By Jove (6 page)

She caught her breath. Jealous? “Er, should I take this as formal notification that you’re interested in me as something other than a teaching colleague?”

“Hmm? Well, yes, of course I am. I just never thought it would hit me that way. Jealous,” he said, with a wondering sigh. “Me, jealous.”

Theo laughed. “Don’t you think you’ve got it a little backward?”

“What?” Grant looked startled.

“Well, when most people start falling in—um, I mean feeling interested in someone else in a—er, romantic sense, they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they’re feeling. They just do it.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that maybe you should spend a little more time feeling and a little less analyzing.” Was she really having a discussion with him about how to fall in love?

“Oh. I see.” Grant studied her for a moment. “Uh, Theo? I think I’m starting to feel considerably more than mere friendship for you.”

“Oh, Grant.” She shook her head. “Haven’t you ever been in love with anyone? Ever had a serious girlfriend? With your looks, I can’t believe you haven’t.”

“My—really? I mean, yes, of course I have.” He looked down and brushed a thread from his sleeve.

She cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow at him.

He flushed slightly. “I’ve just never met anyone like you. Do you—” He paused, then said quickly, “Do you think you feel something more than friendship for me?”

Theo wanted to laugh again, but didn’t. She took his hand instead, moving carefully, as if he were a wild creature she was trying to tame. “Yes, Grant, I am feeling something considerably more than friendship for you too.”

“Oh. That’s good.” He smiled radiantly and held her hand in both of his. “So what do we do next?”

Try as she might, she could not restrain a smile. “Why don’t we just try to relax and see what happens? Get to know each other better?”

“That sounds like a good plan. I’m enjoying knowing you, Theo.” He exhaled. “I guess I can start talking to Paul again, then. So long as he doesn’t keep trying to get to know you better than I do.”

Speaking of Paul… “What have you heard about these symposia that the department holds? Paul said we’ll be invited.”

“I’ve heard about them.” Grant grimaced. “We have to come in appropriate Greek or Roman attire. Guess I’ll have to get my toga sent down from Eleusinian.”

Visions of toga-ed bears declaiming in a pine forest, Grant patiently correcting their grammar, flitted through Theo’s head. “And I’ll have to get my mom to send me one of her costumes that she wears to Dad’s Classical Club dinners, except that she’s married and wears the stola, not the toga. Dad made her do all kinds of research on Roman clothing.”

“I bet I’d like your dad. I hope I get to meet him some time.”

An extra surge of happiness caught her. Men didn’t say things like that lightly, usually. “I hope you do, too.”

…

After that, their relationship did not change radically: outwardly they were still simply friends and colleagues. But Theo could sense something in the way Grant stared at her over their stacks of Latin quizzes when he thought she wasn’t paying attention or over the drinks or pizza that frequently followed. She swallowed her eagerness and waited for him to make the first move; it was like pretending to be a statue, waiting to see if the shy wild bird would light on her hand.

One afternoon in early October they lay on the west-facing hillside behind Hamilton Hall. Theo had diverted them from their usual afternoon go-over-homework-and-class-assignments meeting to enjoy the Indian summer weather.

“Oh, what a day!” she sighed as she stared up at the cloudless blue sky. “Just breathe that air.”

“I am breathing,” Grant said seriously. “I usually do.”

Oh, Grant. “No—I mean
really
breathe. Isn’t it wonderful? It makes me want to flap my arms and follow those geese up there,” she said, pointing with her chin at a V-formation that passed overhead. “And look at those maples over there, just starting to show color around the edges—incredible.”

He squinted at the trees. “They’re, um, very nice.”

She let her arm fall to cover her face. This was the way he was, and it never failed to amuse her: so cynically observant about some things, and utterly clueless about others. Especially about anything that involved the senses. One day a few weeks ago he’d found her in one of the seminar rooms with her shoes off, blissfully burying her toes in the silk Kerman rug. He’d been mystified, even when she made him do the same.

Now he rolled over in the grass to regard her. She reached up and brushed aside his hair. “Just checking your ears,” she said with a grin.

“My ears? Why?”

“To see if you’re a Vulcan. Honestly, can’t you feel what a glorious day it is? Don’t you want to roll in the grass like a colt and be glad you’re alive?”

