Provocative (Tempting Book 3) (11 page)

“I’ve got on a very good pair of Spanx,” Adele deadpanned.

Not the right answer. Mary narrowed her eyes. “So what do you do, Adele? Or are you a stay-at-home girlfriend?”

It might have been clearer if Mary had outright called her a gold digger.

Adele clenched her teeth, and I could practically see all the things that she wanted to say stamped all over her face. Lots of F words. “I’m finishing up my degree. So no, I’m not working right now.”

“Ah,” Lisa interjected, flashing an uncomfortable look at Mary. “Your Masters?”

Fuck.

Fucking fuck fuck fuck. Adele cleared her throat and then took a sip of her wine. I tossed back the whiskey that Bonnie had brought to me.

“No, my Bachelors.”

Silence.

Everyone in the room seemed to stop talking at the same time.

“Oh,” Lisa said slowly. “Well, that’s wonderful.”

“I took some time off to work full time. It put me behind by a couple years.”

It was a weak excuse, and Mary flicked her eyes between me and Adele. I smiled at her, trying my damndest to look unconcerned, but bombs were going off in my head. Massive explosions that were making my ears ring and my blood pound.

If they asked where she attended, we were so screwed.

“Adele, sweetie, you haven’t seen the house yet,” Bonnie said from behind us. “Would you like a tour?”

I exhaled quietly when Adele walked off with her.

We were idiots for not expecting that her schooling might come up. Stupid, fucking idiots.

Mary and Lisa walked off to talk to their husbands. Jonathan started saying something about the Patriots. But I didn’t hear a word.

And when Adele and Bonnie came back in the room about fifteen minutes later, I gave her a quick look and then turned my back to get another drink.

“
Y
our home is beautiful
,” I said to Bonnie as I tried not to dissect the way Nathan had looked away from me so quickly after we returned from the tour.

“It’s been in my family for sixty years,” Bonnie replied with pink in her cheeks. “I grew up here, inherited it after my parents died.”

I was nodding, but not really listening. Nathan had turned his back to where we stood just by the hallway’s threshold. He’d seen me come back, but he made no move to come to my side, to chat a little more with Bonnie. What the fuck?

“Adele?”

“Hmm?” I turned to Bonnie.

“I asked about your parents,” she said, her gray eyebrows drawn together. “Do they live in Boston?”

“Oh.” I turned my attention decidedly away from Nathan. “They live about forty minutes away.” It was all I could say about them, because it wasn’t like we got together for rousing Sunday dinners or some shit. I searched for some way to change the conversation and spied a family photo on the wall. “Your family?” I asked, with a nod of my head to the cherry frame.

Bonnie’s face brightened with pride. “Yes. Four sons. Ten grandchildren, with two more on the way.” She was absolutely lit up, like a sunbeam behind her eyes. “I thought being a mom was the best thing to happen to me.” She turned to me, pushing me gently with her elbow. “Turns out, being a grandmother is even better.”

My stomach twisted. Would I have felt the same way about our child? I snuck a glance at Nathan, whose broad back was all I saw. What did he think, surrounded by his married colleagues—with many of them, I was sure, raising kids and settling into their
Leave it to Beaver
existences?

“Let’s rejoin your beau,” Bonnie said, seeming to take notice of how my attention was distracted. I gave her a grateful smile as she led me back to where Nathan stood, surrounded by a few of his colleagues and their wives. She slid her arm in the crook of her husband’s offered one and I felt another little twist, because Nathan acted as if I wasn’t even there.

“How’s Pippa?” Lisa asked that twat-face, Mary.

Mary took a sip of her wine, as if she was enjoying holding us all in suspense over whoever the hell Pippa was. “She qualified at the county gymnastics,” she said. “So we’ll be traveling to D.C. for the next phase of qualifications.”

“Oh, wow!” Lisa exclaimed, the most personality I’d seen from her all night. “We’re hoping Madison will take a liking to gymnastics in the next couple of years. I do love those outfits.”

Realizing that I had nothing to offer to the conversation, I turned my attention to the table with canapes and had just shoved one into my face when Mary’s voice called to me.

“What about you, Adele? Is a family on your horizon?”

What the fuck kind of question was that? For one, what did that even mean—on my horizon? And for two, did she mean to imply that I couldn’t have a family without children?

I swallowed the cracker and cheese and took the last sip of my wine. “Well, I’m only in my twenties. My decisions don’t much go beyond what I’m going to do for the day, much less five or ten years from now.” Beside me, Nathan shifted but I didn’t look at him because Mary’s gasp at my answer was loud enough to cause me to look directly at her.

“Ten years?” Mary asked aghast, as if I’d just told her I took great delight in torturing puppies. “Well, that would put Nathan at, what, forty-five years old? Assuming that you two eventually marry.”

“Assuming,” I said sweetly, wishing I had another glass of wine. “Nathan and I haven’t talked a lot about the diamond rings and white picket fence and golden retriever life.” I glanced at him, my smile tight. The fact that he wasn’t saying a damn thing right now was causing my face to heat. He made no move to touch me, to give me a reassuring smile. Not even a blink in my direction.

“Oh. I guess I assumed that, since you’ve been together nearly a year—you said?” Mary asked, like she couldn’t quite remember—but I knew she fucking did. “I assumed you’d be talking marriage and children. But I guess, since you’re so young, that must be a little much for you.”

