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Callie jerked her attention to his face. Behind black-framed glasses, a pair of striking blue eyes regarded her with both intrigue and faint amusement.
She stepped backward, her heart racing. “Why…why is that a good thing?”
“Because if you’d taken the stairs, we wouldn’t have gotten trapped.” A smile tugged at his beautiful mouth. “So I’m eternally grateful to the elevator gods now.”
Callie’s mind went blank.Blank.
That never happened. She was always thinking, assessing, worrying, planning…she had hypotheses to prove, lectures to organize, her family to take care of, books to write. Her mind was amachine.
“Button fly,” she said.
What the…?
A puzzled crease appeared between his eyes. “Excuse me?”
She waved a hand at his groin.
I just waved a hand at his groin.
“Your jeans have a button fly.”Please, kill me now.
“So they do.” He looked down, as if verifying the truth of her remark. “You’re very observant.”
And contrary to what I’ve believed my whole life, I’m also apparently stupid.
She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Yes, well, one must possess keen powers of observation when one is a scholar.”
“Indeed one must.” The amusement in his eyes deepened. He slid his gaze over her body, and the potency of his attention sparked a firestorm in her blood.
“Double-breasted,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re wearing a double-breasted blazer.”
Then he glanced at her breasts, a quick graze of his blue eyes, and Callie’s nipples tightened as if he’d touched them. Or licked them. Or—
“You’re also observant.” Her voice came out high and breathy. This really had to stop.
“About you, yes.” He met her gaze with a grin so engaging that her heart did an entirely ridiculous spin and twirl. Her heart had never donethatbefore. Not even with Brian. Not even close.
“Did you make it to your meeting okay?” he asked.
“More or less.”
The snap of a door clicking open jolted her out of her brain fog. Behind her elevator stranger, a stoop-shouldered, balding man in his late sixties approached.
“Hello, Professor Markham.” Callie struggled with a simultaneous surge of relief and disappointment over the distraction. “Did you get my message about next year’s course curriculum?”
He paused, straightening to peer at her with rheumy eyes. “I did, though I take exception to your suggestion that we excise the unit on great Roman military leaders.”
Callie gave him a tight smile. “I didn’t suggest we excise it. I suggested that we include alternative narratives instead of only focusing on the conventional geopolitical history of male politicians.”
Markham sniffed. “Overhauling a curriculum that has been in place for ten years will do you no favors in your quest for tenure, Professor Prescott.”
“I’ve no intention ofoverhaulinganything.”
“Good. See that you keep it that way.” Pursing his lips, he shuffled toward the elevators.
