Bernie emerges from the crowd, a glass in one hand and a woman’s purse in the other. “Not for nothing, guys, but this girl is wasted on you this evening.”
“Says the man who looks like Billy the Kid,” Tim shoots back, a little pissy.
Bernie takes this jibe at his expensive-looking cowboy outfit in good humor, admitting that Elvira had expressed doubts, too.
“You should have listened to her.”
“Why, you don’t like the rugged look?” He grins. “Anyway, Anna-Banana, before Elvira comes back, for old times’ sake—” He puts one arm around my taffeta shoulders and kisses me on the mouth before he struts off.
“You’re kissing the wrong man.” Tim glares at me through narrowed eyes.
“I didn’t kiss him at all!” I snap, indignantly.
“Never mind,” he relents. “Where is Giles? We need to get Elizabeth’s card signed.”
The spring semester starts on January fifteenth, Ma Mayfield’s fifty-fifth birthday, and some strategic thinker realized that we would never get a present sorted out and a card signed if we left it till then. He also bought a pint-sized crystal-and-sterling bottle, which he produces from a dark leather box in his office.
“And this is genuinely eighteenth-century?” Erin examines the sparkling piece in its velvet case.
“No, I got it from Sears for nineteen ninety-nine,” Giles says.
“Seriously, where did you get it? The Internet?” Eugenia straightens up from signing the card.
“London. I know a guy who sells that sort of thing. And no, it isn’t fenced goods!”
“‘Last week, mysteriously disappeared from the Duke of God-I’m-Posh’s billiard room, antique crystal to the value of—argh!’”
Giles grabs Tim by the neck and shakes him.
“Listen, son, don’t get fresh just because you’ve passed the first round of your tenure review!”
“My tutor in Cambridge collected this sort of stuff,” I tell them. “He wasn’t supposed to keep it in his office at all, because of insurance, but he did it anyway.”
“Tristan Millard was your tutor?” Giles asks, mildly interested. With the air of one humoring a precocious child, he picks a yellowing, slightly tattered booklet out from beneath the velvet bed and hands it to me to read. Despite ourselves, nerds that we are, we get involved in the topic and I only realize that the others left the room when Erin sticks her head through the half-open door.
“Tim, c’mon—the taxi’s here! Sorry, Giles, but I had to bribe the driver with the promise of an extra-large tip, so—Tim, now, please!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”
Tim grabs his coat and makes for the door before I can decently get up from that damned leather sofa. I was all right in Giles’s office on that sofa in my burgundy taffeta dress as long we were a crowd of six. I’m definitely not staying for a company of two, and since he has also gotten up from his chair, I’m assuming that we see eye to eye on this one.
“Bye, Giles! Bye-bye, love!” And Tim is out the door.
And I’m suddenly so shy with this man I’ve hardly been able to look at all evening because I don’t want to let him see the adoration glowing in my eyes.
“Yes, well, it’s a good thing we’ve got that sorted out. One item off the holiday list, I guess.” I glance round for my coat. “I think I’ll try my luck with the cabs, too, now.”
Then everything happens very fast. I’m reaching for the doorknob, and he is suddenly right behind me. One hand, left of me, slams against the door, the other, by my right shoulder, slams against the light switch and turns the key in the lock. Suddenly the pale glimmer from the electric bulbs in the garlands outside the windows is the only source of light, and it isn’t much. I wince at his unexpected physical violence, but not for a nanosecond am I afraid. His hand is on my waist, his fingers dig into my flesh; he spins me round, my shoulders and the back of my head bump against the door.
And then he kisses me. Giles Cleveland bends down from his great height to kiss me, and it is a big, wet, angry kiss, full of pent-up emotion. The fingers of his other hand slip round my neck, and I couldn’t avoid his mouth even if I wanted to.
“This is for letting that guy kiss you!” he growls above me in the dark.
“Bernie? But he isn’t—”
“And this one is for wearing lace stockings in my office!”
“How do you—” I gasp for breath when he finally releases my mouth.