Grace stared at the ceiling as if help might be sent down from up above. But none came, so she finally met Dee’s gaze. “It was for his own good.”
“I don’t get it. Is he a bad kisser?”
“Oh, no,” Grace said, shaking her head. “He’s really good.”
“Well, then…”
“I ran away,” Grace said, and buried her face in her hands. Humiliation swept through her. She still couldn’t believe that she’d run from Logan like a teenager afraid of her own hormones.
Dee’s eyebrows shot up and her feet thumped to the floor. “You ran away? Honey, are you crazy? Nobody runs away from Logan Sutherland. We’re all running toward him.”
She had known that, deep down of course. But hearing Dee say it out loud only confirmed that once again, Grace was “not normal.” She didn’t do anything like your average woman did. Heck, she hadn’t even been able to stand her ground when a gorgeous man kissed her. It was pitiful. Just pitiful.
Still, she had to try to defend herself, pointless though it might be. “Dee, he doesn’t know me. He’s the one who would go running if he knew…”
“If he knew what?”
Grace gritted her teeth and forced herself to say it. “If he knew how smart I really am.”
Dee came over to the bed, grabbed a pillow and sat next to her, resting her back against the headboard. “Honey, I confess I’m not sure how smart you are, but what does it matter? He kissed you. He likes you. Why are you running away from that?”
Grace folded her arms across her chest, anxious to make Dee understand. “Men don’t like smart women.”
“Oh, Gracie, that’s just plain prehistoric. These days, men love smart women.”
Grace shook her head stubbornly. “Not when they’re as smart as I am.”
Dee’s mouth twisted in confusion. “Just how smart are you?”
“I have an IQ of 172,” she said, annoyed with the slight whine in her voice.
“Oh, Gracie.” Dee reached out and grabbed Grace’s hand. “You realize that means nothing to me, right?”
“Yes,” Grace said, laughing. “That’s just one reason why I like you so much.”
“I like you, too, Gracie,” Dee said, “but really, is 172 good? I mean, what’s average?”
“Well, that’s difficult to say, really, since IQ scores have been gaining three points every decade now for some time, but-”
“Ballpark figure,” Dee interrupted. “What’s average?”
“About 100,” Grace admitted with a sigh.
“Whoa.” Dee blinked. “And what’s genius?”
Grace groaned as she said, “One forty and above.”
“Damn.” Dee grinned at her. “So, you’re like, what?
Stunned to discover that Dee’s opinion of her hadn’t changed, Grace relaxed and for the first time in her life, actually giggled. “
“You could be a superhero or something,” Dee continued. “You could be Smartgirl!”
Relief and gratitude rushed through Grace as she returned Dee’s smile. She had been so worried that once Dee knew the truth about Grace, she wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her. After all, her own parents had run the other way from her, and that was a memory she really didn’t want to dwell on just now. No, right now she wanted to concentrate on the amazing sensation of having her fears dissolve. For the first time, she was being accepted and liked, completely, for exactly
“Smartgirl? Sometimes I wonder,” she muttered, then brightened. “But I do have four doctorate degrees.”
“Wow! Four?” Dee laughed. “I lasted about six weeks in college. I was so bored, I ran screaming.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. So how long did it take you to get four degrees, cuz you look really young.”
“I did all four of them concurrently.”
“Wow.” Dee shook her head, then took a sip of her drink. “Your classes must’ve been intense. But now you’re like a PhD?”
“Yes, times four.”
“Holy moley.”
“I know,” Grace whispered, then said, “Do you think we could have another mini-margarita?”
“I think I need one, too.” Dee bounced off the bed and returned to the table to mix the drink. “So you work in your lab every day. But what do you do in your spare time?”
“I don’t have much spare time,” Grace said as she joined her at the table and squeezed a lime into the shot glass. “My work in the lab is very important, so-” she shrugged “-that’s mostly what I do.”
“Okay, I know you don’t go out to bars,” Dee said. “Do you like to shop or go to movies?”
“I’ve never really had much time to do either,” Grace said, feeling more inadequate by the second.
“So you’ve only ever gone to school and worked in a lab?”
“That’s pretty much it.” She smiled cheerfully. “But I love my work.”
“Oh, I like my job, too,” Dee said, as she mixed another mini-margarita for herself. “But I like shopping, too, and, well, lots of things. But especially shopping.”
“School and work are all I’ve ever known,” Grace said, sipping her drink. “I started college when I was eight years old.”
Dee’s gaze was awash in sympathy. “That’s terrible. College is hard enough on grown-ups, let alone a kid.”
Grace blinked. She’d never shared that part of her background with anyone besides Phillippa. But that didn’t mean there had ever been a moment when she’d considered herself unfortunate. Far from it. “I was lucky. I got to live at school and study and learn.”
“Your parents let you live at school? When you were eight?”
“Well, I wasn’t alone. I lived with the head of the Science Department and his wife.”
“But your own parents sent you away?” Dee said.
“Oh, they were happy to do it,” Grace said lightly. “I belonged in college. And it worked out well for them because the university paid them for me to go to school.”
Dee stopped in midpour. “Your parents got money for you?”
“They didn’t have a lot of money,” Grace explained, “so I was glad to help them get by.”
“But it sort of sounds like they sold you.”
“Oh, no.” Grace laughed. “I wanted to go.”
“Gotta say, Gracie…I think somebody needs to go back in time and give your folks a swift kick or two.”
“No, no,” Grace said, pleased that her new friend would defend her, but knowing her parents had done the best they could. Maybe she hadn’t quite understood it at the time, but now she knew that her mom and dad were nice, simple, hardworking people who had never understood her at all. “I appreciate it, but everything worked out.”
“Wow,” Dee said, taking an experimental sip, then another. “When I was eight, my big excitement was cutting all the hair off of my Barbie dolls. Guess we come from two different worlds.”
“But we can still be friends,” Grace said, hating to sound so tentative.
“Most indubitably,” Dee said, giggling as she held her glass out in a toast. “We are friends, Gracie. Never doubt it. To my friend, Gracie.”
“To my friend, Dee.” Grace wiped away a happy tear as they clinked their glasses together.
Grace wasn’t sleepy at all. So after leaving Dee dozing in her room, she walked out to the terrace and down to the beach. She couldn’t get over how beautiful it was here, even at night. The moon was as big and clear in the sky as Grace had ever seen. The water was as smooth and shiny as the heavy-gauge stainless steel table in the lab’s radiation room.
“You’re hopeless,” she muttered, shaking her head at that comparison. Would her head always be stuck in the laboratory? She hoped not. She wanted to think carefree thoughts, dream frivolous dreams, like drinking champagne and kissing a handsome man under the Caribbean moon.
Had she always harbored a secret wish to be so frivolous? No, she was absolutely sure this was something new for her. But it felt good.
