Living in Shadow (Living In…) Page 2

  Chapter Two

  Luc sat in the student café with his back to the wall, which he preferred. Another habit the army had bred into him. Even though he knew no one was going to suddenly get out a knife or a gun and shoot him in the back here, he couldn’t quite break himself of the habit.

  The only exceptions being Eleanor’s classes. For her he’d sit with his back to the rest of the class, so he could be down in the front and look at her.

  He turned his head a little, watching the group on the other side of the café without seeming like he was staring. Another old habit.

  Eleanor sat there with some of the other faculty members, talking about something that was clearly very interesting because she was leaning forward with her elbows on the table, making small, elegant movements with her hands as she spoke. Her face was alight with interest and intensity, as if she was trying to get a very important point across.

  I look at people who aren’t paying attention…

  A bullshit lie, offered with a cool, impersonal smile. And yet when she’d taken his hand, he’d seen the telltale stain of color on her cheekbones. She’d hidden it well, but he’d had a lot of practice watching for people’s reactions. Seeing below the surface of a person. It had been a skill he’d had to develop in order to survive Inza’s army and it was one that continued to be useful.

  He had the feeling that he could look all day at Eleanor May and he still wouldn’t be able to see the woman she was underneath. A pain in the ass since that thought only made him want to find out even more.

  Christ, he shouldn’t have approached her yesterday after the lecture. He should have walked out with all the others, and yet he hadn’t. What had he been thinking? He’d been obsessed by that split-second reaction he’d seen in her eyes. And now the feeling of her cool fingers in his had only wound that obsession tighter.

  Beside him, Maddy was saying something. She had one hand on his thigh, a proprietary gesture he didn’t much like. They’d been sleeping together on and off—a casual thing, they’d both agreed. But that didn’t mean he was hers, like she wasn’t his.

  He shifted his leg subtly and her hand fell away.

  Across the room, Eleanor laughed her amazing laugh. Dirty and low. He could hear it even in the hum of the café, the sound in stark contrast to that cool, sophisticated image of hers. She wore another of her pencil skirts today, light charcoal. One knee was crossed over the other under the table, leaving the heel of one of her stilettos dangling off her toes.

  Such a little thing to notice and yet he did, fascinated by the dichotomy of her. The way she could be cool, not a hair out of place, one minute, then laugh like a phone-sex worker and dangle one heel off her foot the next.

  “Hey, Luc, are you listening to me?”

  “Not really. Sorry.”

  “Who are you looking at?” Beside him, Maddie craned her head and he forced himself to look away from Eleanor, focusing his attention on the woman beside him.

  “You,” he said and smiled at her.

  The smile had its usual effect. Maddie rolled her eyes, but he knew she wasn’t offended. “You’re impossible.”

  Across the room he could hear Eleanor laugh again, but this time he didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He already knew how her face lit up.

  Why were you looking at me?

  He’d told her he was looking at her because she was the lecturer, fucking liar that he was. He should have told her the truth.

  Because you’re the most beautiful, fascinating woman I’ve ever seen. Because I want you.

  “Ugh,” Maddy said, complaining already. “I’ve got Harris this afternoon. Anyone got anything to keep me awake?”

  The conversation turned into the usual round of complaints about the boringness of Prof Harris and his criminal law classes, then diverted into what was usually a more interesting topic, such as which club they were going to that night.

  Luc didn’t much care where they went. He’d gotten himself to the point where he could fit in with what normal twenty-somethings did on a Friday night without trying too hard. Sometimes booze and loud music even made him forget he wasn’t a normal twenty-something.

  Of course there would always be a part of him that knew otherwise. That understood no amount of booze or sex would make him normal. He was too different. There was too much darkness inside him.

  He’d learned to ignore that part.

  As his friends argued over the choice of bar, over on the other side of the café Eleanor was standing, her jacket slung over one shoulder, high heels now firmly on. She was smiling at one of her colleagues, continuing to talk. And even though he’d seen her glance around just about everywhere in the café, she hadn’t once looked in his direction.

  Like she didn’t look in his direction during class.

  Something stirred in him. Something hungry he’d been suppressing ever since he came back to New Zealand—there wasn’t any need for it in the life he’d come back to. The instinct of a hunter.

  Fuck that. He was going to make it his mission to get her to look at him. See him the way she had in the lecture hall, as if for one split second he was a man not a student. Get her to look at him like that every damn time.

  She’s your professor. That sort of shit isn’t allowed.

  Yeah, but it wasn’t breaking any rules. An acknowledgment. That’s all he wanted. And then perhaps he’d get back to thinking about his degree and not what lay behind that cool gray gaze of hers.

  He sat back, waiting as she and her colleagues came toward the doors. He was sitting right by them; she wouldn’t be able to miss him unless she was deliberately avoiding him. But he wasn’t going to resort to a cough or anything else attention getting like last time. She would look at him because she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

  She continued talking, smiling at something Professor Devon had said to her, and he thought that perhaps she’d keep on ignoring him, which was a kind of acknowledgment all on its own.

