She knew she was explaining too much, but he was watching her with a careful expression, and she was afraid of what his answer might be. Maybe she had misunderstood him. Maybe he didn’t want to see her outside of her apartment and the Hawthorn campus. She couldn’t blame him; they were only going to be together for the summer, even if reminding herself of that made her throat start to feel tight. But then he was talking, and Maggie had to ask him to repeat himself because she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.
“I’d love to take you to the beach that Saturday, but we might have to take a break to watch a five-year-old pick flowers in the outfield,” he said, back to busying himself with the alembic in front of him. “My nephew’s baseball game is that day.”
Maggie paused. Surely he didn’t want her to go to his nephew’s baseball game? “Well, that you definitely can’t miss. We’ll find another day.”
He finally looked up from fiddling with the equipment. Behind his safety glasses and his eyeglasses, his expression was one that Maggie couldn’t quite interpret. “No, you’re right. There isn’t really another day. Besides, it won’t take long. They’re five and six, they’re lucky if they make it through half an hour. Come to the game.” He sounded sure, but Maggie couldn’t helpher doubt. He seemed to sense her hesitation because he added quickly, “Invite Dahlia. Simon will be so happy to have a crowd cheering for him. We’ll have hot dogs and get irrationally angry at the opposing five-year-olds when they manage to score.”
Maggie couldn’t help the curve of her smile, or the flush of pleasure she felt at Arthur’s relief when she said, “I’ll ask Dahlia. You’re right, it’ll be fun.”
—
When the liquidhad siphoned into the beaker, Maggie returned it to the container above the burner and adjusted the temperature until it was a slow, rolling boil. “It’s ready,” she called over to Arthur, who was removing his safety glasses and lab coat. He walked to one of the many old levers in the lab and began to crank the glass panel open. Ancient copper gears on the ceiling creaked to life, and cool, foggy air filled the lab. “Dr. Silva said we don’t have to babysit it. She’ll have her lab assistant check to make sure it isn’t boiling over or getting too cool.”
They decided to get lunch and meet back in their office, with Maggie returning to Ilex Hall and Arthur heading down to a café right off campus called Dot’s. Eventually, he returned with a crinkling bag filled with metal canisters of soup.
“I’ve never been over to Dot’s,” Arthur said as he unpacked their lunch. “It’s cute. Dot served me herself!”
Maggie laughed at his enthusiasm. “You met a celebrity. She hasn’t been behind the counter much since her ninetieth birthday.”
“That explains her granddaughter’s scowl.” He arranged the food on Maggie’s desk so he could position his office chair across from her. She opened her container of tomato soup andunwrapped the grilled cheese. Maggie had been the one to call the order in as Arthur walked, and she found a napkin tucked into her wrapped sandwich with Dot’s shaky handwriting—What a hunk!Maggie choked on the spoonful of soup she’d just sipped and tucked the napkin into her pocket. Arthur would be insufferable if he saw it.
Arthur had ordered a beef noodle soup with thin, stretchy noodles and a fragrant broth flavored with ginger. It was one of Maggie’s favorites, and she reached over with her spoon and stole a piece of beef and some broth. She sighed. Everything Dot and her granddaughter made was delicious.
When they finished eating, somehow they both ended up on the couch. Arthur sat with his knees bent, and Maggie with her legs over his, leaning against the armrest. They had a little over an hour where their time was not accounted for. It wasn’t enough to replenish any of the wards around campus or solve the problem of the incantation translation or adjust any calculations. They had no more rare ingredients to hunt for or experts to consult. So, for once, they took a break.
Both of them had reached for novels on Maggie’s shelves. Arthur chose a fantasy novel he had already read, losing himself in the pages quickly. Maggie picked a romance she’d been saving for a quiet moment just like this. She tossed a crocheted blanket over their legs against the chill coming through the window, which she’d opened to air out the stuffy office, and let herself get lost in the meet-cute.
Arthur’s hand rested on her thigh, and she barely noticed as he absentmindedly traced languid circles over her skirt, thesilky fabric pulling up her thigh until his finger was on her skin. She glared at him over her paperback, but Arthur kept turning his pages, and she didn’t tell him to stop. She tried to focus on the words in front of her, but his fingers were trailing bigger and bigger circles, moving dangerously higher. She snapped her book shut and stood up, the blanket falling to the floor.
“What is it?” Arthur asked innocently. Maggie locked their office door and Arthur leaned back, looking entirely too satisfied for Maggie’s liking. His legs were spread wide, his hand resting on his inner thigh. He nearly took up the entire couch, the entire office.
They didn’t say a word to each other. Arthur’s eyes roamed over every inch of Maggie, every curve, every glimpse of her skin. In two steps, she was back in front of him, leaning forward and resting one hand on the worn arm of the couch, which propped her above him. Her other hand came up and stroked Arthur’s tense jaw.
“You’re breaking the rules,” he said through clenched teeth, shifting his hips.
“You broke them first.” As she said it, he reached up and grasped the hand she was using to stroke his jaw. His grip on her arm was strong and firm, but it didn’t hurt, and she liked it. With his other hand, he grabbed a fistful of her shirt and pulled her closer toward him. Her knees knocked against the edge of the couch between his spread legs. She gasped as his fingers snaked up the back of her neck and into her hair. “Whatever we start here we can’t finish here,” she said in a breathy voice. His hand moved from the front of her shirt to the crook of her hip,settling her between his legs. “We have to check on the decoction in half an hour.”
Maggie didn’t understand how she could still be wound so tight after the weekend they had, but he had already spun her into a frenzy with just his words. And now his touch, featherlight brushes of fingers over parts of her body that were definitely not office appropriate.
He grabbed the muscle of her thigh, her skirt riding up until she could see the soft indents of his fingers in her skin, and guided one leg and then the other over his until she was straddling his lap. Maggie’s knees sank into the soft couch, and as he looked up at her, he brought his lips to her ear. “Is this okay?” he asked, checking in as they pushed the boundary they had set earlier. In response, she held his face in her hands, bringing her mouth to his. There was no urgency in their kiss, only soft, long strokes of her tongue against his. His fingers traced her spine as the kiss built.
“I am beginning to see the appeal of the fainting couch,” he moaned into her neck as he trailed kisses down toward her breasts. She held on to the back of the couch, arching her back to give him more access while his hands continued to roam her body, grasping at her hips to keep her seated on his lap. Then his hand moved over to the pocket of her skirt, and he grabbed the paper sticking out of it.
Distracted by the work he was doing at her neck, her breasts, she did not see him start to unfold Dot’s note until he stopped what he was doing to read it. She squealed and managed to squeak, “That’s not your business!” But he already had the noteopen with a cocky grin on his face. She still tried to grab it, but Arthur deftly hooked his arm around her waist and laid her down on the couch until he was on top of her.
“Dot seems to think you’ve done well for yourself,” he said, practically preening.
“She’s in her nineties, not dead.”
“So you do think I’m attractive,” he said, as if he’d made some shocking discovery.
She rolled her eyes. “You know you are.”
“Maybe. But I like to hear you say it.”
She reached up and cupped his cheek. He leaned into the touch, a soft and intimate gesture that made Maggie’s chest constrict. “Your good looks have been driving me to distraction since the day the pall fell,” she admitted. “I couldn’t get any work done because I kept staring at your stupid hair and your shoulders and your forearms and—”
He interrupted her rambling by dipping his head down and kissing her, softer still.
