The Duality Principle

by Rebecca Grace Allen

  “Gabby Evans?”

  She opened her mouth, prepared to correct him and insist that he call her Gabriella like everyone else did, but stopped. No one but Nana ever called her Gabby. It felt good to hear the nickname again.

  “That’s me,” she said. “I assume you’re Connor Starks?”

  Connor leaned back a touch, his brow pushed down in what looked like confusion. But he recovered quickly, features evening out as he flashed her a smile.

  “I am. It’s nice to meet you.” He pulled out the chair across from hers and sat down. He was so tall that his knees just barely skimmed the bottom of the table. “So what are we having?”

  Connor flipped through the menu, pursing his lips together as he read. Gabriella watched his mouth, studying it like a test object in a lab. There was a little indentation above his upper lip, and for some reason she couldn’t help wondering how soft it must be. She wanted to reach out and dip her finger into it.

  Only to verify her hypothesis, of course.

  “I’m happy with just decaf,” she said.

  “Well, I’m starving. I’ll have coffee too, and a piece of strawberry shortcake.” He glanced up at her. “If you’d like to share.”

  Gabriella didn’t answer at first, because eating would make this take longer than she’d planned, and nothing said awkward like sharing food with a complete stranger. It was also three in the afternoon—that weird hour too late for lunch and too early for dinner—but she could withhold judgment on the date’s outcome for a little bit longer. Plus, she was hungry. Cake sounded good.

  “Sure,” she replied.

  He grinned at her, a mischievous gleam in his eyes as he flagged down the waitress.

  Connor turned away from her to order, but his smile echoed in her vision. It wasn’t so much a smile, but a smirk that left a pulse of heat behind in its wake. It was lopsided, curling up to one side a little more than the other. His cheek curved with the lines around it, his lips ridiculously full and pink. While his face may have been boyish, and his cell phone case screamed geek in a way that made her want to cringe, that smile of his was dangerous. It made her wonder if there was anything else about him that wasn’t as cookie-cutter as he seemed.

  The waitress quickly delivered their coffees. Connor took a sip from his, and a droplet remained behind, settling into that adorable little dip. He licked it—an absent-minded slide of his tongue across his upper lip. The sight drove a surge of lust in between her thighs.

  It wasn’t because of him. It was simply because of how long it had been since she’d felt anyone’s tongue there in a way that didn’t make her stare at the ceiling and count the tiles until enough time passed that she could fake her orgasm.

  “Well, I’ve got to say I’m really relieved,” Connor said, shaking her out of her thoughts.

  “About what?”

  He leaned in toward her and crossed his arms on the table. “That Jamie was telling the truth. She usually exaggerates about everything.”

  “That’s frighteningly accurate. What was she actually honest about this time?”

  “That you’re really pretty.”

  Her cheeks defied her in a heated rush of pink. She glanced away, hiding her face and mumbling a thank you.

  “You’re welcome.” Connor’s speech slowed, his gaze sweeping her cheeks appreciatively before he rocked back in his chair. His massive shoulders almost eclipsed the back of it. “Admit it. You were a little nervous about this too, right? I mean, the probability of a blind date working out is practically zero.”

  Thirty percent, Gabriella thought, but she didn’t want to correct him. He deserved credit for trying.

  She offered him her best sarcastic grin. It would be fun to tease him a little, just to see what happened. “What makes you so sure this one is working out already?”

  Connor smiled down at his cup. When he looked back up at her again, his eyes were hooded with lashes longer than anyone over six feet should have. He raised one dark eyebrow.

  “So far so good, right?” He softened his voice a notch when he said it too.

  “So far.”

  She had to give him that much. He’d earned himself a few points at least for the smirk and the eyebrow. The gorgeous face didn’t hurt, either.

  Connor cleared his throat. “So Jamie said you’re a grad student?”

  “Yup. Seems I couldn’t get enough of M.I.T. after four years there as an undergrad, so I decided to just keep going to school rather than face the big bad world.” That made Connor grin again, but his eyes were fixed on her, reminding her a little of the focused way last year’s freshmen had watched her when she’d given lab instructions as a TA. “I’m in the Applied Mathematics PhD Program there. I’ll be starting my final year in the fall.”

  “So all you do is...math?”

  Gabriella rolled her eyes.

  “Well, I don’t sit around just counting things all day,” she drawled, and his smile grew wider. God, even his teeth were white and perfect. “The program covers tons of stuff: probability, astrophysics, fluid dynamics, number analysis. We take courses in engineering and science too. And if my thesis gets accepted for publication, it could mean some big things for my career.”

  She only noticed she was babbling when she caught the way Connor was looking at her. This time his lips were pressed into an amused stance, like he was trying not to laugh.

  “That all sounds pretty intense.” His smile was kind, but her face heated again nonetheless.

  God, since when had anyone made her blush like that?

  “It is.”

  Intense didn’t even begin to cover it, but she didn’t want to say more and risk having her mouth run away with her again.

