Love by the Numbers Read online

  Kate laughed. “You’re so stuck with this one.”

  Shaking her head, Nicole left Kate to her ravings. She stripped off her slacks in the bathroom and examined the damage. The road rash was minimal—just a light scrape. Dirty water had soaked all the way through her bra on one side so a quick shower was mandatory.

  She was away longer than she meant to be but by the time she returned to the sitting room she felt more human. She hoped her simple black slacks and plain white blouse would be sufficient to balance whatever Kate had meant about the assistant’s shoes.

  “I don’t know a thing about chess,” she heard the assistant saying. “My uncle taught me to play Go. We haven’t played in some time, but our matches were epic—to us, at least.”

  Her mother said, “I used to play Go, but I can’t find a well-matched player. My late husband always played chess with Nicky. She is playing a game by correspondence with a colleague in Seattle.”

  They were getting along so well that Nicole bypassed the sitting room and went instead to the dining room. If the good china was out, they were eating at the big table.

  It was curious, she thought as she set the table, that when she tried to look at Lily Smith she couldn’t focus. The simple crystal teardrop necklace was eye-catching and the turned back cuffs her of dress sleeves encircled shapely arms. Her eyeliner was amethyst, which brought out the green irises, but the more Nicole thought about it, the more she knew she hadn’t a clue about the shape of her nose or mouth, or a sense of her entire face. It was—ridiculous thought—as if she were afraid to look at the woman.

  Knowing they would be in close quarters on the road was the likely cause of her reluctance, she decided. Her mother’s concerns for propriety aside, traveling with a man had not been the least bit threatening. Well, traveling with a woman wouldn’t be either. There was nothing about Lily Smith that pinged her gaydar, and Nicole felt that hers was exceptionally accurate. She had made a study of the cues and signs of other lesbians to avoid giving out any of her own. It was a decision that had made sense when she had known she would not marry and settle down as her mother desired, and she had seen little more ahead of herself than the grind toward tenure and the repetition of research, publish, teach.

  Cole’s encounters in college were a long time ago, and the subsequent anonymous liaisons at conferences had been few and far between. The leather jacket and all that it represented, now packed inside her locked suitcase, was her outlet. She’d had no reason or temptation to risk the status quo with her family, or her colleagues, not when that aspect of her life was so neatly contained.

  Of course the world had changed all around her ever since, but she hadn’t felt the need to keep up. This trip, away from all her expectations and limitations, would allow her opportunities for the quick connections with women she couldn’t help but crave. Cole would get what she needed. But she would return as Nicole.

  The irony of the author of Love by the Numbers: How Your DNA Forms Receptive Relationships not being the least bit interested in a relationship of her own wasn’t lost on her. Irony, however, was an emotional construct that created a false need to find resolution.

  She heard Lily Smith’s husky laugh followed by her mother’s unmistakable titter and tried to school bitterness from her expression. Instead of the ease of simply putting on her jacket and visiting a club as many nights as possible, she was saddled with the epically feminine Lily Smith. She would have to make sure that Ms. Smith didn’t think being a travel companion meant familiarity. They had nothing in common.

  * * *

  “This is truly delicious,” Lily said, and it was the truth. The spiced chicken was rich with fennel, cinnamon and ginger, and the coconut-apple-pecan compote was perfect to complement it. If this was an example of a casual meal, then Indira Hathaway was an excellent cook. “Thank you so much for letting me share this meal with you.”

  Indira beamed. “What lovely manners you have. You are a credit to your mother, I’m sure.”

  She shook her head at her hostess. “I wasn’t being polite. This is wonderful. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in years. I mean, one that I didn’t make for myself.”

  “A girl like you—”

  “Here we go,” Kate said.

  “A girl like you,” Indira repeated with an arch look at Kate, “cannot possibly be single.”

  “I am. No prospects either.”

  “You’re embarrassing her, Mother.”

