begin with. He’d made sure no one knew. He didn’t want to have to answer questions if things didn’t work out.
Quinn knew. He’d have to ask her to keep that to herself. Surely, she’d do that. She had quite a few secrets of her own.
Like why she was teaching at a state college in Wyoming rather than back at Harvard.
He saw her as soon as he walked into the cafe. Too many years of living with the Linear Tactical guys had taught him to scan a room for potential threats when entering.
And Quinn was definitely a threat, although what type, he wasn’t sure.
She was sitting over in the corner booth, her hair once again back in that bun, glasses perched on her nose as she stared down at a laptop on the table in front of her.
Inappropriate hard-on number infinity-plus-one. What was it about this woman that had his libido so out of control? She was attractive, yes, but there wasn’t anything overtly sexual about her. As a matter fact, it was almost like she was trying to downplay her sex appeal by keeping herself trapped in a perfectly made shell.
And he wanted to crack it. Not in a bad way, but in a way that got to the real woman underneath.
All fine and dandy considering he knew less about her than he’d thought, and she had secrets that rivaled his own.
He ordered a sandwich and coffee and took his number to set on the table. He should leave her alone. He knew he should leave her alone, but he still couldn’t stop himself from walking over to her table.
“Dr. Pritchard.”
Her fingers stopped their movement on the keyboard, but she didn’t look up at him.
“You know,” she whispered.
He sat at the table next to hers, his back to the wall so he faced her diagonally. “It took me longer than most to figure it out, I’m sure. Maybe if you’d told me your last name rather than ‘Just Quinn’ it wouldn’t have taken me so long to put it all together.”
She gazed over at him. Those big brown eyes behind the glasses, hair wrapped in a bun—all of it perfect and tight—did nothing to quell his body’s response to her. Given his past, he never would’ve thought sexy librarian would do it for him in such a way, but damn it, it did. As long as the sexy librarian was her.
“Legally, my last name is Harrison, which is why I didn’t tell you, so you wouldn’t realize I was Riley’s sister. I was technically Harrison–Pritchard when I got my PhD and started my academic career. I was able to use Pritchard as my instructor name at the college.”
“I see.” The shadow that crossed her face told him there was more to that story than she was saying, but he wasn’t going to press. At least, not right now.
“And when did you find out that I was Blake Bollinger?”
Her shoulders slumped. “The day I kissed you behind the Eagle’s Nest when Riley walked by. Your sister said your full name. By then, I’d already sent you that horrible email and told you that you couldn’t pass the class.”
“Horrible?” Honestly, he hadn’t paid much attention to the tone of the email. Once he’d realized she wasn’t going to give him a chance to pass, he’d stopped trying to decipher any meaning and deleted it.
“Yes. I never should’ve sent it. When I took over for Mr. Lewis’ classes, it seemed like people were crawling out of the woodwork to try to take advantage of me. Your email was one of the last ones I read that day, and I’d just had it.” She threw her hands up in the air. “But that’s no excuse... I should’ve talked to you, found out what the problem was, and worked with you.”
That would’ve been more than any of his other professors had done for the classes he’d struggled with.
“Honestly,” she continued. “I thought you’d figured it out, and that was why you didn’t show up for our non-date.”
“No, there really was an emergency.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard everybody talk about it at the Eagle’s Nest. Something to do with somebody kidnapping Girl Riley. But she’s safe now, right?”
He leaned back in his chair as the waitress brought over his sandwich and coffee. He smiled at the teenage girl before she blushed and scurried away.
“Don’t you think your brother would be a good person to ask about those details?”