by Linda Seed
When a student spoke, he listened completely, giving all of his attention to whatever they had to say. She herself had sensed that from him. Before she’d met Patrick, when had she ever felt that her words were so valued? When had she ever felt so heard?
It was a heady thing, getting full and caring attention from anyone, let alone from this man who, at the moment, seemed so commanding and so brilliant. She couldn’t blame the students for falling for him.
How could she, when she’d fallen for him herself?
If Sofia had doubted her instincts about the women in Patrick’s class being infatuated with him, her suspicions were confirmed when the class session ended. He was immediately surrounded by students wanting to ask him questions—and almost every one of those students was female.
He dealt with them just as masterfully as he’d taught his class. Another professor needed the room in a few minutes, so he answered the quick questions, acknowledged the more complicated ones, and invited anyone he hadn’t had time for to speak to him during his office hours that afternoon.
When his class had filtered out and the next one was straggling in, Patrick gave her a shy smile and she followed him out into the hallway.
“That was really something,” she told him.
He ducked his head in an adorable show of humility. “Do you think so?”
“I do.”
“I have some time now. Do you want to get some coffee?” he asked.
Normally, she’d have liked that. But after all of the things she’d seen and heard and felt over the past hour, all she really wanted to do was be alone with him.
“Could we go back to your office?” She grinned at him suggestively.
He got her meaning; she could tell by the way he was blushing. “I think … ah … yes. Follow me.”
Patrick’s office was small and simple, with a desk, a chair, a visitor’s chair, and a compact sofa. A bookcase on one wall held a selection of novels, books of poetry, and textbooks, along with neat stacks of student papers waiting to be graded.
Sofia appraised the sofa and judged it too small. The desk was better.
“You don’t have office hours right now, do you?” she asked.
“Ah … no. That’s later.”
“Good.” She reached out, grabbed his tie, and used it to pull him toward her.
“That’s not to say that students won’t drop by.…”
“Hmm. That could be awkward,” she purred, her mouth barely an inch from his.
“Just …” He put up one finger in an indication that she should wait. He retrieved his tie from her, went to his desk, wrote something on a piece of paper, then taped it to the door of his office.
The paper said, back in ten minutes.
“Ten minutes?” She raised one eyebrow at him meaningfully.
“Hmm. I see your point.” He took back the paper, crumpled it, and threw it away. Then he made a new sign: back in twenty minutes.
Still not enough time, from her perspective, but it would have to do.
With the sign up, he closed and locked the door, closed the blinds on his window, and went to her.
“I’m pretty sure the dean would frown on this,” he said in a voice rough with lust as she started undoing his tie, then working on the buttons of his shirt.
“The dean would be jealous as hell,” Sofia said.
“Ah … probably.”
She propped her butt against his desk and parted her legs a little, and he slid a hand up her skirt, pushed her panties aside, and slid a finger into her. She squirmed against him, helping him to hit just the right spot. “There. There. Oh …”
He knew he shouldn’t be doing this. It was unprofessional and potentially scandalous. But that just made it more irresistible. He’d never behaved this way in his place of employment—had never even come close. And that quality of danger was so erotic that he thought he might evaporate into a million tiny pieces if he couldn’t have this, have her.
“Please, Patrick.” Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, and he could smell the heady scent of her arousal.
All semblance of self-control gone, he moved his body between her legs and unbuckled his belt. He unsnapped, unzipped, and then he was pushing himself past the panties she was still wearing and into the warm, hot depths of her.
He was still mostly dressed and so was she, because there was no time, no time. Someone might come to his office door at any moment, and if they got caught it would be shame and doom.
That prospect—the shame and the doom—heightened his senses and his arousal, taking this from a mere act of lovemaking to something animal, something elemental.
She grabbed at the sides of his desk to hold on, and a cup of pens and a stapler fell with a crash to the floor.
She started to cry out, so he covered his mouth with hers to silence her. He shoved one hand under her shirt to cover her breast, and wound the other in her hair, holding on as he moved inside her, moving both of them closer, closer.
He came so hard he saw stars. He’d always thought that was an expression—seeing stars—but there were honest-to-God flashes of light in front of his eyes as the spasms slammed through him.
He might even have blacked out for a moment, because when he caught his breath and became aware of his surroundings again, she was pinned under him and he didn’t know if she’d reached the finish line or not.
Patrick lifted himself up a little so she could breathe. “Did you …?”
“Twice,” she said, gasping. “It was like a bomb going off. Two of them. Holy shit.”
He kissed the side of her face and then her neck tenderly, feeling immeasurably grateful.
“Dr. Connelly?” a voice said, followed by a knock on the door. Outside, one person said to another, “That’s weird. I thought I heard him in there.”
22
As it turned out, Patrick was not the first one in Sofia’s circle to issue an invitation for the holidays. But neither was Sofia. Bianca did it, when November was well underway and Sofia still hadn’t asked Patrick to have Thanksgiving dinner at the Russo house.
