Monica Murphy: Torn

“Need a reminder?”

The last person Mina Cavallari expects to encounter in the depths of the National Archives while doing research on a thesis is Sebastian Graham, an outrageously sexy financial whiz. Sebastian is conducting a little research of his own into the history of what he thinks is just another London underworld myth, the fabled Harridan House. When he discovers that the private sex club still exists, he convinces Mina to join him on an odyssey into the intricacies of desire, pleasure, and, most surprisingly of all, love.

It was the most innocuous of sentences: “A cappuccino, please.” Three words—without a verb to ground them, even. Yet, at the sound, my hand stilled mid-motion, my own paper coffee cup paused halfway between table and mouth. I looked over to the counter of the cafe. It was mid-afternoon, quieter than it had been when I’d come in earlier for a quick lunch, and only three people were in line behind the tall, slim-hipped, blond-haired man whose curve of shoulder and loose-limbed stance struck a chord in me as clearly as his voice.

Of course it couldn’t be. In two years, surely, I had forgotten the exact tenor of his voice, was now confusing some other deep, posh English accent with his. Yet I watched the man, waited for him to turn around, as if there were any significant chance that in a city of eight million people, during the middle of the business day, I’d run into the one English acquaintance I had. At the National Archives, no less.

At the first glimpse of his profile, I sucked in my breath sharply, nearly dropping my coffee. Then he turned fully, looking around, likely for the counter with napkins and sugar. I watched his gaze pass over me and then snap back in recognition. I was both pleased and terrified. I’d come to London to put the past behind me, not to face down my demons. I’d been doing rather well these last months, but maybe this was part of some cosmic plan. As my time in England wound down, in order to move forward with my life, I had to come face to face with Sebastian Graham again.

“Mina!” He had an impressive way of making his voice heard across a room without shouting, and as he walked toward me, I put my cup down and stood, all too aware that while he looked like a fashionable professional about town, I still looked like a grad student––no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweater.

“This is a pleasant surprise. Research for your dissertation? Anne Gracechurch, right?”

I nodded, bemused that he remembered a detail from what had surely been a throwaway conversation two years earlier. But of course I really shouldn’t have been. Seb was brilliant, and brilliance wasn’t the sort of thing that just faded away.

Neither, apparently, was his ability to make my pulse beat a bit faster or to tie up my tongue for a few seconds before I found my stride. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, at least not in an American way. Too lean, too angular, hair receding a bit at the temples, and I was fairly certain he was now just shy of thirty. But I’d found him attractive from the first moment I’d met him.

I still did.

“That’s right. What are you doing here? I mean, at the Archives.”

“Ah.” He shifted and smiled at me, and there was something about that smile that felt wicked and secretive. “A small genealogical project. Mind if I join you?”

I shook my head and sat back down. He pulled out his chair and sat, too, folding his long legs one over the other. Why was that sexy to me?

I focused on his face. He was pale. Much paler than he’d been in New Jersey, like he now spent most of his time indoors. Which should have been a turn-off. Yet, despite everything, I sat there imagining him in the kitchen of my apartment wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Apparently my memory was as good as his.

And I still remembered the crushing humiliation and disappointment of that last time we’d talked.