“Hardly. She’s 22 years old.”
“And 22 you are not. You were her mentor and now you’re her boss. This isn’t a morally gray area. It’s black and white. Does the phrase power imbalance mean anything to you?”
Tilting his head, he feigned confusion but his face quickly hardened. He had long grown tired of Nathan Jiminy Cricketing his way into the situation with Kenna.
“I don’t know. Does the phrase mind your own damn business mean anything to you?”
“I’ll drop it. For now.” His gaze flicked upward as he dismounted the barstool, gesturing for Dayton to do the same. “Kick your drunk ass into gear and let’s split. I have to drop you off at your place and Charlaine will be all over my case if I’m not home by 11.”
The mention of his wife turned Dayton’s heart to stone. Reflecting on mementos of lovers past no longer brought him satisfaction. A magical alchemy, pure and scarce, of which he’d long been a non-believer had transformed him.
Love.
Only, he hadn’t realized he had fallen victim to its alluring properties until it was too late and Kenna had uncovered fractured pieces of his past and fled.
Nathan’s wedding band glinting beneath the streetlights—or perhaps it was his present brain chemical imbalance—reignited flames of passion in the darkest recess of his soul. Bright bursts of memories assailed him.
Her carefree smile behind the wheel of the station wagon. Hair shrouding her face as she hunched over the reception desk. A bobbing foot betraying her restlessness during patient observations. Recently, his life brimmed with these flashes of Kenna. Diaphanous and impossible to grasp.
No matter the obstacles, he would have her.
10
PROFESSIONAL
It had been the alcohol talking.
He didn’t need to reclaim Kenna. No, he needed to stay away from her, to let her rebuild her life and try to do the same for himself. This was where his research was destined to end. No more games. No more heartbreak.
With the state of his health the past year, he couldn’t afford to hold onto such emotionally taxing extracurriculars.
A change was needed.
And while he would’ve preferred resuming his role as the lover, that had not exactly worked out in the past. Instead, he became his version of a perfect gentleman. He equated the self-imposed role to walking around the office with a shock collar latched around his throat.
One false move resulted in pain for both of them.
He only spoke to Kenna when spoken to. He indulged her intellectual thirst on a daily basis, offering the chance to sit in and observe whenever possible, and answering her questions at the end of each day. He even cleared a space in his office for her to stow her belongings so they were no longer relegated to the floor beneath the reception desk.
It was the most trying part of her shift, hearing her boots or Mary Janes or whatever shoe she’d slipped her delicate feet into that morning clack-clacking on the floor as she neared. She swept in with her mint toothpaste and tea tree oil and impressed those scents upon every knob, tile, and screw that comprised his office. Her lush lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile and she’d offer him a polite goodbye and he would remain in his chair long after she had gone, breathing in the familiar scents and reminiscing on the times she would have stayed. Their university days.
Dayton may have been guilty of peeking at her backside a moment too long when she knelt to retrieve her things each afternoon, but he did not allow the sight to consume him. He didn’t comment upon or react to it.
Was this the true meaning of professionalism?
The word he and Kenna had tossed around last semester, a blanket unable to stifle their roaring flames of sexual and academic chemistry.
“Hey, if you’re not busy, would you mind coming in here for a minute?” her feathery voice called from the lobby.
He was, in fact, not busy. It was still his lunch hour. She had come in early and the extra time she’d dwell in his presence that day felt like a small karmic gift for striving to be on his best behavior.
He strode along the short hallway that let out into the reception area, soon emerging. “Is there a problem?”
Her attention fell to him like a hot, white spotlight and everything within him hollowed out, leaving him floating in another dimension, one in which he might have gazed into her cartoonish eyes, uninterrupted.
Now they were on him, appraising.
Mascara darkened her auburn lashes and champagne glitter dusted across her eyelids.