“Lose something?” Phoebe muttered, adding just for him. “Something with, er, long black hair in designer jeans?”
Lewis cast her a sharp glance. She’d noticed that he and Bethany were together. “You could say that,” he replied smoothly. “How long is this cruise supposed to go on, anyway?”
“Four hours,” she said, tipping up her glass to finish the champagne, then handing it to the professor with a charming smile. He moved off with the empty glass. She knew damn well Lewis hadn’t planned to sail with the boat. “The dean is over there.” She pointed to a middle-aged man in the middle of the deck, looking very flushed. This was his big day.
“They docking anywhere else?” He could hope.
“Not as far as I know,” she replied, still smiling. She seemed delighted to see him in this predicament.
Lewis stepped over to the side of the boat. He hadn’t made it as far as he had in a tough business by letting petty details stop him. They were only seventy yards or so from the dock, upstream. It was doable. And the south bank of the river was even closer.
“Lewis!”
He grinned. He’d shocked her, after all, right out of her creamy smooth, Phoebe Longquist, algae-specialist self by stripping off his T-shirt and tossing it to her. She caught it by reflex. He kicked off his sneakers. He’d buy a new pair.
“Sorry, Phoebe, Professor Paterson,” he said, stepping up to the railing. The professor had returned with two full glasses and was regarding the crumpled white material in Phoebe’s hands with an expression of horror that might ordinarily be reserved for, say, a rattlesnake. “Sorry, folks, can’t stay. I’ve got other plans.”
And with that he dived smoothly into the North Saskatchewan River. When he surfaced, he laughed and waved at the boat. Dozens of screaming spectators leaned over the side and the boat’s steam whistle shrilled. He saw Phoebe in the background, waving back. He’d swear she was giggling.
Lewis sputtered. It was tough to swim and laugh at the same time. Then, with steady, powerful strokes, he set off for shore.
As he’d told her, he had other plans.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN LEWIS GOT BACK, Bethany and Reg were kissing and cuddling in the tiny crowded office of Bethany’s Blooms.
He was astonished. “I thought Reg was gay.”
“What!?” With her hands on hips, disheveled as hell, Lewis had to admit Bethany looked as if they’d been having a good time. Her face was flushed and her eyes were soft. Funny, it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, Lewis wanted to laugh. Loverboy was hiding in the office—the coward—with the door closed, while Bethany confronted Lewis in the shop.
“Yeah. I thought—”
“You thought he was gay? Just because he works in a florist shop? Just because he loves flowers the same way I do? Just because he’s a fine, sensitive, artistic young man? Lewis Hardin! You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re just one cliché after another.”
“I am?” Now Lewis was hurt. “He’s six years younger than you. He can’t even drive!”
“So what? He has many other fine qualities. And, yes, you are one testosterone-loaded, macho-oilfield cliché after another, with your…your big muscles and your smelly boots!” With that final salvo and one long manicured finger indicating the door, Bethany asked him to kindly leave her establishment, which Lewis did, shaking his head. Smelly boots?
It was true. He’d found some steel-toed boots in his Jeep and had put them on when he got back to where he’d left his vehicle, in the alley behind her shop. He’d also found an old shirt to wear. His jeans were soaking wet. Bethany hadn’t asked how they’d gotten that way. Hadn’t she even noticed? Just before he climbed into the Jeep to leave, Bethany ran out and hugged him and thanked him for all his help with the riverboat. The flip-flop was pure Bethany. She was a good kid, underneath all her craziness.
“Where were you, anyway?” he asked when he got his breath back. “Why’d you leave the riverboat?”
“We were worried you weren’t going to make it in time so we…we thought we’d hurry back to the shop and see what was happening.” Bethany looked doubtfully at him. “I had to drive.” He figured she knew very well that she was making no sense. He handed her the keys to her van.
Whew! Some females. Lewis got into his own vehicle and left. He felt better than he had in a long, long time. His big muscles and his smelly boots?
Bethany and little Reg. Well, hot damn. Who’d’a thought…
PHOEBE STUFFED Lewis’s T-shirt in her bag and asked the boat’s steward for a plastic bag so she could take his sneakers, size twelve, home with her, too. She’d return them to Mercedes and Billy Hardin next time she was in Glory. They could make sure Lewis got them back. No point wasting perfectly good clothing.
Boyd quizzed her about Lewis as he drove her home, but Phoebe’s mind wandered, and she realized she wasn’t paying as much attention to him as she usually did. Generally she enjoyed the young professor’s conversation and his company. He’d been the one to insist she go to the reception today, telling her it couldn’t hurt to be seen at a few department events. It was sincere and well-meant advice. But somehow today, since she’d seen Lewis peel off his shirt and take that flying leap into the icy North Saskatchewan River, Boyd seemed…well, pale. Thin and pale and not nearly as interesting as she’d found him in the past.
When he kissed her at the elevators that led to the third-floor apartment that Phoebe shared with another graduate student, she didn’t invite him up. Men were allowed on the women’s floor between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Phoebe and Lindy Sokoloski were “floor mothers” in the undergraduate girls’ residence, Hanratty Hall. It was a job, extra income that paid for her accommodation, which meant she could use all her scholarship money for school and books. Well, most of it. She looked down guiltily at the little black dress she was wearing. It had been on sale, she reminded herself, or she’d never have spent the money.
And now that she’d graduated at the top of the dean’s list and been accepted into a very limited postgraduate program, she had a certain amount of socializing to do, even within the department, as Boyd had reminded her. She needed clothes, besides the jeans and T-shirts she wore to classes and in the field. She had a career to develop. There was politics in the sciences, just as there were in the arts. Maybe more, with everyone jockeying for publishing credits and grant money. Boyd Paterson’s specialty was studying the sediments at the bottoms of lakes. It was a subspecialty of geology. Pond science, she called it privately.
Algae was her particular passion. Chemistry and plant science. She was excited about the work she’d be doing this year with algae. New breakthroughs in DNA technology had opened up possibilities for the simple-celled organism to supply all kinds of useful products—starches for the food industry, waxes for cosmetics, enzymes that might prove useful in medicine, even oillike substances that might help replace fossil fuels someday.
“Lindy?” No answer. The apartment had an empty feel, and Phoebe was a relieved. There were disadvantages to sharing such a small space; lack of privacy was one.
She went into the small alcove that served as her bedroom— Lindy had one on the other side of the tiny living room—and folded Lewis’s T-shirt carefully, pausing to stroke the soft, overwashed texture of the cotton knit. How would she have explained pulling this out of her purse if her roommate had been home? Plus a pair of men’s sneakers? Lindy might not have asked. She was pretty easygoing, one of her qualities Phoebe admired most. Lindy was practical; she’d just assume Phoebe had a good explanation for bringing home a pair of men’s size-twelve sneakers and a T-shirt. Otherwise, or so Lindy would reason, why would she have them?
Phoebe buried her nose in the soft folds of the T-shirt and breathed deeply.