by Leigh Tudor
To Loren’s utter dismay, she heard the voice of a small English woman of questionable French descent, from the living room.
“Levi, I forbid you from leaving before having a second healthy platter of food.”
It was Loren’s turn to be shocked. Madame Garmond was laughing . . . no, she was giggling like a schoolgirl as she rounded the corner. Like a comedic scene in a B-rated movie, Madame came to a full stop when she spied Loren.
Loren smiled and waved her fingers, doing her best to inspire a non-freshly fucked demeanor.
Despite her efforts, Madame lifted a single eyebrow and announced with a hushed voice. “Dear heaven above. You have been compromised.”
Loren’s face turned beet red. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” she hem-hawed.
From what must have been the living room turned community center came Cara. “Ally, you play the next stanza for Amarilla, and I’ll fix Mr. Simmons another plate.”
Before she could more than lay eyes on Loren, Madame Garmond blocked her view. “You sit with Mr. Simmons and Amarilla while I plate another serving of Coq au Vin.”
Cara barely caught sight of Loren as Madame turned her by the shoulders to shoo her back into the living room. Before turning the corner, Cara yelled out, “You didn’t let him see you sweat, did you?”
Mercy chuckled. “I think she let him see a lot of things.”
Loren’s eyebrows furrowed. “You’re all acting like I frequented a seedy sex dungeon.”
“Wilder has a sex dungeon?” Mercy’s brows shot up and then toward Becky for confirmation as she dipped into what appeared to be a food-blogging-worthy trifle dessert.
Loren grabbed her own spoon as Mercy took a bite directly from the bowl before Madame returned from redirecting Cara.
“No sex dungeon,” Becky said with a shake of her head, “although I do know a couple who have a room strictly for s.e.x,” she spelled, “and it has a swing.”
Madame returned to a wide-eyed Mercy, an all-knowing Becky, and a guilt-ridden Loren.
Her hands placed on insubstantial hips, Madame said, “Please tell me you thought to employ protection.”
Annddd . . . Loren lost her appetite, set her plate on the table, took a fortifying breath, and admitted defeat. “We did.”
“When do you see him again?” Mercy asked, assuming the most romantic of outcomes.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”
Madame turned her head to the side. “Oh, bollocks, he was a disappointment in the sack.”
“Oh, my God, no,” Loren said, clutching at the pearls Madame had loaned her, not sure if she were more offended by the conversation or the prim and proper woman who seemed completely at ease instigating it.
Madame waved a bejeweled hand. “It’s quite acceptable to move on when the relationship is bereft of chemistry, my dear.”
“Yeah,” echoed Becky. “You have to try a number of cock . . . tails before finding the one that gives you just the right zing.”
“Discretion is key, however,” Madame intoned.
Mercy nodded. “Exactly. You don’t want to get a reputation for being easy.” She glanced at Madame for validation.
“So true, but you mustn’t act indifferent in that someone else shags your man.”
“Okay,” Loren interrupted, raising her hands in the air. “That’s enough about my one-night stand.”
Suddenly, a male voice captured their attention. “Um . . . Miss Loren, you’ve got company.”
Three heads turned toward the kitchen entrance at an embarrassed Levi Simmons.
And if things couldn’t get any worse, Alec Wilder himself moved beside Levi with his signature face, the one lacking any and all expression, looking absolutely yummy in a washed-out dark-blue hoodie and ratty sweats.
Her abandoned coat looked the size of doll clothes clasped in such large hands.
“I’d like to talk to you about that, Loren.”
Simultaneously four heads, a couple with open mouths, moved toward his deep voice and then swung in her direction.
Loren felt the blood inch up her neck until it reached the top peaks of her forehead. She wiped her clammy hands together and then straightened her skirt as she cleared her throat.
“Hello, Alec. Are you here for Ally?”
“No.” He shook his head once as his eyes shuttered. “I’m here for you.”
“My dear,” Madame commented, “why don’t you escort Master Wilder upstairs where you may have a touch of privacy.”
“Okay.” Loren swallowed self-consciously, scooting herself between the table overflowing with food, and Mercy, Becky, Madame Garmond, and Levi Simmons.
Levi scooted next to Madame, allowing Loren to stand next to a stoic but determined Alec.
“Follow me,” she instructed as she entered the hallway and up the stairs.
Alec squeezed at the back of his neck.
Despite harboring a rather unhealthy dose of self-awareness, his eyes continued to greedily follow Loren’s sweet ass as she climbed the stairs.
Of course, she had great tits, too.
But God almighty, that ass.
Harder than a tire iron, he adjusted himself.
He dipped his head, still allowing for his preferred view, but hiding his slight grin in case she was to glance over her shoulder and catch him leering at her.
Each step she made was an exaggerated thud as if she were walking the last green mile as opposed to searching out a room with some privacy.
Reaching the top of the stairs, she passed a door to her left, turned to face him, and motioned for him to follow as she turned the knob. Instead, he eyed a sticky note on the door directly to his right, which read: DO NOT GO TO BED BEFORE TELLING ME EVERYTHING, OR ELSE YOU’RE DEAD TO ME.
