“Um,” Caleb said, his eyes widening as he imbibed the sight of her lace negligee (which did not take him long, since it was very skimpy), her bare feet, and her loose, still-damp hair. Amelia considered slamming the door shut and running away to hide inside a high-necked, heavy black gown, but clutched all her courage to her, along with clutching the edge of the door, and did not move.
“Hello, Caleb,” she said calmly.
“Um…I have something for you.” He looked up into her face with some effort.
“If it’s a written apology from Professor Ottersock…” Amelia began, but stopped as Caleb reached into his jacket pocket, for she wasn’t exactly sure how she would finish that sentence. The question proved moot, however, when he brought out a small black safe bag and handed it to her.
Amelia gasped as she felt the contents’ shape through the material. “My teaspoon!” she exclaimed delightedly. Then she frowned. “You stole a valuable thaumaturgic artifact from Professor Ottersock.”
Caleb shrugged and nodded.
“He’ll fire you!”
“No, he won’t,” Caleb answered lazily. “I quit.”
Amelia’s mouth fell open. She hastily closed it, but not before an incredulous laugh escaped. “You—what—why?”
Caleb tilted his upper body toward her so as to answer in a low, deep voice that transformed the humming of Amelia’s nerves into a full operatic chorus and sent a blush over her cheeks. “Where you go, I go too.”
“But your career is so important to you,” she argued. “Please tell Ottersock that you’ve changed your mind.”
“No.” He smiled as if abandoning the dream that had guided him all through his youth were a matter of little consequence. His eyes lit with that smile, turning them into the most enchanted summer. “Don’t look so disconcerted, Meely. I only studied history so I could stay with my best friend. If you’d chosen to study geography instead, we’d currently be knee-deep in a muddy tidal pool somewhere.”
“Oh,” Amelia said blankly. If her blush grew any hotter, the negligee would burn right off her (which, she suspected, might have been part of his plan). “Um.”
Caleb’s eyes twinkled, for he knew that he was charming, and he loved it. “I’m seriously proud of you for resigning. And even more so that you did so for the sake of self-love. Youshouldlove yourself—you are very, very lovable, Amelia.” His smile deepened, and the twinkles became sparks that sent thrilling little electric shocks through Amelia’s body. “Besides,” he added, “I’ve beenso bored. If it weren’t for you, I’d have quit months ago.”
“But what will you do? Caleb, my dear friend, I admire you in so many ways, but you’re not the best at planning.”
He leaned against the doorframe, hands in his trouser pockets, wholly unoffended by this criticism. “I have a plan. The first thing on it…well, the second thing…is to buy twotypewriters. I’m going to write a novel, Meely. I know a publisher, Bernard McDonald, who is keen to buy one from me.”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “Bang-Bang McDonald? Didn’t he put the dean’s carriage upside down in the middle of the lacrosse field and blame you for it?”
“Yes, and now he owes me.”
“Hm. Well, that is a good plan. You’ll make a marvelous novelist, and publishing surely pays better than teaching. But why do you need two typewriters?”
“One’s for you, so you can write your future bestselling book about the teaspoon.”
“Oh.” Amelia looked down at the safe bag in her hand, then up again at Caleb, and somehow within that one and a half seconds her love for him grew a thousandfold. “Oh,” she said again, which was oddly more eloquent than real words would have been.
“Is that not a genius idea?” Caleb asked, a little cocky, a little shy.
Amelia nodded. “Mm-hm,” she managed to say. Inside her brain, several thoughts were already coming up with chapter headings, while several more were designing various experiments she could perform. Caleb watched her with a fond smile, no doubt all too well aware of this mental activity. Amelia forced herself back into the conversation and frowned at him with a teacherly habit that would probably take years to break. “If this was second on your list, what’s first?”
Caleb’s smile vanished. He straightened away from the doorframe. “Er, well, yes, well, I’m not quite prepared for that yet,” he admitted, rubbing his hands up and down the expensive cloth of his trousers. “I need to rent a marquee, you see,and get together a string quartet, and then there’s the difficulty of finding three dozen roses at this time of year.”
“Right,” Amelia said, blinking bemusedly. “That sounds very…extravagant.”
He bristled. “Of course it is. A man can’t just propose marriage while standing on a doorst—”
He was abruptly silenced due to Amelia leaping on him. She threw her arms around his neck in a manner that her mother would vehemently denounce as contradictory to Tarrant dignity. But Amelia did not think of her mother in that moment. Her feet left the ground, and Caleb, with a joyous laugh, wrapped his arms around her so that she was safe against him. He walked them both inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Sorry,” Amelia began. But she proceeded no further before he was kissing her. The flutters fluttered, and sparkles sparked, and Amelia wrapped her legs around him as he strode across the room at a speed that felt wildly thrilling after all the years of waiting and wishing. Pressing her back against a random wall, he kissed her so thoroughly, her bones seemed to melt.
Amelia could have stayed there all day, kissing the time away. But Caleb soon advanced the conversation, setting her on her feet, extending his kisses along her jaw and against the shy, sensitive place behind her ear. Amelia’s only contribution now was a moan of pleasure, but this seemed sufficient for Caleb, and she felt him smile against her skin. By the time he had kissed down the length of her neck, she’d made her second monumental decision of the day.
Stepping back, she looked at Caleb with all the love and longing that had been archived in the secret recesses of her heart for so many years. His eyes darkened in response. Cupping herface with one hand, he stroked a thumb across her cheek, as if she were a priceless antique whose magic he yearned to experience. He said nothing; but then, words never had proved capable of encapsulating the depth of friendship between them. Taking his hand, Amelia silently led him into her bedroom.
