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He’s ceding control to me?
“I can tell you want to drive this bus.” Shakespeare grinned. “You know that I believe this is fate. But I don’t think free will means you have to fight fate. Maybe it means you can decidewhento grab onto me again.”
He wasn’t just her kind of sexy. He was her kind of intellectual, able to talk about things that interested her on multiple levels like the concept of fate versus free will. She wanted to kiss him. And it excited her that he wanted that kiss, too. He made her feel like Violet Summer, pre-Harvard, the woman who attended Coachella and dated men who weren’t interested in settling down.
I should ignore him.
She was Professor Summer, after all.
But, oh, the power. Her body was already tingling with an overload of attraction. And to set the pace…
“I’m a college professor,” she said out loud. “I’m too old for this kind of frivolity.”
“But you were a rebel when you were younger.” His gaze stroked over Violet, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. “I can tell. And I can tell you want to relive your youth.”
She touched her cheek with the back of her hand, wondering how he knew. “There will be no kiss for the devil incarnate.” For surely, that’s what he was. A man sent to tempt her dedication to achieving Harvard tenure.
“Nice reference to Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth,” he said, pushing her buttons all over again.
All that beauty, all that brawn, all that intellect.
It was a good thing this stretch of beach was always deserted. There were no witnesses to note the slow erosion of her defenses. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to feel the press of his lips against hers. She wanted to grab onto that muscular body and hold on as her mind went blank and her knees went weak.
She stared straight ahead.
I shouldn’t.
She was a boring associate literature professor at Harvard. Boring associate professors at Harvard had a better chance of becoming full professors. She was a Summer, of the society page Summers. And the Hamptons was a hotbed of gossip.
I won’t.
And still, she gauged the distance to the Summer property line to be about one hundred yards. She calculated the odds of returning to work without kissing the cowboy as a one-to-one ratio. Even money.
Not-Chuck settled his cowboy hat more firmly on his head. “You’re trying to talk yourself out of it.”
“Yes.” Violet couldn’t look at him. Not-Chuck brought to mind moonlit swims on warm summer nights, calling in sick to work on Monday to stay home to talk, to laugh, to snuggle. “You… Kissing you would derail me.”
“And yet, you still have regrets about not letting me kiss you yesterday.”
Vi refused to answer him.
They approached the property line and the path to her family’s house.
They approached the point where she’d say her goodbyes and walk back to stacks of Shakespeare’s works and her lists of characters who’d been unable to dodge their fate.
She dismounted, sneakers landing in the soft sand. She flipped Yancy’s reins over the mare’s head and came around, holding them toward not-Chuck, who’d dismounted as well. “Thank you for the ride and the…the stimulating conversation.”
Stimulating? Come on, Vi.
Her cheeks began to heat.
He didn’t take the reins from her. “Vivi—”
“You shouldn’t call me that. My name is Violet. Or Vi.” Or Professor Summer. She extended the reins closer to him.
Yancy tossed her nose, bumping Violet’s arm, as if to say,“Kiss him, you fool.”
“Do you know what I’ve discovered about people who protest too much?” Not-Chuck’s voice was low and gruff, filled with the same yearning Vi was fighting. “They’re just arguing with themselves. You want to kiss me, Vivi.Alas, poor Yorick. Life is too short not to reach out for what you want. That is, reach for what you want badly.”