  “Hmm.” Connor’s mouth twisted to the side, as if he were considering her answer. “So obviously all things mathematical take up most of your time. What do you do for fun?”

  The question caught her off guard. Her dates didn’t usually ask her that. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t remember one of them keeping their eyes on her for so long without taking a break to check their email.

  “You mean studying fluid dynamics and numerical analysis doesn’t sound fun to you?” she asked.

  This time, he did laugh, a chuckle that was low and sultry. The sound did something to her it had no business doing.

  “Oh, it sounds like a blast, all right. But there’s got to be something you do to blow off steam.”

  Telling Connor the things she fantasized about doing to “blow off steam” was definitely not first date material. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be honest about other things.

  “I hike a lot, when the weather’s nice,” she told him. “I like being outside, in nature.”

  “Smart and outdoorsy.” Connor cocked his head and pointed at the right side of her face. “I wouldn’t think a girl so into numbers would have a bit of spunk to her.”

  It took her a minute to figure out that he meant her earring, and she fingered it without thinking.

  “Well, like I said, I don’t just study numbers. I’m actually working on disproving a theory.”

  “Which theory is that?”

  “It’s called the Duality Principle.”

  Gabriella paused, sure he wouldn’t be interested in any of the mundane details, but Connor inclined his head, silently bidding her to go on.

  “The Duality Principle says that if a theorem is true, it remains true if each object and operation is replaced by its dual. In math, that means given one conclusion, we can easily reach another one which is equally important. Duality is the quality of being two-fold, so if something is true, it remains true if it is replaced by its dual, or its opposite.”

  She was babbling again. The same amused grin was back on his face.

  “Yeah, I didn’t understand a word of that.”

  She half cringed, h
alf laughed. Having to explain things was another break from the status quo. Most of her dates were already familiar with what she studied, turning romantic candlelit evenings into debates. This was a nice change of pace.

  “Sorry. It’s just a fancy way of saying that two things that are the same can be interchanged without changing the result.”

  “It seems pretty complicated.”

  “It’s not that complex, but it also happens to be completely preposterous and I am going to bring it down.”

  “Do you have a personal vendetta against duality?”

  “I don’t. I just think it makes no sense.”

  “Why?”

  “One entity, capable of being two completely different things?” She shook her head. “It’s not possible.”

  Connor’s eyes were still on her when the waitress arrived with their plate of cake. He thanked her for it and picked up his fork before nodding at Gabriella. “Do you want the first bite?”

  “You go for it.”

  He looked at her a moment longer and then slowly sliced his fork sideways through the tender shortcake and whipped cream. It was somehow ridiculously erotic. She didn’t realize she was staring until he lifted a morsel of the dessert from the plate and raised it to her mouth instead of his own.

  “Ladies first. I insist.”

  It wasn’t offered easily, though. He held the fork just far enough from her mouth so that she would have to lean in to bite the dessert from it. He was making her work for it, beckoning her closer. She smiled at the challenge and held his stare, tilting forward over the table until she could steal the piece of cake with her teeth. She sat back and bit down, savoring the taste. The satisfied grin on Connor’s face as he watched her swallow made her belly flare.

  The door to the café opened and closed, the little bell attached to it breaking the mood. Connor blinked and frowned at his plate. He looked suddenly uncomfortable and busied himself with taking a long sip of his coffee. Gabriella sliced a mouthful of the dessert with her own fork. It tasted better when Connor fed her, which, of course, made no sense at all.

  “So you’re a computer programmer?” she asked, uneasy with the silence.

  “Yeah. I work at a local web marketing firm.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “I code stuff.”

  He gathered another piece of cake for himself. When he bit it off the fork, he caught her watching and smiled around the utensil, pulling it slowly back out of his mouth.

  Gabriella took a breath. It was annoying, to be jealous of a piece of silverware.

  “Is your degree in computer engineering?” she asked, forcing herself to concentrate on something other than his mouth.

  Connor’s expression changed, blanking out, shutters rolling down on his smile. “I took some classes in it, but I pretty much taught myself all I know.”

  He didn’t offer any more information. Gabriella tried to analyze the situation. Did he switch majors, or did he get a degree in something else and make a career change at the last minute?

  “Are you staying in town with family for the summer?” he asked, clearly changing the subject. Gabriella didn’t like not having answers to her questions but let it go anyway.

  “Not really, no. I mean, I’m staying at my grandmother’s house, but she passed away. Last fall.”

  Lines creased his forehead. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She nodded and smiled, fighting back the sting of tears.

  “It’s okay,” she said, even though it wasn’t. “She died peacefully in her sleep. And I love being in her house.” A house that she would be losing soon. “It reminds me of her and how it felt to be a kid when I’d come here in the summers. It’s off the cove, right by the water. That’s how I know Jamie. She’s my neighbor.”

  She didn’t know why she was telling him all that. This wasn’t the time to break down about Nana, or the house, or how her parents were hell-bent on selling it.

  “I didn’t know that. I live a few blocks away from you.”

