The Lie(17)

“Sorry, did I embarrass you?” she asks as she shoves noodles into her mouth. She eats with gusto, no restraint, just eating for the pure pleasure of it and enjoying every bite. That gorgeous mouth…

Stop it.

“No, no,” I tell her, attempting to snap out of it. I reach for a beer then eye the door. It’s open, as it usually is when we’re working together. But even though I’m sure what I do in my office is my own business—every professor here seems to have a bottle of Scotch in their desk—I don’t want to rock the boat. I’ve only been here for two years, and people talk.

I get up and close the door. The click of the latch seems awfully loud in the room. I turn around, and she’s watching me curiously.

“You want some privacy?” she jokes, but there’s something in her voice, a warble that tells me she might be nervous.

I sit back down and raise my beer at her. “I don’t want anyone to get on my back about drinking in my office, let alone with my research assistant.”

“Why not?” she asks saucily. “Too scandalous?”

I give her a tight smile, ever conscious of my wedding ring. “Something like that.” I point my beer at her, and even though I’m starting to question if drinking with Natasha is a good idea, I say, “Now, let’s say cheers to a productive Friday night.”

She quickly wipes her hands on her jeans, swallows her bite of food, and clinks her beer against mine. “To a wild and crazy night.”

But of course things don’t get wild and crazy, not with us. We do work, at least for the first two hours—her on her laptop, flipping through books, and me on my computer, typing like a madman as I usually do around her. Having her in my office is the greatest motivator to getting my book done. She’s practically a muse.

But eventually, when the both of us have noodles and three beers in our bellies, and I’ve brought out the bottle of Scotch from the secret stash in my own desk, the work slows to a crawl.

“So,” I say, leaning back in my chair and kicking my feet up on the desk. “You never told me what you were like when you were growing up. High school. That whole thing. Tell me about Natasha.”

She takes a sip of Scotch from the bottle and puts it back on the desk. Then she leans back in her chair and puts her feet up on the desk, mirroring me. I can’t help but smile.

“I’ll tell you my past if you tell me yours,” she says, eyeing me slyly.

“Deal.”

“Okay,” she says, clearing her throat. “I grew up in Los Feliz. That’s in Los Angeles. My dad is French, and he married my mother, an American, after I was born. I was actually born in France though, Marseilles, which I got to visit a few years ago. Pretty cool place. But anyway, I know for sure it was a marriage out of necessity cuz my mom got knocked up. I’m pretty sure I’m the last thing she wanted, but anyway. I promise this isn’t a sob story. I don’t care if I was wanted or not. But I know my dad loved me. He was a cinematographer.”

“Ah,” I say. It makes sense now.

“Yeah, and he would make me watch so many films when I was younger. Like, so many. All the classics. All Hitchcock, all Preminger. Lots of foreign films, too. He was obsessed with Ingrid Bergman.” Her smile fades a bit and her voice drops. “Anyway, he left when I was ten years old. Fell in love with a younger woman. Maybe he was trying to emulate Roberto Rossellini, I don’t know. He moved back to France. And my mother became a single mom. She did not like that. Her self-esteem problems multiplied, and they were already pretty bad.” She shakes her head to herself, her eyes taking on a faraway look. She sighs and grabs the bottle of Scotch. “My mother is quite the character. You’d hate her. Sometimes I think I hate her too, but mainly I feel sorry for her. Which is kind of worse.”

“I think I understand that.” My relationship with my brother Lachlan has sometimes taken that route.

“You know what my mother used to say to me when I was younger?” she says, leaning in. “She used to say I better not be prettier than her when I’m her age.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, talk about giving me a f*cking complex. At the same time, all she would do is praise my looks, along with the daily bomb about how I need to lose weight.”

“You don’t need to lose weight,” I can’t help but say. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

She gives me one of those wry, embarrassed smiles that tells me she doesn’t believe it. “Then, at the end of high school I joined the track team and I did start to lose weight. She pushed me into doing modeling, then some acting. The acting was fine, the modeling was a bore, and when track was done and I graduated, the weight started creeping back. I mean, I was never fat. I was pretty much what I am now. But boobs and ass and thunder thighs do not a model make. Nor an actress for that matter, unless you can score a gig on Mad Men. No matter what I did, I couldn’t please her. When I was thinner, she got jealous, and when I was back to normal, she’d find some way to insinuate that I was fat.”

What a witch, I think to myself, feeling protective over her. What I told her was true. I do find her perfect, at least in my eyes. She does have curves and she’s not skinny, but her waist is small and her arse is unreal, and her eyes threaten to take me away somewhere. Somewhere new and very beautiful.

Flashes of heat and guilt compete with each other. I take in a deep breath and force my thoughts to behave.