fit his desk, chair, and two stocked bookshelves. The place was a disaster, papers strewn about in haphazard piles among books, sticky notes, and empty coffee cups.
He slid the key back in his pocket as he made a beeline for what was supposed to be his father’s desk, but which had no visible beginning and end. He grabbed the laptop, complete with its sticky notes about contacting the coordinator for the latest exhibit, some scribbles about an artifact, or more accurately a McGuffin, known as a diviner.
Brian searched for the papers Tellulah had informed him their father needed, breathing a heavy sigh as he knew it would be a while. He’d have to sift through everything on the man’s desk to find what he was searching for. So he pulled up a spot in his father’s chair, laptop set in his lap, and painfully went through each and every one. When he’d finally garnered everything he needed, it was nearing five o’clock.
He grabbed one of his father’s leather bags, sliding the laptop and the papers in. As he left the office, traipsing down the hallway, he expected to see a handful of students occupying the study cubicles at this hour, but what he saw instead nearly made him drop his father’s bag onto the dark blue carpeted floor.
Because browsing the back of the rare books where his father’s office was closest to, washer.Athena stood there in nothing more than a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt, but she still looked like an absolute Goddess, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulder in waves as she focused her gaze on the bookshelves in front of her.
Brian’s heart raced at the sight, and it took him a moment to remember to breathe. Just as he attempted to muster up the nerve to speak to her, to run up to her and tell her he never thought he’d see her again, a man came up to flank her. He was tall, broad-shouldered and well-toned if the definition of his biceps practically rippling out of his black tee shirt were any indication, and he possessed a darkness in his features that would have melted the polar ice caps.
How could he compete withthat?
No, Brian knew some things were too good to be true, and some things were better left alone. But as he cleared his throat, shaking off the thoughts, a woman’s voice interrupted him.
“Excuse me, but don’t you have a book on mythological ritual practices in your rare book collection?”
At that moment, Athena and the man turned to face him, and her silver-grey eyes twinkled with amusement, a slow smile turning up at the corners of her lips.
Brian fought to look away from Athena’s steady gaze, which made his entire body feel like it was on fire, despite being in the middle of a pleasantly air-conditioned library.
Regrettably, he looked away, if only to answer the dark-haired woman in front of him who had mistaken him for the staff.
“Oh, uh... I don’t work here. I—”
“You were just coming from Professor Leehan’s office, though...” she said with a confused look.
“Of course, um... there’s a reason for that, you see—”
Athena took a step closer, then another, until she was only mere inches away.
“Callie, meet Brian,” she said with a smile, and Brian could not help the blush that flourished in his pale cheeks.
