Road Trip Ch. 01

I KNOW. Eve was giggling as she typed and hoped Will couldn't hear her from the bathroom.

His wife?

Doing Dr. Laughlin.

Whoa. So besides that, how is he?

Same.

So, hot.

Yep.

Woman, you better get here ASAP. I want to hear all about it.

Should be there in a couple of days. Will text tomorrow. xo

Drive safe. Use a condom.

SHUT UP.

Eve blushed, but grinned when she pictured Katie's wicked smile.

"Ready."

She hadn't heard him exit the bathroom and dropped her feet to the floor, turning in surprise. He was wearing crisp, dark jeans and a black v-neck t-shirt that revealed a smattering of chest hair. His hair was still damp, slicked back off his head, and his eyes seemed a dark blue as opposed to their normal grey color. Steam rolled out of the bathroom and surrounded him in an angelic fog.

Eve swallowed, the room suddenly feeling suffocating.

-

"Everything okay?" he asked as she stared at him.

"Yeah, it was my friend in Chicago checking up on me," she said, holding up her phone. "You might remember her - Kate Devlin?"

Will racked his brain but couldn't picture the classmate she named. Maybe if he could stop fixating on the sight of her bare legs he'd be able to focus. If he could stop picturing her dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks when he'd passed her on the way to the bathroom. Maybe if the smell of her freshly washed hair wasn't still invading his nostrils.

"Ah - it doesn't ring a bell," he said apologetically.

She shrugged as if it didn't matter, getting to her feet. They studied each other for a moment before she suggested they find a restaurant. The front desk clerk recommended a nearby pub with outdoor seating so they walked there with Maggie. Conversation came easily at dinner; their earlier discussion of Richard III transitioned to Henry VIII and Will was surprised by her extensive knowledge of the king.

"I've read everything about him I could get my hands on," she said when he commented on it. "He's fascinating."

She looked amused as he encouraged her to share her opinions of Henry VIII's behavior and decisions. He knew the teacher mindset was ingrained in him, but this felt different, like a conversation between friends or colleagues. They fell silent at the end of the meal, Eve reclining in her seat and absently petting Maggie, occasionally lifting her glass for a sip. When she finished her wine and looked at him, he realized he'd been staring. She moistened her lips and he swallowed, averting his eyes.

"Where do you think you'll go after South Bend?" she inquired.

He swallowed, thinking about how much he now wanted to see Georgia and the Carolinas - wanted to be wherever she was going, really. Instead he told her he'd planned to explore northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula before traveling through Minnesota toward Sturgis. She nodded slowly.

"Do you think you'll buy another bike?" she asked mischievously.

"I don't know," he admitted, laughing. "Maybe."

"You should," she said thoughtfully.

Her face broke into a bright smile. He couldn't stop his grin in response.

-

Eve lay in bed, wide awake. She had been wide awake for almost an hour, physically tired but unable to shut off her brain.

After dinner she and Will had walked leisurely back to the hotel where he had seen her to her room. There had been a long moment at her door, heavy with anticipation as they stared at each other. Despite how comfortable she felt with him, despite him complimenting her, she couldn't bring herself to take the chance that he was interested in her. Out of practice and gun-shy after being in a relationship for so long, she knew it would be absolutely mortifying to put herself out there and be rejected by her former professor.

Besides, she was having a hard time reconciling her attraction to him, which had become so much more than her college girl crush. Then it was a fun, harmless infatuation since he was off-limits - besides being her professor and advisor, he'd been happily married to a woman Eve had met and occasionally ran into on campus, after all. The juxtaposition of that Dr. Hammond and the Will of today - the funny, sexy, charming man who acted like a peer - was confusing.

So she had instead said a simple goodnight after a stilted exchange about their plans for the next day. And now she was lying in bed, wound tight as her mind flooded with images of him sitting across from her talking about British history, his arms flexing under his shirt as he drove, his long legs accentuated by his jeans, his warm eyes crinkling in the corners and looking at her warmly when she made him laugh.

Sighing in frustration, she launched herself from bed, turning on her laptop and opening her journal. It was an exercise she had begun in college, when her sporadic sleep schedule seemed to cause an insomnia that had stayed with her ever since. This wouldn't go in her public blog, but she needed to get the day's events out if she would ever have a chance of sleeping.

-

In the parking lot, Will nudged the curtain over his bed open and looked out at the hotel, trying to figure out which window was hers. His mind was locked on that moment at her door before she'd said goodnight. He could still see the openness of her stare and the wideness of her eyes, at the time a golden brown. It would have taken less than half a step to close the gap between them, just an inch or two of movement to bring them close enough that all it would take was him lowering his head to taste her lips.

He still wasn't sure if he would have done it had she not said goodnight. He wasn't sure of anything he was feeling, actually. The only thing he knew for sure was that he hadn't been able to take a complete breath since that moment, his chest tight with a wonder and longing that until today he was convinced he would never experience again.

He moved his gaze to the ceiling, knowing it was going to be a long night.