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“The fire and the bomb weren’t artificial,” she said.
“No, they sure weren’t,” he agreed. “Thanks for letting me look.”
“You barely looked.” Her tone was faintly accusatory. “It took you, what, two minutes?”
“I have a photographic memory,” he told her. “I’ll be reading those e-mails all night long.” His gaze swept the dim room and came to rest on the chemistry textbook on the bedside table. He leafed through it. “Wow, here’s a blast from the past. I thought you hated this thing.”
“I did hate it. I only liked it when your brother was explaining it.”
Sean nodded. “Yeah, Kev was a genius at making that stuff interesting. He got his undergrad degree in two years. Could have done it in less, if he hadn’t had to work nights. He was already working on his thesis when he…” He stopped, swallowed. “Ah, shit. Never mind.”
“You were pretty brilliant at it yourself,” she said, to break the poignant silence. “You didn’t even need the textbook.”
His short laugh hurt his burning throat. “Son of a bitch cost eighty bucks. Why buy it when you can read the one at the library?”
“You never took notes at the lectures, either, but you always remembered everything,” she said. “It made me so jealous.”
He flipped the textbook shut. “Dad taught us to remember what we heard. For him, taking notes was a sign of mental sloppiness.”
“Wow,” she murmured. “That’s rigorous.”
“Rigorous. Yeah. Good word to describe Eamon McCloud. The trick is to make your selections as the data comes in. You organize the important stuff. The rest you toss into the garbage.” He paused. “I throw away the garbage. But I remember all the important stuff perfectly.”
Her eyes grew wary at his tone. “Oh yeah? And what stuff is that?” She picked up the comb and dug it into another hank of her hair.
He flinched when she yanked it through. “For Christ’s sake, would you stop that? Give me that comb.” He plucked it out of her hands and held it out of reach when she tried to grab it back.
She lunged for it. “Sean, this is not funny—”
“Sit,” he ordered. “On the bed.” A brief wrestling match ensued which he promptly won, and soon she was seated on the bed, clamped in the vee of his thighs. He grabbed a lock of her hair and started in on it. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. We were talking about what’s important enough to remember, and what’s insignificant enough to forget.”
The position was intimate. Her silk-clad hips were so smooth, so hot where they touched the inside of his thighs. His body thrummed.
“Sean,” she whispered. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Your hair will be,” he assured her. “Just relax, and let me be your lady-in-waiting for a few minutes. It’s no big deal.”
She was silent as he worked slowly up the length of the lock of hair, smoothing out every little tangle until it combed smooth and easy down the entire length. He laid that lock over her shoulder and chose another one, taking it patient and slow, like he had all the time in the world. Drawing it out, as long as he possibly could.
“So, ah, what do you think is important enough to remember?” she inquired, in a brisk, let’s-move-on type of voice.
He draped a smooth, perfect lock of hair over her shoulder, and chose another one to lavish his attention on.
“You,” he said.
Oh dear. This was like one of her private middle-of-the-night fantasies. Sean, materializing in her bedroom and telling her she was important to him. She could not fall for this lethally dangerous hooey.
“Oh, get out,” she quavered. “Let go of me. This is a bad idea.”
He grabbed her around the waist as she tried to get up. “I remember every detail,” he said. “From the moment I first saw you. What you wore, how your hair was dressed, the smell of your shampoo. Everything. 3-D, full sensory overload. I can’t shake it.”
She twisted and gave him a quelling glance. “Shut up, Sean. That is just so much calculated bullshit, and I’m not falling for it.”
“The first day, at the construction site, you wore a white blouse,” he said softly. “Your skirt was blue. Your hair hung down to your ass.”
“Construction site?” She frowned. “I met you at Schaeffer Auditorium. At your brother’s class.”
“I’d seen you before,” he told her. Every slow stroke of the comb through her damp hair was a caress. “All the guys on the crew were talking about the big boss’s gorgeous daughter, back from prep school. Then one day you came to the site with your dad. You didn’t even notice us poor bastards staring after you. Tongues dangling to our knees.”
