Page 19 of Misadventures with a Professor
“You do not fucking live here. Professor Graeme does, and Professor Graeme is an old man. He’s friends with my father and has slippers and everything!”
Well, now I think she’s gone truly insane.
Except…
“Friends with your father,” I repeat. I stare at her. “Your father is Michael Lynch?”
The tip of the fire poker lowers the slightest amount. “Yes,” she answers, her eyes narrowing. It has the unfortunate—for me—effect of making her eyelashes sweep lower, long and sooty against her cheeks.
“Are you Zandy Lynch?”
The poker lowers a bit more. “Yes,” she says.
“You told me your name was Amanda.”
She drops the poker all the way down but still holds on to it, as if she’s ready to strike me at any moment. “It is Amanda. Zandy’s my nickname.”
“It’s still a lie.”
“It’s not,” she fires back. “And you said your name was Oliver Markham!”
I hesitate because she’s got a point. It’s not entirely a lie either, but it wasn’t the whole truth. “Oliver Markham Graeme,” I say. “Markham is a family name. I knew…I knew it would be enough for anyone to locate me, coupled with my birthday and picture, if that alleviates any retroactive safety concerns of yours.”
“Graeme,” she mumbles. “You’re Professor Graeme. But…but you’re not old at all.” Her cheeks go pink in the most tempting way, and then I notice—oh Christ—her nipples have pulled tight under the criminally thin fabric of her camisole.
Fuck. How dare she be so delicious now? When I’m so furious with her?
She drops the poker, and it bounces off a pile of books. “But you have slippers and everything,” she whispers.
Why is she so fixated on my damn slippers? And how does she know I even have them unless she’s been in my bedroom?
She’s been in my bedroom.
A desperate, lust-filled rage floods me anew. “Tell me one thing,” I demand. “Did you really not know? Did you really not know it was me?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “That was the whole plan,” she says, gesturing in front of her as if the plan is something she can trace the shape of. “That’s why it had to be London. It had to be a stranger. I wanted to get rid of it and then go on with my life.”
I study her. Years of fibbing and malingering students have given me a keen ability to detect the truth, and there’s nothing but honesty glowing from her blue eyes and flushed cheeks.
She didn’t know.
A realization comes, jagged with relief and something that’s too close to disappointment. “You should leave.”
“Right,” she says, smoothing down her hair. Her tits move under her camisole with mouthwatering heaviness. “I should go to bed, and then we’ll discuss this after we’ve had some sleep.”
“No,” I interrupt. “I mean you should leave. Go back home.”
I’m not prepared for the sudden hurt and unhappiness that floods her face. “Oliver,” she says.
“It’s Professor Graeme.”
“Professor,” she says. “Please.”
The proximity of th
ose two words together, coming out of a mouth like hers, lances heat right to my groin.
Professor, please.
