He didn’t know. But the hopeful stirring in his chest was a roar now, and the half-formed, impossible idea in his mind was so wrong it made him feel kind of dizzy, and he couldn’t make himself type out the words She’s not my girlfriend. He couldn’t. Through the tangle of fevered, guilty thoughts, one thing stood out nice and clear: he needed to talk to Dani.
But first, he better figure out what the fuck he wanted to say.
CHAPTER FIVE
No umbrella?” Sorcha tutted as she popped hers open. “You trollop.”
“It was sunny this morning,” Dani sniffed. “I’m sure you can’t blame me for the indecision of the weather, darling.” Not to mention she’d been somewhat distracted since, erm, “going viral” on Monday. It was Wednesday now, and Dani remained in a befuddled sort of fugue state, which did not lend itself well to remembering umbrellas.
Of course, she’d made sure to apply mascara. Apparently, one never knew when one might be recorded and posted online without permission.
“It’s March, babe. What did you think was going to happen?” Sorcha rolled her eyes and held the umbrella between them, though she favored her own head a little more. The bitch. “If this blowout curls up, I’ll kill somebody. Possibly you.”
“That threat would work better if you ever attempted to follow through,” Dani murmured, but her focus had already drifted away from the icy drizzle and toward the mammoth building ahead. Sorcha was a writer, and she tended to get . . . edgy every time she submitted a manuscript, so today Dani had paused her symposium preparation to drag Sorcha off for an emergency cupcake in town. Now they were returning to campus, which meant walking past Echo.
Echo, of course, meant Zaf.
Yesterday morning, while she’d waited in line for his coffee and her green tea, Dani had devised a cunning plan: first, she would ask Zaf when on earth he’d been planning to mention the whole “pro rugby player” situation. Second, they would laugh together over silly social media frenzies and the vagaries of human nature. And third, she would somehow segue smoothly from that sparkly bonding moment into the fact that they were apparently destined to bone.
But he’d ruined everything by barely talking to her at all. She’d entered the building to discover that Zaf had lost his marbles and was demanding students line up to scan their cards at his desk, rather than the more casual policy adopted by, oh, every campus security guard ever. When Dani had tried to hover (in order to chat about ridiculous videos and lonely vaginas and so on), he’d grabbed his coffee, practically thrown a protein bar at her, and proceeded to look pointedly busy. When she’d come down from her class hours later, George had been at the desk in his place. Apparently, Zaf had just nipped to the loo.
The bastard was avoiding her, and heaven only knew why.
Dani didn’t teach on Wednesdays, so she probably could’ve popped in today and caught him by surprise, but that seemed undignified. It wouldn’t do for Zaf to see that she was bothered by his sudden distance. Or rather, for him to think she was bothered. Which she wasn’t.
Sorcha must’ve followed Dani’s gaze toward the building, because she purred, “Planning to visit your boyfriend, hmm?”
“Stop,” Dani muttered. The word boyfriend made her stomach seize up like a gazelle in the face of danger. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I swear students keep pointing their phones at me.”
“Oh, they are,” Sorcha said, sounding disgracefully unconcerned. “Who knew Zaf was famous?”
“He’s not famous famous.” The words were automatic, but Dani wasn’t sure if they were true. He certainly wasn’t A-list, or even C-list, but judging by the comments Eve had read out last night, Zaf had once been reasonably well known. Which didn’t concern Dani—after all, her grandmother Gigi had been something of a musical legend in the sixties and remained a classic sex symbol. But Dani had always known that about Gigi, while she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever known anything about Zaf.
Which was a ridiculously dramatic thought, one she shook out of her head immediately. He was a friend from work, not her lifelong confidante. He didn’t owe her bloody confessionals across the security desk. He didn’t owe her anything.
Still . . . “Did you know,” Dani said out loud, apparently unable to help herself, “that he runs some sort of charity?”
“Does he?”
“Eve showed me his account last night. It’s supposedly his account, anyway. He uses rugby to teach boys to embrace their emotions. The website was all, something-something-something, toxic masculinity. You know.”
“Hmmm,” Sorcha said slyly. “Interesting. And speak of the devil.”
Dani knew exactly who she’d see even before she turned her head.
Huddled just inside the entrance to Echo’s underground car park stood an unmistakable, imposing figure in a security uniform. Zaf was eating what looked like a sub from the union restaurant, his hair spilling over his eyes like black ocean. But it was obviously him. No one else had those thighs, which were thick and muscular and looked in danger of splitting his uniform trousers, or that torso, which seemed, beneath his navy-blue jacket, like the kind of solid core an Olympic shot-putter or possibly the Hulk might possess. And no one else, Dani might as well admit, made the constant thoughts and ideas whirring in her mind stutter, momentarily, to a stop.
Being as effortlessly sexy as Zafir Ansari should really be illegal, or at least regulated. He must represent some sort of danger to the public.
“I should probably go and talk to him,” Dani said absently, because it was true. They had things to discuss, such as their sudden viral fame and why the fuck he was acting so strangely. Again, not that she cared.
“Talk to him? About
