Author: Tiffany Reisz

Griffin tossed his shirt over the back of a chair.

So moved by the gift, Michael could barely speak. It took a few seconds to gather the words up.

“Thank you, Griffin,” he whispered. “It’s awesome.”

He’d never had a sketchbook so obviously expensive and high quality.

Shrugging, Griffin unbuckled his belt and pulled it off. The sight of the black leather belt in Griffin’s hands…Griffin shirtless, his usually perfect hair slightly mussed from the flight…Michael suddenly found it nearly impossible to take a full breath. He kept inhaling and forgetting to exhale.

Griffin stood right in front of him. If a bomb had gone off out in the hallway, Michael still wouldn’t have been able to wrench his eyes away from the flat plane of Griffin’s hard stomach.

“I liked ‘sir’ better.” Griffin tilted his head, raised his eyebrow and looked at Michael.

Michael could only blush.

“You’re welcome, Mick.” Griffin stepped away and sat on the edge of his bed, the belt still in his hands.

“It’s really nice. I’ll go, um…draw.” Michael started to back toward the door.

“Have fun…drawing.” Griffin gazed at him without smiling, without irony, without even the hint of amusement on his face or sculpted lips. In a gesture that seemed both mindless and calculated, Griffin pulled the belt taut between his hands.

“Okay…good night, Griff. Thanks again. You know, for everything.”

Griffin finally smiled but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“’Night, Mick.”

Michael turned around and headed for the door. He could do this. He could leave. He was going to leave and go to bed. He was going to keep his mouth shut and not say anything because he always kept his mouth shut and he never said anything. He never asked for what he wanted, never confessed what he needed. That’s how it was and how it would always be.

On the threshold of Griffin’s bedroom, Michael stopped as if he’d run into an invisible wall. Slowly he turned back around.

Griffin still sat on the end of his bed, leather belt in hand, watching him.

“Um…Griffin?”

* * *

Suzanne stirred and sat up straight. What the hell? She rubbed her face and looked around. Dammit, she’d fallen asleep in Father Stearns’s rectory. Søren’s rectory, she reminded herself. If her father had been a rapist, she wouldn’t want any part of his name, either.

Raising her wrist into a patch of moonlight she checked the time—3:53 a.m. Søren hadn’t been kidding when he’d said explaining what Nora Sutherlin was like would take all night. He’d regaled her with story after story of her youth at Sacred Heart…how she’d once asked a nun if she wore holy underwear; how she’d sprained her ankle on a hiking trip after a boy shoved her after she called him a cocksucker for kicking his little sister; how the community service the judge imposed on her for stealing cars changed her from an angry little monster of a teenage girl into a compassionate young woman who wept in his arms when her favorite homeless-shelter resident died of a drug overdose.

“I think I’d like her,” Suzanne had said, smiling into the empty fireplace. “Wonder if she’d like me.”

“Knowing Eleanor and considering you’re investigating me, she’d likely make a pass at you in the first five minutes after meeting you and threaten your life in the next.”

After all their talking, Suzanne came to one single conclusion about Father Stearns—he wasn’t the enemy. She still didn’t know what the possible conflict of interest was and it did concern her. But no way was he a sexual predator. She felt the truth of that in her heart.

Even this stupid situation she found herself in testified to his inherent decency. She’d fallen asleep after hours of talking and one very potent glass of red wine. She’d woken up on his sofa with a blanket over her with her clothes on and her shoes off.

Overhead she heard the squeak of hardwood. She needed to go home, would go home—right now. But she couldn’t just leave without telling him goodbye and thanking him for the blanket. He’d admitted he sometimes had trouble sleeping and usually worked in his upstairs office until dawn. Suzanne folded the blanket, slipped on her shoes and nervously made her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor. At the end of the hallway she saw a pale light spilling onto the floor from an open door. Walking loudly to alert him of her presence, Suzanne came to the end of the hall and inhaled sharply.

Not his office…his bedroom. Next to his four-poster bed, dressed in pristine white linens, Søren stood with his back to her. She saw his Roman collar on the table next to the bed. Watching him, Suzanne froze, unable to move, unable to look away as he slowly unbuttoned his cuffs and let his shirt slide off his arms.

Never in her life had she seen a man with a more exquisite body…every inch of his back rippled with lean muscle, his biceps were ridged with sinewy veins. The long line of his spine was a canyon she wanted to traverse with her lips again and again. She could live and die happy in that broad expanse of smooth skin between his arching shoulder blades. Her hands itched to trace the curve of his rib cage, her tongue ached to taste the nape of his neck. Her fingers tingled, her nipples tightened and liquid heat gathered deep in her stomach.

“Suzanne, are you planning on standing in the hallway all night staring at me? Or are you coming in?”

Part II

Six Weeks Later

16

If he kept his eyes closed and she didn’t talk, he could probably go through with it. His hand slid under her silk blouse and stroked the soft skin of her stomach. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck while her hands roamed down his chest. With his eyes shut tight, his body started to respond to the press of her hips against his and the warmth of her curves. She released an amorous sigh as he started to push her skirt up.

“This might be more comfortable in my bed, Wesley.”