  Nicole’s expression was fixed in lines of too-polite interest. Lily was disconcerted that Nicole had yet to meet her gaze or attempt to draw her into conversation to break the ice between them. For the most part, the good professor—younger than expected—was simply listening. Lily hoped Nicole had missed her slight twitch at the mention of her mother.

  “It’s quite all right,” Lily said automatically. It was as good a time as any to practice her vague responses to someone who asked about her private life. “I’ve been very busy since leaving college.”

  “How is it you have traveled so many places? Please help yourself to more of anything.”

  Lily immediately spooned out two more dollops of the tangy-sweet compote. “My parents believed in travel. When I was in high school I was an exchange student for two months during both my junior and senior years. On other occasions I spent time with relatives who had homes in other countries.”

  She returned her attention to her food, hoping she’d seemed forthcoming enough to forestall questions about her relative’s names, her parents’ occupation, how they had died…

  “My mother is right that you have good manners,” Kate said. “You haven’t asked about the baby’s father. I can’t go anywhere without people asking when I’m due and what sex my husband and I want for the baby. And touching my stomach, which drives me nuts.”

  “It’s not an unnatural question,” Nicole commented. “You’re going to have to get used to people saying the baby takes after the father, or somesuch.”

  “It might not be an unnatural question, but you don’t have to satisfy their curiosity just because they ask.” Lily realized she sounded as if she was rebuking Nicole, so she added quickly to Kate, “Strangers actually touch you? In nine-tenths of the world, that’s rude.”

  “Really?” Nicole sipped from her water glass.

  “Here we go,” Kate said.

  Nicole continued as if Kate hadn’t spoken. “Ninety percent of the world’s cultures frown upon unwanted touching of a pregnant woman’s belly? Or did you mean ninety percent of the world’s population? In India, it’s considered good luck for a woman to touch a pregnant woman’s belly, and that would be nearly a half-billion women—roughly—right there. So you probably didn’t mean population.”

  Lily gave Nicole a faint smile. Might as well stand her ground from the outset. “I was estimating the number of societies—roughly—that frown upon unwanted touching.”

  “Is this something you’ve made a study of?”

  “Yes.” Their gazes finally locked. Lily kept hers as guileless as possible. “Extensive.”

  “A curious area of study.”

  “When you travel it’s a good idea to know the cultural mores of your host country. I’ll brief you when we travel to each new destination. Everything from ordering food, if tipping is expected. Avoiding cultural condescension. That sort of thing.” She tacked on a bright smile and scolded herself for her attitude. This was a job, a good job. Uncle Damon had told her she couldn’t quit, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get fired.

  Nicole continued to meet her gaze. Like her mother, she had deep brown eyes and a definite ascetic hook to her nose. She was thin, much the way Lily would think someone who biked daily would be, and her thick, straight hair wasn’t more than an inch or two past her earlobes.

  “How useful you will be. Perhaps I could simply have access to your guides to study them myself.”

  What a distant, chilly smile, Lily thought. She might look like her mother, but she doesn’t have
half of the personality. She tapped one temple. “All in my head. And I can always use my phone to find out if there’s any current civil unrest.”

  “There’s an app for that?”

  “The CIA World Factbook.”

  One eyebrow lifted, just slightly. Lily had no idea what the woman was thinking.

  Kate said, with a snarky smile, “It’ll be good for you to have someone with you who can read a map.”

  “Kate, if your point is that I’m not well-traveled, then you could simply say so. Sarcasm is a waste of time.”

  Indira said to Lily, “They’ve always been like this. Sisters.”

  “I don’t have any siblings,” Lily shared. The byplay between Kate and Nicole was enlightening—Kate brought out a less guarded streak in her sister. She had no problem believing that Nicole could be scathing when she wished to be. She pitied her students.

  “And your parents?” Indira glared at her daughters as they subsided into silence. “They are living?”

  “No, sadly, I lost them both some time ago.” She forestalled the expression of sympathy by adding, “That’s why I’m so grateful to join you tonight. It’s been a while since I’ve spent time with a family.”