  And then her attention flicked to him as she approached the doors.

  He held her gaze, silently willing her to see him. To really see him. And shit, there it was again, that flash of silver in her eyes. A reaction she couldn’t hide.

  Helpless desire tightened its grip. So, he hadn’t imagined it yesterday. There was something between them. Very definitely something. And God, he wanted to know what it was.

  Her gaze dropped, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of his stare, and he found that perversely thrilling. Was she trying to hide her reaction again? Collect herself? Had he affected her so much she didn’t know what to do with herself? God, he wanted to take that determined chin in his fingers and force her to look him in the eye. While he told her exactly what she’d been doing to him for the past month…

  Since when did you force women to do anything?

  A thread of unexpected cold wound through him at the thought. No, shit, he didn’t force anyone to do anything. Especially women. That was one of the rules he’d given himself back in the squad. It was the one thing that kept him from becoming one of them. The only thing…

  “Anything I can do for you, Mr. North?” Eleanor May’s cool voice cut through the ice and he realized that, far from continuing to ignore him, she’d stopped beside his table, looking down at him with one pale brow raised in enquiry.

  Well, hell. He hadn’t expected that. “Excuse me, Professor?”

  “You were looking at me. I assumed you wanted some attention.”

  He leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to relax. “Of course I want some attention. Who doesn’t?”

  Maddy snorted and Eleanor flicked her a brief glance before looking back at him. “It appears you have plenty of that.”

  Oh, she was so cool, so calm. Pretending nothing had happened, that she hadn’t felt the charge of electricity between them. Which presented him with an irresistible challenge.

  She wasn’t going to pretend, no fucking way. He was going to make it his goal to see under that s
mooth, sophisticated front of hers. Get beneath it. Get the truth out of her, one way or another.

  Starting now.

  The decision gave him far more satisfaction than it should have, but he didn’t bother to hide it. “Surely you can never have too much attention, Professor?” he said and smiled at her, an expression he’d once had to practice in the mirror to get it working right.

  She stared at him for a moment, gray eyes narrowing, clearly sensing something was up. Her colleagues were looking at her strangely but she didn’t seem to notice.

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, but one of her colleagues said, “Are you coming, Ell?”

  A fleeting look of annoyance crossed her face before the cool smile was back. “Yes, possibly you’re right.”

  “What’s all that about?” Maddy asked as Eleanor went through the café doors. “I didn’t know May was giving undergraduate classes?”

  “She’s giving Prof Holmes’s legal history class this semester.”

  “Huh. What’s she like?”

  Luc put his hands behind his head and smiled. “So far? Interesting. Very fucking interesting indeed.”

  Eleanor was extremely pissed. Somehow Lucien North seemed to be everywhere she went. It wasn’t that he was stalking her—at least she didn’t think he was—it was that she seemed to notice him a lot more than she had before. The Auckland University law school wasn’t terribly big by international standards and she knew a lot of the students, at least by sight. He’d never been in any of her classes but he’d been there on the periphery, a tall, striking figure she’d glanced at many times and acknowledged—at least in the privacy of her mind—as being pretty stareworthy. But now he’d somehow insinuated himself into her consciousness, made it so that she was exquisitely aware of him.

  In the student café, where she went sometimes to get coffee, he’d be there in a group of students, either talking with them or reading. He seemed to be pretty popular—understandably—and there always seemed to be a woman or five hanging around him. In the library when she went to pick up a book, she’d find him sitting at a desk with some headphones on, doing something on his laptop. Or walking down a corridor, he’d be there in deep discussion with another member of the faculty or another student.

  It annoyed her. She wasn’t consciously looking for him, it was only that somehow her brain had decided he was a person of interest and so kept an eye out for him.

  And whenever it did, she found she couldn’t help looking at him, almost as if she was seeking out that disturbing black gaze. Which was insane. He was a student and that was all he ever should be.

  As for him, only once did he acknowledge her and that was in the student café, as she and a colleague were getting coffee. She was on her way out and he was sitting at the table he’d been at the week before, by the doors, leaning back in his chair, legs stretched arrogantly in front him, hands linked behind his head. There was a woman beside him, leaning close in, obviously telling him something. And he appeared to be paying attention. Until he lifted his head as Eleanor passed and his eyes met hers, hot and dark.

  And the same thrill passed through her as it had that previous week. The one she’d told herself she didn’t feel. She only smiled coolly back and walked on, not bothering to speak to him, ignoring both the flicker of heat that settled in her gut and the annoyance that the flicker of heat was even there in the first place.

  Jesus, what did he think she was? Sixteen? She was thirty-eight and long past the stage of getting hot and bothered just because some outrageously good-looking young man kept staring at her.

  “Eleanor?” James Devon was at her elbow and she realized she’d stopped short of the café doors. Luc wasn’t even looking at her now, the blonde sitting next to him had her hand on his thigh and he’d turned his head toward her, smiling.

  Her irritation deepened. Fuck’s sake. What was the matter with her?

