Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little Secrets #1) Read online

  Thankfully, the hard drive will overwrite itself if anyone other than me tries to sign in on it, and I do have backups of all my programs stored safely in the cloud. There’s just the small issue of not having enough cash to replace the machine that I had. I could charge the parts, sure, but do I risk putting a transaction with my name on it out there for Privya to find? I could take a train to Connecticut or something, and take out a cash advance there. But then I’d risk him knowing where in the country I am, and…maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe I’m worrying for nothing.

  “Miss Briggs?” I hear the nurse say.

  I shake head, pulling myself out of my thoughts. The nurse is looking at me patiently, with a faint smile. Caleb is looking at me like he’s not sure I should be allowed to leave this hospital.

  “Yes?” I say, distractedly.

  “You need to come back immediately if you experience any of the symptoms on this sheet,” the nurse replies, pointing to a piece of paper that Caleb is holding in his hands. “Understood?”

  I nod.

  “You’re going to be staying with Mister Simmons?” she asks, nodding at Caleb.

  “She is.” Caleb gives me a look that’s nearly a glare, just daring me to say otherwise. He insisted on me staying with him while I recuperated, and I fought him on it. It’s too soon, it’s too much, but at the same time…where else am I going to go? I’m low on funds, and my prospects are looking pretty bleak right now. It was a superficial fight. I want to stay with him, and, as much as I hate it, I need to stay with him.

  “All right,” the nurse says, as an orderly shows up with a wheelchair.

  “Is this really necessary?” I ask.

  Caleb gives me that look again, the one that’s just daring me to put up a fight. The nurse quickly tells me that it’s hospital policy, and that if I want to get out of this place, I’m going to have to do it in a wheelchair.

  If it’s my only means of escaping? I’ll happily let someone take me for a ride.

  “You’re going to have your hands full with this one,” the nurse tells Caleb.

  Caleb looks at me fondly, like there isn’t anything in the world that he would change about me, and it makes a warm rush of some unnamed emotion flow through me. He walks ahead to get an elevator for us, and as she pushes me through the door and down the hallway, the nurse leans down and whispers in my ear. “You’ve got a good one here, honey. You better hold onto him.”

  I know Caleb is going to have some questions for me that I’m not going to want to answer. I wonder how long I’ll be hanging on to him after that.

  * * * * *

  Caleb and I are quiet on our way back to his apartment, but he holds my hand in the back of the town car as we ride along the busy streets of Manhattan. When we arrive at his building, I follow him inside. It feels strange being here like this, since I’m not here for a visit, I’m here to stay for however long I need or want to, or until I wear out my welcome. I feel naked without my bag, and for as much as Caleb used to tease me about it, he hasn’t breathed a word of it since the short conversation we had after I woke up in the hospital room, where I told him that it was all that I had. Maybe he thinks I don’t remember telling him that, but either way, I’m grateful to not have to answer questions about that statement right now.

  It’s kind of like a raincloud hanging over my head. I know it’s going to start pouring at some point, but I’m hoping to stay dry for as long as I can.

  I step inside Caleb’s apartment, feeling uncomfortable with my empty handedness. I’m here for an extended stay, but I don’t have anything with me. I didn’t have anything to bring with me, except for the clothes I left at my hotel. I never did check out of there, and only paid by the night, so I’m guessing the clothes I did have with me have been tossed or donated. Yet another strike against me.

  When the door closes behind us, Caleb makes a show of locking it. It’s a touching gesture; even though we’re in a secured building on a floor high in the sky, he still wants me to feel safe here.

  Caleb steps up to me, and pulls me into his arms.

  “You’re safe here,” he says. He’s holding me as tightly as he dares, and apart from handholding while I was bedridden, it’s the most prolonged contact we’ve had in days.

  “I know,” I reply with a grateful sigh. “Thank you for letting me stay here. I’m not quite ready to go back to the hotel.”

  I feel his muscles stiffen as soon as the words leave my mouth, so I know I’ve said something wrong, but I don’t know what.

  “You’re not going back to the hotel,” he says firmly. There’s a hard, unwavering glint in his eyes, like he’s just daring me to challenge him on this.

  I take a deep breath to get a grip on my rapidly fraying nerves. I might be scared and borderline desperate, but, “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Caleb.”

  I’m not sure whether I step out of his arms or he steps out of mine, but before I know it, we’re standing with a few inches (that feel like a mile) between us.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me!” I yell. I feel like I’m on some kind of emotional roller coaster, and I can’t tell which end is up. I’m angry, and I can’t get a handle on that, but why am I upset? Caleb cares about me, he just wants me to be safe, but this sets a bad precedent. He can’t just command me to do things his way just because he’s scared and worried. “If I want to go back to the hotel, I’ll go back to the hotel. You don’t get to tell me what to do now, especially not if that’s going to be a requirement for your hospitality.”

  His eyes widen. “You think I want to control you?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing? Is there some other way that I’m supposed to interpret you telling me that I can’t go back to my hotel if I want to?”

  “Please,” he says, gritting his teeth. “Don’t fight me on this.”