It was signed Mercy, and he instantly knew this had to be the door to Loren’s room.
Her private sanctum.
The woman was surprisingly skilled at spewing her emotions, while at the same time, maintaining and withholding an impenetrable vault of information. He felt an inexplicable need to learn everything about her as quickly as possible. And he’d bet money he could learn far more from behind curtain B as opposed to A.
That said, curtain A looked to be a bathroom, a venue far more amenable to make-up sex, not that they had had an argument but he could certainly conjure one up. Then again, based on her ramrod straight back and exaggerated foot stomps he may be in store for some angry sex.
He looked to his left and then to the right, and at the risk of sporting a perpetual hard on for the next couple of hours, he reached for the knob to the opposite door she had indicated and walked in.
“No, no! Not in there.”
Ignoring the two hands pulling on his arm, he strode inside. He stopped short, standing in the middle of her bedroom and staring at what he saw before him. His eyes moved all the way down to the floorboards and back up to the crown molding.
There had to be hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands. Pieces of papers tacked to the wall, overlapping one another and covered with odd drafts and sketches.
Not taking his eyes off them, he tossed her coat onto the bed and turned her direction to see if the walls behind him held the same drawings.
They did.
So many sketches of what appeared to be the most meticulous of drawings made little sense to him but were impressive regardless.
He walked past her to touch one tacked next to her light switch. It looked like one of those pictures of a snowflake magnified to the point they became more than a speck of frozen water, but a beautiful, ornate sculpture with definition and structure.
He turned toward her to gauge her reaction to his discovery. She was shaking her head, covering her hand against her mouth and avoiding eye contact.
Then he noticed the small table next to her, covered with a pile of the very same papers with dozens of more sketches.
“What is all this?” he asked.
She looked down at the floor
as she crossed her arms over her chest. “They’re nothing. Doodles.”
“Doodles?” His eyes moved around the room. “You have layers of doodles covering your walls.”
Mute, he watched her work her bottom lip with her teeth. “I need you to tell me the truth, Loren. Could I finally get something real from you? Please.”
“They’re . . . how I see things sometimes.”
He remained quiet for a moment, taking it all in. “What things?”
She finally raised her eyes to his and swallowed as if trying to make a decision. “Everything.”
He ran a hand through his hair as he made another turn of the room.
“Everything?” he asked and turned back toward her. His eyes searched hers as he reached out his hand to lightly touch a finger, compelling her to continue.
She nodded. “When I look at things and really focus on them, my mind cuts them into slices, kind of like a grid or a spiderweb.”
Alec reached down and picked up the paper sitting on the top of the stack. “What’s this?”
“That’s a shell,” she explained, taking the paper. “I drafted it in a three-dimensional spiral applying the Pythagorean theorem. It was super easy. I mean, you could learn this in early Algebra.” Her voice seemed to grow with anxiety as she pointed at the design. “I drew the first triangle using a simple equation, a2 + b2 = c2, and then I put c back in the equation as a, kept b as one, and built it out, placing each new triangle at a right angle to the first.”
She became quiet again. Alec watched her as she remained focused on her sketch. As if waiting for his next reaction.
He picked up another drawing. “And this?”
Pointing at a particular circle, she said, “This circle is pi, and that design is wave-particle duality.”
He had no idea what any of that meant.
“Believe me, these are rudimentary geometric sketches.” She pointed at the stack. “The ones on the wall are things that have caught my attention during the day that I drew later. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, and drawing them can be therapeutic.”
Her eyes looked at him earnestly. “I’m also super interested in the images of sine, cosine, as well as tangent waves, and how their reflections vibrate due to the speed of light making a space-time grid and potentially representing one fractal fusion. I mean, wouldn’t it be cool if we could find a way to capture the potential energy of geometry?”
As she continued to speak in a language he failed to comprehend, a realization came to him. “All three of you,” he said, dropping the paper onto the table and staring at her. “How is it that you and both your sisters have such . . . gifts? I’m no mathematician, but it seems highly improbable that one sister would be born a musical genius, the other an artistic genius, and you, a mathematical . . .”
“Genius.”
Confirming to Alec that she was one of three siblings possessing DNA that was mathematically improbable if not impossible.
One eyebrow raised in question, causing her to fidget.
“How?”
“Good genes?” she replied with a shrug.
“Loren,” he said, wanting to learn more about what papered her walls but also determined to address what he came here to say. “We need to talk.”
“Nope.” She popped the P and shook her head frantically. “No. We. Do. Not. I’m totally good. No need to discuss anything. Don’t need an apology, an explanation—”
“Hey.” He pulled her toward him as he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hips captive. “We need to talk about what happened tonight.”
“I know what happened. I was there.”
She attempted to pull away, but he also knew she had the skills to easily incapacitate him if she really wanted to. “Look at me, Loren.”
Conceding with a huff, she met his eyes and it just about killed him to see the raw vulnerability in them.