My stomach was like a wrung-out rag. Twisting, aching. “Well, you know what assuming does, right?” I asked, my anger at the situation causing me to want to bite back at Mary and her condescension.

“Adele.” It was the one word he’d said in the last fifteen minutes, but he said it with such admonishment that I clamped my lips shut instinctively.

It was all I needed to hear from him, and I realized my presence was no longer welcome in such
polite
company.

“Bonnie, can you tell me where the restroom is?” I asked, the sugar back in my voice.

* * *

O
n the car
ride home two hours later, I kept my gaze firmly forward, not sparing a glance at Nathan. The rest of the night, he’d pretty much ignored me. If that hadn’t set the steel in my back, the way he hadn’t seemed the least bit sorry for it had. He hadn’t touched me once after Bonnie steered me away from the conversation to give me the tour. It was like he was depriving me of it for some reason—punishing for me for whatever had set him on edge.

He had been embarrassed of me. I rewound the night and replayed it over and over, trying to imagine what it was that had made him suddenly pretend as if I didn’t exist.

Not once in our relationship had Nathan acted like he was embarrassed of me—not a single time. He’d only kept our relationship from his father for the same reasons my family was in the dark—because no matter how we framed it, he’d always look like the professor who had seduced his student.

Funnily enough, it really had been the other way around.

When Nathan pulled into the drive, I was out of the car before he was, taking quick steps to the door and sliding my key into the lock before he could join me and either continuing ignoring me or say something to piss me off.

I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a pop from the fridge. As I brought it to my lips, Nathan passed in front of the door. He glanced at me—but it was as if he looked right through me. He turned, emotionless, and walked into his study.

I set the can of pop down harder than I should have, causing a mess on the counter. My first instinct was to clean up the droplets of soda that peppered the counter but then I thought, fuck it.

This house wasn’t mine, in any way. It was as if I was living in a hotel, built by Nathan and his dead wife. I didn’t have a single thing besides the clothes in his closet that proved I lived here. The mess was the only acknowledgement that Adele was here.

He’d never been embarrassed of me—until he was in a room full of Susie Homemakers and their Accomplished Husbands. Sure—I didn’t fit the mold of a professor’s girlfriend, but that had never seemed to bother him before.

I wiped a drop of soda off my dress, remembering how Nathan had asked me to change out of it before we went to the party. And after the comments from Mary about the dress and Nathan’s silence following, I just wanted to rip the damn thing off and wash away the embarrassment that lingered on my skin.

Twenty minutes later, after cleaning off the makeup that suddenly made me feel cheap, I turned the shower water hot—hotter than I usually allowed— as I stripped out of my clothes. Again, I thought to carefully pick them up and place them in the hamper, but defiance caused me to drop them on the middle of the bathroom floor, so Nathan couldn’t ignore them as easily as he ignored me.

Scrubbing at my skin with the loofah, I ground my teeth. In high school, people had assumed I was a slut just because the boys liked me. That stigma had followed me into college. I thought I could shake it off the older I got, but after a night like tonight, in a room full of mothers and wives, I realized I didn’t fit in, not with anyone—not anywhere—not even in my boyfriend’s life.

I sighed as I massaged the shampoo into my scalp, feeling like I was washing out a pound of hairspray and uneasiness. So consumed by the feel of the hot water sluicing over my body, I didn’t realize Nathan had stepped into the shower with me until his hands slid around my stomach.

My instinct was to settle against his touch, so I did for just a moment. He hadn’t touched me all night and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed such a simple gesture until his chest met my back.

My traitorous body relaxed and an ember lit low in my belly when his hand slid up my abdomen to cup one breast. I knew I shouldn’t give in to him so easily—but sex had always been how we found our way back to one another. As his thumb brushed against one of my nipples, a sigh escaped my lips. Another hand traveled south, to the apex of my legs and I opened them more fully.

I shouldn’t want this—want him. But no matter the anger that coiled around me, Nathan was my undoing—always.

Settling against him, my head dropped back to his shoulder. And that’s when I smelled the bourbon on his breath. Smelling it was an awakening, because Nathan hardly ever drank enough for me to smell it.

Instantly, I pulled away from him and turned so we were facing. “Are you drunk?”

“I drove us home,” he said flatly.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Nathan’s eyes were so dark then, like someone else had taken possession of his body. I crossed my arms over my chest, as if it would protect me. “I had some bourbon in my study.”

“Define ‘some.’”

“Does it really matter, Adele?” he sighed, as if I exasperated him.

Well, the feeling was fucking mutual.

“It does when you’ve spent all night ignoring me. Did you come home and make yourself get drunk enough to work up the nerve to touch me?”

He shook his head, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes. “I didn’t ignore you. Don’t act like a child.”

I clenched my teeth together. “You treated me like I was one—a misbehaving child who you regretted bringing to meet your colleagues.”

“Come on, let’s just shower and go to bed.” He reached a hand for me but I stepped back.

“No,” I said firmly, putting a finger against his chest. “You don’t get to touch me in private after spending an evening in public, treating me like I was invisible—like you were so embarrassed by me that you couldn’t even acknowledge my presence until I was about to say something to that bitch.” I pulled my hand away from him and raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to shower alone.”

Despite my anger at him, I was grateful that he didn’t push me, force me from his shower. He stepped out with a sigh loud enough to echo in the house.

I stood under the shower head until I was sure he was asleep. We’d need to have a talk, but not when he was lit up on bourbon and my wounds were still so raw.