Year of Living Blonde (Sweet Life in Seattle, Book 1) (34 page)

“Yeah, I’m trying to decide if it’s too soon to send flowers to a woman.”

The brunette tilts her head and smiles. “It’s never too soon to send flowers. Is this woman your girlfriend?”

“No,” but then he pauses, “maybe, I’m not sure.”

“Are you trying to send her a message? Or convey something? There’s a language to flowers.”

“There is?” Anthony considers this. He’s given a lot of gifts to women over the years, but he can’t remember ever giving flowers. It’s usually candy or jewelry—there was a blonde flight attendant he met coming back from an observing run in Chile who wanted a belly chain.

“Something romantic,” he tells her. “That’s the kind of message I’m going for.”

“Red roses are always good for romance, especially to say ‘I love you.’ The lavender roses can be used to convey love at first sight.”

The phone by the cash register rings and the salesgirl excuses herself to go answer it.

Anthony studies the flowers, mildly panicked. He wonders which ones say, ‘I really like you and I want to sleep with you.’

There’s probably a good reason I haven’t been giving flowers to women all these years.

Luckily, his phone alarm goes off, telling him he has ten minutes to make his class, so he doesn’t have to decide anything right now.

It’s drizzling outside again and he wishes he’d worn a different jacket as he heads up toward the campus to meet with a couple of his postgraduate students about their Ph.D. projects. Coming from L.A., he’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to the wet Seattle weather.

When Anthony gets there, his student, Navez, is already working on the whiteboard while his other student, Brad, looks on. They’re both working with neutron stars and black holes, so their projects are closely tied to his own area of research.

After taking a seat, Anthony starts scanning the equations Navez has been writing. His eyes narrow as he searches for mistakes, but also creativity. Finally, he leans forward.

“You’re looking at stellar initial mass function using N-body simulation, but is your IMF slope too shallow?”

Navez goes to check through some of his notes.

When he comes back to the board, they go through the equations step by step again, with Navez changing some of his variables. The three of them hash out more things on the board and the time goes by fast. It’s the kind of work Anthony enjoys and can easily do for hours. As they’re finishing up, he nods to himself, and decides that overall he’s satisfied with both of his students’ progress.

He’s in good spirits as he heads toward his office, thinking about seeing Natalie again on Friday. Although he’d prefer if it were just the two of them. Unfortunately, when Anthony turns the corner to his office, he discovers there’s a group of young female students waiting to ambush him.

Shit.

He tries to escape, but it’s too late. They’ve already spotted him. Like a pack of hungry wolves.

“Professor Novello!”

Desperate, he searches around for his assistant, Maya, who usually helps wrangle all these women. And, of course, she’s nowhere in sight.

“I have some questions about astrology!”

“Do you have a girlfriend, Professor Novello?”

“What’s gravity?”

“Could you come to our sorority tomorrow night? There’ll be dancing!”

They’re all chattering at once and he’s already getting a headache from their shrill voices.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Anthony says, rushing into his office and quickly closing the door.

He wishes he could teleport away. Glancing toward the window, he thinks about that scene from
Raiders
where Indy climbs out of one to get away from his female students.

The problem is, Anthony’s office is on the third floor.

Pulling out his phone, he texts an SOS to Maya. He’s tempted to leave, but knows they’ll only follow him wherever he goes. A posse of determined young females is harder to lose than you’d think. Pretty soon, they’re going to start knocking on the door, rattling the knob as they try to get inside. It’s like keeping out a zombie attack.

Luckily, Maya shows up within a few minutes. Turns out she was only getting coffee and was already on her way back.
Thank God.
He can hear her through the door.

She sweeps through the group in her efficient way, telling them how they’ll each need to make an appointment and how she handles most of Anthony’s student questions herself. That typically gets rid of all of them, and this time is no exception.

“Thank you,” Anthony says, peeking his head out.

Maya rolls her eyes. Her dark curls form a halo around her face. With a Cuban mother and an Ethiopian father, Maya is nobody’s fool. She’s also hot tempered and as smart as they come.

“You’re like a reluctant rock star, you know that?”

“I don’t want to be a rock star.”

“I know. But that’s partly what makes you so irresistible.”

Maya hands him one of the lattes she bought and Anthony thanks her. She then reminds him about the SWIFT proposal.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” He gets his computer out and switches the keyboard over to Italian so he can email his colleague in Naples. They met when Anthony spent time in Italy working on a postdoctoral fellowship with the Italian Space Agency. Having produced some of the world’s finest astronomers, Italians still have a strong presence in the world’s astronomical community.

Maya is sifting through his mail. “Have you seen this?” she asks, holding a letter up. “There’s an invitation here for you to speak at the European Astrophysics conference in Rome later this year. I assume you’re going to that.”

Anthony nods, still typing. “I submitted that paper I wrote on redshift measurements a while ago. What does it say?”

Maya reads it aloud and Anthony listens with half an ear. The conference is months away and he’ll have plenty of time to pull together a short lecture. His mind wanders back to Natalie and all the kissing they’ve been up to lately, mostly because it’s driving him nuts.

You were an idiot to agree to it in the first place.