  Those are the exact words that make me want to fight him on this. I’m feeling the last bit of my control slipping through my fingertips, and all I need is just a minute of quiet to collect my thoughts and work through them, but Caleb isn’t going to give that to me. I walk toward the door, not really sure where I’ll go once I step outside of it, but needing to move, to-

  “Mia,” Caleb says, and the desperation in his voice is enough to get me to stop. “I’m your boyfriend, I’m not about to let you go out to a strange hotel right after you’ve been robbed when I have a nice and safe place for you to stay right here!”

  I can’t feel or hear anything apart from the rush of blood in my ears. He’s my boyfriend? We’ve never even discussed anything like that, even though I obviously haven’t been seeing anyone else, and given the amount of time he spends with me, Caleb can’t be, either. We’ve known each other for almost a month, but I still haven’t come clean with him about the real reason why I’m here. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep it from him, and I feel terrible taking him up on his kindness when I haven’t even been honest with him. Hearing him call himself my boyfriend knowing all that seems like too much, and yet it makes a flood of warmth flow through my veins.

  I like the word, like hearing him talking about belonging to me.

  “You’re my boyfriend now?” I ask. My voice sounds accusatory and mean in a way that I wasn’t intending.

  Caleb looks like I’ve actually hit him. “Aren’t I?”

  “We never talked about it, I just-”

  “I assumed.” He takes a long, deep breath, like he’s trying to calm himself down. “Is that not where this is headed for you?”

  “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t know that was where this was headed for you.”

  Caleb’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Have I somehow been unclear about my intentions? You’re the only woman in my life. You’re the only woman I want to be in my life.”

  My heart is hammering in my chest, and I feel like I might pass out. I had figured we were on our way to getting serious, but I had been avoiding thinking about that, because I didn’t want to deal
with the fact that this thing that Caleb and I are building together is standing on a foundation full of cracks. Cracks that I put there by not being honest with him about why I’m here in the city, why I ran away from Chicago. What am I going to do? Stay and let my shadowy past lurk out there in the distance somewhere, wondering if I’ve run so far that it can’t ever catch up with me? Tell him I’m a thief and lose him forever?

  “You haven’t been unclear about your intentions,” I say, looking down at my hands.

  “Do you not want the same things I want?”

  Those clear green eyes of his are boring into mine, and all I want to do is give him an answer, but answers come with consequences that I’m not ready to deal with yet. “I want you,” I tell him.

  He takes a deep breath. “Only me?”

  I give him a grin, then reach out and twine our fingers together. “Only you.”

  Caleb leans down and gives me a sweet, tender kiss. “Please stay. It’s not that I’m trying to control you, Mia. This is for me. Please do this for me.”

  “Caleb, I-”

  “Don’t make me listen to someone hurting you over the phone again. Please.”

  When I see the genuine pain in his eyes, I’m nearly left breathless. Of course hearing what happened to me over the phone scared him. Even though things are still incredibly new between us, I wouldn’t want to listen to him getting robbed and beaten while I was on the other end of the line, helpless. Just the thought of it makes my stomach roll.

  “Okay,” I tell him, and he looks absolutely relieved.

  “Come here,” he says softly. He guides me through the apartment, down the hallway that leads to his bedroom. There’s a room on the left, near the middle of the hallway, and the door has been closed every time I’ve been here.

  Today, he opens it. Inside is a spare bedroom. It’s a beautiful space; sunlight floods the room. Everything is neutral, from the hardwood floors, to the beige walls, to the off-white comforter that covers the bed. The large, wrought-iron headboard is the focal point of the room, and it is framed by two large, floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a vase full of daisies on the nightstand to the right of the bed, and I grin, because I made an offhanded comment not too long ago that they’re my favorite. But…why are they in here?

  “What’s this?”

  Caleb looks at me with a bashful smile. “It’s your room.”

  My eyes widen, and my stomach drops. I figured that when he asked me to stay, he was asking me to stay with him. As in sleep with him, sleep in his room and in his bed, like I have been.

  “My room,” I repeat dumbly. “Do you not want…” I’m having difficulty forming the words for the rest of that question. Did we not just decide that he’s officially my boyfriend?

  Caleb shrugs. “You seemed to want to stay in your hotel a lot, and I figured it was because you wanted some time away from me. I thought it would be good for you to have a place to escape to, if you wanted.”

  “Oh,” I sigh. “Caleb, that’s not why.”

  I wait for him to ask me why I spent so much time in my own hotel room when I could’ve been spending time with him, but he doesn’t. He just says, “I want you in my bed, Mia.”

  The words send a wave of desire through me, even though my face is swollen and the color of an eggplant, and I know for sure sex is off the table for the foreseeable future. But when a handsome, kind man says something like that, how can I not go weak in the knees?

  “I want to be in your bed.”

  “Good,” he replies, leaning down and placing a quick kiss on my lips. “But if you need some time to yourself, this room is all yours.”

