Calculated Exposure by Holley Trent Page A

door’s closing, but she was too slow and he was too strong.
    This was different. He’d never locked her in before.
    Tate walked around to the driver’s side and got in. He wore that smile she used to think was charming but now, after years of learning his quirks, she knew it was the one he wore when he wanted to manipulate people.
    “Let’s go back to my place, huh? We’ll get you cleaned up. Find you some clothes to wear. Get you something to eat.” He reached over and stroked her cheek.
    This time, she drew back.
    He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “Then maybe we can talk about what you can do for me.”
    Enough .
    She shook herself awake and forced her eyes open, heart racing, breath ragged.
    Oh, yes. That was Tate. Absolutely Tate. But why had the dream changed? Why now?
    She tried to sit up, but something, no, someone pinned the covers on her right side. How quickly she’d forgotten about her guest, and he was actually one she enjoyed rather than endured.
    She looked down at Curt in the television’s dim light and felt the tension in her chest unfurl. He didn’t want anything from her, and that was just as well, because what did she have to give? Still, as she ran a fingertip down the line of his elegant nose and traced her thumb’s pad across his parted lips, her compulsion was to keep him.
    But how did that work? Tate had been the only man she’d dated long-term. The relationship had been educational in its dysfunction. It’d been the kind of partnership where she couldn’t have done much worse even if she’d tried.
    She’d held no pretenses of being Tate’s one and only, but monogamy seemed natural to her. So, when he wasn’t in her bed, she kept chaste. Besides, she hadn’t liked anyone else enough to give up so much of her body.
    She’d never wanted to give that up again until she’d met Curt, and she didn’t bother understanding it. Maybe she was a little infatuated–in awe of the man. He’d been filling nearly every spare thought in her mind for a week. The boys she knew back in Miami were good-looking enough, and definitely had swagger, but geniuses they were not. She found herself hanging on his every word, filled with an unquenchable curiosity of what would come out of his mouth next. He was interesting in the same kind of way the stars were: pretty from a distance, but up close, kind of dangerous and complicated beyond measure.
    How did one trap a star?
    “Don’t scare him away,” she whispered to herself.
    He stirred at the sound of her voice, turning his face toward the ceiling, but didn’t wake.
    She eased off the bed, being careful not to jostle the mattress, and tiptoed down the hall. The living room was dark as she padded in, so she didn’t see Curt’s shoes near the chair. She stumbled, but her anger was short-lived, and quickly devolving into giggles.
    She liked his stuff taking up space in her home. Made her feel less invisible, having someone around.
    The buckles of her camera case seemed impossibly loud as she unfastened them, and she cringed pulling the device out. The goal was to keep him asleep, and every time the camera beeped and whirred as she manipulated the settings, she cringed. She felt like a photographer on safari, afraid to make a sound for fear the lion would run. Curt probably wouldn’t roar at her, but he likely didn’t want to be captured mid-slumber.
    She padded down the carpeted hallway and knelt beside the bed. Camera poised and in focus, suddenly he tossed his arm to the empty place where she’d been. As his body and brain registered she wasn’t there, he opened his eyes.
    Shit.
    She shoved the camera under the bed as his eyes finally focused on her kneeling form.
    “Turn off the television and come back to bed, darlin’. I’ve got to leave early.”
    “Oh.” She felt like her stomach had tied itself in a knot. She didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to forget his shoes were there and trip over them again. But, it was