Beth said nothing, but the awkwardness of her movement as she walked behind the desk revealed just how shy she felt in allowing Devon to see her professional space. He was touched, and also more enamored of her than seemed reasonable for a man who had spent the past decade of his life developing unsentimentality into a fine art. Usually by this point in his relationship with a woman he’d be suggesting interesting ways to mess up that desk of hers. But instead he found himself fighting back the desire to buy some beeswax polish and offer topolish her furniture until it shone. And the fact that this wasn’t a metaphor disturbed him considerably.
Shoving his hands in his pockets and a bland expression on his face, he watched Beth remove her hat as if she were at home, brushing back fine strands of hair that drifted over her cheekbones and the soft curve of her mouth. His hands fisted, and when she began opening desk drawers and shuffling through their contents, his capacity for lewd metaphor came rushing back in a great torrent. From sheer self-preservation, he forced himself to look away. On the wall behind her were several framed qualifications, and he could imagine how they must daunt her students. The woman wasaccomplished. He also suspected she put those qualifications up not to daunt but to reassure people that she knew what she was doing, because she was nice (and ignorant of human psychology).
“Aha!” she declared, holding up a three-ringed binder triumphantly.
“Proof?” Devon asked.
Opening the binder, flipping to its third page, she bit her thumbnail as she read. “Circumstantial evidence. Last term Professor Gladstone asked for an inventory of all the birds in both his and the department’s aviaries that had been included in his T-2 research program. I thought I remembered having seen the frostbird’s name somewhere, and here it is.” She tapped the page. “Along with the carnivorous lapwing and feuerfinch, among others.”
“Huh,” Devon said. “Interesting indeed. But the most important question is…”
When he paused, she looked up over the rim of her spectacles at him. “Yes?”
“Why is Gladstone getting you to do an inventory for him? That’s work for a secretary, not a professor.”
Her expression went utterly blank for a moment. Then she blinked, and blushed, and looked everywhere but at him, muttering something about “diligence” and “happy to help” and quite possibly “better than washing dishes.” Devon took pity on her—and on himself, since if he remained on that subject, he’d likely find himself in prison for smacking Gladstone in the face.
“What is T-2 research?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Professor Gladstone kept it secret. But considering what we’ve experienced of those birds, probably it involves training them.”
A grim pause followed.
“But I must be wrong,” Beth murmured, frowning at the inventory. “It’s hard to believe even Professor Gladstone would do that. He’s a misogynistic reactionary who teaches outdated science, is callous toward his students, and only leaves the tea bag in for less than two seconds…But clipping a bird’s wings? Manipulating its instincts and exploiting its magic? That represents a corruption unlikely in such a reputed ornithologist.”
Devon knew his face displayed more skepticism than an entire consortium of scientists, but the second Beth looked up at him, so troubled by this threat to her essential goodwill, he smiled. “Perhaps we should draw up a chart of all the possibilities and formulate a hypothesis from that.”
The ring binder swung shut. “What kind of chart?” she asked eagerly.
He took a step forward, intensifying his gaze. “A radar chart.”
Beth drew in an audible breath of delight, and thus encouraged, he took another step. With the desk between them and the shadows looming like outspread wings behind her, he glimpsed what she must look like in a lecture theater: mesmerizing, and more beautiful than he could ever describe.
“I should clarify something,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “I intend to win this competition regardless of what charms a conniving villain might try to work on me.”
Devon set a hand on the desk and leaned forward. “Is that so?”
“We can make a chart, we can even indulge in some analysis, but there can be—”
“Only one Birder of the Year,” they chorused.
Devon repressed a sudden wistfulness. “I have a particularly interesting algorithm I’d love to show you,” he said.
Then the clever, clever woman turned his world upside down. Setting her own hand on the desk, she leaned forward until her face was mere inches from his. “I know how to plot variables, Mr. Lockley. I read more than field guides, you know.”
He watched courage crackle and flare in her lovely, halcyon blue eyes, behind the spectacles. It sparked fires all through his body. “You smell like lavender,” he murmured.
She blinked, thrown off-balance, but did not retreat. “It calms birds.”
It was doing the opposite to him. He’d tried being good, being restrained, but she was simply too delectable. “I’m going to kiss you,” he warned.
Instantly her face turned red, her expression lighting with the same desire that had propelled Devon through Spain and France, then across England in helpless pursuit of her. Hemoved the last tiny distance, even as she moved to meet him in the middle. Their breath mingled, their lips parting.
“Aaaaggghhhh!”
A scream rang out from the museum’s courtyard below. Beth jolted back, her eyes growing wide. Devon bowed his head with a frustrated sigh.
“Tsk,”she said, pulling off her spectacles as she frowned toward the office window. “Students.”