Wesley exhaled and opened his eyes. One sentence from her and the moment shattered. He shouldn’t have stopped kissing her mouth. Then she wouldn’t have been able to talk.

Sitting up in the backseat of his car, he ran his hands through his hair, and rubbed his forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Bridget asked as she tugged her skirt back down. “You didn’t have to stop. Just saying we should probably finish somewhere other than in the car.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Wesley didn’t finish the sentence as he could think of no true words that wouldn’t hurt her feelings.

“Just what?”

He heard the edge in her voice and sighed.

“Just…not ready.”

As he knew they would, the words not  ready inspired an eye roll and an unhappy crossing of her arms over her chest.

“Wes, we’ve been going out for two months. Two months. My last boyfriend and I had sex our second date. You and me? Two months and you won’t even let me touch you.”

“I like taking things slow. I’m…” He stopped and considered telling her the whole truth. But the whole truth would involve talking about certain things—and one certain person—he had zero desire to talk about. “Old-fashioned.”

“Old-fashioned. All right. I can accept that. Maybe. Can you at least give me an idea when an old-fashioned type like you would be ready to have sex with his girlfriend?”

He turned his head and gazed at Bridget. Such a beautiful woman—dark hair with blond highlights, tall and slender, a stunner, as his dad would say; a stunner seven years older than him.

“You’re Dad’s secretary. I think it’s a bad idea for us to be involved.” A lame excuse. His Dad had been thrilled to see him and Bridget flirting. He’d practically ordered Wesley to ask her out.

“If that’s what it is, then break up with me and get it over with. Stop screwing around with my feelings.”

Break up? For some reason those two words that he should have dreaded sounded not like a death knell to him but like freedom. Break up—maybe they should.

“Okay,” he said, nodding.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’ll break up. You’re right. I’m an ass for being like this. It’s complicated and I don’t really want to go into it. But you’re totally right.”

Bridget’s brown eyes widened.

“I didn’t say I wanted us to break up. I only meant—”

“Then why—”

“Why are you being like this?” she demanded. “We’re good together. At least I thought we were.”

“But you complain the entire time about us not moving fast enough. Obviously you don’t think we’re good together.”

“I think we could be. Wes…” She held up her empty hands.

His stomach clenched into a tight fist of guilt. If Bridget felt even a fraction of the misery he felt that day that Nora—

No. He wasn’t going to think about Nora. He’d gone all day without thinking of Nora and he wasn’t about to let her creep back into his thoughts. He and Bridget and their problems had nothing to do with Nora or what he felt for her. Felt—past tense.

“Can we—” he began and stopped. He’d meant to say, Can we talk about this tomorrow? But he knew he had to go through with it, get it over with. Bridget at least deserved the truth. Not the truth that he was still a virgin. That wasn’t why he couldn’t go through with it with her. That might even be the least of all the reasons.

“Can we what?”

Wesley took a deep, steadying breath and met Bridget’s eyes through the dark.

“I’m in love with someone else. And I can’t have sex with you because I’ll be thinking about her the entire time, and you don’t deserve that.”

For a long time Bridget said nothing. She didn’t even look at him.

“Who?” She finally spoke.

Wesley laughed then, a miserable, tired laugh.

“Ever heard of Nora Sutherlin?”

Bridget’s jaw dropped. “That crazy writer?”

Wesley nodded. She stared at him a long moment before shaking her head and throwing open the car door.

“Dump me if you want to dump me.” She grabbed her purse from the front seat. “But at least be man enough to tell me the truth.”

Bridget’s high heels clicked across the concrete the short distance from her driveway to her house. He heard her screen door open and fling itself shut. Wesley crawled from the backseat into the front of his father’s spacious Cadillac and turned the car on. Taking Versailles Road he headed out toward the farm. He hated this drive at night. Too long, too dull, too easy to let his mind wander places it didn’t need to go. The small castle some weirdo had built his wife twenty years ago constituted about the only thing of interest on this stretch of road. Wes glanced at the castle on the right. Yeah, still there. He kept driving.

The entire way home Wesley berated himself for how badly the evening turned out. Bridget…she was great. Smart, beautiful, older—he liked that. A year and three months living with a woman in her early thirties had made Wesley nearly allergic to girls his age—their drunk texting, their obnoxious Facebooking, their Ugg boots and their wide-eyed flirting. Nora didn’t wear Ugg boots. Or play on Facebook. Or drunk text. She wore black leather boots with straps and zippers. She swore like a sailor, drank like a fish, fought like a man—literally. He’d watched her box once and she KO’d her sparring partner—a retired featherweight boxer named Bruce—in three rounds.

And Nora didn’t flirt with anybody. “Flirting’s for people who don’t mean it, Wes,” Nora had once said. “I seduce.”

Dammit…he’d just broken up with Bridget and here he was thinking of Nora. Again. As always. As he had every single day since moving back to Kentucky. He’d never told his parents about Nora—just said he’d decided he missed the farm too much. His mom had bought it. His dad had been more suspicious. Of course, he’d been something of a zombie those horrible weeks after Nora kicked him out of their house. He’d finished out the semester in a daze, crashing on his friend Josh’s couch and staring at his cell phone waiting for Nora to call and say she’d made a mistake, that she wanted him home with her again.