  Right now it feels like time to myself is the very last thing I need.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When I wake up, I hear voices echoing all the way down the hall into the bedroom. The door is open, and I figure Caleb left it like that so he could hear me if I called for him. The fact that he’s so thoughtful makes me smile, despite the crankiness I usually feel when I first wake up. Last night was my first night as a temporary resident in Caleb’s apartment, and he told me that he was going to be working from home for the next few days in order to keep an eye on me. So, I’m not exactly surprised to hear his voice; I figured he would take a conference call or two during the day. What does surprise me is that there’s someone responding to him when he speaks, and that someone is here in the apartment.

  I glance back at the clock, surprised to see that I’ve slept so late into the morning. I’ve always been an early riser, but Caleb’s thick, lined curtains keep the sun from shining through and waking me up like it normally does.

  Slowly, I begin the process of getting out of bed. The nurse was adamant that I not move too quickly for the first few days I’m home. I move my legs across the soft sheets, until they dangle off the side of the bed. When I’m feeling confident that I’m not going to be dizzy or pass out when I step onto the floor, I slide down off of the mattress.

  I’m only marginally woozy. The doctor said it’s common and that it would pass soon enough. Honestly, I can’t wait for that day to come.

  The only clothes I have with me are the ones I was wearing when I was robbed, so I’m wearing a t-shirt that belongs to Caleb, and actually looks like an overly large dress on me.

  Standing in the middle of the room, I notice that I can’t hear the voices as clearly as I did before. Caleb is still talking to his guest, but I can only make out faint sounds of the conversation. Even though I know it’s terrible to eavesdrop, I really can’t help my curiosity, so I step out into the hallway and quietly walk toward the main living area.

  The closer I get to the end of the hallway, the clearer those hushed voices are. When I’m at a place where I can get a good listen, I immediately recognize one of the voices as Ben’s. The fact that they’re being hush-hush about whatever it is that they’re talking about makes me think that whatever it is that they’re talking about is me.

  When I get to the point where I can’t walk any further without the risk of being seen, I stop.

  “What makes you think that?” Ben asks.

  There’s a long silence from Caleb, before he finally says, “She was just…carrying that bag around with her everywhere.”

  God, they are talking about me. And about my suspicious behavior with my bag, which…well, it can’t be good.

  “I can’t blame her for not wanting to leave it at a hotel. My laptop is my livelihood too, and there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d leave it where anyone who had access to my room could take it.”

  “I’m sure that drives Oliver crazy,” he replies with an amused lilt in his voice.

  “I’ve told him about it several times. He’s always got some kind of rebuttal about how he screens his employees, and has top-of-the-line room safes, but I take an extreme stance on the safety of my electronics: trust no one.”

  “Still,” Caleb continues. “She carried that bag around like it was the only thing she owned.”

  “What would be wrong with that?” Ben asks.

  I barely even know the guy, and I feel like I have an ally. He could just be riling Caleb up by coming up with counterpoints to all of his concerns, but even the illusion that someone’s in my corner feels nice. I like Ben more than I already did.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb replies. “Don’t you think she’d have some furniture stored somewhere? Or have movers bringing it here from Chicago? Something?”

  “Have you ever asked if she has furniture stored somewhere? Or if movers are bringing it here from Chicago?”

  This conversation is making me uneasy. Of course, I have given Caleb reason to be at least a little suspicious of me, what with the staying in hotels and carrying that damned bag everywhere. I had foolishly hoped that he wouldn’t ever raise those suspicions. The good thing is that he doesn’t sound angry about it; he’s just trying to talk it out with his friend. I suppose I should be thankful for that; at least now I won’t be blindsided if any of this ever comes u
p in conversation.

  “I’m really trying not to push her too hard.”

  “I get it,” Ben replies. “Maybe there are some things you should push, though.”

  Now I feel even worse than I already did about not being totally honest with him. He’s offered me a place to stay despite his misgivings, and…god, I’m just so lucky to have met him. I’d be lucky anyway, but with the situation I’m in? It’s the biggest blessing imaginable.

  “Speaking of pushing, you really should talk her into letting me see some of her work. I’ve got this new project that I’m starting, and I’m short-handed. I need someone who knows what they’re doing and can jump into the deep end right away.”

  “Yeah,” Caleb says distractedly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I’ve listened to too much, and overstepped my bounds enough for one day. I sneak down the hallway, and back into the bedroom, where I strip off Caleb’s shirt and head straight into the bathroom. I need some time to think, and standing under the steady spray of a shower head always seems to do the trick. Once the water is steaming hot, just the way I like it, I step inside the shower.

  As I wash the hospital off, I try to figure out what exactly I’m going to do when Caleb starts asking questions.

  It seems like I’m running out of time.

  * * * * *

  My eyes are glued to the top-of-the-line, custom-built laptop that Caleb just placed in front of me on the dining room table. It’s the nicest one I’ve ever had; even nicer than the one I built myself with special-ordered parts that I spent months saving up for. This thing runs like a dream. I’m half expecting a ray of light to shine down on it from heaven, complete with a choir of angels singing in the background. That’s how amazing this laptop is.

  “How did you get this?” I ask. The person that built this beauty has some serious computer know-how. It’s not exactly surprising that Caleb would have access to something like this, but to get it on such short notice is impressive.