“You need to know that what we did tonight meant something.” He lifted a fist to his chest, not taking his eyes off her. “To me.”
“You don’t have to say that.” She shook her head.
“I’m not just saying words, Loren. I mean them. I don’t want what happened tonight to be a one-time thing. I want to explore this. See where it goes.”
Alec’s eyes held hers as hers narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
“What don’t you understand about what I just said?”
She chewed on her bottom lip, and he found it adorable and also frustrating.
“Are you saying you want to date me?”
He smiled, astounded that she could discuss and draft such lofty mathematical concepts but be totally clueless to the obvious.
“You do know that’s the second time you’ve asked me that.”
“All things considered, it bears repeating.”
“Yes, Loren Ingalls. I’m saying I want to date you. Again.”
“One more date?”
“No, many more dates.” This was becoming ridiculous.
“Will we be having sex?”
“Preferably.”
“Will you be having sex with other women?”
Now he wondered if he’d misread her. “Why? Do you want to have sex with other men?”
“Oh, God, no. I’m pretty much ruined for all other men. I mean, really, what’s the point?”
“Okaaay,” he replied, nodding his head while suppressing a grin. “That’s both highly flattering and . . . forthcoming. But to answer your question, no, I will not be having sex with other women while we date.”
“So, we’re a thing?” she asked with a burgeoning smile.
He nodded, extremely full of himself that he put it there.
Once again, he fully recognized she was teetering on some sort of metaphorical ledge. Like a starving bird on a wire, food within reach but too full of distrust to go for it. He didn’t know what happened to her to make her so mistrustful and suspicious, but he was going to feed her if it fucking killed him.
“And all this?” she asked, her eyes lifting toward the wall behind his shoulder.
“A surprise,” he replied, “but I have a feeling that being with you is going to be full of surprises.”
Their moment of bliss was shattered by a knock on the door.
“Yes?” Loren called out.
A woman with what sounded like an English accent said. “We have two impressionable young ladies in the living room, not to mention a number of guests, asking questions about your petite tête-a-tête.”
Loren grimaced as Alec stood, kissing her on the cheek and leading her toward the door while holding her hand.
“Oh, today’s she’s French,” she complained. “Cooking Coq au Vin and using terms like tête-a-tête. Just you wait, tomorrow she’ll go all English dowager, asking us if we want a spot of tea and throwing a good old-fashioned Edwardian conniption if it’s not her beloved Earl Grey.”
Alec opened the door to the small woman with her nose in the air. “I trust you’ve both come to an understanding.”
“We have.” Alec nodded once.
“Might I make a suggestion for future consideration?”
Loren groaned, and said, “No!”
While Alec replied, “Please do.”
“The next time you partake in activities of a more pagan nature, please see that you are a gentleman and take the time to ensure the lady is properly buttoned up.”
Loren inhaled sharply and darted to the mirror over her dresser.
Alec pulled his lips together in a straight line as he heard her gasp, as she discovered that in her haste to escape his bedroom, she had inserted the first button at the nape of her dress into the third buttonhole, exposing a good bit of chest and cleavage, leaving little doubt as to their “pagan” activities.
Alec turned to Madame, meeting her stoic expression with his own. “I will do my best to be more hands-on in the future.”
Madame said with an exaggerated side-eye, “I do believe that is precisely what got you in
to trouble in the first place.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.”
—Philip J Davis
American academic applied mathematician
known for his work in numerical analysis
and approximation theory
* * *
Sunday couldn’t come soon enough for Loren.
“Come on, come on, come on!” she shouted, holding the front door open while waiting impatiently on the porch.
Vlad was the first to make it to the door, tying a woolen scarf around the collar of his peacoat.
“You are in quite a hurry, mi padruga.”
“Yeah, yeah . . . keep it moving, my self-proclaimed Ukrainian Ruskie. We’ve got souls to save and potlucks to plan.”
Mercy emerged behind Vlad, holding her hand to her eyes to ward off the bright midmorning sunlight.
“Trust me, she’s in no hurry to get to church to save souls. She’s eager to get to church to see our grumpy neighbor and fantasize about doing dirty things with him in the back pews.”
Loren’s smile felt a mile wide. “He’s not just my grumpy neighbor. He’s my grumpy boyfriend.” She skipped down the steps to the car and turned back to the slowpokes behind her. “But I need to get there early because the Thanksgiving potluck committee is meeting today, and I’m the chairperson.”
Mercy hesitated. “You’re chairing the Thanksgiving potluck committee?”
“What?”
Vlad and Mercy looked at one another over the hood of the vehicle.
“My friend,” Vlad said with a look of extreme concern, “you cannot cook.”
“I can cook,” Loren said, rolling her eyes theatrically.
“No,” Mercy said emphatically, “no, you cannot.”
“It’s not like I’m doing the cooking. I’m managing the event.”
“You know nothing about Thanksgiving food.”
“Okay, point taken. But last night, Madame agreed to join the committee, and she’s going to help me.”
“Thank God,” Vlad said, opening the car door for Loren.