Opposites
9
She handed him a cup of coffee when he slouched into her office/home the next morning, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows in the universal symbol of impending work. (Why did that always look so good? She pondered the question for a second, realized she was ogling his arms, and made herself stop.)
“I know you had other ideas about how to spend your Saturday ...” she said by way of apology.
He snorted as he sank into her couch. “I had other ideas about how to spend the entire semester. You, Daggett, are a monumental distraction.”
“And you’re not?” She grinned at him. “It’s a wonder I’ve gotten any work done with a real, live wizard—”
Oops .
“I mean convincer,” she said, racing to get it out before he could. The tight line of his shoulders softened. “You know, I can’t help wondering ...”
“Yes?” He stared up at her, eyes narrowed.
A lost cause. She jettisoned her question about what he had against “wizard” and found another one that would do instead. “How long have you known Willi?”
“Several years.”
“I like him.”
“Well, there’s no accounting for taste.”
She sat on the couch, realized she was a bit too close to him, contemplated shifting away and decided to stay put. “You like him, too.”
“I don’t like anyone,” Hartgrave said, an assertion undermined by the mischievous twist to his lips.
Merely to needle him, she said, “You spend an awful lot of time with me.”
The twist of his lips now looked suspiciously like a grin.
“You’re thinking of saying that it certainly has been awful, aren’t you,” she said, elbowing him.
“I figured I’d wait and you’d say it for me.”
She laughed. He almost-grinned some more.
What had they been talking about? Oh, yes—his friend. She gave herself a mental shake and said: “Does Willi know your secret? Is he a convincer too?”
She’d never seen a smile vanish as instantaneously as his did. “Daggett.”
Conversations with him were a minefield.
He stuck out his hand and she took it, trying to concentrate on why they were there—not to talk or joke or be friendly, but to get her problem under control so she didn’t do herself in. His skin prickled hers in an accusing way. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the feeling to subside.
She let silence stumble past, flat-footed, before giving in to temptation. “Why are you helping me?”
“Well, I do admit to some hope that it will mean less work for me in the long run.”
She shook her head. “But today you’re making sure I get home and back. If I die tomorrow, you’ll have less work immediately.”
“Hmm ... true.” He took a thoughtful sip of coffee. “Though why wait for tomorrow when I could simply dispose of you now?”
Of course he was having her on. But she’d already leapt to her feet before her brain caught up with her body.
A zing of painful magic followed.
“Ow!” she snapped, wrenching her hand away and rubbing it. “Did you do that on purpose? What the heck!”
His wide-eyed look gave her the momentary impression of surprise. Then he got up and glared down at her. “Look, you ungrateful pillock—”
“Ungrateful … what?”
“I’m doing you a tremendous favor, and all you do is complain. You’re not even trying!”
“Hey,” she murmured, hurt.
“It’s a wonder you ever managed to earn a PhD or complete anything because the minute something requires a bit of hard work, you give up— ”
“Hey ,” she said, annoyed.
“—and if you ever question my teaching methods again, I’ll sit in on your classes and loudly critique every foolish decision you make!”
She was trying to think of a reply that sufficiently conveyed what an utter jerk he was when he thrust both hands around hers. An instant of contact on par with the other awful times he’d touched her fully charged.
He let go with a whoop. “Hah! I’m brilliant!”
“Get out,” she spat, stuffing her abused hands into her pockets.
“Wait, calm down—”
“Calm down? Calm down?”
“I wanted to make you angry, Daggett,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested this was a perfectly reasonable point.
“Well, I want to kick one or both of your shins—” And then it clicked. She gaped at him. “Are you saying it wasn’t—you weren’t—”
“Exactly. I didn’t add more magic to my aura just now. That reaction was entirely your anti-magic at work.”
She rubbed her temples because what this suggested made her head hurt. “Are you telling me that my body pumps out more of it when I’m mad?”
“Apparently.”
She groaned. What a stupid, stupid power.
“This is a breakthrough, you know.” He held out a hand. “May I?”
Steeling herself for more unpleasantness, she took it. And let out a breath when touching him brought on nothing worse than the sensation of having clapped her hands too long and hard.
“Ah, that’s already much better,” he said. “Either anti-magic quickly becomes inactive, or it’s not staying put in your aura ... There, can you feel that?”
She could. The sharp stinging gave way to itching. Then tingling.
She let go, the better to think. Touching him was distracting.
“I don’t know that it’s only anger,” she said. “That time you’d just told me I was anti-magic, I was more upset than mad.”
“Anti-magic production could be sped up by adrenaline, then. It’s not that way with magic, I’m sure of it.”
He strode around her office for a moment, an air of suppressed excitement about him. But in the end he merely offered up the blazingly obvious.
