The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(7)
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SHE APPEARED AT Dana’s door an hour later, and the second she knocked, tears made a rare appearance, sliding down her face in hot streaks.
Dana opened the door, took one look and blinked. An odd expression—half surprise, half something else—came over her face. “Well, I guess I can see how that turned out,” she said after a beat. “I’m sorry, babe.”
She got a clean pair of pajamas, and Honor changed, then washed her face in the sloppy, comforting bathroom.
“At least you know where you stand,” Dana said, leaning against the doorway. “I think drinks are called for, don’t you?”
She made very strong martinis and handed Honor a box of Kleenex. Shark Week, a shared passion of theirs, played in the background. Somehow, it was the perfect backdrop to spill everything.
“I feel like such an ass,” Honor said when she’d finished recounting the wretched evening. “And the thing is, I didn’t know how much I loved him till it was out there, you know? Does that make sense?”
“Sure, sure it does.” Dana drained her drink. “Listen, I hate to be insensitive here, but tell me the part about the parents one more time, okay?” she said with a wicked grin, and Honor snorted and complied, making Dana swear she’d never tell anyone, because as a hairdresser, Dana saw everyone, and knew everyone’s business, and was pretty liberal with sharing it.
“Comparing your vajay-jay to an old baseball glove...that’s going a little far, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t my... Never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Oh, look at that guy’s stitches. I’m never swimming again.” She sat back, leaning against her raincoat. Stupid raincoat. Where was the shock and awe now, huh? Wadding it up, she tossed it on the floor.
“Hey, it’s not the coat’s fault. And that’s Burberry,” Dana said, retrieving it. “But no, I see your point. You hate it now, so I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice and take it from you. I promise never to wear it in your presence.” She opened a closet, shoved the coat in and slammed the door.
Dana could be prickly, but she certainly had her moments. “So what now?” she asked as the guy on TV described what it was like to see his severed arm in a great white shark’s teeth.
Honor swallowed the sharp lump in her throat. “I don’t know. But I guess I can’t sleep with him anymore. I have a little pride, glove or no glove.”
“Good. It’s high time,” Dana said. “Now sit there and watch this next attack, and I’ll make us another round.”
CHAPTER ONE
FOR A GUY who taught mechanical engineering at a fourth-rate college in the middle of nowhere, Tom Barlow was packing them in.
At the university where he’d last taught, there’d been an actual engineering school, and his students were genuinely interested in the subject matter. Here, though, at tiny Wickham College, four of the original six attendees had stumbled into class, having left registration until too late, only taking mechanical engineering because it still had open slots. Two had seemed genuinely interested, until one, the girl, transferred to Carnegie Mellon.
But then, by the end of the second week, he suddenly had thirty-six students jammed into the little classroom. Each one of these new students was female, ranging in age from eighteen to possibly fifty-five. Suddenly, an astonishing array of girls and women had decided that mechanical engineering (whatever that was) had become their new passion in life.
The clothes were a bit of a problem. Tight, trashy, low-cut, low-riding, inappropriate. Tom tended to teach to the wall in the back of the room, not wanting to make eye contact with the hungry gazes of seventy-eight percent of his class.
He tried not to leave time for questions, as the Barbarian Horde, as he thought of them, tended to be inappropriate. Are you single? How old are you? Where’d you come from? Do you like foreign films/sushi/girls?
Then again, he needed this job. “Any questions?” he asked. Dozens of hands shot up. “Yes, Mr. Kearns,” he said gratefully to the one student in the class who was there out of interest in the subject.
According to his file, Jacob Kearns had been kicked out of MIT for doing drugs. He seemed on the straight and narrow now, at least, but Wickham College was a hundred steps down academically. Then again, Tom knew all about shooting himself in the foot, career-wise.
“Dr. Barlow, with the hovercraft project, I was wondering how you’d calculate the escape velocity?”
“Good question. The escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy of your object, along with its gravitational potential energy, is zero. Make sense?” The Barbarian Horde (those who were listening) looked confused.
“Definitely,” Jacob said. “Thanks.”
Thirty seconds to the bell. “Listen up,” he said. “Your homework is to read chapters six and seven in your texts and answer all the study questions at the end of both as well as pass in your term project proposals. Those of you who flunked the hovercraft estimates have to do them again.” Hopefully, he could break the Horde with a ridiculous workload. “Anything else?”
A hand went up. One of the Barbarians, of course. “Yes?” he said briskly.
“Are you British?” she asked, getting a ripple of giggles from a third of the class, whose mental age appeared to be twelve.