Page 17 of Misadventures with a Professor
Dad said Professor Graeme wouldn’t get in until tomorrow morning at the earliest, so I don’t bother to change out of my camisole and sleep shorts. Instead, I walk downstairs huffing to myself, doing a little dance across the cold flagstone floors until I get to the study and its many cozy rugs. That cat comes with me, oblivious to the cold floors, walks up to a pile of yellowing newsprint and kneads it pointlessly for a minute, and then lies down.
I walk around the room, hugging my arms around myself to ward off the clammy night chill. I poke at some of the stacks with my toes, trying to get a feel for what the professor’s research seems to encompass. I know he probably won’t want me to start on anything in earnest until he arrives, but I can at least start sorting some of it and making lists of things to do and archival materials to order. But I have to be doing something. I have to keep my thoughts occupied. Otherwise Oliver will creep into them again, and I can’t have that.
The thing is that I’ve never had any trouble achieving something I’ve set my mind to. Honor roll, valedictorian, grad school of my choice—everything has boiled down to research and focus and discipline. I’m excellent at those things. I’m an excellent student.
So it was easy to promise myself that I’d be the perfect virgin. I’d be honest but not too honest, enthusiastic but not needy. I’d be able to shelve away the experience like a book and be able to revisit it with fond, wise memories. There was no reason to think I wouldn’t be excellent at this either. But I’m not.
The thought makes me shuffle papers and books around a little harder than I should, sending dust clouding up into the air and stacks slumping sideways, much to the irritation of the cat, who looks at me over her shoulder and flicks her tail in a very deliberately unimpressed way.
“Oh sure,” I tell her. “It’s so easy to judge a girl when all you have to do is nap and eat.”
Another tail flick. I glare at her.
“You know, this wouldn’t be such a mess if your owner would clean up after himself,” I grumble. “Why would anyone keep an office in this state? Or their research?”
“Because I like it that way,” a cold voice says from behind me.
And I spin around to see the furious face of Oliver Markham.
Chapter Six
Oliver
It was a hard trip home.
Literally.
I spent my time on the train with crossed legs and gritted teeth, and then it took some artful draping of my jacket over my arm to cover my, ah, situation as I climbed onto the late bus from Matlock. And it isn’t until right now, at my front door—tired and frustrated, a heavy bag full of photocopies and clothes slung over my shoulder—that I remember.
That I fucking remember.
The girl. Michael Lynch’s girl.
Shit.
Lynch is an old acquaintance of mine. First my professor, when I spent a year studying abroad in America during my undergraduate degree, and then later a colleague and peer as we corresponded back and forth about various topics within our closely related fields. In one exchange, I made passing mention of needing an assistant simply to wade through all the material and make sense of it. It was a throwaway comment, bordering on a joke. Until Lynch wrote me back, offering up his librarian daughter for the cost of room and board.
He talked about the girl frequently—the fond asides of a proud father but not much more. To be honest, I forgot she existed until he mentioned her.
Zandy.
I pictured a girl looking like Michael—beanpole thin and bespectacled—poking around my research and asking all sorts of nosy questions about my methods, and I almost immediately said no. I enjoyed Michael’s correspondence and his company, but I took this damn sabbatical from teaching precisely so I wouldn’t have to talk to strangers. And that included any timid, mousy Lynch offspring inside my home. Inside my sanctuary.
But I owe Michael. He’s been a good friend all these years, even after Rosie happened, even after I took a break from teaching—and, well, I really do need the help, if I am being honest. What started as a small stack of research beside my laptop has now become a behemoth of paper and ink that is happily swallowing up the rest of my study. Walking inside it is starting to put me in a bad mood—fine, a worse mood—and even my cat, Beatrix, seems to be losing patience with the unstable stacks of books, which have the tendency to slide and collapse under her feet when she tries to climb them.
Michael deserves the favor, and I deserve the help.
So I said yes and steeled myself to the thought of the summer with a girl bound to be as awkward and fretful as her father. It’s only two months, and surely Michael would prepare his daughter for what a cold, miserable bastard I am. Surely she wouldn’t take it personally.
I’d made my peace with Zandy’s presence before I left for London, but now…
Now there’s been Amanda.
And there’s no peace left inside me. None at all.
In the moonless summer night, the lights inside the cottage burn a merry, welcoming yellow, although I can’t help but r
ather grimly think of what I’ll find inside. I repeatedly charge myself to be nice—or polite at the very least—and I remind myself that none of this is her fault. Not that I met a woman. Not that the woman let me play wicked games with her. Not that the woman let me deflower her and then somehow lulled me to sleep with soft curves and a faintly spicy smell.
