“I’m afraid…” Her voice graveled to a stop. If she couldn’t disappoint him, how in hell was she going to tell Carla she’d been sleeping with her husband for the last three years?
“But you will do well, my dear. You were always an insightful student, and a defense in this case is a formality.”
Crap. He thought she was just scared to do the defense. He wasn’t going to let her out of it unless she had a valid reason. Plagiarism was plenty valid, but the truth about this thesis was so incredible Alex wasn’t sure she believed it herself. She’d never even read the thesis submitted under her name. But if she spun the truth just right, taking all the blame on herself for the theft, it had to believable enough for him to cancel the defense. “I’m afraid I…plagiarized it.”
Dr. Meyer stiffened and drew a sharp breath. “Plagiarized? Are you sure? You are the only student studying Eliot at this university. Romantic poetry is not as in fashion as it once was. Your advisor is Dr. Delgado, yes? He is our resident Romantic expert.”
Resident Romantic expert? Right, from a certain point of view.
“How could you plagiarize from another student? You?”
This was conditioning for when she told Carla. If she could live through this, she might be strong enough to survive that. “You haven’t seen the thesis, have you? I changed my topic. Last Christmas when Melanie Finch killed herself, I was upset, and I changed my topic to Plath in honor of her. We were very close.” Alex needed to find out where Melanie was buried so she could leave flowers on the grave for all her lies.
“I didn’t know. You could have gone to the University Psychological Services for counseling instead of doing something so drastic as to change your thesis topic. Did your advisor approve it? I must speak to him about this.”
“He did, but it’s really not necessary to talk to Roger—Dr. Delgado, I made a very persuasive case.” Alex closed her eyes, trying to block out the memories of her “persuasive case.” “I had some of Melanie’s notes, and I’m not sure now which conclusions are hers and which are mine.”
“Alex, Alex. I am disappointed.” Dr. Meyer withdrew his hands from hers and steepled them in his lap. “You must tell me who else knows about this.”
Marc, Diana Gregor, Roger who started it all. “No one.”
“Well, we will keep it between us, shall we?”
He couldn’t be about to suggest she go ahead and defend Melanie’s thesis as if it were her own.
“The university, it cuts the English department budget every year. If this were to get out, they would have reason to cut further.”
He was. The world was mad. “Dr. Meyer, I can’t present this work as my own.”
“No, no, of course not.” He patted her arm. “We can’t reward plagiarism. We just need to keep this mistake of yours between us. But you came to me, yes? Before the real crime is committed. You and I, we will keep this between us. We will cancel the defense and you will complete the work you had started on Eliot.”
A loud, excited squawk from reception startled them.
“Genesis. She is a lovely girl. Alex, is this acceptable? You will not speak to anyone?”
“No, I won’t tell anyone.” Not for all the tea in China.
He patted her arm again. “You have always shown such good sense that I cannot condone the destruction of your scholarly reputation for a misstep such as this.”
If he only knew. Tears threatened. He was such a nice man. “Thank you, Dr. Meyer.”
“Of course. Of course.” He stood so she followed suit. “I still look forward to seeing you on the faculty. Just not as soon as we hoped.”
“Thanks again, Dr. Meyer.” If she had never bought that first cup of coffee for Roger, if she hadn’t been that sweet little sixteen—nineteen—she could have been on his faculty. As she left, Dr. Meyer was settling down to squint at his computer again, and her heart sank as she closed the door on a life she’d never get.
Genesis sat on the floor in the reception area, bouncing as she talked on the reception phone. “… and she was so cool!”
Alex found Marc in the hall, prying old reading lists off the bulletin board with a pen. “What’s going on with Genesis?”
“I thought Phil Collins wasn’t interested in a reunion.”
“What?”
Marc turned to her with the Great Books list dangling from a staple. “What?”
Alex pointed over her shoulder into the office. “What’s going on with her?”
“Oh, she found out that I know Suzi so I called her up so she could talk to her. Now she’s calling everyone she’s ever met to tell them.”
“Called who?”
“Suzi.”
Alex shook her head. “This is turning into an Abbot and Costello routine.”
“Who’s on first?” He dropped the paper in the gunmetal gray trashcan beside the door. “How did it go?”
“It’s done.”
“One down.”
“Let’s save the other for later. It’s been a long day already.”
He pried off the last paper and dropped it in the trash. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine is closer.”
Marc leaned into the office, put the pen on the counter, and waved at Genesis who was still burbling on the phone about the very cool Suzi, whoever she was. In the hall, he draped his arm over her shoulders, not caring who saw them. “What was the upshot?”
“Let’s get to my dorm first. It’s all very hush-hush.”
“Cool.”
Alex leaned her head against his chest. “We’re going to have to talk, too, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“I may cry.”
“I’m adapting.” He led her along the sidewalk like he’d lived on campus for months, taking her to the front door and waiting while she opened it.
Cheryl wasn’t lurking in the lounge like she had been when Alex left. They hurried through to the stairwell.
