Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)

by Ani Keating

  He sighs and pulls out his phone from his back pocket.

  “Aiden, what are you doing?”

  “Saving the day.” He presses one button and before I can blink, someone answers.

  “Benson, find the PR for a Nigel Fleming and arrange to extend his talk at Powell’s today for a private audience… Yes… ASAP… Then reserve Powell’s for the afternoon… All of it… Top, of course… Thank you. Call me with details.” He hangs up and looks at me as though he does this every day.

  I try to remember English, blinking, breathing or anything in between but cannot. Bloody hell, he just rented Fleming and two enormous city blocks! Why? I won’t lie, it has been a fantasy to have Powell’s all to myself but this is madness. Who does this just to avoid waiting in line?

  “Breathe, Elisa,” he chuckles, blowing gently on my face.

  The cinnamon scent brings me back to my senses. “Aiden, thank you. Truly. But I think you’re barking mad.”

  He chuckles again. “You’re more right than you know. Now, will that suffice or do we need a psychoanalysis session about all the reasons that led me to that decision?”

  He is smiling with his dimple, knowing he has won. Helpless to reverse what just happened, or to resist his smile, I give in and kiss his cheek.

  “I’m a chemist, not a psychoanalyst, which means I notice facts. And now I know you like lip biting, eternity and the night, but you don’t like going outside or being around people. Therefore, I conclude you’re a vampire.”

  His laugh echoes in the room. “I won’t tell Denton or Fleming about this lapse in scientific judgment. But you’re right, I do like biting you.”

  He starts kissing me in a way that stops all thought. His fingertips travel up my thighs. At his taste, the morning’s contradictions dissolve and the rest of the world disappears. My body comes alive. New though everything is, I remember him as if from a different time. Not from the past. Maybe from the future. I get lost in his lips, his tongue, his fingers flying over my skin. Higher. Higher. He slides my knickers to the side, running a single finger there, and sighs. I press myself eagerly against him. Another finger joins the torment like he is playing the piano.

  “Does this hurt?” he whispers.

  My legs begin to shake and the only sound I can produce is a moan.

  “Apparently not.”

  He unzips his fly, keeping his eyes on me as he produces a condom from his back pocket and rolls it over himself. His arm snakes around my hips. I close my eyes, waiting to see whether the feeling will be as otherworldly as it was yesterday. But he doesn’t move. I open my eyes and he smiles.

  “That’s better.” He lowers me onto him. A hiss whooshes out of me. It is just as otherworldly. In fact better.

  “Ah you,” he sighs and leans me back on the piano. He moves slowly at first, then his tempo changes, faster, rhythmic. I grip the ivory and roll my hips with his. I focus only on the way he pulses inside me and on the off-key piano prelude that at least to me sounds better than Beethoven.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wonder

  I storm through my apartment like ICE is chasing me while Aiden and Benson wait in the Aston Martin to take us to Powell’s. Reagan is still at Hotel Lucia with her parents. I shower in seconds, strangely relishing the way the hot water stings against Aiden’s love bites. Then I skip to my room for my first shag pack ever. I put on my mum’s 1950s peridot dress. She was wearing this the day she met my dad. I’ve always wanted to wear it but no occasion ever felt right. I throw my new graduation camera around my neck, leave a note for Reagan and run out to meet Aiden, tripping twice.

  I slide next to him in the backseat. His posture is tenser than I’ve ever seen it. As though all his muscle bands are pulled taut by his very blood. His eyes are tight but the moment he sees me, they relax a fraction.

  “You know, I could have bought you some clothes, Elisa, and avoided all this shuttling.”

  “And have you spend more money on me? No, thank you.”

  He skims my arm with his fingers. “And I probably couldn’t have bested this dress. You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks. This was my mum’s.” I fluff the full, twirling skirt. “I thought it would be fun for dinner, although vampire that you are, you probably don’t eat.”

  He leans in my ear and whispers. “Oh, I eat. We can go home right now and have a thorough study of my dietary preferences.”

  Oh my God, he cannot be talking about that right now. “Anything to get out of going places, Aiden.”

  “Anything.” His fingertips skim along my hemline, lingering on my thigh. I start reciting the periodic table to distract myself from the tightening in my belly and the treacherous moisture in my knickers. Lucky for my faculties, Benson starts driving. Instantly, Aiden’s hand turns into a tight fist and rests on his knee. The deeper we get into the heart of downtown, the more rigid he becomes. His fist never relaxes.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask.

  “Peachy,” he says in a tone that can only mean “no”. He turns to Benson. “Benson, we have Elisa in the car. Let’s watch where we’re going here. That asshole in the white van is driving in two lanes.”

  “Yes, sir,” poor Benson answers, staying firmly in his own lane.

  “And Blondie over there is texting. Stay on the left.”

  “Yes, sir.” Benson looks like he’d rather be riding with Blondie.

  I’ve never heard Aiden so abrupt with Benson. Usually this dragon-speak is reserved for graduates in absentia. Feeling responsible for Benson’s day taking a turn for the worse from the moment he was tasked with finding an ivory centifolia rose, I decide to put my new camera to work and distract Aiden.

  I snap a picture of his sharp profile, his eyes scanning the world as though he looks past it to the very edge. The moment the camera flashes, his head whips toward me. Hypervigilance glints in his eyes for an instant, then they relax. It’s so quick I can’t be sure I really saw it. I lower the camera slowly but he smiles.

  “Are you checking to see if I can be photographed?”

  “Definitely.”