He’s not used to this kind of sexual frustration. His only hope is that it’s wearing on her, too—and he suspects it is. Even his dreams are working against him. Last night he had the boxing one again. She was wearing the tight T-shirt and shorts that he likes to imagine her in. They were boxing at first, but that turned into wrestling, and it didn’t take long before their clothes were gone and he was on top of her, buried deep. Her legs were wrapped around him and that sexy mouth was screaming his name.

He woke up sweating with a rock hard dick and he had to finish himself off.

It would have been far better if she’d actually been there
.

Seeing Natalie in the morning after having spent the night rolling around in his bed—now that would be something. She’d look so pretty. All mussed and well-tumbled. He can think of a million things he’d like to do with her, each one dirtier than the last.

“Do you want to schedule extra time in Rome so you can visit your family?” Maya asks, bringing him back to reality.

“Uh, yeah, an extra week should do it.”

“I’ll go ahead and put the paperwork through then.”

“Sure,” Anthony says, but he’s already back to thinking about how he can make his dream with Natalie come true.

THIS IS THEIR
third potluck dinner and the first one where Natalie feels nervous.

“You look great,” Lindsay says. “Stop freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out.”

“Really? How many times are you going to change clothes?”

“I think ten times should do it.”

Lindsay laughs. “You look fantastic. Trust me, I’d tell you if you didn’t. You’re my greatest project yet.”

It’s almost time for people to arrive so Natalie starts laying out dishes of food on the dining room table. Lindsay likes Mexican, so she puts out the makings for tacos using refried beans. Oliver will probably bring beer. Blair mentioned something about a bread pudding, though she’s not sure about Graham or if he’s bringing anything. Natalie decided to make a tiramisu.

I like tiramisu.

Though who is she kidding? She made the tiramisu for Anthony. In truth, it’s a pleasure to make sweets for a man who appreciates them so much. Peter was often disdainful of some of the rich desserts she created. Of course, it didn’t help matters that he was a dentist.

The doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it,” Lindsay calls out. “I think it’s Oliver.”

Natalie continues setting a stack of plates out for everyone. She doesn’t see a sign of either Lindsay or Oliver for about five minutes. When they finally come into the dining room, Lindsay has a smug smile on her face, while Oliver is in a daze and can’t take his eyes off her sister.

Natalie feels a twinge of envy and wonders, not for the first time, how her sister does it. She seems to have a magical ability to enslave men.

“I’ll take that from you,” Natalie tells Oliver. She puts the beer he brought in the fridge, offering him one first, which he grabs eagerly.

“Do you need any help?” Lindsay asks.

“No, there’s not much else to do.”

In a short while, Blair shows up with Graham. The two of them look like they stepped out of the pages of a preppy college catalog. Blair is wearing a scarf in her ponytail, a cardigan sweater, beige capris, and black ballerina flats. Graham looks handsome in a white button-down shirt and dark khakis. He offers her a bottle of white wine, which she thanks him for and, after uncorking it, places next to the food.

“How are you?” she asks Blair.

“I’m fine.” Blair waves her hand dismissively. “I’m over it. I blocked Road’s Facebook page, so I won’t even be tempted to look at it anymore.”

A couple of Chloe’s friends arrive and after loading their plates, Natalie helps the girls get settled in the family room with their sleeping bags. There’s a stack of board games and Chloe has a few favorite movies picked out. Natalie figures she’ll make popcorn and bring it in to the girls later. She’s happy that Chloe wanted to have friends over tonight and has been encouraging her to do normal kid things since the divorce. Both Natalie and Lindsay also finally drove out to meet Cinnamon, Chloe’s new horse. Natalie still isn’t crazy about any of it, but there isn’t much she can do.

The grown-ups are sitting in the living room, drinking and talking. Natalie is waiting for Anthony to arrive before she has everyone get food, but when the clock hits twenty after the hour, she decides to let people eat.

He’s probably just running late,
she tells herself as she checks her phone for a text again. Still nothing. No voicemail, either.

A small pitiful part of herself worries that she’s being stood up.

“Isn’t Anthony coming?” Blair asks.

“He’s supposed to be here.”

Graham adds salsa to his plate and dips a chip into it. “Don’t worry, he’ll show. That guy is late for everything, trust me.”

Natalie nods, but there’s a growing sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. She chastises herself for letting this mean so much. Men like Anthony are all the same and she should know better. He’s probably juggling a dozen women at once and she’s just another number in that perfect memory of his.

Grabbing a plate, Natalie helps herself to some food, though she’s basically lost her appetite.

“If he stands you up, he’s a dead man,” Lindsay says, coming over to her. “I’m serious. I’ll have Oliver kick his ass.”

Natalie glances over at Oliver. He’s wearing a hockey jersey from the Phoenix Scorpions. It’s gray with an orange scorpion tail and hugs his muscular shoulders. “Whatever. I’m not going to let it bother me. We’re just keeping it casual, anyway.”

She pours herself a glass of the wine Graham brought and takes a large swallow. Natalie takes another swallow and just as she considers pouring a second glass, the front doorbell rings.

Thank God.

The clock says he’s forty-five minutes late.

“I’ll get it,” she announces, trying not to let her annoyance show. Her pulse kicks into overdrive. The worst part is she’s thrilled he showed up even if he is so late, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t pissed.

Natalie swings the door open, ready with a glare and a tongue-lashing.