“Well—let’s see what difference it makes if you’re absolutely calm.”
“I think this would be one of those cases in which the scientist’s presence ruins the experiment,” she muttered, falling back on the couch. She shouldn’t care about his opinion of her—as long as it didn’t stop him from helping with her anti-magic—and it annoyed her that she apparently did.
He slipped his hand around hers, the itchy bite of that skin-to-skin contact sending goosebumps up her arm. “The scientist would like to point out that he didn’t mean any of that nonsense he said,” Hartgrave murmured.
Very, very distracting .
Focus .
But no matter how calm she managed to get as they sat there together, the humming feeling remained. Maybe serenity wasn’t enough.
At lunchtime, they made passable ham sandwiches from the ingredients she’d stashed in the history-department kitchen and brought the food back to her office. He seemed more comfortable in the Inferno, and it was probably the place where she could do the least harm—no tech beyond her computer and telephone. Well, and the lights, depending on one’s definition of technology.
Good grief, why had she never thought to ask?
She waited for Hartgrave to finish chewing the bite of sandwich he was working on, then pounced. “What everyday items have magic in them?”
“Daggett, for the love of—”
“No, I need to know,” she protested. “What if I hadn’t mentioned I was driving home this weekend?”
He looked appropriately discomfited. “You’re right—I’m sorry. Computers and anything with an embedded computer.”
“That’s—um—a lot of things, isn’t it?”
“Airplanes, mobile phones, cameras, watches, microwaves and just about every other household appliance, to name a few.”
She chewed her lip, trying to think through her technology mishaps. “I’ve never been on a plane or owned a camera or cell phone—”
“Good God, you’re a Luddite . ”
“Well, it’s a good thing, don’t you think? Anyway, I have had many watches, all dead now, but I use the microwave upstairs all the time and I’ve never damaged it. At least, I don’t think I have.”
He poured himself more water and handed her the bottle, the unexpected brush of his fingers against hers sparking the nerve endings halfway up her arm. “You probably aren’t spending enough time with your hands on it. The entire box isn’t magic, so it has some protection. You’d have to stand there touching it for a while.”
She rubbed her arm absentmindedly and sighed. “Like I do with my wretched PC.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask—how did you manage to get anything done on computers before you became my problem? Or did you never own one of those either?”
Her laugh was rueful. “My family did, but wouldn’t you know, it never worked right, so I lost interest. In college, I wrote my essays out longhand and typed them up in the computer lab. Made it through without mishap, usually.”
“No doubt because you didn’t use any of the machines there for long,” he said.
Something about his gaze made her feel almost as itchy as if he were touching her. Then his words penetrated. “Wouldn’t that mean I’d be okay in the car?”
He shot her one of his patented looks. “Don’t bank your life on it. You’ve been lucky, Daggett—you shouldn’t push it.”
She rested her head in her hands. Her dangerous, dangerous hands. There had to be a way to get home, had to .. .
“Come with me,” she said, looking up at him. Begging him.
His eyes widened. Then he narrowed them, like he was trying to read her and couldn’t.
“Come on.” She put a hand on his bare arm without thinking and felt the zing past the crook of her elbow this time. A bit breathlessly, she added: “You haven’t really lived in Iowa until you’ve spent a few nights on a farm.”
“I don’t think I’m the ideal addition to a family holiday,” he muttered.
“My parents would be delighted. It’s just the three of us, and half our board games require four at minimum.” She managed a lopsided grin. “Really, you’d be very welcome. Unless—unless you have other plans?”
“No.” He sounded irresolute. He looked over his shoulder, toward the corridor outside her office.
“So come. Good company, great food and I won’t have to worry about careening off the road ...”
He snapped back to attention. “No ,” he said again. But this time it wasn’t irresolute. More like furious.
“But—”
“I’ve no interest in adding mechanic to the list of things I do for you without recompense.”
That was unfair. She’d offered from the start to pay him for tutoring, and he’d sneered—what did he want from her?
“Oh, that’s right.” She crossed her arms. “I’d forgotten you can’t leave town, thanks to the evil sorcerer. ”
He pushed back from the table and stood. She thought he would walk out on her, but he stomped to the couch and sat. To continue working on her problem for no recompense, apparently.
Half of her wanted to thank him again, and the other half wanted to blow a raspberry at him. She finished the last bit of her sandwich, compiling other examples of his mulishness until one gave her an idea.
“What if I don’t touch the car? Would that work?”
He heaved a sigh. “Unless you can steer with your mind—”
“No, no. I’ll show you.”
She retrieved her thick pair of winter gloves, pulled them on and grasped both his hands—with no ill effects, not counting his deepening frown.
