Page 32 of Misadventures with a Professor
And then he goes back to pretending I don’t exist.
Perverse satisfaction buoys me for a moment or two. Whoever this Rosie is, she’s not a lover of Oliver’s any longer, it seems. But soon I’m weighed down with razor-sharp anguish again. At least he talked to Rosie in bed. I was only ravished within an inch of my life—not that I’m complaining—and then summarily scorned the next day…and I am complaining about that. He won’t even look at me now, as if I’m beneath his attention, and yet I never feel like he’s not aware of me. Of where I move and when I move, of how I sit and how I write. I just can’t tell if his awareness is one of cold annoyance or of burning dislike. It can’t be anything else.
It’s the slowest afternoon of my life, and as it drones on, too warm and narrated by the drone of a bee that gets stuck inside the study and bumbles about while Beatrix watches, I begin to wonder if I can really do this for the rest of the summer. Can I sit in a room with a man I want, a man I gave my body to, and have him treat me like this?
No.
I’d rather be spanked every day, because an entire summer of Oliver treating me the way he’s treated me today—that would be the real masochism.
After six o’clock rolls over, I close my laptop, coming to a decision. Dinner with Oliver would be an exercise in heartache and misery, and I can’t bear it. I won’t do it to myself.
If he wants to ignore me, fine. I’ll make myself very easy to ignore.
“May I sit here?” a warm voice asks, and I look up to see a very good-looking man in a button-down shirt and trousers standing next to me at the bar inside the Slaughtered Lamb pub.
“Of course,” I say with a smile, and his face opens up with an answering grin.
“You’re American.”
I give a sheepish smile as I pat the stool next to me. “Take a seat, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“That’s an invitation no man can refuse.” He chuckles, and there’s a little bit of heat to his gaze as his eyes make a surreptitious flick over my body.
We both order drinks, and we start chatting—he does some type of accounting for a local quarrying company, and I explain why I’m spending my summer before grad school helping a scholar with research.
He seems charmed by me, and I can’t help but wonder if this is how it would have happened if I’d made it to the Goose and Gander that night. If I’d met any other handsome Englishman, anyone other than Oliver. If it would’ve been as easy as I’d planned on it being—just two adults sharing a night together and then going their separate ways. Not whatever it is that Oliver and I have going on.
But at least I scored a point for my dignity tonight. I stood up and left the study as if I were simply going to get another mug of tea, and then I got my wallet and left the house, walking the short, pleasant route up to Bakewell and indulging in some Indian food before I decided to stop by the Slaughtered Lamb for a much-needed drink.
I hope Oliver enjoyed his dinner alone.
I hope he enjoys the rest of his summer alone, because I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to stay. It stings and it rankles, having to give this up just because he’s a colossal dick, but nothing’s worth being this miserable. I’ll go back tonight, announce that I’m leaving, and then tomorrow I’ll be on my way home, away from him and his perfect eyes and his perfect mouth and his perfect everything that even now sets my body on fire just thinking about it.
“Have you been enjoying your stay?” Matthew the Quarry Guy says, and I feel a stab of guilt when I realize this isn’t the first time Matthew’s asked the question.
“I have been.” I give him my renewed focus and another smile, which he seems to enjoy very much. “It’s so beautiful here, so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.”
“I’d be happy to show you around sometime,” Matthew says, his voice going lower. “I’d hate for you to miss anything.”
I’m about to tell him I appreciate it but I can’t because an arrogant professor broke my heart and now I have to go home early, but I’m stopped by the sudden appearance of a man right behind Matthew.
A man with blue-green-brown eyes who’s practically vibrating with rage.
“Oliver?” I ask as he takes my elbow.
“We’re going home, Miss Lynch,” Oliver says through clenched teeth, and oh, it’s terrible, but hearing him call me Miss Lynch again makes me want to squirm in the best kind of way.
“May I help you?” Matthew asks, looking a bit alarmed for my sake, but Oliver cuts him a glare so ferocious that Matthew withers immediately, and I can’t blame him.
“Only Miss Lynch can help me by coming home, which she’s doing now, so any help from you is quite unnecessary,” Oliver pronounces stonily. “If you’ll excuse us.”
I don’t have to go with him. Not only could I struggle free if I wanted, but I think if I said red, he’d relinquish me right away. He’d let me go.
But I do go with him, flashing an apologetic smile at Matthew and letting Oliver guide me out the door of the pub, grateful that I’ve already paid my tab.
“What were you doing in there?” he demands the minute we’re in the open air.
“Getting a drink.”