Patrick had spent the night in Sofia’s room—something he’d been doing more and more often—and Bianca caught him when he was heading out to go home and shower before work. Sofia was still sleeping.
“So, do we have an answer about Thanksgiving?” she asked, as though he should already know what she was talking about.
“About … excuse me?” He paused on his way toward the door, his jacket in his hand.
“She hasn’t asked you yet, has she? Good lord.” Bianca scowled and shook her head in judgment.
“Ah … I suppose she hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Patrick,” Bianca said, a hand on her hip, “would you like to have Thanksgiving dinner with us? Since my idiot sister won’t ask you?”
“Oh.” The question sounded simple, but it probably wasn’t. “I’d love to, actually, but if Sofia hasn’t asked me yet, she … Well, I can only assume it was because she doesn’t want that. For whatever reason.”
Whatever reason encompassed so many possibilities, some of which probably didn’t reflect badly on their relationship and some that might.
“Pffft.” Bianca made a dismissive sound halfway between a scoff and a snort. “It’s not that she doesn’t want you here. It’s that she doesn’t want to be here herself. But unless she decides to flee to Vegas or something …”
It seemed to Patrick that he had an opening, so he decided to take it. He put down his jacket and walked into the kitchen where Bianca was standing.
“Bianca … Since you brought it up, what exactly is Sofia’s issue with the holidays? I’ve tried to ask her, but …”
Bianca’s eyes widened. “You mean she hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
“Oh, man.” She gestured toward a chair at the kitchen table. “Have a seat.”
He hesitated. “If this is something she doesn’t want me to know, then I don’t think …”
Bianca sat across from him and folded her arms on the table. “You want to respect her privacy—I admire that. So, I won’t tell you anything about Sofia. I’m going to tell you something about me.”
“Oh. Okay.” He sensed this was going to be significant, so he gave her his full attention. He had the idea that he might not want to hear what she was about to say—that it might change everything—but knowing was better than not knowing.
“My parents died almost exactly two years ago. Cancer got my mother a few days before Thanksgiving. And my father went just a couple of weeks later in a car accident that might or might not have been an accident. As you can imagine, we pretty much skipped the celebrations the past couple of years. So this year will be my first more or less regular holiday season without them. It’s hard for me—and I’m not the only one who feels that way.” She looked at him significantly.
The news gut-punched him. How could he not know this? How could it be that Sofia had never mentioned a word about the timing of her parents’ deaths?
After a moment of stunned silence, he said, “I’m so sorry,” his voice thick.
“Thank you. So am I.”
“She’s never told me the details. I knew they’d died, but …” He rubbed his face with his hands, trying to absorb it.
“She deals with things by not dealing with them. By closing a door on them and deadbolting it shut. Which is a thing you’re really going to need to understand if you’re going to be with her.”
It was a lot to absorb. He hurt for her—for all of them—but he was glad he knew about this, because it was key to knowing her. At the same time, he felt uncomfortable hearing it behind her back when she so clearly had wanted to keep it from him.
“I don’t think you should say any more,” he told Bianca. “Without her here, I mean. It feels wrong.”
She considered that, then nodded. “Good for you.”
Sofia’s bedroom door opened and she came out dressed in a terrycloth robe, bleary-eyed, her hair askew. “Hey,” she said to Bianca. “Are you trying to poach my guy?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Bianca got up from the table and regarded Patrick. “Besides, something tells me he’s unpoachable.” She picked up her mug and went to refresh her coffee.
Patrick wasn’t sure what to do with this new information. It was too big, too significant. Should he tell Sofia what he knew? Should he wait for her to tell him herself? And what about the Thanksgiving invitation? Should he accept, knowing that she didn’t want to do any of it, with or without him?
He didn’t want to seek advice from anyone who knew Sofia, because that would seem like a betrayal. He considered talking to his mother about it, but that was too fraught with peril—she cared too much about whom Patrick was dating and why, and where it might lead. If he confided in her and she decided that Sofia had too much emotional baggage, it could make things awkward when Sofia did, sooner or later, meet his family.
And that was how he thought of it—when she met them, not if. In his own mind, the relationship had taken on an air of inevitability, perhaps even of destiny. He didn’t think Sofia was there yet, but he could wait. If he had to, he could wait.
In the meantime, he needed advice from someone who knew about women and who could look at things objectively. During his lunch break, he went into his office, closed the door, and called his sister.
Fiona, the oldest of the Connelly siblings, had been married for fifteen years to her high school sweetheart, a solid blue-collar man who worshipped her. They had three kids, ages twelve, ten, and eight—spaced with unlikely precision—and Fiona stayed home with them, making sack lunches and casserole dinners, attending PTA meetings and volunteering at the local food bank.
