Promises in the Dark (15 page)

But men like him didn’t fall for women like her. This was simply a case of babysit the geek, play nice and make her do what you want. She’d been there her entire life, had fought the stereotype and then had simply given up.

Still, when she’d glanced at Caleb again and his expression hadn’t changed—but his eyes, oh his eyes, dark and fierce and locking her in their scope—it had made her shiver.

Well, at least now she knew the look had most definitely been pity. She’d been a fool to beg him to kiss her.

At least he’d given her space for several hours. Now it was well into the early morning hours, and even though Vivi was tired, there was no way she could sleep. No, the stress kept her moving forward as her eyes blurred and her fingers ached, but she was no closer to finishing the program than she’d been hours before.

What did you do, Dad? Why couldn’t you have let me in?

Lawrence Clare had been a certified genius, so much so that he seemed to live in another world—and often, he did. Most of the time he forgot he had a family, which she knew was the reason her mom left them. Vivi stayed behind because, even at twelve years old, she knew her father needed help.

There was no way he could have survived on his own. Beyond that, the relief in her mother’s eyes when Vivi insisted on staying was apparent.

Even as a child, Vivi had been almost as good at reading people as she later was at interpreting code. Besides, Vivi had a lot of her father’s qualities, and she figured her mother wouldn’t want to put up with two of them cut from the same cloth.

Like her father, Vivi could be forgetful, distracted, and so she wasn’t allowed to ride her bike or walk alone, because she’d do things like wander into the street. She’d finally learned to harness all of that distraction though, something her father had never really been able to do.

He’d do things like put water on for tea, then forget about the pot and nearly burn the house down. Most of the time, he forgot to eat—or to buy food.

She understood that her gift for numbers came from him, and he’d always told her to use her gift for the common good, not to be ashamed of her intelligence.

Not to hide behind it.

She wasn’t ashamed, but found it was a problem for making friends. Although not on the same plane as her father, she’d still found herself without common ground with the kids around her. She would often zone out, planning mathematical possibilities in her mind. Would rather spend time with her computer on Saturday nights than anyone else.

Contrary to popular belief, a laptop did keep you warm at night.

“Dad, you have to help me out here,” she muttered and, not surprisingly, she got no answer in response.

She attempted to get the feeling back into her hands, rubbing them together roughly, attempting clumsily to massage one with the other.

That’s when she saw Caleb from the corner of her eye, hadn’t heard him move from one room to the other, wondered if that stealth came naturally or if it had taken practice.

He didn’t say anything, just sat next to her and took one of her hands in his and began to work it between his own. He stared at her hand intently, doing something with trigger points, something she’d attempted to read and forgotten about in lieu of work.

“Better?” he asked after a few minutes.

She flexed her hand, although truth be told she’d been reluctant to pull it away from his. “Better.”

He went to work on her other one, while she rubbed her eyes with her free hand.

“You’ve been working non-stop.”

“I figured you would like that.”

He laughed—a short one, but it helped. “The faster you work, the faster we can make headway, yes. But sometimes walking away for a little while helps you solve the problem. It’s always worked for me when I’ve been too close to something.”

The thing was, his problems dealt with the safety of the world, so really, he did understand. Except … “Caleb, what if I can’t do it?”

“In my world, we don’t use that word. There’s no
can’t
. You’ll pull it out of the fire. Maybe you should take a short nap. You’re tired.”

“You must be too.”

“I can handle long nights,” he said easily, letting her hand slide between his again.

“Right.” She wanted to pull it away and turn back to the computer, because that’s what she understood—it was safe. It needed her to work, and with the right kind of coaxing, she could get it to do anything she wanted.

Staying away from the computer meant spending more time talking to him, and that in itself was confusing. He was still looking at her with the same intensity in his eyes … and she was still confused as hell.

“Why didn’t you accept the FBI’s offer?” he asked finally.

“I considered it. I still am, I guess. But it’s a huge commitment. I don’t know if I’m any good working for other people. I think I lived with my dad for too long.”

“It must’ve been tough growing up like that.”

“People just saw the crazy. They couldn’t see beyond that to the genius.” She paused. “For a while, I tried to fit in, but it never worked. I followed in his footsteps—I’m a computer geek and I’m really good with numbers, but I’m nowhere near my father’s level. I use what I know for practical purposes.”

“So there’s never been anyone in your life—boyfriends?”

Her stomach got those nervous butterflies she’d heard so much about but never actually experienced. Now she understood. They got stronger when she forced herself to look directly into his deep, dark eyes. “I dated a couple guys when my father was alive—nothing too serious. And then he got sick and I put all my efforts into making sure he was comfortable. After he died, I dated one guy for a while … it was serious, I guess. As serious as I’d ever gotten.”

“We probably should check all of them out, just to be safe.”

“I’m sure none of them knew what I was doing, job-wise.”

“What did they think you did?”

“I told them I was in IT. It was much easier that way. It’s what I tell everyone,” she said. “The first two were just some casual dates here and there. One guy was an auto mechanic. Kind of a bad boy, motorcycle-gang type.”

Cael stared at her. “I know. Not the best choice,” she told him. “The other was a guy I’d known from my classes freshman year in college. We kept in touch and he told me he’d wanted to ask me out for a while, but then …”

“Not a bad enough boy?” he asked.

