Shelby squared the corners of the books stacked on her coffee table, then fluffed the cushions on the couch. She liked the house tidy, and she’d gotten into the habit of spending a few hours every Saturday making sure the place was in shape.

What she hadn’t done lately was clean out her briefcase, and even though that was a job that made more sense to tackle at work, she’d already conquered the kitchen, the bathroom and the living room, and she was still in the mood to kick some organizational butt.

Since her house was too tiny for a full-size dining table to spread out on, she moved to the bedroom and dumped the contents of her cherished Louis Vuitton briefcase onto the fluffy white spread. The case had been a present to herself after she passed her CPA exam, and she loved it because it held so much stuff, traveled everywhere with her, and still looked great.

She was sorting all the papers into piles when she heard footsteps on her front porch and then the sound of a key in the lock. She was just about to abandon her project and go meet Nolan in the living room when she caught sight of the benefit brochure that Frank had pressed on her days ago.

The cover said only DTRR with a stylized graphic of letters and words in odd shapes and sizes. Since that gave her no clue as to what cause the sponsoring organization supported, she started to flip the pages, wanting at least a little information to throw at Nolan before she asked if he wanted to join her.

“Hey,” he said, coming into the bedroom and leaning on the dresser about the time that she realized that DTRR was the Dyslexia Training and Resource Room, an organization devoted to helping children with dyslexia.

“Hey, back.” She glanced up at him, greeting his smile with one of her own before looking back down, more interested in the benefit now that she knew it was for a good cause. “I was just trying to figure out what this benefit Frank has me going to is about. I think I may need a date,” she teased, and was surprised to see that the bright humor in his face had faded.

“Something the mat—”

She didn’t finish the question, because while she was speaking, she glanced down at the brochure. And there—on the center spread—was one of Nolan’s publicity shots and the large font announcement that the longtime DTRR supporter would be this year’s keynote speaker at the gala dinner, talking for the first time publicly about his lifetime struggle with dyslexia.

With a frown, she looked back up at him. “You’re the keynote speaker? The guest of honor?”

He nodded, and she pushed off the bed, then started to pace. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

She whipped around to face him. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his posture defensive, and for some reason, that irritated her all the more.

“Don’t play games, Nolan. You didn’t tell me you were headlining a gala benefit. You didn’t invite me to be your date even though we’ve been sleeping together for quite a while now.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Sleeping together?”

She ignored him. “And you somehow failed to mention that you’re dyslexic.”

His jaw tightened. “It didn’t exactly come up in the conversation.”

Cold anger bubbled inside her. But anger she could handle. It was the hurt that was making her legs shaky and tears gather in her throat. “You kept a huge part of yourself from me. You didn’t let me in at all.”

Some of the tension left his body, and his expression turned soft and earnest. “It was private. Intensely personal. And not something that’s easy to talk about. I debated for months before I agreed to speak at the benefit.”

“Intensely personal,” she repeated. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to wrap my head around the idea that you turned our sex life into fodder for your show? Or to ask you to tie my wrists when you made love to me? That’s not me—doing it or asking it. But I managed it—hell, I wanted it—because it was you. Because I thought that we were a couple.”

A tear trickled down the side of her nose, and she brusquely wiped it away.

“Baby, we are…”

“Are we? Because it doesn’t feel that way right now. It feels like all I’ve seen is the celebrity. Have you ever shown me the man?”

“Okay, wait a second,” he said. “That’s harsh.”

“Is it? You make your whole life public for ratings, but I always thought you held some of it back. That there was a part of you—an intimate part—that you let the people close to you see. And maybe it was my fault for thinking I fell into that group. But I don’t, Nolan. As far as you’re concerned, I’m just another woman in your audience getting the watered-down, sexed-up version of you.”

“That’s not fair.”

She blinked, her body tired, her head hurting. “Isn’t it? It feels fair. Hell, it feels like the truth. Because, dammit, Nolan, it hurts. Here,” she said with her hand over her heart. “And I’m not sure how to make it feel better.”

---

She curled up on the bed after he left, and she was still there hours later when her mom called around dinnertime. “I spoke with Alan,” she said without preamble. “Is it true that you broke up with him?”

Shelby rubbed her face and forced herself to sit up. She needed blood to be circulating to her brain if she was going to have this conversation with her mother. “A while back, yeah. He’s a great guy,” Shelby said. “But not someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

She thought of Nolan. Of a guy she could see in her future, and wondered if she’d over-reacted earlier. If maybe the fact that she could see a future with him was making her so terrified of losing him that she was seeing cracks in the relationship where there weren’t any cracks at all.

“Shelby. You know I’m not going to criticize your choices, but we both know that Alan adored you.”

“I guess so,” she said. “But I didn’t adore him.”

There was a pause, and then her mom said, “I see. And is there someone else you’re seeing?”

Shelby loved her mom, but for a woman who lived by math and numbers, she was very rarely direct and straightforward in life stuff. “If you’ve been taking to Alan, you know there is.”

She could practically hear her mother’s frown. “Alan didn’t know who’d captured your interest.”

“His name’s Nolan Wood. He’s a radio host.”

“What? Like a DJ?”

“It’s a lot more than that, Mom. He’s practically a stand-up comic.”

“I’m really not sure that makes it better. You have professional appearances to think of. Does he—”

“That reminds me,” she said, grateful to have a way to change the subject. “I got a call from the Young Professionals. You know, that networking and educational group? They asked me if I’d do an on-camera interview for their webpage. It will be on Facebook and YouTube and I don’t know what else.”

“Sweetheart, that’s wonderful. That’s exactly the kind of thing you should be doing.”

Unlike Nolan, which wasn’t.

Her mom didn’t say the last, of course, but Shelby heard it anyway, and the censure was still ringing in her ears after she ended the call.

But all it did was bring her thoughts of Nolan front and center.

She reached for her phone to call him, but pulled her hand back, afraid he’d hang up on her. More than that, afraid that she would deserve it if he did.

Instead, she grabbed the copy of Watchmen off the table, settled back on the love seat, and picked up where she left off.

When she finally closed the book, it was late. She’d been absorbed in the story of the flawed and fascinating heroes. A lot of times, they’d made the wrong choices, but that didn’t mean she stopped rooting for them.

Then again maybe it was Nolan she was thinking of, and not the Watchmen at all.

Frowning at her own meandering thoughts, she got up and went to the bedroom, intending to go to bed. Instead, she found herself pulling on shorts and a T-shirt, grabbing her purse, and then heading out to her car.