“The elevators should be fixed by Wednesday. I’m going to be kind of sad when they are. It’s been nice these last few days to go up to my floor and know that nobody else would brave all these stairs to get to me.” She rounded the landing on the third floor and started up toward the fourth. “That’s probably a little creepy in retrospect. Melanie lived on the tenth floor of the Liwa building, and that’s how she killed herself. She jumped out the window in the middle of the night over Christmas break. Groundskeepers found her the next morning when they were shoveling the walks.”
“Alex, slow down.”
She turned back. Marc stood on the landing below her.
“Darlin’, I smoked for a long time, and I haven’t quite managed to quit yet.”
She bounded down the stairs. He was short of breath.
“Okay.”
“You’re happy.” He pulled her close.
“I’m so glad to have that thesis thing out of the way. Ever since Roger showed it to me, it’s been hanging over my head.”
“What did you mean you were the instigator with Roger?”
All that happiness? Poof. Her stomach dropped and her hands went cold. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Tell me how.”
Alex pulled away. “I brought him coffee.” She sat down on the steps. “He was just so impressive. At least he was then.”
“Did you drug the coffee?”
“No.”
“Show up at his office in lingerie or something?”
“No, I just brought him coffee to class a few times.”
Marc sat down. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but there is no way a woman brings me coffee, and I fall so madly in love with her that I cheat on my wife.”
“I brought you a steak.”
“I wasn’t married.”
“I guess.” Alex tried to stand, but he caught her and pulled her into his lap. “I did this. I pursued Roger, and I knew he was married. Don’t tell me I didn’t.”
“But you didn’t.” He turned her chin with his long fingers, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Alex, a cup of coffee doesn’t make you a siren.”
“It wasn’t one cup.”
“If you were a barista in a Starbucks, you wouldn’t have wooed a man away from his wife on coffee alone. Men who want to cheat on their wives will find someone. Men who want to be faithful can resist anything, even if it’s painful. Trust me. Sometimes it’s agonizing.”
“Don’t get shitty and sarcastic with me. It was more than the coffee and you know it.” She pulled away and walked up a flight of stairs. “I studied him to figure out what he liked. I paid particular attention to the works he commented on in class and focused on those. I watched to see which girls he watched in the halls and dressed like them. I changed my major from journalism to English because it meant more chances to talk to him and take his classes.”
Marc walked up to join her on the landing. “So?”
“I did the same thing to you.” She walked up another flight of stairs. He wanted truth? He was getting truth. “Let me tell you, the Internet makes that shit a lot easier.”
Before she could escape up another flight, he caught up to her. “As far as I can tell, most people do that, and it is easier with the Internet. I have fans who are never likely to meet me in the flesh who study me. There’s a woman in Iowa who has an entire blog devoted to studying my dialect.”
She pulled away.
“Alex.”
“You sound pretty Standard American to me.”
“She went bananas when I said in an interview that the album we were working on ‘needs mixing.’”
She took two steps at a time. In her room it would be safe to break down.
“Alex.”
She stopped in the middle of the steps.
“Why do you keep running away from me?”
“I’m not. I’m walking up the stairs.”
“Ahead of me. Every time I catch up, you take off.”
Alex looked up and down the steps. He was still on the fifth floor landing and she was half a flight ahead of him. “I’m not running away. I’m trying to get up to my room. We’re only halfway.” Running away. Totally running away. Should have gone into psychology.
He climbed up beside her. “What did you do to attract me?”
“I analyzed your ice cream flavor choice.”
“And what did you learn?”
“Butter pecan means you are conscientious, careful with your money, and you are a strong believer in right and wrong.” She watched his face, but his expression didn’t change. No way to tell if he thought she was nuts or not. “And I wore high heels and a short skirt to the diner that one day because I knew you were coming in.”
“Most girls wear high heels and short skirts to meet me. The ice cream analysis fits though.”
Alex pulled back. “You’re being sarcastic again.” She stomped up to the landing.
“I’m not. Quit being so fucking sensitive.”
“I’m not being sensitive.”
“Like hell.”
Alex stopped next to the graphic six next to the door. She was being sensitive. And now she wanted to cry again. “It doesn’t bother you that I tried to remake myself to be your perfect woman which was the same thing I did to Roger?”
“Not really. My buddy Bear lied to his wife when he first met her, and led her to believe he was a mechanic because he thought she would run screaming if she found out he was a drummer. That idiot Jason bought that land his house is built on to make Cassie love him. Dez, Jesus, I don’t even want to go into the lies Dez worked on me.”
“You divorced Dez.”
“Exactly. No, wait. That’s not where I was going with this.” Marc started up ahead of her. “What I’m trying to say is that everybody I’ve ever known, when they wanted someone to like them, they bent the truth a little until they got comfortable with each other.”
“You realize that makes no sense. Lie until you can tell the truth? What kind of a basis for a relationship is that?”