  “And you two do nothing but bicker,” Indira said to her daughters.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Lily said.

  “Now you’re being polite.” Nicole set down her fork. “There’s no need. We were, in fact, bickering.”

  “I’m not saying that you weren’t.” Lily could arch an eyebrow too. “I refuse to acknowledge it, which is quite different.”

  “Are you in the habit of denying that something exists?”

  “Yes.” Lily gave her the sweetest smile she could manage.

  Nicole smiled back, for the first time. It reminded Lily of the Cheshire Cat. But all Nicole said was, “I see.”

  Had she made some kind of behavioral science faux pas? No matter. She turned her attention back to Indira. “This dish is so fragrant. I love that about Indian cuisine. What’s your secret?”

  * * *

  Later that evening, after Lily checked into one of the motels on the main highway, she reflected on the undertone of the evening’s conversation with the dear professor. Nicole had seemed always ready to spar, which Lily didn’t understand. She was definitely not the kind of personality she’d ever seek out for a friend—too sure she was right about everything.

  Over dessert, Lily had realized why her reaction to Nicole had been prickly. It wasn’t just that Nicole was arrogant and distant. Her cold brown eyes reminded Lily of one of the prosecutors who had grilled her for hours about her knowledge of her parents’ business dealings. So certain of facts, so quick to accuse. The prosecutor had brought out Lily’s sarcastic side, which had only gotten her into more trouble. Nicole Hathaway touched the same raw nerve.

  Well, she couldn’t quit, and only Uncle Damon could fire her, so she would have to find the best frame of mind to get through it. She was living almost free for a few months and maybe when she returned home the scandal junkies would have found someone new to stick on a Pinterest.

  Nevertheless, it was best the good professor learn right away that Lily was perfectly aware when someone was trying to make her feel inadequate. Picking at a casual comment like whether it was appropriate to touch a pregnant woman’s stomach—that had been condescending. The dear professor had no idea exactly how well trained Lily was in certain things.

  She wearily brushed her teeth, hoping she didn’t fall asleep before she was actually in the bed. She looked at the dark half-moons under her eyes and sighed. Academic snobbery was nothing compared to the acid bites of wealthy people with nothing else to do but belittle each other. Professor Dr. Nicole Hathaway, Ph.D., PITA, might think her expertise in behavioral science made a formidable weapon in a battle of wits, but Lily had been schooled in bitchery by the best.

  Those few years when her parents had seemed to have money to burn, they had spent lavishly on clothes and trips. Finally, they were on equal monetary footing with so many cousins, aunts and uncles. Her college breaks had been filled with weeks at Martha’s Vineyard, skiing in Whistler, bargain hunting in Thailand, beach volleyball at Bondi…

  Sometimes it all seemed like a dream. But then so did her studies—world literature, public policy, economics, sociology, world religions—they all seemed far, far away from a dining room making barbed conversation with someone who clearly didn’t welcome her but whom she was supposed to help. All those months she’d been cooped up in her condo, afraid to step outside, she’d watched a lot of television. Smart people who lacked basic social graces made interesting detectives and might be useful to save the day when world crises threatened, but who wanted to spend three nonstop months in their company?

  It was childish and not a good omen that she fell asleep thinking, Bring it on, bee-yatch.

  Chapter Three

  Nicole parked her car in the faculty lot and battled an early morning wind as she carried two empty boxes to her office. She would have normally chosen jeans and a sweatshirt for what was going to be dusty work, but instead she was in slacks and a blouse and trying to ignore the fact that Kate’s comment about Lily Smith’s shoes had made her examine her own penny loafers with a more critical eye. They suited her. There was nothing wrong with them. Just because the shoes Lily Smith wore made her calves look sleek and her legs unnaturally long was no reason to change her own attire. Still, she hadn’t wanted to look casual. It would set the wrong tone.