  “Really?” The seacoast area wasn’t cheap. “Did you buy something, or do you rent?”

  He drummed his fingers against the table, his mouth opening and closing, like he’d realized he’d offered too much information and wasn’t sure what to say next. “Actually, I live with my grandparents.”

  That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. She wanted to know more, but then the waitress dropped the check on the table. Connor snatched it up and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Gabriella reached down to rummage through her bag, but by the time she’d touched her own wallet, he was waving the waitress back and handing cash over to her.

  Kevin had always insisted on going dutch, calculating each of their shares down to the penny.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure.” Connor focused his attention on putting his wallet away, eyes averted. “So maybe we can go out again? How about ice cream, at the place on the corner of Wharf Street? I’m free on Wednesday.”

  “Maybe.” She wasn’t agreeing to anything yet. Logically, there was no reason she should. The statistical thirty percent remained. The date could still go sour.

  Connor smiled down at the table then gave a swift scan around the café. An errant strand of hair fell over his forehead. He looked back at her and nodded to the plate between them. It had one lone piece of cake on it.

  “You want the last bite?”

  This time his smile was innocent, but the look in his eyes was anything but.

  “Sure.”

  Gabriella reached for her fork, but Connor held up his hand to stop her. Capturing the remaining bit of cake between his thumb and forefinger, he brought it up to her mouth and held it there like a prize. She didn’t take the bait at first, and waited, trying to make sense of the man in front of her. He was such an interesting mix, polite and respectful, and yet something behind his crisp shirt and tailored buttons seemed unpredictable and rebellious.

  She’d had the tame before. This time, she wanted the wild.

  Gabriella opened her mouth, allowing her lower lip to graze along his thumb before sinking her teeth into the cake, pulling it free from his fingers. His eyes blazed as she devoured it, like he was watching a show that wasn’t quite suitable for public viewing.

  Maybe Connor Starks wasn’t going to be so boring after all.

  Chapter Three

  Connor turned the hot water as high as it would go and let the scalding stream rush over him. It was a bizarre choice, since it was still over ninety degrees outside. He probably could have used an ice-cold shower after the way things had gone down this afternoon. But taking a hot shower in summer instead of a cold one was a practice his grandfather had taught him years ago. That way the air outside would seem much cooler when he was done.

  His grandfather was full of good advice. Advice Connor needed. But he couldn’t talk to his grandfather about what he really needed help with: how he’d ended up on a date with Gabriella Evans, and what the hell he was supposed do next.

  He’d seen her before today. Actually, he’d noticed her the first moment she appeared by Jamie’s side. It had been back in early June, when summer had just started to make itself known. She was beautiful—curvy in all the right places and strong in all the rest. He dug girls with glasses too. The sexy-smart thing always did him in, although those types of girls didn’t have a tendency to run in the same circles he did. He didn’t see her often, anyway. She didn’t show up at the beach parties he went to with Dean, and he’d been avoiding those kinds of nights lately anyway.

  He kept wondering what her deal was every time he saw her on a street corner in town, or eating lunch by herself somewhere, but he never approached her, never asked Jamie to make the introductions or even find out her name. He’d made a point not to ask for it. She seemed untouchable somehow. Pure. Too perfect for h
im to mar. A girl like her needed to be taken out on expensive dates by a nice, well-mannered gentleman, and that sure as hell wasn’t him. Besides, he was on a good streak now and needed to focus. He’d spent most of the last few months working, which was probably why Jamie had steamrolled him into going on a blind date. He said no right away, but then she’d gotten Dean on her side. Once they’d both started in on how long it had been and how he’d probably lost his touch, Connor begrudgingly gave in. He was only doing it to get them to back off, so he hadn’t bothered to find out much about his date in advance. All he knew was that she was a grad student and only around for a few more weeks. That was fine with him. He’d never looked for anything more long term than that, so why start now?

  But then he saw that she was the one waiting for him and everything changed.

  He’d had a moment of panic, wondering why on earth Jamie had set him up with the first woman he’d ever been intimidated to approach. She seemed so sure of herself sitting in the café, so calm and detached, like an island. While Connor walked around his life with a kind of cocky self-confidence, he always felt a bit cracked open, like anyone could see what a mess he was inside if they looked hard enough. Her poise disarmed him. He couldn’t call her Gabriella. The name, so formal it seemed almost royal, kept her firmly on the pedestal he’d put her on all summer. Calling her Gabby was the only way he could bring things back down to a level he could handle. The nickname seemed to suit her more, anyway, once she smiled and blushed.

  He hadn’t been prepared for how that blush would hit him, or the other million little things about her he hadn’t caught from far away. How her blonde hair wasn’t bleached and brittle, but was natural, a soft ashy color that fell down around her elbows. That her eyes were gray behind her glasses, unusual and striking. The hoop in her ear that suggested there was more to her than just a smart girl with a pretty face.

  God, he was an ass for telling her she was pretty. What kind of idiot says something like that ten seconds into a date?