He stopped on the seventh floor. “Okay, not lie then, but be willing to test new self images to attract a desired partner.”
“Gee, that doesn’t sound clinical.” Alex passed him, but he caught her hand before she got off the first tread and turned her toward him.
“Maybe it does, but I’m still not sure what the hell you were talking about when you were telling me about that Shelley guy.”
“And you pretended to be following right along.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was an idiot.” His gaze locked onto the cinder block wall behind her head.
Alex cupped his cheek. “An idiot? No. Too clever by half and three-eighths.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her, opening her mouth with his. Alex leaned in, grateful to have him supporting her. He slid his hand up her spine, bending her toward him and taking more of her weight.
“Alex,” he said. His voice was strained and needy.
“We have three floors to go.”
He groaned and released her, only to catch her hand.
“You said your friend was an idiot for buying that house to make Cassie love him, but you paid off my loans and paid this year’s tuition.”
“First of all, there was no house there when he bought it, and second, he bought the land to use against her. I paid off your loans just because I wanted to do something for you. Trust me, I got in hot water with the office and caused a major division between Helen and Sandy because they thought I was doing a Jason. I think they’ve got it sorted out now, though.”
She had stopped when he said he wanted to do something for her, but he didn’t notice until he got halfway up the flight. Their linked hands stretched their arms between them like a string of Christmas lights.
“What? I talked to Candy last night, and she said she talked to Sandy yesterday and everything is smoothed over now.”
“You just wanted to do something for me? But I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore, and that I’d gotten back together with my boyfriend. I told you it wouldn’t work out because you were intellectually inferior.”
He came back to her this time, still cradling her hand. “I thought we weren’t talking about that anymore.”
“It seemed pertinent.”
“In the interest of full disclosure, I told Tessa to clear your debt before I found you at your dorm, but I could have called her back to cancel, and I didn’t. You were worried about money.”
“When did I say I was worried about money?”
“You said if you took a semester off, your loans would come due. Besides, what college student isn’t stressed about money? I could fix that for you.”
“Even if we weren’t sleeping together?”
His jaw flexed and he blinked a couple of times. “I guess. I want you to be happy even if it’s not with me.” He squeezed her hand. “As long as the guy is somebody better than me. If you could find that mythical beast. A man better than me? Doesn’t exist.”
She laughed, but the sound that came out was more of a strangled sob. He wanted her to be happy. He wanted her with a better man if she wasn’t with him.
“You gonna cry?”
“I thought you’d adapted.”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Work in progress.” He led her up the stairs.
“You’ve never lied to me.”
“Except for pretending to have an interest in poetry, no. I did end up being interested in it, though, so I guess I did try on a new self image and I liked it.” His phone rang. With his free hand he fished it out. “Hello? Can’t talk. No, not eating, smartass. I’ll check in later.” He stashed the phone back in his pocket.
“Who was that?”
“Bear. He’s never going to let me live this down.”
“Live what down?”
“Love at first sight.”
“Love at
first sight?”
“You.” He stopped on the ninth floor landing and stepped back far enough to see her face. “I’ve never done this before.”
Alex shivered. The moment demanded she ask what, as if she didn’t already know, but there was no purpose in it. It was her. It was falling in love in a week. It was throwing himself into the moment with everything he had. Her whole body trembled, wrung out and dehydrated.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure Jason is working on a fucking brilliant power ballad about it right now. He’ll be done in an hour, and it’ll go platinum.” He shrugged.
Alex pushed him back against the wall. “Let him write the song. We get to live it.” She pushed her hands under his shirt, stroking the firm muscles of his abdomen. Stretching up on her toes, she kissed him, needing the contact. He hooked his hands around her thighs, pulling her up his body and dragging his hard length down her belly to right where she wanted to surround him. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he rolled her against the wall. She twined her fingers through his hair, catching his earlobe between her teeth.
“We have one more floor to go,” he murmured against her throat.
“I don’t care.”
“I care about you.” He shifted and started carrying her up the stairs. “No more sex on desks in offices. No more shitty hotel rooms. No more closets. No more hiding. No more quickies.”
She bit his neck. “No more quickies?”
He set her down at the tenth floor door, breathing hard. “Okay, we can have quickies, but not every time.” He pulled the door open. “Get out your keys before you make me break my promise already.”
Keys. Oh, yeah. Several years ago when she left this morning, she’d crammed them in her pocket. They were still there on the ring with her student ID. She opened the door and walked down the short hall. Marc met her in the middle of the room after he closed the door, not giving her a chance to speak before her slid his hands along her jaw and into her hair, drawing her face to his. She splayed her fingers on his back, pressing as close as she could. He was hard in all the right ways, and yet so gentle, cradling her against him. One of his hands left her for a second.
“You are so lucky I’m a boy scout.” He shifted back a step, holding a foil covered condom between his first and second fingers. “I went over there expecting to yell and be yelled at for a couple of minutes and came prepared anyway.”
Waiting for a Girl Like You Page 17
