“I only own one TV,” she said. “Having one in the bedroom seems luxurious.”
“I put the TV on to help me fall asleep sometimes.”
“Yeah? What do you watch?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s this forensic investigation show on one of the upper dial cable channels that airs all night. They solve crime with science.” Caleb paused on an ad for a personal injury lawyer. “I love this guy’s accent.”
It was a pretty aggressive Brooklyn accent; the guy looked Italian and had probably grown up in Carroll Gardens or Bensonhurst. Not only did he have the “cawffee tawk” vowels down, but he hit his consonants hard.
“Better or worse than the Boston accent?” Lauren asked.
“Dunno. More of a novelty, maybe. When I lived in Boston, one of our vet techs had a hard-core Southie accent, so I heard it every day and got used to it. Plus I grew up in Maine, where nobody pronounces Rs, either. Still, the first time the tech told me a canine patient had parvo, I had no idea what he was talking about. He kept saying ‘pah-vo.’”
“Parvo?”
“Canine parvovirus. It’s a virus we see in dogs sometimes. Anyway, my point was that the New York accents are new and different.”
She looked at the TV for a long moment. “It’s perfectly in character for you to be into a forensic investigation show.”
He shrugged. He’d done enough necropsies in his career that not much turned his stomach, but he could admit that someone with a weaker constitution might not like the content of the show. But he liked that they could solve the puzzle of these crimes with hard science and logic.
And speaking of logic, if Lauren noticed he’d broken protocol, she hadn’t said anything.
He looked over at her. She had on a pair of lacy pink panties and one of his old T-shirts. She climbed onto the bed, where he sat in a pair of boxers, and snuggled up beside him.
Were they about to…watch TV in bed together? It seemed like such an established-couple thing to do. Certainly not what two people only seeing each other for sex would do.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lauren said.
Caleb’s chest tightened in anticipation. “Yeah.”
“I just… Well, I had drinks with Evan the other night, and we were talking about dating, and it felt very strange I couldn’t tell him about you and me.”
“What about you and me?”
Lauren leveled her gaze at him and patted his knee. “I hate to break this to you, but we have a relationship. It’s secret and undefined, but it’s still a relationship.”
He sighed, unable to deny that.
“So at some point,” Lauren said, “you and I transitioned from people who hate each other to people who sometimes have sex to people who are basically having a secret affair. We’ve spent more nights together the last few weeks than some real couples do. But… It is a secret, isn’t it?”
Going public, for lack of a better way to explain it, would be like advertising to the world that they were in a relationship, and Caleb didn’t feel he could do that. He wanted to keep seeing Lauren, especially like this when she was half naked in his bed, but he didn’t want to make a commitment. He didn’t knowthatmuch about her, did he? They got along well in bed but less so out of it. It wasn’t like they were going to end up together. Caleb had no intention of marrying again. He’d trusted love once. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
“Do we have to label things?” he asked.
“No, not this minute. I’m okay with the way things are. I just feel weird about this all being a secret.”
“I know women talk, but do you really have to talk aboutthis? It’s no one’s business. I’d really rather it not be public knowledge.”
Lauren leaned back and stared at him, her expression surprised. “Womentalk?”
“You know. You go for drinks and gossip and stuff.”
“I don’t live in an episode ofSex and the City. I would just like to be able to tell my friends about something significant happening in my life. But maybe what we have is fleeting and not significant and doesn’t matter.”
Oh, here it was. “It’s…fun. I enjoy spending time with you like this. Does it have to be anything more than that?”
“No, it doesn’t have to be.” She sat back against the headboard and crossed her arms. “This thing between us may become something you don’t want, though.”