“Hah! I’m brilliant,” she said, which should have elicited at least a snort from him, but no. She cleared her throat. “I remembered I couldn’t feel a thing that time you ‘helped’ me out of your chair. You had gloves on.”
“Yes, but there’s no guarantee that would work for long.”
“Sounds like an experiment.”
He gestured to the other side of the couch. “Sit, then, and stop hovering over me.”
The minutes ticked by with nary a tickle. Her idea was proving sound. But he was unusually—aggressively—silent. He wasn’t looking at her, and he was sitting as far from her as the couch allowed.
Finally she could stand it no longer. “Hartgrave ...”
“What .”
“What’s wrong? What have I done? ”
“You’ve no right to ask me that,” he said to the floor, as if he wanted it to relay the message. “You’ve traded your questions away.”
She wanted to shake him. “It’s not that kind of question.”
“Oh? It’s not an attempt to extract information from me against my will?”
“No, it’s an attempt to find out why you’re upset, because I care about you, you dolt!”
He abandoned his grim perusal of the floor to eye her. “My ability to do things for you, you mean.”
The pang of guilt this brought on was as sharp as heartburn. Of course he would think that. Hadn’t she been telling herself the same thing?
She scooted closer and put her other hand on his. “Whatever it may look like, I do care about you, Hartgrave. You. Not simply what you know.”
She was about to add that he was the closest thing to a friend she had—she was now spending far more time with him than Bernie—but she didn’t get the chance. Because he sliced through the space separating them and kissed her.
She didn’t register any sensation at all for a second, so great was her shock, but then her nerve endings roared back to life. Everywhere his skin touched hers—his lips on her lips, his hand cradling her jaw, the tip of his nose against her cheek—prickled, itched, buzzed.
It felt really good . No—good was a massive understatement. She gasped. He pressed in further, tongue touching hers, and the aftershock zipped to every part of her body .
That was when reason belatedly kicked in. She jerked back, trying to get her tingling mouth to form the words, “I can’t kiss you yet, I hardly know you”—and all that came out was a shaky, “Can’t—know!”
This sounded far worse.
He leapt off the couch, face twisted in mortification. She said “no!”—this time meaning the word he’d thought he’d heard—and added, “Wait!”
He didn’t wait. He was already out of her office, and in the few seconds it took to get up and dash after him, he’d already ducked into a corridor and out of view. She ran to his room, hoping to beat him there and make him listen, but no—the soft thud of the other door closing, the one leading out of the Inferno, proved that he’d doubled back and escaped.
She tried to find him. She rushed from the building and jogged to Mexican Foo (dark, door locked), then walked back to campus, winded, and with increasingly heavy feet took herself to just about every square inch of the college.
Eventually she returned to her empty office. It was possible—just barely—that he’d show up at seven o’clock, if only to insist her kissing was terrible and he was glad he’d never have to suffer the experience again. He hadn’t missed their appointment before, not once. Like a standing date. She wondered when he’d begun to see it that way—and when exactly she’d changed her mind about him. Because she had, almost without noticing.
He was fascinating, challenging, provoking. Apparently she liked bickering. Also, men who looked like vultures. Under the barrage of constant exposure, her subconscious had made the executive decision that he wasn’t ugly, he was striking—all angles and sharp edges. And good God, that kiss ...
But getting involved with a man who refused to answer questions about his past, who seemed to dislike any questions on principle, would be a monumentally stupid thing to do.
All purely academic, because it was now seven fifteen. He wasn’t coming. He was holed up somewhere, humiliated. Even if she could find him and force him to listen to what she’d meant to say, he wouldn’t like that much better—he’d probably think she was trying to manipulate him into a relationship-for-information exchange.
On that lovely thought, she got ready for bed. It might have been only seven fifteen, but her feet hurt, her heart ached and she had a long drive ahead of her that she hoped would not end in disaster.
. . . . .
Emily woke the next morning to find an old cell phone, the not-smart kind, and a piece of scrap paper sitting on her table. At the top of the note was a telephone number. Underneath: If your car gives you trouble, pull over immediately —underlined twice— and call me.
She gaped at it. Then she dashed for her gloves and dialed the number with awkward fingers.
“Yes?” Hartgrave—tense.
“It’s ...” She faltered. How should she identify herself? “It’s Daggett. I’m— ”
“Where are you?”
“In my office, but that doesn’t matter, I’m—”
“Nothing’s wrong with your car?”
“No, but—”
“Nothing’s happened to you?”
“No, listen —”
“Goodbye,” he said. The word sounded extremely final.
“Hartgrave! It wasn’t what you thought yesterday, that’s not what I meant!”
There was no one to hear. He’d hung up.