“Two years. One year of research, then I did most of the writing when I was dealing with my grandfather before he died.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say taking care of my grandfather since I hadn’t wanted to be around him. The most I could do was deal with him.
Liv looked at me, cautious. “How did he die?”
“Lung cancer.”
What could I tell her? How Victor West was never a pleasant person and became miserable when he got sick? He hated being in the hospital, hated the treatments. He was demanding, mean. I lost track of the number of times the nurses called me to tell me he’d become belligerent and they needed my help.
“And you took care of him?” Liv asked.
I didn’t want her to think I’d been a martyr. I’d hated it almost as much as Victor had—the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the oxygen tanks, the sounds of the machines, the rasp of his voice.
“He was eighty-three,” I told Liv. “Had a contentious relationship with my parents. They’d stopped talking years ago. I was the only one he’d talk to.”
“Is that why you ended up taking care of him?” Liv asked.
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck. Tried to smother the shame and bitterness. “Because no one else would.”
“Where he did live?”
“Orange County. I went to stay at his house after he was diagnosed.”
“How long were you there?”
“Almost a year,” I said. “Worked on my book at night. Got him to his doctor’s appointments during the day and helped with stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just cooking, cleaning. He had plenty of money to hire nurses to come to the house, but he didn’t like them much.”
“So he relied on you,” Liv guessed.
I nodded. For a year, my world had distilled to the two vocabularies of medieval architecture and cancer treatments that, at some point, became bizarrely indistinguishable.
Hemoptysis. Cruciform piers. Hypercalcemia. Plate tracery. TNM classification. Equilateral arch. Metastases. Geometrical manipulation.
I looked at Liv and realized this was the first time I’d ever talked about it. She was watching me with unnerving perception, as if she sensed all that I wasn’t saying. As if she knew that had been just one other situation I couldn’t fix.
“The book didn’t delay my career, at least,” I finally said. “I applied for the Wisconsin professorship last fall. My grandfather died in the spring, about a month before I heard I’d gotten the position.”
“So…” Liv tilted her head. She was still holding my book. She smoothed her hand over the cover before setting it on a table. “You told me you hadn’t been in a relationship all that time.”
“True.”
“When was the last time you were with a woman?”
“I’d just heard about my grandfather’s diagnosis,” I said. “I turned down an offer from the University of Toronto because I knew I’d have to help him. I had an affair with a woman who worked at a legal firm I’d contacted to deal with his estate.”
I was uncomfortably aware of Liv’s gaze. The affair had been brief and unsatisfying. I couldn’t remember the other woman’s name. Sandra? Sarah?
“It wasn’t good,” I admitted. “Not for either of us.”
Christ. Liv was going to turn and walk away from me.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What?”
“Sorry you had to… go through that. The whole thing sounds rough.”
“Well, it’s over.”
That was a lie. It wasn’t over. My grandfather had managed to control things even in death, which was both frustrating and almost funny.
“Hey.” I grabbed Liv around the waist and hauled her close to me on the sofa. “Enough of that. What’d you do today?”
“Just classes. Thought about you when I was supposed to be thinking about database management.” She settled against me with one of her breathy little sighs that made me hard in half a second. She was all pillowy breasts, long hair, and soft skin. Her clean smell sweetened my thoughts.
“Yeah?” Whether or not that was true, I liked hearing it. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been waiting to show you.”
Her mouth came down on mine. I loved it when she initiated a kiss. Warmth spread into my blood. Whatever her reasons for remaining a virgin, there was nothing frigid in the way she moved her mouth against mine, spread her hands over my chest, pressed herself against me. She’d gotten more comfortable with me over the past couple of weeks, but now it was as if knowing about my recent abstinence had emboldened her.
I grasped her ass and squeezed. Pulled her up so she was sprawled on top of me. She shifted. A silver chain laced around her neck, a pendant dangling between her breasts. I’d noticed it before, but never paid much attention to it. Now the pendant brushed against my chest.
I took it in my hand. Warm from resting against her skin, it was a plain, brass disk etched with the Latin phrase Fortune favors the brave.
“Is that your motto?” I asked.
“Sort of.” Something flickered in her brown eyes. She took the disk and held it in her palm.
“Where’d you get it?”