All this quippiness and pastry eating were just a cover.
Had he always done that?
She couldn’t remember.
Of course, she’d only known him for a few months nearly a decade ago. Weird to think that someone who had loomed so large over her romantic life for so long was basically a stranger.
Shaking off that thought, Vivi stepped back from him. “Fine. Come with. I’ll go teach, and you can go check out the Special Collections at the college library.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Rhys asked. “I really hope it’s a euphemism.”
“Nope,” Vivi replied, already pulling out her phone to send an email to the director of Penhaven’s library. “It’s exactly what it sounds like.”
Chapter 13
Penhaven College was smaller than Rhys remembered.
And, as he and Vivi made their way across campus, it dawned on him that it was very strange a place named after his gloomy and depressing home could be this light, this cheerful, all redbrick buildings with white trim, bright lawns and autumn leaves in bold colors everywhere he looked.
“Nice place to work,” he commented to Vivienne, who was about two steps ahead of him, her low heels clicking on the brick walkway.
“It is,” she replied, but she was obviously distracted, looking around with these quick, darting glances, and Rhys jogged a little to catch up with her.
“What is it?” he asked in a low voice. “Something amiss?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing I can see right now, but . . .”
“But you’re keeping an eye out.”
“Exactly.”
Rhys looked around, too, although he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. There were no statues to fall on him, no cars to suddenly come careening his way. But who was to say a sudden sinkhole wouldn’t open up in the ground or that a stray tree limb might not come winging down from the heavens?
The sooner they got this fixed, the better.
Besides, once he wasn’t cursed anymore, maybe he would stop feeling like such an utter bastard.
He knew Vivienne had been angry with him, furious even, and he’d deserved every bit of it. But that he’d hurt her badly enough that she’d done this . . .
Fuck, that bothered him.
There was a set of concrete steps just ahead of them, leading down to a white building at the base of the small hill, and Vivienne stopped just on the top step, turning back to look at him.
“Be careful.”
“With . . . five steps?”
She scowled, one hand on her hip. “Do I need to remind you of what’s going on?”
“You don’t,” he assured her, “but you heard what Elaine said. The curse is almost certainly doing its thing on the town now, not me, and besides, do you really think these steps are going to take me out? Do you want to hold my hand as I walk down them?”
Vivienne muttered something under her breath, then turned and walked down the steps, leaving Rhys to follow.
Carefully.
Rhys didn’t know what he’d expected Vivienne’s office to look like, but as he followed her down the hall of the bright and airy building that housed the history department, it occurred to him that he hadn’t exactly given a huge amount of thought to anything when it came to Adult Vivienne.
It was almost like she was frozen in his memory at nineteen, but now here she was, a grown woman with an office and a career, and he suddenly, desperately, wanted to know everything about her.