Ora’s late husband had been a different breed of man than the miserable specimens she worked with now. Dr. Alfred Worthy believed that women scientists were equally capable as their male counterparts, and it showed in his willingness to stand up for Ora when other faculty expressed their doubts about her suitability for the field. Despite his somewhat advanced age, Alfred’s support and inherent goodness had made him easy to respect and love. So Ora had.
They spent only two years married, but they were nice ones. Peaceful and content.
And yes, it was Alfred’s friendship with Langley that likelyled her to working here. But she had proven herself time and time again since. Her work on hummingbird hybridization was highly lauded. She had the same academic honors, several more articles to her name (albeit under O. B. Worthy to let her findings speak for themselves), and more field experience than nearly all her male colleagues combined.
And yet it was still not enough to make them take her seriously.
What would convince these people who were supposed to be her peers that her presence here was no fluke or ill-gotten favor? It was a question she asked herself every day.
She folded, then unfolded the message from Mr. Morse. Read it again and grinned. Because perhaps she’d finally found her answer.
FOUR
Callahan
I come downstairs thenext morning to discover Annie already there, sitting atop the counter and singing passionately to the meatball sub cradled in her hands. Where she got a meatball sub at 9:30 in the morning is anyone’s guess, and why she thought it a good idea to eat it atop my counter, her shapely legs swaying back and forth over the edge like a clock’s pendulum while her pencil skirt sits precariously high on her thighs…
No. Nope. This will not do.
“Um. Hi. Sorry to interrupt your, uh…this,” I say loudly enough to cut through a rather operatic high note as I gesture to encompass the entire situation. “But you need to get down. And go eat in the office. There’s no food allowed in the main part of the store.” My eyes narrow, as if calling me out on my own lie. I force them to open wider again and tilt my chin down.
Annie’s mouth clamps shut and she stares at me for a moment before taking a large, provocative bite out of her sub. Marinara sauce clings to the left edge of her full lips and a dot of itpaints her nose. She should, by all accounts, look ridiculous. Yet instead, she manages to look like a lioness enjoying her latest kill, eyeing me as if I may be next. I gulp as she slides off the counter, the hem of her skirt inching up and up, just to the edge of something black and lacy before she stands and adjusts it down again. Carefully, she reswaddles the sandwich in its aluminum foil and takes it in hand. Her wide hips sway as she and her unconventional breakfast march toward the small hallway leading to the back of the store.
Only when she’s out of sight do I feel like I can breathe properly again.
I know this is only the second day of this whole arrangement, but I’m already certain it is not going to work. I had low enough hopes for it to start with, when Harold first told me he’d asked his niece to come help out in his and Inés’s absence. It isn’t like I have the time or patience to orient someone to how we do things around here right now. So my plan was to keep her distracted with low-effort, independent tasks—cleaning, organizing, drafting a few social media posts. If those weren’t enough to occupy her, I’d invent some errands or have her inventory the entire store. I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to keep Annie out of the way while I attempted to run the shop normally while also dealing with this goose suddenly on my plate, so to speak.
Except, the moment she walked in yesterday, I knew I was completely screwed. The idea of ignoring her presence seemed immediately laughable. Not only is she objectively gorgeous with her curves and bee-stung lips and wavy brown hair, but Annie has this quality about her that reminds me of a pre-Raphaelite painting of a woman biting the blooms off a sprig of violets I once saw: soft and fierce and vivid all at the same time.And that wasbeforeshe opened her mouth and unflinchingly put me in my place.
She’s made it very clear she is not someone I can push to the side or pretend isn’t there. Annie is a presence. A force. She’s like gravity—a constant pull that sometimes feels more like a push when all I’m trying to do is desperately keep my footing steady until things settle down.
I admit that I could be handling things better. For one, I should have been kinder to her from the beginning. But frankly, I was flustered.Amflustered, still. She overwhelms me in a way I usually feel only in the presence of something like a scenic view or an authentic Hepplewhite chair in mint condition. That’s not something I can afford to feel for four weeks straight, especially when I have a business that needs maintaining while two-thirds of its employees are out of the country, and, perhaps more importantly, a contraband stuffed goose is stashed upstairs in the corner of my living room.
So I went with my first instinct, which was, as usual, to be a bit of an ass.
I intended to apologize this morning. I really did. I was going to attempt to reverse course, tell her I’m sorry and I’m just a tiny bit on edge because Harold and Inés left so abruptly and also for other reasons I cannot discuss, and that I really am grateful for her willingness to drop everything and come here all the way from…wherever it is she’s from. New York? New Jersey? Something like that.
But then she was on thecounter.
Singing anaria.
To ameatball sub.
And why the hell is that the most arousing thing I have ever witnessed in my whole life?
It must be the lack of sleep. I only managed three hours last night. When I wasn’t lying there thinking about how to address my goose problem, I was ruminating on how to remedy my Annie problem. The former needs my attention, but the latter is very much trying to absorb every spare morsel of it.
Which is why she cannot be gorgeous and on my counter first thing in the damn morning. Absolutely not. If I have to be a jerk about it, oh well. At least my continued surliness might encourage her to keep her distance over the next month so I can retain the focus necessary for finding out how that stupid goose wound up in Nicole’s great-aunt’s attic.
Not that I can do any further research at the moment, since the computer is in the office. Which is where I banished Annie and her meatball sub.
Instead, I spend the twenty minutes until we open reviewing the photos she took around the shop yesterday and emailed over to me. I have to admit, she did a nice job with them. Not surprising, as one of the things I looked up last night was her online storefront. I was both intrigued and horrified by the original work for sale there—a pair of bergère chairs reupholstered in hot pink velvet, an Empire-style dresser decoupaged with samples of vintage wallpaper, old metal teapots transformed into birdhouses. I can’t wrap my head around the impulse to further destroy things of value to make something new out of them instead of trying to restore them as closely as possible to their previous condition. Regardless of how I felt about her creations, she does undeniably have an eye for capturing images that speak to both the overall piece and its details, which is an underappreciated skill in this line of work.
Hm. Maybe I can have her redo all of the photos of our inventory for the website. That will take a while, and the only timewe’ll have to interact will be if she needs help moving something.
Annie emerges from the back of the shop. A tiny fleck of sauce still lingers on her bottom lip, and I guess she spots me staring at it because the tip of her tongue darts out and swipes it away.
Suddenly, I’m hyperaware that it has been well over five hundred days since I have had sex.