“I’m very grateful to be alive,” he said, looking down at the grass, then up at her again. “But thank you,” he added in the same quiet tone.

“For what?”

“For teaching me to be human.”

“Wait a minute. Let me see those ears again.” She reached for his hair. He captured her hand and held it.

“You have no idea what being with you is like for me,” he said, looking earnestly into her eyes. “You are so here, so in the minute, seeing and feeling and knowing.”

“Aren’t you here? Don’t you see and feel and know?”

“Not in the way you do. I see that the sky is blue and that the leaves are changing colors because it’s fall. But they’ve done that for millennia. They just are. Only man can look at them and see the passing beauty in them. Maybe it’s their mortality that gives men the ability to appreciate the things that don’t last.”

“So you admit it—you
are
a Vulcan.” She grinned at him again. “But those things do last. I’ll always remember lying here on a perfect October day with you.”

“Someday that memory will die with you.” He squeezed her hand, then held it against his cheek. She held her breath. “But I don’t want to think about that.”

“Then don’t think about it.” She stroked his cheek. “I know we all have to die someday. But until we’re dead, we’re alive. They say that where there’s life, there’s hope.”

“Hope,” he said, with a tight, humorless laugh. “You talk to me of hope?”

What had happened to Grant that he was this way? “Why not? That’s what it means to be alive. To live in the hope of another perfect fall day. Can’t you see that?”

He studied her face as if looking for some hint of irony, and she felt the tension slowly leave him.

“Theo,” he said, his voice hoarse. “
You
make me see that.” He bent his head toward her.

A flutter of excitement ran through her at his closeness. She slid the hand that still rested on his cheek around to entwine in his hair, as soft and dark as mink, and pulled him down to her.

He touched his mouth to hers carefully, delicately, like the brush of a feather. She felt him tremble, and with a rush of tenderness held herself in check and let him set the pace of their kiss, closing her eyes and keeping her lips soft and yielding as he explored them. Time stretched and slowed.

But after a brief eternity she couldn’t hold back any longer. With a little sigh she let her lips part and brushed her tongue across his lips.

“Theo!” he gasped, and gripped her shoulder.

She murmured into his mouth, “I want you to taste me, Grant. Please.”

“Taste you…oh, God, Theo…” Now it was her heart pounding as the slow honeyed seconds flew by. He may have had little practice, but the sheer emotion—the passion, the longing—that his kiss summoned in her was making her—

“Oh,
really
,” said a disapproving voice above them.

“You’re just jealous, Di,” came the cheerful reply. “I know I am.”

“Jealous? I don’t think so. Kissing is so—unsanitary!”

Grant sat up as if jerked by a string. Theo made a small, anguished sound, and her dismay threatened to choke her. Past Grant’s shoulder she saw Diana Hunter and Paul Harriman standing over them. Di looked disgusted, but Paul regarded them with interest.

“That looked like fun,” he said, turning his smile on Theo. “You never told me you were such a good kisser. Or offered to show me, for that matter.”

Theo closed her eyes for a second, trying to gather her scattered wits and conjure some answer that wasn’t too irritable. She said politely, without sitting up, “Lovely afternoon, isn’t it?”

Grant glanced at her. A hint of a twinkle showed in his eyes.

“Well, it
was
,” Di said. “C’mon, Paul. Let’s walk somewhere else.” She cast one further dark look at them and flounced away. Paul blew Theo a kiss and followed.

Grant collapsed on his back, eyes closed, and began to shake.

Theo glowered after the retreating pair and muttered, “Damn them anyway.” When she looked back at Grant she was relieved to see that his shaking was actually muffled laughter.

“I’m glad you think it was funny. I thought it was singularly poor timing,” she said in an aggrieved tone, then pushed herself up on one elbow. “I’m sorry if I startled you—I mean, if you didn’t want—”

Grant’s laughter ceased at once. He opened his eyes, and now his expression was gentle and wondering. “Theo, you don’t know how much I did—do—want it. I’ve never—”

“I guessed.” She touched his cheek.

He stiffened, then relaxed as her fingertips brushed his skin. A rueful smile tugged at his mouth. “Really? Am I that transparent?”

