His face clears, he nods. “Laugh it off. Best thing to do, believe me.”
My smile is a little wobbly, because I really need to sit down somewhere and have a good cry. I should go home with a bottle of Merlot, have a hot bath and a good long cry. Be right as rain afterward.
Giles reaches out, and his hand on my shoulder unclenches all the muscles in my body so suddenly that I sway against it.
“But you’re not laughing it off, are you? I wish you would.”
Did he feel my body lean against his hand for half a second? I try to catch myself, mortified, and launch into false swagger.
“Hey—there’s plenty of time to find my feet! Just because I’m having a rocky start doesn’t mean I’ll…fail, does it?”
How simple it is. How simple, an arm around my shoulders, a warm hand cupping my neck. I can’t believe he is actually doing this, that he has actually done this, gripped my shoulder more tightly, taken that one step closer toward me, drawn me against himself, into his arms, against the smooth cotton of his shirt, the solid body underneath, and that he is holding me tightly, not politely. This is not a gesture. He wants me to feel it.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is so close, in my hair, against my ear. No idea what he means, and I don’t care, either. But I have to pretend. I have to disentangle myself from his arms and my longing, and look up at him, although my eyes are swollen with exhaustion.
“Why sorry? This has nothing to do with you.”
He steps back from me.
“Yes, it has. I helped to get you in here.”
For the first time since I entered the room, his eyes fall from my face. He is standing in the middle of his office, in his black pants and white shirt, staring at the pattern of the rug on the floor.
“And here’s me thinking it was my qualifications that got me in. Duh.”
“No—yes, of course!” He actually drives his fists into his pockets, he feels so awkward. Sorry, maybe, that he touched me.
“Or my sex and my religion. After all, Dancey told me in so many words that I had, quote, ‘sailed in here on a diversity ticket,’ so—”
“What?” Within a second Giles’s expression has gone from troubled to suspicious to furious. “God, he is such an arsehole! No, they weren’t sure about your UK degrees, and Elizabeth wrote to me, in case I knew anyone in England who had worked with you. Well, since I had just seen you at the conference, I told them that you were by far the best fit, and that I would strictly veto any of the other candidates.”
I am too tired to manage my anger.
“And why didn’t you tell me this earlier? I thought I had been dropped into your nest like a cuckoo’s egg! You were horrid to me!”
“I was not!”
“You were an arrogant jerk!”
With a crack of laughter he flings himself into the low upholstered chair at right angles to the sofa. That’s a lot of arm and leg to dispose of, and one hand is back in his pocket, the other elbow on the back of the chair.
“Anyway, when you came down, people liked you much better than they liked that Wright woman, and Bergstrom never had a majority anyway, so Elizabeth decided it would be best to go for the third candidate. And although none of that is your fault at all, several of my esteemed colleagues, Dancey among them, were so miffed that they’ve taken it out on you. But that’s just a little hazing, and it’ll pass once they’ve got it out of their system.”
“Gee, that’s so comforting.” But now I sit down, too.
“What I want you to understand,” he goes on, undeterred by my sarcasm, “is that this isn’t how it’s going to be. They’ll find a new grudge and forget about you.”
I contemplate his angular posture in the chair, the hunched shoulder and the ankle resting on the opposite knee so that his shin forms a horizontal bar between us.
“You don’t believe that,” I say. Down comes the ankle, but his legs are still crossed, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “No, Giles, I think you’re beginning to realize that what with the resentment I caused simply by having been the laughing third party, and the resentment I’m causing now by scaring your snowflakes and by attracting haters, there’s a real possibility I won’t