  She pushed through the café doors and out into the corridor, clutching her latte, letting the hot liquid burn through the paper cup and into her palm. So much better to concentrate on that small pain than on the other, far more dangerous heat down low inside her.

  “You okay?” James, who taught international law and was one of the few people in the faculty who wasn’t a fuckwit, looked at her curiously. “Or were you stunned by the magnificence of Lucien North?”

  Of course James would notice that. He’d always had an eye for handsome men.

  Eleanor gave him a filthy look. “Are you kidding me?”

  James shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first. You should see Carly.”

  Carly was one of the criminal law professors and a sucker for a good-looking student, though, since she was nearly sixty-five and married, with her it was purely a visual-appreciation thing.

  “She’s like that with everyone.”

  “Luc is a little different, though.”

  He had that right. Eleanor didn’t say anything for a moment as they strolled down the corridor toward her office. Then, when a decent-enough amount of time had passed, she said, “Is he in any of your classes?”

  “Yeah. International law is his thing.” James grinned. “I’m not complaining. Whenever he comes to one of my lectures, everyone else shows up too. Especially the girls.”

  “Popular then.”

  “Extremely. And a brilliant student too. Wrote me the most fabulous essay on—”

  “Thanks, James,” she interrupted gracelessly as they stopped outside her office. “Got a mountain of assignments to mark.”

  She wasn’t curious about Lucien North. She wasn’t.

  Yet when Thursday rolled around and she stepped into the lecture theatre for her legal history class, her gaze went straight to the desk where he normally sat, in the front row, right in the center. And found his seat empty.

  The sharp point of an emotion she refused to call disappointment needled at her.

  Shit. What the hell was her problem?

  She’d kept away from men for a long time after her divorce from Piers. For years the thought of another relationship—hell, even just sex—was too much to contemplate and though she’d broken through that little block with a couple of guys since, in the end she’d found being single easier. Her career at the law school was much less complicated, even with the usual university/faculty politics that sometimes drove her round the bend. She liked teaching, enjoyed the interactions she had with her students and found the intellectual challenge of law stimulating. That was all she needed. That and an excellent vibrator.

  Lucien North was nice eye candy, but that’s all he’d ever be.

  Eleanor gave the lecture, irritated with the way her attention kept going to the place where Lucien normally sat and catching the eye of the young woman who was sitting there instead. Which probably weirded her out as much as it did Eleanor.

  After the lecture was over and the usual crowd of students and their questions had vanished out of the door, Eleanor was sliding her laptop into its bag when she noticed someone standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe.

  Lucien.

  The irritation and annoyance gathered in a small, hard knot in the center of her chest.

  He had one arm against the doorframe, the posture drawing attention to the sharply defined lines of his biceps, left bare by the black T-shirt he was wearing. It was…distracting.

  “I’m sorry I missed the class today,” he said. “I had an appointment.”

  Eleanor looked away from him, fussing around with the laptop cords. “That’s okay. You didn’t miss much. I’ll be putting the notes up on the class web page anyway.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  A small silence fell. Then his voice, much softer and much closer this time. “Did you even notice I wasn’t there?” He’d come into the lecture theatre proper, was now standing not far away from her, hands thrust casually in the pockets of his jeans.

  She glanced at him but all he did was stare back, a strange, intense glint in his e
yes.

  Christ, what did he want from her? If he thought she was going to admit to the fact that, yes, she had noticed, he needed to think again. Something told her that admitting any kind of weakness around this man would be a mistake.

  Feeling threatened, Eleanor turned away, resuming tucking the cords away into her laptop bag as if nothing were bothering her in the slightest. “That’s an odd question to ask.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. And no, I didn’t notice, but thanks for letting me know.”

  There was a weirdly taut silence.

  She continued to fuss with the cords, feeling the weight of his stare on the back of her neck like the touch of a hand. Jesus, he really needed to go the hell away.

  “You’re one hell of a good liar, Professor May,” he said softly.

  Ah Christ. This was ridiculous. Of course she knew what he wanted from her. She’d known it the moment his gaze met hers. And she was too old for teenage, flirty games. Actually, shit, what did that have to do with age? Even when she’d been younger she hadn’t had the patience for it. Whatever she’d done to deserve his attention, one thing was clear. It had to stop.

  Slowly she closed her laptop bag then straightened and turned to face him. He stared back at her, his beautifully cut mouth unsmiling. The uncompromising look on his face, hard and stern, made something hot clench inside her. Something she wasn’t prepared to acknowledge.

  This is how it started with Piers…

  Forcing away the thought, she said bluntly, “I’m thirty-eight.”

  His straight, black brows arrowed down. “So?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

  Twenty-five. Christ. Older than the average student, but still. “I think thirteen years’ age difference speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

  “Does your age bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because it doesn’t bother me either.”

  “Well it should.” She twisted to pick up her laptop bag and briefcase. And when she turned back he was standing right in front of her. Not too close but enough that the sexual awareness she’d been telling herself for days she didn’t feel gathered tighter inside her.