Patrick and Fiona didn’t talk often—at least, not often enough—but he thought that, with her experience managing a long-term relationship, she’d likely have something useful to offer.
“I guess you didn’t lose my number after all,” she said when she picked up the phone.
His first impulse was to react defensively. After all, she hadn’t called him in a while, either. As the oldest, she always seemed to think it was her privilege to be the one on the receiving end of phone calls and visits. But bringing that up would have distracted him from his mission. Instead, he got right to the point.
“Do you have a minute, Fiona? I need some advice.”
“About what?”
“Well … about … You see, I’ve met someone.…”
This was big, obviously. She became all business. “All right. Listen, I’m in line at the grocery store. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll call you back.”
She made it in twelve.
“Okay, shoot,” she said without preamble when she called him back. He could hear her in the background opening cabinets and the refrigerator, putting away her groceries.
“Well … Sofia and I have been seeing each other almost three months….” He gave her the short version of that—how they’d met and how things were going between them—then told Fiona about the bombshell Bianca had dropped that morning. “I’m not supposed to know any of this, and I don’t know what to do with the information. And there’s the entire issue of the holidays.…”
“Wow.” Fiona had stopped rustling around in the background and was now giving him her full attention. “That’s a lot. Are you sure you’re up to dealing with all of this?”
“I’m coming to you instead of Mom precisely because I didn’t want to be asked that question,” he said.
She was silent for a moment, then conceded, “Yeah, I can see that. Well, look. Let’s take this one issue at a time. First, you’ve got to talk to her about it. Let her know what her sister told you.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Hell, no, I’m not sure. But it seems like your best bet. If you don’t tell her, where does that leave you? You’re still not talking about it. She’s still not letting you in, and she’s still not dealing with things.”
He rubbed his eyes and slumped back into his chair. “That’s true.”
“If you tell her, sure, she’s going to be pissed that you talked about her with her sister. But then she’ll get past that, and you two can actually deal with all the shit she’s got going on.”
Fiona had been a problem-solver from the time they were kids, and she used that skill to great advantage with her own children. Now, her confident tone was making Patrick feel a little bit better about things.
“All right. But when we talk about it … what do I say?”
“It doesn’t matter what you say, Patrick. It only matters that you listen.”
He bobbed his head in agreement, though she couldn’t see him. “Yes. Of course. I can do that.”
“As far as the holidays go, I think you’ve gotta be matter-of-fact about it: Thanksgiving’s happening, and I’m going to be there, so let’s eat some damned turkey.”
He grinned, missing his sister. “It sounds simple when you say it that way.”
“It is. If she skips it and hides in her room, she’s going to feel like shit because she’s wallowing in misery. And if she doesn’t skip it, she’s going to feel like shit because she thinks she should be wallowing. Either way, she’s going to need you there.”
“All right. You’re right.”
“But, Patrick?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t tell Mom any of this.”
He’d had the same instinct, but still, he had to ask: “Why not?”
“Because all she’s going to see is, this girl has more baggage than the cargo hold of a 747. And you don’t need to hear that shit, because it’s too late, and you’re already in love.” Fiona said the last part as though it were a simple fact.
Patrick supposed it was.
“Thank you, Fiona. Give my love to Barry and the kids.”
“You can tell them yourself. You’re coming for Christmas, right?”
“Yes. But that’s another thing. Sofia—”
�
��Patrick, trust me on this. Stick to one holiday crisis at a time.”
23
Patrick was nervous about bringing any of it up with Sofia, but Fiona was right. There wasn’t a good alternative. He raised the issue as casually as possible a couple of nights later while they sat across from each other in a booth at a pizza place in Morro Bay.
“Bianca invited me for Thanksgiving, and I said yes,” he told her as he picked up a greasy slice of pepperoni pizza. “I know the holidays are going to be hard for you with everything that happened, but we’ll all be there to help you get through it.”
He took a bite of his pizza, trying to pretend the moment held less weight than it did.
Sofia didn’t say anything at first. Instead, she sat motionless with her hands in her lap, staring at the table.
“You and Bianca must have had quite a talk,” she said at last.
“I’m glad she told me. I’m sure you had your reasons for keeping it to yourself, but it’s good that I know.” The casual act wasn’t working, so he put down the pizza and focused on her. “Sofia, I’m so sorry about your parents. You must be—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” Her eyes were dry, her face hard. “And I wish Bianca had minded her own business.”
He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then folded the napkin carefully and put it on the table. “I understand that you didn’t want me to know, but now I do, so if you ever do want to talk about it …”
“Thank you. Really. But I don’t.”
He nodded. “Is it all right if I come for Thanksgiving, though?”
Sofia reached out and took his hand. “Of course it is. I should have asked you myself.”
The conversation had been tense, but the touch of her hand was making him feel better. “I’ll bring pie,” he said, because it seemed impossible for anyone to stay upset while talking about pie. “What kind’s your favorite?”