Chapter 4 #2
He was wearing a shirt and trousers, and much to her own annoyance, she admired him for a second – the shirt stretched along his back highlighting his broad shoulders, which she found sexy in any man.
As he turned around, she walked straight up to him and straightened his tie.
Theo was thrown for a moment as he would have been expecting some sarcastic quip, but she liked to keep Theo Blake on his toes, because this was the man who had once made her feel small.
She refused, absolutely refused, to ever let him think he was more academic, more capable, or more untouchable than she was.
He looked exactly the same as the first time she’d seen him, standing just inside the college courtyard by the porter’s lodge, surrounded by suitcases and nervous parents dropping their kids at university for the first time.
Her own nerves had been jangling like loose clock springs, the air buzzing with voices and expectation.
She’d noticed him immediately. Sharp cheekbones.
Dark, wildly curly hair. Hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, as if he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them.
Pippa soon looked for him in every room she was in.
He’d been quiet at first, almost shy, but when someone asked him a question about clocks, he didn’t try to be impressive. He just was.
She’d fancied him. Absolutely, she had. And there’d been a thrill the first time his eyes had caught hers across the lecture hall, a moment that made her heart give a little skip.
She hadn’t been brave enough to admit her feelings back then, and thank God she hadn’t, because Theo Blake might have had it all going for him, but he’d shown his true colours the night he decided she didn’t deserve her place at Cambridge.
It had been at a halls dinner party filled with too much cheap wine and too many overconfident first-years, everyone loudly sharing opinions no one had asked for.
She hadn’t even been part of the conversation.
Sebastian had been, though, and he’d been the one to warn her when he’d noticed her watching Theo a few days later.
‘You don’t want to waste your time on Theo Blake,’ he’d said.
She’d blinked, startled. ‘I wasn’t…’
‘He didn’t have a good word to say about you at the dinner party.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He said that he didn’t think you’d last long here. That Cambridge isn’t really for … people like you.’
Pippa had frozen. The words burned. Not for people like you.
She didn’t even know what that was supposed to mean.
Because she’d worked for this. She’d earned her place.
She wasn’t some fluke accident who’d slipped through the admissions net.
But once Sebastian planted the seed, it festered.
How dare Theo Blake judge her. Those words had hurt her and just like that, Sebastian had positioned himself as the ally. The one on her side.
After that, people seemed to keep their distance from her. It felt like they, too, agreed with Theo, and that was how their feud had started.
Then there was week three of university. Lecture Room Four. She remembered it like it was yesterday.
Pippa sat in the middle of the lecture theatre, the student next to her having just admired her favourite silk scarf, the one with tiny illustrations of vintage mantel clocks.
They’d been told to prepare their own thoughts on the assigned reading and to be ready to present them to the class, and the tutor had started with Theo.
Theo hadn’t seemed nervous as he announced clearly into the microphone at the front of the lecture hall that he would be covering ‘Purity Over Sentiment: Mechanical Integrity in Late-Georgian Restoration’.
Pippa could hear the whispered gushes of admiration from her fellow female students, but she felt nothing but loathing.
Yes, he was annoyingly handsome, with an immaculately tailored blazer, and yes, he was able to instantly charm the rest of his peers, but Pippa told herself she was immune to it.
She was determined to use this opportunity to challenge him, not because she disagreed with what he was saying, but because she wanted to prove herself – and to prove he was wrong to judge her.
‘In my opinion, restoration is not about nostalgia,’ Theo began. ‘It is about precision. A clock is a machine; it does not feel. It either functions, or it doesn’t. Any addition of sentiment is a contamination of the historical record.’
Oh, he was good. He’d captured everyone’s attention and the way he spoke was mesmerising.
You would never have guessed he was a first-year student, the way he held himself and spoke off the cuff with no written notes.
Pippa raised her hand, not waiting for the question portion of his time, and interrupted.
‘Sorry,’ she said, not sorry at all, ‘Are you saying that the entire human history attached to the object is … irrelevant?’
Theo narrowed his eyes, looking flustered for a moment, caught off guard by the challenge. ‘I’m saying that when you start choosing which memories to preserve based on emotion, you compromise the object’s integrity.’
‘Right,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘God forbid we compromise a cogwheel’s feelings.’
