The Weight of Words (The WORDS Series) (21 page)

Instead, I watched Penny in action. The girl knew her way around a dart board. Daniel took the opportunity to mock his brother’s lack of skill compared to Penny’s command of the game.

“Jesus, you daft prat! You’re not gonna let her walk all over you like that, are you?”

“Fuck yourself, Daniel,” Bradley said good-naturedly.

“You couldn’t hit the back of a bus with a banjo, bro,” Daniel mocked.

There was something about being with Penny that brought back Daniel’s accent and the accompanying lingo with a vengeance. It was unbelievably hot.

Suddenly he took my hand and said, “Come on, I’m going to teach you to play snooker.” However, between his slurring and his emerging English accent, it sounded like, “C’mon, I’m gon’ta teachoo ta play snookah.”

Delicious.

I adored drunk Daniel. Bring on the Guinness! It was dissolving his stony, carefully maintained exterior quite handily.

He led me to the pool table and put our drinks on the ledge. “Ever played before?” he asked.

“Um, no. I don’t even know how to hold the cue properly,” I confessed.

“Well, we can’t have that now, can we?” he asked. “You’ve got to know how to hold it before you can do anything else
, Aubrey
.”

My name, a husky sigh rather than a word, was rolling off his tongue so smoothly I wondered how he’d cope on Monday when he had to revert back to calling me “Miss Price.”

He retrieved Bradley’s discarded cue and grabbed a little blue square off the edge of the table. He was standing far too close to me, looking at me through lidded eyes. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

With the cue in his left hand, one end on the floor and the tip up, he took the blue square between his fingers. “This is cue tip chalk. Before you begin, it’s a good idea to rub some on the tip, but gently. Not too hard. If you get too much on the tip, you blow it off—like this.”

His gentle breath fanned strands of my hair around my face. My knees turned to rubber as he spun me around to face the table.

“Take the cue in your left hand here and your right hand here. Now lean over the table.”

I did as I was told. He leaned in behind me, wrapping his left arm around mine to help me plant my fingers on the table in a little bridge.

“Now take the cue and place the tip
right there
,” he said, helping me balance it atop my left hand.

Oh, I’ll tell you where to place the tip, Mr. Shmexy.

“With your right hand, grasp the
shaft
of the cue
firmly
up here.”

I looked over my right shoulder. His face hovered beside my ear and his right hand wrapped around mine.

“How does that feel?” he asked, his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear him.

“That feels good,” I said, and then I brazenly shifted my position slightly so that I could feel his crotch pressing against my ass. “Wait…now
that? That’s
perfect.”

I looked over my shoulder again. He was grinning naughtily. And I never thought I’d say it, but Shakespeare was wrong. There was no “performance” being compromised by drink in this scenario.

“Now, slide the cue back and forth on your left hand to get a feel for it. Don’t grasp it too tightly here.” He loosened my right hand a little. “You need
exactly
the right amount of pressure to follow through properly. It’s all about angle and speed. If you hit it too hard, you’ll lose control; too softly and you might miss it entirely.”

“I see. What about earlier, what was that you were doing with your leg?”

“Yes, well, sometimes you have to hitch your leg up a bit to give you better—”

“Friction?” I asked.

“No,” he said, his tone becoming more and more seductive. “I was going to say
access.
”

Hitch your leg up to give you better access? Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean
.

“Daniel, are we still talking about pool?” I giggled.

He laughed softly too. “I’m not sure I was
ever
talking about pool.”

Oh, God!

He gently trailed his left hand up mine before allowing it to come to rest on my wrist. He rubbed himself against my backside, and I moaned softly.

All of a sudden, Bradley broke the spell. “Dude, are you trying to teach her to play pool, or are you molesting the poor girl?”

Bradley laughed at his own joke, but Daniel froze behind me, quickly releasing my hands. Before I even had time to process what was happening, he’d pulled away, saying something about needing coffee and striding across the room to the stairs, his hands frantically raking his hair out of his eyes. The mood had changed in an instant.

Bradley, you dink.

“Well done, you silly bugger. He was starting to have fun then,” Penny said.

Yeah, so was I
. My girly bits were all aflutter.

“Yeah, idiot, I haven’t seen him having that much fun since…well, in a long time,” Jeremy added, clipping Bradley on the head with his hand.

“Aubrey?” Dean Grant’s voice called out.

I walked over to the bottom of the stairs. “Yes?”

“I’m going to have to take Daniel home. He’s in no shape to drive. I’ll drop you off on the way. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

“Um, okay,” I said, grabbing my purse.

“Jeremy? Are you able to drop off Daniel’s car for him tomorrow?” Dean Grant said.

“No, can’t do it tomorrow,” Jeremy called up to him. “I’m in Scarborough all day. Maybe Monday?”

“Okay, we’ll figure something out.”

Dean Grant retreated from the top of the stairs, and I threw my purse over my shoulder.

“Well, it was nice meeting you all,” I said.

Penny hugged me warmly. “It was nice to meet you properly, lovey.”

I was glad I’d left Penny’s eyes intact. She was a great girl—a little rough around the edges, but hey, I wasn’t one to judge on that score. Bradley gave me a wave.

“Take it easy, Aubrey. Maybe we’ll see you soon?”