  My favorite dimply smile returns, and I take another picture. He shakes his head. I keep snapping, his expression changing from smile to laughter to a raised eyebrow that says plainly “enough or else”. By the time we reach Burnside Street, I have lost my camera privileges. But at least now I have parts of him for posterity. I gasp as I realize that, apparently, I want the same thing as he does: an image for always.

  Every ounce of warmth leaves my body as the world outside dissolves into the image of PDX from my nightmare. End this. End this now if you want to survive in twenty-nine days, that small voice wails like a harpy. Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium 4.003. Lithium 6.94…

  “We’re here.” Aiden caresses my knee, drowning the voice. The heat of his hand thaws the ice.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, the deep V folding between his eyebrows.

  I nod, burying my face in his neck, his scent calming me more than the periodic table. He wraps his arm around me and tilts my face up.

  “What’s wrong?” he says, his sentient eyes scanning mine.

  I kiss his cheek. “Not yet, please.”

  He whispers in my ear. “You promised you would tell me.”

  “And I will. But right now, I want to enjoy this very expensive day you bought for us. And take more pictures.”

  He nods and hands me my camera, eyes still on my face. I snap another picture of him and one of Powell’s doors with a big red sign: CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE EVENT.

  At the sight, I shove everything aside. I have Powell’s all to myself with the most beautiful man on the planet and I’m wasting time being an idiot.

  “Come,” I say, getting out of the car. The change must show on my face because he smiles. With a final whisper at Benson, he uncoils out of the car. His eyes scan the
sidewalk as always. Then, taking me by the waist, he strides to the doors and opens them for me.

  “After you, Elisa.”

  I know this place like Denton’s lab, yet today it feels new. It’s quiet, the only sound a mild concerto over the sound system. Two employees work quietly behind the counter, sorting and stacking endless books in towers. The smell of parchment wafts in the air. But the biggest difference is not the emptiness. It’s this sense that today, Powell’s feels like my own story. I snap a picture even though I know I will never forget this.

  Aiden chuckles next to me. “You look lovely when you’re astonished.”

  I grin, reaching on my tiptoes and kissing him on the mouth, not caring if I’m nauseating the diligent employees. “I think this merits a ‘Best Date Ever’ trophy.”

  “Well, that scraps my trip to NASA idea.”

  I laugh and pull him behind me into Powell’s color-coded maze. “I think Fleming’s talk is upstairs, in the Purple Room.”

  He follows me dutifully, kissing me in each aisle we visit like he did with his house and the roses. I stare at the shelves loaded to the brim with books, feeling like my eyes are not wide enough for the sight. By the time I’ve finished my third detour into the Isaac Newton section and head for the American Studies, Aiden yanks me back by my waist, laughing.

  “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.”

  “Something else, first.” I take his hand and lead him to the Rose Room, which is about the size of his own library.

  He chuckles. “More roses?”

  “Not this time. Just a coincidence.”

  “Good because Benson might quit if he has to learn origami for paper roses.”

  I laugh, weaving through the aisles. He is always next to me or behind me—never ahead. Unwilling to miss a speck of him, I start walking backward.

  “Right here,” I say as we reach Aisle 738. I start rolling down the ladder but Aiden stops me.

  “Do you need to reach something?”

  “Yes. Up there, on the seventh shelf.”

  He grips my hips, lifts me like Fleming’s remote control and rests me on his shoulder. “I like this better,” he says.

  “That’s a place my arse has not been before.”

  “With some luck, your arse will find another place to sit soon, Elisa.” He imitates my accent so perfectly that I stop reaching and gape at him. He is making no effort at all to hide the fact that he is peeking under my dress.

  “Your Oxford accent is flawless!” I blurt out—almost like an accusation. Now I’m se
riously consumed with his brain. “Have you lived in England?” What else makes sense?

  “I have visited.”

  “But how do you get the pronunciation so right? I’ve tried to speak with an American accent for the last four years!”

  He laughs. “It most definitely has not worked, although you’ve adopted the jargon. Now, I can stay here all day, staring at your delectable legs and these rather fetching cotton knickers but I’d prefer to shred them in private. So, show me what you need to show me because there is only so much a man can tolerate.” He slides his hand under my dress, tracing his fingers upward.

  “Okay, okay, here it is.” I reach for the familiar tome. He slides me down, my body flush with his.

  “The Science of Poverty Eradication?” he reads, his eyebrows arching.

  “I know, I know, technical titles but look.” I flip to page 845 and point. “This is what you helped me live today.”

  He takes the book, his pupils zooming in on the text. His mouth opens into a perfect O.

  “‘The Hunger Genome’, by Peter Andrew Snow and Elisa Cecilia Snow,” he reads slowly. “This is what you wrote when you were sixteen!”

  I nod, unable to speak. He looks utterly engrossed, unlike Reagan’s yawn or Javier’s roll of the eyes, which are much more understandable reactions than this fascination. He starts flipping through the pages but I yank it from his hands.

  “Oh, you don’t have to read it. I only wanted to show you because it meant a lot to me to meet Fleming today. Come, let’s go read more fun things.”

  “More fun than ‘If there ever was a responsibility for humans—one which we should not pass along but accomplish—it is to eliminate that which will eliminate our offspring. Through the production of synthetic NPY/AGRP and POMC, we can embed in our DNA artificial sequences that not only satiate hunger but also extinguish it.’” He quotes the article without looking at it once.

  I stare at him, gobsmacked, until a hand waving in front of my face brings me to my senses.

  “How did you do that?” I blubber. “You just quoted straight from page 879 but there’s no way you could have read that far. Have you read this before?”