She was silent for a moment. “Sorry if I’m oversensitive,” she said finally, her voice subdued. “And thanks for making that offer to Vivi, about your friend in Oregon. I hope that works out. She needs a break.”

“I got that sense, too,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”

The silence that followed was an invisible wall between them. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from him. It made him anxious and lonely. He wanted to break through, get inside.

He needed more info. More intel. She was so complex, so goddamn much going on in her head. He wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. He wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her, as if she were a math problem, an insanely complicated puzzle. And she’d have his ass barbecued if he ever said anything like that to her. He had to watch his metaphors with this woman.

“Talk to me,” he blurted.

She looked at him, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”

“About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”

She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”

He ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” he urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what.”

Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from him, a vibration he could do nothing to hide. “Duncan…”

“You make me feel so alive. Just…please, Nell. Just tell me how it is to be the way you are.”

His appeal touched her, and she gave him a tremulous smile. Something relaxed inside him. Excellent. By sheer chance he’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. He hadn’t calculated that strategy, either. It had simply come to him. Instinct.

Maybe this convoluted emotional shit could be learned, after all.

Chapter

9

The look on his face, that note in his voice, it released the floodgates. Nell talked so much, she embarrassed herself. She told him things she hadn’t let herself think about in years, things she’d pretended to forget. The lonely boarding schools, the bad foster homes. Her mother’s death. And that solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with her mother’s coffin.

The endless, terrible afternoon that still haunted her.

She had no idea there was so much to say about her childhood, but it tumbled out, charged with raw emotion. She told him about Lucia finding her. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that she could have a family after all. She talked about stories, poetry. Her magical refuge.

Duncan had listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and she looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.

“Why aren’t you going home?” she asked.

“I wanted to hear you talk.”

“We could talk at your apartment,” she pointed out.

“What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”

She crossed her legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”

He turned the car at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”

She hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made her vaguely nervous.

“You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” she said.

“You’re evading my question.”

“Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”

“I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”

She twisted her hands together. “Well, my plan is to finish my thesis, get my doctorate, and find a teaching job. At which point, I guess I will attempt to have a normal life. The Fiend permitting, and all that.”

“Let me rephrase,” he said softly. “By normal life, do you mean marriage, kids?”

Nell stared at him. Her heart had started to thud quickly, and her palms felt damp.

He simply waited.

Nell stared at the streetlights swooping by. “Of course I dream about love,” she said quietly. “After all those novels and all that poetry, how could I not? But I know better than to take anything for granted. There are no guarantees. I’ll do the best I can. Try to get over my baggage. Hope that I get lucky.” With you was the real ending of that phrase, but her lips and throat trembled too much to say it.

He was quiet as he pulled into his parking garage and drove down two ramps to his own slot. He parked, killed the engine, and stared at the concrete wall in front of them.

“You’re special, Nell,” he said. “You should ask for more.”

Warmth softened her chest. She touched his face with the palm of her hand, and stroked his cheek gently. “So should you, Duncan,” she whispered. “So should you.”

This was the moment. It could make or break them, if he said the right thing. He looked like he was poised to say it. He covered her hand with his own. She was poised to hear it. She couldn’t move, or breathe.

Seconds ticked by, stretched to a minute. More. He didn’t say it.

She turned her gaze away, blushing madly, feeling like an idiot. Here she went again, projecting her silly romantic fantasies onto the unsuspecting man. And him, just bumbling along. No freaking clue.

She tried to cover her embarrassment. “So? I answered your question. It’s your turn to bare your soul. Let’s hear it.”

He looked alarmed. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You just saw me do it,” she said. “Watch and learn, Duncan.”

“That’s different.” His voice was defensive. “You’re…you’re you.”

“Right, and you’re Duncan, and that’s what I’m interested in. Why don’t you start with parents? They’re usually at the bottom of things.”

He let out an impatient sigh, as if humoring a child. “My mom’s great. She taught elementary school for thirty-five years before she retired. She raised us on her own. She’s a general. Tries to run our lives, and mostly fails, but she’s a pretty good sport about it. Usually.”

“How did she feel about you being a spy?”

He grunted. “Hated it. She nagged and schemed.”

“Is that why you quit?”

His grin flashed. “No. I know how to block and fake. I suit myself.”

“I’ve noticed,” she murmured. “And your father?”

His face changed, like a door slamming shut in her face. “I have nothing to say about him.”

She flinched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “So tell me what there isn’t, instead of what there is,” she suggested.

He looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Silence is as revealing as words,” she said softly. “But you already know that. I can see it in your photos.”

“Don’t go all poetic on me, Nell,” he warned. “Or I’ll devolve on you. Start to grunt and snort, and scratch my tufts.”

“Stop being ridiculous, and just tell me about him,” she snapped. “It can’t be worse than my father story. At least you know his name.”

He looked hunted, scowling down at the steering column. Finally started to speak, but his voice was very flat.

“He fell in love with a woman who worked for him,” he said. “His accounts manager. Sylvia. She was younger than him and my mother. I was thirteen. Bruce was nine, and Ellie was a newborn. Ellie was Mom’s last-ditch effort to tie Dad to her. Bad idea. Didn’t work.” He shook the memory away with a sharp wave of his hand.