Beauty And The Brain

Dammit.

Rosemary March had ruined him for other women, and he hadn’t even had the opportunity to experience her. In spite of the fact that she was the last kind of female he should be attracted to, she’d been the first one he’d had a crush on, the first one he’d lusted after, however stupid it had been for him to want her.

And somehow, that had defined his taste in women for the rest of his life. Although he’d tried to establish relationships with good, solid, intelligent women—attractive women at that, and women who appreciated what he had to offer intellectually, women who likewise challenged his own IQ—he suddenly realized that he was doomed to want spirit and fluff, instead. Like Rosemary March.

As he watched the little red sports car with the gorgeous brunette at the wheel disappear around the corner with far more speed than was prudent, Willis realized something else, too. It wasn’t that he was destined to spend his life wanting women like Rosemary March. No, he was condemned to spend his life wanting her. Specifically. Ironically. Erotically. Eternally.

Dammit.

A woman who had nothing to offer him beyond the physical, who would challenge him in none of the intellectual ways he wanted and needed to be challenged. A woman he could certainly be satisfied with sexually, but who would do nothing to fulfill his other, metaphysical, needs. A woman who would make his daily life hell because he would constantly be tied in knots wanting more than she could ever hope to give him.

A woman who would never even like him, let alone love him, he reminded himself. So what was he getting all worked up about anyway? It wasn’t like Rosemary would ever return any overture he might make. Thanks to some of the things he’d said and done to her fifteen years ago, she would despise him for the rest of her life. Worrying about a future with her was pointless, because he didn’t have a hope in hell of having a future with her. Not that he truly wanted one anyway.

He expelled a restless breath and scrubbed a hand viciously through his hair, then turned back to the task at hand. He had a lot of unloading to do, he reminded himself, and a lot of unpacking, too. And not just of the material things he’d brought with him on this particular journey, either. Willis was carrying around a lot more baggage than he’d realized, and he’d brought it all back home to Endicott. Yeah, he had a lot of sorting and unpacking to do while he was in town. And a good bit of it was in no way scientific.

For an intelligent man, he thought to himself, he sure did do some stupid things.

Rosemary pulled into her driveway after work and sat in her car with the motor off, staring at her front door. She was actually dreading to enter the house she’d loved all her life, fearful of what she would find inside. Visions of the new-and-improved Willis had assailed her all day while she was at work, making her lose her place and forget what she was doing. She’d done nothing but make mistakes—dumb mistakes—the whole time she was working. And she’d felt like an idiot as a result.

Because all she’d been able to do, instead, was daydream about Willis. Willis draped over her sofa with the Sunday sports page. Willis sharing a cup of coffee with her in the morning before she left for work. Willis mowing the grass in the backyard. Or changing a spark plug on her car. Or lifting a baby high above his head with a laugh. Or leaving the bathroom amid a puff of steam, wearing nothing but a loose towel wrapped around his waist.

She squeezed her eyes shut as that last scene unfolded in her brain. Boy, was she desperate. The first guy that wandered into her house, she had him nailed down for husband-and-father material.

Rosemary would have been lying if she said she didn’t want to settle down with the right man. But she just hadn’t met the right man. Most of the boys she’d gone to high school with had left town to go to college, and they’d either stayed gone or come back with wives or fiancées. And the few single newcomers who had managed to wander into Endicott just hadn’t been her type. She would have loved to be married and raising kids by now, had she found someone who wanted to share such a future with her.

But this was Willis she was fantasizing about now, she reminded herself ruthlessly. Willis, for God’s sake. Willis!

Willis who hated her guts and made her feel like an imbecile. Who dismissed her with all the consideration of a mosquito about to be squashed. Who would do nothing but make her feel like less and less of a functional human being if she was ever stupid enough to get involved with him.

Not that he had offered her any indication that he wanted any kind of involvement, she reminded herself. Oh, no. On the contrary, he’d made it clear from the get-go that he thought she was still the simpleminded, slack-brained know-nothing he’d pegged her as back in tenth grade. And considering the idiocy of her daydreams at work, she wasn’t entirely sure she could disagree with him at the moment.

Of course, there could be a perfectly logical explanation for her fantasies, she reminded herself hopefully. Comet Bob was looming out there on the horizon, and everyone in Endicott knew that Bob was responsible for creating a cosmic interference that wreaked all kinds of havoc with the townsfolk, not the least of which was driving together romantically two people who were normally at polar opposites.

Yeah, that was it, she told herself. The comet might just be within range enough now to be putting everyone under its cosmic influence, herself included. It was entirely possible that Rosemary was simply succumbing to a galactic disturbance over which she had absolutely no control whatsoever. The reason she suddenly found Willis at the center of her romantic fantasies wasn’t that she was honestly attracted to him, but that she’d simply been pulled into the sphere of Bob’s influence.