Yes. “No. And anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She touched his lips with one finger.

“Theo. My beautiful, warm Theo, let me explain—”

“You don’t need to explain anything to me.”

“But I do. All my life I have worked and watched and suffered. But I have never loved. No, that’s not true. I have always loved people but in a theoretical sort of way. Never singly, never just one at a time, like this. Like you. Now it’s happening to me, and I’m terrified. Excited and eager and exhilarated and scared nearly witless. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, and I live in fear that I’ll make a stupid mistake and drive you from me.”

“You won’t, but even if you did, don’t you think I’d forgive you?” She reached out to stroke his cheek again.

“Be patient with me while I learn to love you, Theo. Please. It’s all so new to me.” He swallowed, and asked, “Was it—all right, to kiss me? Did I do it right?”

She smothered the smile that his earnest expression evoked. “It was more than all right. Why do you think I was so annoyed at the intrusion?”

“Oh. I thought so. Your expression was remarkably eloquent when you looked at Paul and Di. You were right. Damn them anyway.”

They both laughed and Theo nestled against him, head on his shoulder, rejoicing to herself as his arms went around her. “You did it very well,” she whispered in his ear. “But further practice is always a good idea, you know, if you want to perfect your technique.”

His embrace tightened. “I’ll remember that, thank you.”

Theo thought of something. “Grant?” she asked softly.

“Hmm?”

“When we kissed—were you there? Were you in the moment then?”

He pulled back and smiled down at her, the pale, serious El Greco face transformed. “I was, Theo. I was there, I think.”

She kissed his nose. “That was your first class in Being Human 101. Congratulations, Mr. Spock.”

Chapter Four

The following Friday Dr. Waterman asked Theo to fish-sit while he went away for the weekend. She drove that afternoon out to his house, on a low cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay.

Following him from room to room, Theo marveled at the tanks of fish everywhere. Fortunately their care was simple.

“A teaspoon in each tank, every morning,” Dr. Waterman said, tapping a large plastic container. “That’s all you have to do.”

“I thought tropical fish were more labor-intensive. Changing the water and testing it and so on,” she said, staring at a majestic pair of blue and purple angelfish that swept in tandem around one tank.

“Yes, well, there is a lot of that. But nothing you need to worry about for just a weekend. Feed them and they’ll be happy.” He smiled and nodded at her.

She picked up the tub and shook it gently. “Is it the same as what you use at school?”

She often stopped by his office in the early morning to gaze at the rainbow of fish, and more often than not he would let her feed them. She would carefully sprinkle the silvery flakes of food from the little spoon into the tanks, trying not to inhale, but it was impossible not to smell the ineffable sweet floral scent that made her nose tingle and her other senses heighten delightfully.

“Yes, it is. But please be careful with it, Theo. Breathing it in or otherwise ingesting it is unwise. I don’t often trust anyone else to take care of my fish, but I feel that they’re in good hands with you.” He gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and glanced at his massive diving watch. “I’d better get going if I’m to arrive in time for the dinner. You have my cell number if you need me, yes?”

Theo returned to school for her last class after assuring Dr. Waterman that she and his fish would be fine while he was gone. After class was over she stopped in his office to give the fish there an extra feeding to carry them through Saturday, then wandered down to the Great Room.

It had become her favorite place to study, its beauty in sharp contrast to her dreary room in Graves. More polished linenfold paneling covered the walls, pierced at regular intervals with diamond-paned windows. Small groups of couches and chairs were scattered on the mosaic floor, and it was in one of these that Theo generally spent a few hours after dinner each evening, reading or working on her laptop or sparring happily with Grant.

Just now, late-afternoon sun illuminated the floor with rich golden light, making the mosaics glow on their creamy background. There was Apollo reaching toward a girl whose bare legs were being swallowed in gray bark and long hair scattered with green leaves: the transformation of Daphne. And there was a magnificent winged horse, its neck a proud arch, eyeing a youth who held a golden bridle in one hand and in the other an apple to tempt the fey creature. Where was the cruelly magnificent bird she had seen as she dozed on the night of the department dinner? She glanced around, trying to estimate where the chairs had been set up, and saw Julian leaning against one of the Doric columns by the far door, smiling.