Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)(45)

“Elisa, I may be going on a limb here but you seem a tad distracted.”

“Are you kidding? This is Powell’s! The largest independent bookstore in the world. One million volumes, 122 subject areas, 3,500 subsections and a Rare Book Room. Bloody hell, how am I going to have time for all of it?” My voice is rising in panic.

He laughs again. “Maybe I can help but let’s go see Fleming first.”

“Fleming, yes, right, okay. Then modern chemistry, Mendeleev, Curie, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Neruda, Dickinson—”

His mouth swoops on mine, wiping away all thought, and I sag limply in his arms.

“Then Fifty Shades of Grey.” He chuckles.

I blush garnet red. “Umm, technically, the human eye can discern about two hundred fifty-six shades of gray,” I mumble and head for the Purple Room, tripping twice.

Nigel Fleming waits in the book signing area, standing by a lectern with a mess of papers and a few copies of his book. He looks exactly as he does in pictures. Short, with a bit of a belly, a white mustache, goggle-like spectacles and a tweed suit. I take a picture of him, feeling a lump parachuting in my throat. What would Dad have done if he were here?

Fleming looks up and smiles. “Ah, you must be Mr. Hale!” he says with a thick Manchester accent. At the sound, the faithful crater implodes in my chest. Aiden tightens his hand at my waist. Does he guess?

“Professor, thank you for this last-minute accommodation,” Aiden says, shaking Fleming’s hand. “I apologize we could not make the talk but we couldn’t miss the chance to meet you. Your work on the interaction between agouti-related protein and proopiomelanocortin has greatly influenced this budding chemist, Elisa Snow.”

Fleming looks at me but I’m too stunned to look anywhere else but at Aiden. I don’t know what my face looks like but I feel Powell’s air conditioning in my tonsils. How does Aiden know chemical terms? He turns to me with a smile, arching his eyebrows subtly. I blink and recover.

“How do you do Professor Fleming? It’s a great honor meeting you, sir.”

“Blimey! An Oxonian!” he exclaims, taking my hand and shaking it so vigorously that my teeth chatter.

“How do you do, Miss Snow, how do you do! What is a lovely lady such as yourself doing in Portland, Oregon?” Fleming’s belly rises and drops with each overly pronounced Mancunian vowel.

“I just graduated from Reed. My father and I used a lot of your work on ghrelin and melanocortin for our first article together.”

“That’s well mint that. Would I know your father?”

“Peter Snow, Professor.”

“Oh, darling girl, yes, yes, of course. Met him in a few conferences meself. Fine chemist, your father. Me sympathies.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

“Now then, do have a seat both of you and we’ll have a nice chat about the arcuate nucleus and bump our gums about chemists who don’t believe in the genetics of conscience.” He fists his hands in excitement, in a mirror image of my grip on Aiden’s hand. For his part, Aiden is smiling more than I have seen him smile in all the precious time I’ve spent with him.

We take the two chairs in front of the projector screen. Fleming fiddles with a remote control, mumbling to it about cooperation. I laugh that even a chemist like him is confounded by American technology.

“Ah! Bob’s your uncle,” he cries as the screen illuminates and the Purple Room darkens. A diagram of the human brain appears on the screen. Fleming begins with the theory that started it for my dad and me. Because Aiden’s arm is around me, the Manchester dialect does not corrode my insides. I lean my head on his shoulder, stealing glances at his omniscient eyes. He is absorbed but meets my gaze every few moments. Once or twice, he kisses my hair.

“How did you know about the hunger proteins?” I whisper.

“I read about them.”

“When?”

“When you were getting ready in your apartment. Shush.” He indicates the screen with his chin.

I listen to Fleming, but a part of my brain has latched itself irrevocably on Aiden. How could he have absorbed enough in ten minutes to follow this? Impossibly, in the course of twenty-four hours, the rest of him has eclipsed even his beauty. I grip his hand, marveling at how new he is making everything feel. I see Dad in every slide, it’s true, but nothing about it feels like homage. Only like a brilliant date with a singular man.

When the presentation ends, Fleming demands to know about my work. Aiden buys me a signed copy of Fleming’s book, but when he catches me trying to buy a second one for Denton, he buys the whole stack. He also offers to connect Fleming with the owner of an international chain of bookstores.

“Ah, very good, very good, Mr. Hale. Me good fortune after all that you wanted a private audience. Elisa, darling, give your ’ead a wobble about graduate school. I’d be delighted to introduce you ’round Edinburgh.” He shakes my hand with a wide grin. I smile back, keeping my face composed. Professor Fleming has no idea how very soon he is going to hear from me.

When we emerge from the Purple Room, I launch myself at Aiden. “Thank you for that. It meant a lot to me.” I kiss him, feeling like the words are the most inadequate of the English language to really express gratitude.

“You’re welcome. That was actually quite interesting. Now, if I recall, you have a plan of attack for assimilating Powell’s.”