“No, he was seeing a lot of other women and I just wasn’t into that. I didn’t know what I was into. But right after my father died, that guy took me to a lecture at the college—as friends. That’s where I met Dale. He’s an archeologist—and a professor. He traveled a lot.”

“Last name and address.”

“Dale Robbins—247 Lakeshore Drive, Apartment 4C. That’s about half an hour from my house,” she added.

He committed that to memory because he didn’t want to stop working on her hands to write it down. She shifted as his touch began to make her feel … warm. Watching his big hands stroke hers, the difference in the skin color, his tan to her paler skin, highlighted by the closeness.

“How long were you guys together?”

“We dated for six months. In the beginning, I thought it was going to be perfect, but it didn’t really work.”

“Why not?” His voice caressed her—it was deeper now, even as his hands continued to massage hers, working the pressure points on her wrists, and she fought the urge to squirm in her seat.

No one had ever done this for her, had worried about her hands cramping or her wrists hurting. Caleb made this seem like far more than a job to him.

“It was more me than him. I mean, Dale came into my life at the right time. I was more alone than ever, distrustful of everyone. He said the things I needed to hear. He made me feel like someone finally had my back, and it was really nice.” Nice, but no fireworks, at least not the kind she’d read about, or seen in movies and on TV.

Not at all the way she felt around Caleb after less than forty-eight hours together. “He needed me. He wanted me around. But he worked a lot and so did I.” She paused. “I was waiting for it to grow into something it never did, so I ended things. He wasn’t happy about it, showed up at my house late one night asking for another chance. I let him in and we talked until I was too tired to argue more. I went back to sleep, he stayed on the couch, and when I woke up in the morning, he was gone.
Work
, he’d written on a note he left in the kitchen, and I knew that things between us wouldn’t change. Apparently, he realized it too, since that’s the last I heard from him. I’m afraid I didn’t handle any of it very well, not the relationship, or the breakup. He was intense at times … and it was all so new to me.”

“At least you realized early that Dale wasn’t right for you. There are people who live their whole lives in bad relationships and refuse to let themselves see it.”

“So I’m not doing badly for a reforming recluse?”

“Not bad at all.”

She liked the way he talked with her. Talked to her. She believed what he said and even though that might make her naive, her instincts were telling her otherwise. “I never thought I’d be able to fall for someone. My father always said that love is the ultimate weakness, that when you let your guard down, you lose all perspective.” She paused. “Sometimes I think he was right.”

“So why date at all? Why even bother to try?” He wasn’t goading her with the question. Rather, he really seemed to want to know—and she wasn’t even sure
she
knew.

“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life living under my father’s influence of distrust. I wanted to be part of a regular couple. I didn’t want to be the poor girl who lived with her recluse of a father.” God, she sounded defensive. Probably because she knew she’d been acting stupidly. Naively. But since then, she’d toughened up. She’d learned.

From this experience alone, she’d learned.

“Give yourself some time, Vivi. You can’t blame yourself if you weren’t feeling the relationship.”

But she did. Because the sex part hadn’t been good at all, and from everything she’d read, you could have great, even amazing sex with someone you didn’t love. Granted, Dale had been her first and she was nervous, but he’d done nothing to reassure her, which made the entire experience fall into the not-good category.

“We, uh, slept together, but it wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good,” she blurted out, wondering why she couldn’t have just stopped while she was ahead with this true confession.

He stopped his massage cold. “Is that what he told you?”

She hesitated and then said, “He told me I was young … that it would get better as I got older.”

“He’s a fool,” Cael growled. “It’s his job to give you pleasure, especially if you were a virgin.”

How did he know that? And furthermore, why was she talking about this with him? “I suppose things would’ve been different with you.”

He nodded, slowly, raked her with his eyes in a way that made her shiver, as if she were naked in the middle of an open field. “Don’t suppose.
Know
.”

“You stopped me before.”

“I didn’t want to take advantage of you.”

“And now?”

He simply smiled, and God, he looked good when he smiled. But Dale had smiled too.

Dale never made you feel like this
. And still … “What if my father was right? What if I shouldn’t trust anyone at all?”

“You’re going to have to trust someone along the way,” he said quietly, and anger surged through her, fast and furious, her emotions bubbling with a fury she’d never expected.

“Sometimes, I felt so used by him. And that’s horrible, because he was my father.”

“No offense, but it sounds to me like he was the child in the relationship.”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s true. And with Dale—the boyfriend—I followed the same pattern.”

“Maybe it’s time you broke the pattern, tried something new,” he suggested. “Pick someone … random.”

“You don’t know anything about numbers,” she said. “Or randomness.”

He stopped any more words with a kiss. It wasn’t gentle, but hard, almost punishing, and enough to make her forget about numbers and patterns and Dale.

When he tore his mouth from hers, she felt flushed, her lips bruised, and as she touched them he said, “That’s what it should be like.”

“I’d better … ah … I mean …”

His ringing phone saved her and he smiled like he knew it before he turned away and answered with a sharp, “What’s going on?”

What
was
going on? She’d never thought she could feel so strongly for someone, and so quickly. She rubbed her bare arms and then grabbed the blanket from the bed to wrap herself in.

What made her think she could trust him?

He saved your life
…
twice
.

His job
, she argued.