words popped Dani’s buoyant mood like barbed wire—which made very little sense, because they were doing well enough to excuse a single mistake. Zaf answering this question incorrectly shouldn’t throw any real doubt on their relationship. Ph.D.s were slippery and frequently boring things.
“Zaf, show us your board!”
In fact, this time last year, Dani might have struggled with such a question herself. It was a tricky—
“Race and gender in the West after slavery,” Zaf said.
At which point, Dani released a garbled sound of astonishment, one that sounded like a cross between a cough, a burp, and a squawked “What?,” into the ears of the entire city.
Zaf shot her a look of concern, as if he suspected she’d accidentally swallowed a passing pigeon. Which would be quite a feat, considering the room’s lack of windows.
“Dani,” Edison said patiently, “what’s your answer?”
Slowly, she turned her board over. “Evolution of misogynoir post–chattel slavery,”
“That’s close, right?” Zafir looked inordinately pleased with himself. He actually smiled, a big, beaming grin that made him achingly handsome, all white teeth and dark beard and lovely, lovely mouth. But she mustn’t get distracted by the mouth. In fact, for once, she couldn’t be—she was too busy staring at his whiteboard in astonishment. There it was, in black and white: a valid understanding of her general thesis topic.
“How did you know that?” Dani demanded in a whisper.
Zaf arched an eyebrow. “You think I don’t listen when you talk?”
“When I’m rambling about work? I was absolutely certain you weren’t listening, correct.”
“Yeah, well.” He tapped his lovely nose and looked smug.
“Zaf, that’s almost the title of my most recently published article.” In line with her twenty-year plan toward professorship, Dani had, of course, secured bylines in minor academic journals over the past few years.
“And now you think you’re the only one who knows how to use a library.”
Her voice reached dolphin pitch. “You’ve been reading my articles at the library?”
He shrugged, and she got the impression common sense had broken through his competitiveness, because he now looked slightly hunted. “Er . . . yeah. I mean, they’re interesting.”
Interesting?
It wasn’t that Dani didn’t find her own work interesting—of course she bloody did. She had to, or she might have stabbed herself in the throat with a ballpoint pen by now. And she knew very well that lots of other people found her work interesting, too. It was just . . . well. She’d never been with one of those people.
Not that she was with Zaf. But still. Even Dani’s sisters didn’t read her papers. The only friend who did so was Sorcha, and that was because Sorcha had studied a similar field at undergrad. No one outside Dani’s profession had ever withstood her disjointed ramblings about literary theory and come away with a burning desire to learn more about it all. She simply wasn’t as fascinating as the written work itself, as evidenced by the number of dates who had gently informed her that she was more boring than thrilling in long-term conversation.
Back when she still did silly things like date, that is.
So Dani couldn’t think of a single damned reason why Zaf would carry himself to the library to read her essays. Then he slid one big, warm hand over the nape of her neck, squeezed, and said, “Don’t look so surprised. You know I love your brain.” At which point, Dani stopped thinking of anything at all. Her throat dried up like the desert, and tiny darts of sheer, sunlit happiness zipped through her blood, and her eyes prickled oddly hot at the corners because—actually, she didn’t know why. All she knew was no one had ever said a thing like that before.
And Zaf, she realized abruptly, wasn’t saying it, either. He was lying. He was performing. He was faking it.
“Well, that was adorable,” Edison cooed, dragging Dani rudely back to earth. She tucked her stormy confusion away and hoped her expression on camera hadn’t been too shocked, or alarmed, or bewildered.
Meanwhile, the deejay continued. “And there we have it, folks! Zaf and Danika, aka #DrRugbae, are most definitely couple goals.”
Edison was getting on her nerves, all of a sudden. Back to the workhouse with him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zaf wasn’t the only person in the world who’d noticed Danika was kind of a genius. He couldn’t be. For one thing, she had a B.A. and an M.A. and they were letting her get a Ph.D., and that didn’t really happen by accident. For another, journals published her articles, which meant they got it,