When he put it like that it made me want to cry. I swallowed hard, mentally searching for something to make me feel better. Finally, I reminded myself that it was easy for Jeremy to say because he didn’t actually have a girlfriend. That only made me feel slightly better, however. I lifted my chin. “Excuse me for a second. I need to go to the bathroom.”
Jeremy nodded, his face softened.
I turned on my heel and hurried across the room to the corridor that led to the bathroom. I needed to get myself together and give Harrison and Lacey time to leave. I couldn’t handle another encounter with them in the parking lot.
I slid inside the bathroom, leaned back against the distressed wood door, and took a deep breath. The bathroom was hip, too. Real lavender soap. Thumping music. Blood red walls. White subway-tiled floors. I splashed some water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. What the hell had just happened out there? Harrison had seemed a little jealous that I was with Jeremy. I could tell by his expression, but Jeremy was right, Harrison should have defended me to Lacey. I could hear him now, telling me that Lacey’s comment was a disagreement between women and it wasn’t his place to get involved. Sometimes his logic and stoicism drove me crazy. It wasn’t always the best thing to be frickin’ logical.
Minutes later, I came out of the bathroom with a fake smile pasted on my face. Jeremy put his hand on the small of my back again and ushered me out of the restaurant and to his truck. He helped me up instead of allowing the valet to and he also shut the door for me. He came around to the driver’s side and took his seat.
“Hey, thanks,” I said quietly once he’d settled in.
“For what?” He pulled his seatbelt across his lap.
“For defending me back there. I really appreciate it.” Why did my voice sound so small and weak?
“You’re cute in that dress,” he said with a wink.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, well, that’s up for debate apparently, but regardless, what you said...it was really nice of you.”
Jeremy rested his right hand atop the steering wheel and stared into the bushes in front of the parking lot. “I still remember the time Tim Baxter was giving me hell my junior year, and you told him to shut up and mind his own business.”
I frowned. “When was that?”
“In gym class. I was trying to make some baskets and I didn’t exactly have the same height I do now. Baseball’s always been more my sport anyway.” He laughed.
“We had gym class together?” I scratched my head. Why wasn’t this coming back to me?
Jeremy turned on the ignition and put the truck in drive. “You’ve got the worst memory ever.”
“I really do,” I admitted with a sigh.
“Anyway, I owed you one.” He slowly pushed on the gas pedal and the truck eased through the parking lot. He’d remembered again. Car sick. No sudden moves.
I spent the rest of the ride back to my car at Jeremy’s house wondering what else had happened between me and a teenaged Jeremy Remington that I did not recall.
Chapter 16
Monday
I was grading papers in my tiny, fifth-floor office that had no heat in the winter and no AC in the summer. It was the type of office that non-tenured professors had to suffer. But the space was cozy and clean, and I’d made it mine by putting a nice big puffy reading chair in the corner where I usually stored an extra pair of glasses and a coffee mug. I’d splurged on a second Keurig machine for the place. I’d been trying to concentrate on reading the papers my students had just turned in about early-nineteenth-century English etiquette, but my mind kept drifting back to my dinner with Jeremy on Saturday night.
It had so totally felt like a date. We’d talked, we’d laughed, he’d paid. Though I had to admit the part where he’d encouraged me to write a romance novel had been my favorite. He hadn’t laughed or made fun of it, or been derisive like Harrison had been. I mean, Ellie had to support it. She was my best friend and also a romance reader. Jeremy, on the other hand, was supportive because he believed in things like people following their wildest dreams and being happy instead of traditionally successful. He’d acted as if it was perfectly normal to want to write a historical romance novel. As if people did it every day. I wanted to. I really did, and I had to admit I’d spent most of Sunday contemplating the plot idea I had for my first book. Could it really be that easy? To just start typing and see where it led me? Could I do it and worry about the repercussions later? Could I be the next Lisa Kleypas? Wellesley hadn’t kicked her out of the alumnae association, had they?
The romance novel discussion part had been fun. The other part of the evening, however, seeing Harrison and Lacey, had been as much fun as a root canal. Even if I didn’t have the right to be mad about seeing them there together, I could bloody well be pissed about Harrison’s refusal to defend me when Lacey had insulted me. “A working dinner,” Harrison had called it, but I could tell he wasn’t happy to see me there with Jeremy. Well, I’d been on a working dinner, too.
I stood and turned around to open my office window. It was far too hot in the room, but the office window was about as easy to deal with as a recalcitrant mule. I’d just finished prying the thing open when a sharp rap on the door made me jump. I spun around to discover that the knock had heralded the arrival of Dr. Edwin Holmes, the English Department head and my boss. Damn. Damn. Damn. If he was coming up here to find me, it wasn’t good. He usually summoned his staff to his spacious, first-floor, air-conditioned/heated office when he wanted to speak with us.
Dr. Holmes wore a Deerstalker hat at times, just like his namesake, Sherlock, and Harrison and I spent hours laughing about it and discussing it. We were convinced he did it so that people would think he was related to Sherlock—who, of course, was a fictional character—but that clearly didn’t stop our boss from pursuing Sherlock’s panache. Dr. Holmes also always wore dark pants and a dark t-shirt under a tweed blazer with brown, suede elbow patches. Even in the ninety-degree heat, which up on the fifth floor today was particularly ridiculous. He rarely doffed his hat. I wondered if he’d actually remove his coat. I was always hoping he’d add a pipe to the look.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Knightley,” he intoned in his Madonna-esque pseudo/semi-fake English accent that Harrison and I also loved to mimic.
I cleared my throat and made a show of stacking the papers in a perfectly straight pile on my desk. “Afternoon, Dr. Holmes. What can I help you with?”
There wasn’t much space for dramatic pacing in my tiny attic office, but the man worked with what he had. Only pacing back and forth across four feet looks a lot like walking in a circle, and he was beginning to make me dizzy before he finally said, “I hear you’re going to the Austen Festival...” He gave me a stern stare. “To compete.”
The sharp sting of betrayal hit me like a slap in the face. “Who told you that?”
Dr. Holmes ran his hands down the front of his blazer. “Miss Lewis mentioned it. She said Dr. Macomb told her.”
Okay, so Harrison hadn’t betrayed me, but telling Lacey hadn’t been the best idea. Of course she would spill to Dr. Holmes. Why couldn’t Harrison see how sneaky Lacey obviously was? It drove me nuts.