Oh, I don’t know about that, Bradley
. I imagined the fallout this day would surely have. Jeremy gestured to my purse.

“Don’t forget about the phone number,” he said. “You’ll put a good word in for me, right?”

“Of course,” I assured him.

Bradley elbowed him. “Shit, I don’t know who’s worse. You or Desperate Dan up there.”

“Shut up, Brad!” Jeremy glared at his brother.

I smiled as I made my way up the stairs, but my smile quickly dissolved as I glanced into the kitchen. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug in front of him. His mother was leaning over him, rubbing his back as she whispered to him.

“I’m going to warm up the car,” Dean Grant said.

“He’ll be out in a minute,” Gwen called out from the kitchen.

Dean Grant helped me put my coat on and then ushered me out the door with him. He opened the front passenger door.

“Shouldn’t we let Daniel—”

“He can sit in the back. At this point I think I could throw him in the trunk and he wouldn’t notice.”

He climbed in and started the car. “I wish you’d told me Daniel was your TA, Aubrey,” he said with a sigh.

“He asked me not to. I didn’t know what to do. He fenceposted me,” I said, hoping he’d understand. “I didn’t think it would hurt to come over for dinner. You told me Daniel wouldn’t be here.”

“I know, but you realize Daniel has to keep his distance from the students in class. That includes you. He has to maintain impartiality and objectivity. Not courting familiarity with students goes with the territory. It’s not that he doesn’t like you—he can’t compromise his academic position. I won’t allow it,” he added, looking at me almost sternly.

“I understand. I’m sure nothing like this will happen again. Daniel has been nothing but professional for the last month,” I told him.

Up until about twenty minutes ago
.

“That’s good to hear. So let’s keep this between us and try to forget it ever happened, all right?”

“Yes, of course.”

Daniel finally emerged from the house, falling into the back seat with a groan. I kept my eyes trained out the front windows. As Dean Grant drove through the dark streets, Daniel began snoring gently behind us.

“Someone’s going to be miserable tomorrow,” I said.

Dean Grant smiled and shook his head. “I gather he hasn’t eaten much today. It was foolish of him to drink so much.”

I looked out the window, watching the city lights go by.

“Oh, and before I forget,” he said, “these are for you from Gwen.” He handed me two complimentary tickets to the Gardiner Museum.

“Tell her I said thank you, would you?”

“Of course.”

A few moments later, we pulled onto Charles Street, and Dean Grant came around to open my door, holding his hand out to help me over the curb and onto the sidewalk.

“Thank you for a lovely evening, sir. Your family is wonderful.”

He placed his hands on my shoulders, squeezing gently. “It was our pleasure, Aubrey. Business as usual on Monday, yes?”

“Absolutely.”

I watched as he climbed back into the car. Daniel was hunched down in the back seat, arms crossed over his chest, head bobbing.

Adorable.

The car sped off. I walked up the path, prepared to be greeted by my roommates and listen attentively to all their fabulous Reading Week stories, when all I really wanted to do was review the all-important ground rules for playing snooker.

Chapter 15

Outward Shows

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
(
The Merchant of Venice
, Act III, Scene 2)

B
ETWEEN
C
ATCHING
U
P
W
ITH
M
ATT
and Jo and reading ahead for classes, I found plenty of time on Sunday to daydream about firmly grasped pool cues and leg hitches. Even the non-snooker related parts of my trip to the Grant home made me long for a second visit. But that wouldn’t be happening. Dean Grant’s words rang in my ears like a death knell.

“It’s not that Daniel doesn’t like you—he can’t compromise his academic position. I won’t allow it.”

Dean Grant wouldn’t allow it. What about Daniel, though? How did he feel about what had happened?

Dean Grant had advised me not to take Daniel’s distance personally, and it occurred to me that Daniel’s chilly TA persona was probably a response to his father’s guidance. On second thought,
pressure
might have been a better word.

I spent most of Sunday evening worrying about my return to work, unsure what to expect from Dean Grant in the wake of his dire warnings, but everything in the office was normal on Monday morning. He greeted me cheerfully as always, and he mentioned again how much the family had enjoyed my visit. It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and no more was said about it.

Daniel didn’t show up for their routine Monday morning meeting with his father, and Dean Grant didn’t leave. I wondered if they needed some time apart after the craziness of the weekend.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t dreading seeing Daniel, even though we’d
definitely
crossed a line. The whole crotch-ass rubbing episode—complete with off-the-charts sexual innuendo—had launched us soundly into the dangerous territory that his father would probably refer to as “familiarity.”

Euphemism of the year.

There could be no denying the
hard evidence
that Daniel had enjoyed the exchange as much as I had. However, he’d been drunk and was probably horrified once he was in his right mind again and realized that his carefully crafted impartial persona had been completely blown out of the water. As I crossed Queen’s Park shortly after eleven thirty, it occurred to me that I was actually looking forward to watching him squirm. Who knew I had such a sadistic streak?

Julie and I sat in our usual seats in the second row, but I wished we were back on the other side across from the front table so that I’d have a clear view of Daniel trying to hold it together. But this wasn’t something I could share with Julie, so we remained in our seats by the door.

The class was smaller than usual. Several regulars were conspicuously absent, perhaps needing a vacation from their vacation. Julie could have joined the ones who were dozing. She was tanned and full of exuberant stories about her week, but she was bagged.