Laughter rippled through the room but Theo held her gaze. ‘Sentimentality,’ he said coolly, ‘is often a disguise for sloppy craftsmanship.’
Pippa flushed. ‘And sterile minimalism is often a disguise for a complete lack of imagination.’
They stared at each other across twenty rows of amused academics, across wildly different philosophies, across an invisible line they both pretended wasn’t there.
Theo looked away first, and Pippa couldn’t stop the triumphant smirk that spread across her face.
‘You’re up, then?’ Theo turned back to the pan on the stove and calmly flipped a piece of sizzling bacon, all effortless domestic competence.
‘Smells good,’ Pippa said, peering over his shoulder and breathing in the mix of sizzling bacon and something woodsy and warm that was unmistakably him. Her stomach gave another small, traitorous flip.
Theo glanced at her, eyebrow raised. ‘Are you smelling me or the bacon?’
She straightened a little too quickly. ‘The bacon, obviously.’
He gave a quiet laugh and turned back to the pan, and she suddenly wished her face didn’t feel quite so hot.
‘Are you … cooking me breakfast?’
He turned slightly, lifted a mug to his lips, and took a slow, deliberate sip, like a man in a coffee advert.
‘After all,’ she continued, sitting down at the table.
‘Last night I fed you sandwiches, sparing you the indignity of wading through floodwater in search of food. I practically saved you from drowning. I was fairly instrumental to your survival, wouldn’t you say?
’ She said it primly, her eyes locked on the mountain of eggs, bacon, beans, black pudding, and toast that he was now piling on his plate.
‘So,’ he said, with a hint of amusement, ‘you’re after some sort of … repayment?’
‘Only a token gesture.’ She tilted her head towards his plate. ‘A crust. A bean. Maybe half a sausage if you’re feeling generous.’
Theo let out a low laugh and shook his head, sliding his fork protectively across the plate. ‘You’re shameless, and no, I’m not making you breakfast.’
‘Completely shameless,’ she said brightly. ‘Good thing I’ve got a full English waiting at the café anyway. Clemmie said to pop by this morning.’
That made Theo glance over properly. ‘So you didn’t actually need me to share,’ he said, placing his mug of coffee onto the table.
‘Nope.’ She grinned. ‘I just wanted to know if you would.’
He smirked before sitting down and, reaching for the ketchup, squeezed an alarming amount across his plate. ‘Just so you know, I wouldn’t have let you starve.’
Pippa grinned before swiping a slice of toast from his plate and taking a bite.
‘That is good to know,’ she said, eyeing the red mess with mock horror.
‘There is definitely something wrong with you. Who puts ketchup on a full English?’ she muttered, flapping the piece of toast between them. ‘Would never have worked out…’
‘I wasn’t aware that was even an option,’ he replied dryly.
‘Brown sauce all the way,’ she quipped, ignoring his comment. ‘What’s this?’ She picked up a leaflet by the side of his coffee mug.
‘Today’s convention programme,’ Theo replied, through a mouthful of toast. ‘I was looking it over last night while you were upstairs turning the bath into your own personal spa retreat.’
Pippa scanned the sheet. At the top it read: ‘Puffin Island Horology Convention – Day One’. Beneath it was a neatly formatted list.
‘We might not be having breakfast together, but as the two competition winners it’s probable we’ll be dining together at The Sea Glass Restaurant tonight.’
Theo nodded. ‘We’ll be joined by Doctor Miriam Bowes, the chair of the society.’
Pippa smiled as the memory of the only time she had dined with Theo flashed through her mind.
In first year their hall had organised a potluck and she’d volunteered to make the dessert.
However, during the day, time had slipped away from her, and she didn’t have time to whip up a culinary delight, so she’d nipped to the corner shop and picked up a chocolate roulade.
Unfortunately, there was no time to defrost it so it had been a bit like a frozen brick when she served it.
She’d gone at it valiantly with a spoon, dishing out portions, only to hear an audible crack as someone nearly chipped a tooth.
Theo, sitting across the table with his usually impeccable composure, had stared at her, grinning.
‘I suspect tonight’s dessert will be safer than last time we ate together.’
He’d remembered.
Then Pippa noticed something on the itinerary and stared at Theo. ‘Hold up,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re interviewing Horace Vale?’
‘I am,’ Theo confirmed.
‘How the hell did you get that gig?’