"Because—"
"Never mind that I went to your office this morning and asked about you."
"You did?" He began to smile.
"Yes! And never mind the shock to my system when I discovered you'd left the firm and you'd even left town. Never mind that I—"
"Amanda, I love you."
"Never mind that I expected to run into you, and for these last three weeks you weren't even there to run into ..." She paused. "What did you say?"
"I love you."
She would not cry. She would not. "So what good does that do us? You left town."
He moved closer. "I didn't just leave town. I moved to Boston."
Boston? "You moved to Boston? But that's where—" "Uh-huh. I was able to transfer to a Cooper and Scott office there. Last week I found an apartment in Cambridge.
I had to wait until the students started moving out at the end of the semester."
"Oh." Her brain didn't seem to be functioning quite right. It sounded as if Will had moved to the very place she was going next week.
He gazed at her uncertainly. "Amanda, if this won't work for you, then I understand. I made some assumptions, and maybe I was wrong."
"If what won't work?"
"Getting married. See, I thought if we had the summer to ' get used to having sex all the time, then maybe by the fall semester we'd settle down enough that you'd be able to study."
Finally she figured out what was going on. She'd had to make a complete one-eighty from her previous belief, and the shock of seeing Will suddenly appear had been too much to assimilate all at once. But she had it, now.
With a whoop of joy she flung herself at him, knocking her mortarboard to the ground. "It works for me." She grabbed his face in both hands and laid one on him. After a few minutes, she realized they might be into it a little too thoroughly when someone nearby let out a wolf whistle.
Will lifted his mouth a fraction. "We need to continue this somewhere more private."
She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But people were expecting her. "I have a party at Geekland."
"I have a hotel room two doors down from Geekland. And I told Justin that if everything went well, you might be a little late."
She nibbled on his lower lip. "Everything's going exceedingly well."
"So the marriage thing is a definite?"
"Definitely a definite. I love you, William Sloan."
Smiling, he eased away from her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and steered her toward a cab waiting at the curb. "Then come with me, Ms. Graduated-with-Honors. It's long past time to celebrate."
Yes, it was. As Will helped her into the cab, she marveled that he'd cared enough about her future to leave when he had to and come back when she was ready. Finally she'd found someone she could trust with her dreams, and that was worth a gigantic celebration, one that would only require two people, a bed, and an adequate supply of condoms.
My Nerdy Valentine Page 31
