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He looked out to the street, but even the cars and tourists couldn’t wipe the sight of the deceptively provocative V of her dress from his mind. As he turned back, he caught her averting her eyes and smiled at this strange dance happening between them.
‘So. What do you do?’ she asked, biting her lip immediately after the last word was out of her mouth.
And then he registered her question with slight surprise. It had been a while since someone had not known who he was, what he did. Had not known him to be joined at the hip with Kyros. It was novel.
‘Security,’ he replied, his natural disinclination to talk about himself cutting his words short.
‘Financial?’ she asked, a slight pink to her cheeks.
‘No.’
The light seemed to dim from her eyes a little and he silently cursed. He was so unfamiliar with flirting. Was that what he was doing? In the past it had seemed much easier, the women more knowing and determined and he just as willing to go along with the simple sexual exchange. He had the suspicion that there was nothing simple about Summer.
‘What have you done today?’ he asked and she seemed relieved.
‘I went to the Acropolis today. It was...’ she shook her head, her eyes lit with excitement and pleasure ‘...incredible. The sense of history there is quite amazing. And the way that the underlying rock formations have developed...’ She trailed off, biting her lip as if to stop herself from continuing.
‘Yes?’
‘Mmm?’ she replied, as if asking a question.
‘The underlying rock formations?’
‘Oh, shall I continue?’ she asked, surprised.
He couldn’t help but laugh a little. ‘Are you in the habit of pausing mid-sentence and changing the subject?’
‘Well, yes, actually,’ she answered honestly. ‘Usually when I start to talk about rock formations, people’s eyes glaze over,’ she said, sweeping a loose corn-coloured tendril back behind her ear.
‘Are my eyes glazed over?’ he asked and held his breath as she leaned forward across the table to look more closely at his eyes, squinting and assessing and smiling as if he’d delighted her somehow.
‘No,’ she replied, trying and failing to contain a gentle laugh.
He gestured for her to continue, picked up his coffee and sat back in his chair to listen to her talk on, of all things, rock formations.
‘It’s actually quite interesting really, because the limestone capping the Acropolis—the ground on which the Parthenon is built—is Cretaceous Age Tourkovounia Formation. But the layer beneath that, the Athens Schist, is from nearly thirty million yearsafter. So the upper rock layer is older than the lower, which is a perversion of the principle of superposition.’
He nearly choked on his coffee at the way she said perversion and he felt like a naughty schoolboy. He didn’t think he’deverfelt like that, even when he had been at school.
‘And because the schist is more susceptible to weathering than the upper layer of limestone, it’s being nibbled away over time from the sides. But essentially it’s an erosional remnant of a much larger...’
‘Larger...?’
‘Thrust sheet,’ she said, blushing, and as much as he tried, he really couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I should shut up,’ she concluded.
‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely intrigued why she would regret something that brought her to life in such a way—even if he’d been amused by her accidental double-entendre. ‘This is your work?’
‘I’m a geophysics student. It’s the study and analysis of the physical properties of the earth and space around it.’
‘And your interest is in...’ He had never had to work so hard to get a woman to talk to him. Instinctively, without question, he knew Althaia would have loved her.
‘Well, most people go into oceanography, but I’m quite interested in engineering.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s—’ her eyes sparkled ‘—it’s fascinating to me, but boring to most people.’
He frowned. He might not have understood all of it but her enthusiasm and expertise had been electrifying. ‘Boring or intimidating?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she said, giving it that same kind of focused consideration he was beginning to appreciate about her, ‘perhaps it’s just harder to relate to,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Or to talk about,’ she concluded.
‘Or they’re just not taking the time to understand why it’s important to you?’
