she wanted to do with him. “Do you have work you need to do today?”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I asked Ray to handle the milking tonight. I’m all yours.”
His choice of words sent a fresh spike of arousal thrumming through her. “A whole night together, hmmm?” Her fingers curled possessively in his shirt.
“And most of an afternoon,” he pointed out.
“However will we pass the time?”
His lips curved into a libidinous smile. “We’ll have to improvise, I guess.”
She liked the sound of that.
She liked it very much.
Chapter Fourteen
Mia rolled over, encountering empty space where she’d expected to find a warm body. She’d fallen asleep next to Josh last night. She was sure of it.
Hadn’t she?
Her sleep-befuddled mind pieced together hazy memories of the night before. Extremely pleasant memories. So pleasant, for a second she feared it had all been a dream, like the one Birdie had woken her from yesterday morning.
She cracked a bleary eye and was relieved to find herself in Josh’s bedroom, where she remembered falling asleep with her body tucked against his. As she peered around the semi-dark room, he appeared in her field of vision. Smiling, he bent over the bed and kissed her.
“What time is it?” she mumbled against his lips.
“Time for me to do chores. Go back to sleep.” He started to pull away and she grabbed the front of his shirt.
“Wait.” She tugged him down for another kiss, taking her time with this one. “Are you coming back?”
“In a while. Plenty of time for you to get some more sleep.” He kissed her forehead before pushing himself upright. “I’ll be back later to make you breakfast.” This time, she let him go.
Mia curled up on her side, feeling happy. Content, even.
She listened to the sound of Josh’s footsteps going down the stairs, followed by the screen door slamming shut behind him. Outside, a dog barked a greeting, and Josh spoke to it in a low voice. A rooster crowed, sounding exactly like the See ’n Say toy she’d had as a kid. She could hear the hens too, singing the way Birdie’s always did in the morning, along with the honking bleats of the goats.
It wasn’t exactly quiet, but it was peaceful. A different world than the city noises she’d awakened to almost every other day of her life. Even Birdie’s quiet neighborhood sounded more citified than this, with its garbage trucks and school buses and lawn mowers.
Mia rolled onto her back, letting the tranquility wash over her. Feeling satisfied and comfortable. Letting her mind wander. Thinking of things she needed to do this week. Changes she wanted to make to her lesson plans based on her conversation with Renée yesterday.
An image floated through her mind of the eleven-crossing knot she’d been trying to untangle. She pictured its curves and whorls, as she had so many times before. Visualized its trace, a more complex four-dimensional rendering associated with every knot. If she could just figure out how to construct a knot with the same trace, she might be able to use an invariant to ascertain its slice status, and thereby the status of its trace sibling.
It was the step she’d been stuck on for months. She lay there turning the problem over in her head as she’d done so often before. But this time, instead of hitting a wall and giving up in frustration, her drowsy, relaxed mind kept needling at it, teasing around the edges of the puzzle.
Until suddenly, like a match flaring in a dark room, she saw the solution.
Holy shit.
It was only a glimpse. The beginnings of an idea.
But it was the piece she’d been missing.
Mia bolted upright, trying to hold on to the image in her head before it slipped away.
Paper.
She needed paper. Something to write on.
She had to get it down before she lost it.
For once in her life, she hadn’t brought a notebook with her, because she’d thought she was coming here for yoga. Panicked, she cast around the room for something to write on. She couldn’t bring herself to rifle through his bedside drawers, but she remembered seeing an office downstairs. There had to be paper in there.
Mia ran out of the room, desperately hoping she could find something before she lost the first breakthrough she’d had in months.
Two hours later, when Josh came back, Mia was seated cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by notes and diagrams she’d hastily scribbled on pieces of plain white printer paper.