Yeah, that was it, she thought again. Maybe she could just blame the whole thing on Bob.

Then again, maybe Bob had nothing to do with it, she thought irritably. Then again, maybe she was just developing a big ol’ whopping crush on Willis Random.

She leaned forward until her forehead rested on the steering wheel, then slowly and methodically began to beat her head against it in an attempt to pound some sense into her brain. The only person on earth who genuinely despised her, and she might just have a crush on him. Surely there were twelve-step programs for women like her. Maybe she should look in the Yellow Pages.

She stopped bashing her head against the steering wheel and looked up again, only to find that Willis was standing on her front porch watching her. She closed her eyes again, wondering if he’d witnessed her attempted self-inflicted lobotomy, then decided that the way things were going, he must have. Could her life possibly get any worse?

It had to be Bob, she told herself, meeting his gaze as levelly as she could. Yeah, sure, Willis was a prime physical specimen of manhood these days, but he was still a big jerk. There was no way she would normally feel affection for such a man. No way would she fall in love with someone who would always make her feel small.

Inhaling a fortifying breath, she opened her car door and unfolded herself from the front seat, then reached back in behind herself for her blazer. The September afternoon was warm, the sun hung high in the sky and Willis was looking at her with something truly hot and smoldering in his eyes. That look, more than anything else, she decided, was what caused the perspiration that suddenly seemed to be dampening her shirt.

He was angry at her already, she thought. And she hadn’t even walked in the front door yet.

“We have a problem,” he said by way of a greeting as she stepped up onto the front porch.

He was just now realizing that? she wondered. Gee, she’d had that one figured out way back in tenth grade. Some genius he was. But aloud, she only said, “Oh? What’s that?”

In response to her question, he frowned and jabbed a thumb angrily over his shoulder, toward the front door. Gingerly, Rosemary preceded him through it. Inside, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Sunlight filtered through the lace curtains on the bay windows, scattering rampant shadows over her grandmother’s hooked flowered rug and the antique furniture that was arranged exactly as it had been when Rosemary was a girl. Her cat, Ska, was curled up on the window seat in the shape of a Christmas ham, just as she always was this time of day, her silver-and-gray-and-black striped fur sleek and shiny.

“What?” Rosemary asked when she saw nothing amiss.

Willis pointed to the cat. “That.”

Puzzled, she asked, “Are you allergic to cats?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not. That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“She is. She’s a bully.”

Rosemary couldn’t help the ripple of laughter that escaped her. “Ska? A bully? Don’t be silly. She’s the sweetest creature on the face of the earth.”

“Her name is Ska?” he asked, arching one brow in disbelief.

As always, after two minutes in Willis’s presence, Rosemary zoomed from defensive to combative in a nanosecond. “Yeah. Her name is Ska. You wanna make something of it?”

He shook his head. “I should have known. That was what you called that strange music you always listened to in high school.”

She took a step forward and settled her hands on her hips in challenge. “I still listen to Ska bands. All the time. They’re coming back now, you know. You wanna make something of it?”

Willis, too, advanced toward her, crowding her space. “No, I just want you to tell that animal to be a little nicer.”

As if realizing she was the topic of the conversation, Ska woke up and blinked her eyes at the couple, then stood and stretched. With a final flexing of her claws, she leaped down to the floor, then sauntered over to Rosemary, entwining herself around her mistress’s legs with much affection. Rosemary picked her up and scratched her behind the ears, and Ska settled into a contented, rumbling purr.

“I can’t believe you’re afraid of a sweet little kitty-cat,” she told Willis.

Willis frowned at her. “I’m not afraid of her. He is.” He gestured behind himself, toward a ventilated cat carrier surrounded by some of the boxes that had come out of his big...his big...truck thing.

“Who is?” she asked.

“Isosceles.”

Rosemary narrowed her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

He expelled an impatient sigh, then strode over to the carrier in question, flipped open the door and withdrew a huge, hulking white cat that claimed a gorgeous, sleek coat of fur. “This,” he told her, clutching the monstrous beast to his chest, “is Isosceles. My cat.”

Now it was Rosemary’s turn to go on the offensive. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Isosceles’ for a cat? Don’t you realize that’s just asking all the other cats in the neighborhood to beat him up after school every day?”

“It’s a perfectly appropriate name,” Willis countered. “Every time he sits down, he forms an exact isosceles triangle.”

Rosemary arched her brows. “What did you do? Take out your compass and protractor and measure him yourself?”