  There was also Kate’s insinuation that the shoes had something to do with how their mother had received Lily. That made more sense. By the end of the evening, Lily could have been the yellow-haired daughter her mother had always wanted. Kate was far closer to the American beauty ideal than Nicole, but Lily had them both beat. She was aware that her mother loved them both, but she had long conceded that her mother had fallen prey to valuing all the things of her adopted country as better than the country of her birth—except for the advice of the menfolk. Lily could probably be notoriously promiscuous and her mother would still find her charming. But then her mother wasn’t alone in the tendency to forgive pretty blondes more readily than others for their bad behavior.

  You’re getting off track, she warned herself. It wasn’t as if Lily Smith was capable of bad behavior from the looks of her. For someone only a little older than most of Nicole’s students, she was so…correct. Not in a perfunctory or studied way, but as if it was programmed in her DNA to say the right thing, use the right spoon and wear the right shoes to make her legs look…like they did.

  She would, someday, make some man the perfect Stepford Wife. And this trip, and all its opportunities, would be overshadowed by a Barbie clone who believed she could bluff her way through life. The assertion from Barbie-Lily that she knew exactly what percentage of world cultures frowned upon unwanted touching had been ridiculous. Her tone had been more than a little bitchy, actually. Three months of constant contact weren’t going to be easy.

  She calmed her erratic thoughts with a slow, deep belly breath. The oxygen had the desired effect of slowing her respiration and relaxing the muscles across her shoulders. She made one trip to her car, laden with files, and deliberately didn’t think about how Cole was going to get in and out of her hotel room at night in her leather jacket without Lily Smith seeing her. Maybe she should just give up on the idea of visiting the Cat’s Paw in London.

  Her thighs clenched at the mere thought of what might happen if she did go out. Google Maps had shown the club only a short walk from the hotel. Her palms were damp on the file folders. It’s a perfectly natural human response, she told herself. The sexual urge was an evolutionary survival trait. There was no reason someone she knew had to see her having that response. Certainly not the straight and proper Lily Smith.

  She slammed the trunk closed. She knew she was most comfortable when she was in control of a situation. Cole was always in control, and that’s all she was contemplating. Compatible liaisons
, a few hours only, in London. And Frankfurt. And New Orleans.

  Back at her desk she made herself focus on data tables, raw results and subsequent conclusions. With this peer review finished her colleague at UCLA could publish his study results on perceived hunger when presented with different visual and olfactory cues.

  As she circled a column of statistical variances and noted that no bottom limit was stated in the conclusion about aroma, color palette and cognitive dissonance, she heard the light tap-tap of high heels in the hallway outside. That was probably her nanny now.

  * * *

  Fortified by a hearty bowl of steaming oatmeal with local maple syrup stirred into it, Lily made her way from the visitor’s parking lot to the science building.

  They’d agreed upon nine fifteen. It was nine thirteen when she turned the knob on Dr. Hathaway’s door. The orderly office was no surprise, and she admired the view of the college common that was just visible from the window above the bookcase. Nicole, wearing the same style of no-nonsense black slacks and a simple blouse as she had last night at dinner, glanced up with a borderline frown and indicated an overstuffed manila file pocket on her desk.

  “Everything I have that’s related to the trip is there.”

  “Thank you,” Lily said automatically. Though not invited to do so, she sat down in the side chair and pulled the folder toward her. The woman had no manners, fine. “I’d like to sort through this and ask you relevant questions, then I’ll go elsewhere to make phone calls about changing names on the tickets I’ll be using.”

  “That would be best,” Nicole answered. “I plan to complete this review by this afternoon, but it will take focus.”

  Well, that do-not-disturb sign was plain enough, Lily thought. After a glance at the number-encrusted papers spread out on Nicole’s desk, Lily studied her own paperwork. She worked quickly in silence, matching tickets against the itinerary and glad to see that only air tickets were assigned by name. The rail passes wouldn’t be tied to a person until they were first used. The hotel reservations were in Insignis’s name. There was less to worry about than she had thought, but still a lot to do before they drove out of town later today.