'You mean, have we ruined a beautiful friendship?'
'Exactly.'
He moved closer, sliding against her right side, crossing his knee over the backs of her thighs. His lips brushed her ear.
'I hope not. I desperately hope not. But we can't pretend this didn't happen.'
'I know.'
'Do you want to stop and never do this again?'
'No. God, no. But every time you stop by the room, are you going to want to be like this? Am I? I didn't want to be involved, Tim. I really didn't.'
'Are you involved?'
Quinn turned toward him and felt his chest hair brush her nipples as their legs entwined. She couldn't remember feeling this way about anyone else. Ever. This had to be love.
'Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Are you?'
'Have been since I first saw you at orientation last December. From that moment I knew it was going to be you and me. I didn't know how long it would take or how many different roads we would travel, but some part of me seemed to sense that we'd wind up together. You must have sensed something like that too.'
Quinn laughed and hugged him closer—but gently. 'No way! I thought you were an obnoxious brat, one of the last people on earth I wanted to have anything to do with. Just slightly ahead of Saddam Hussein.'
'Thanks a lot.' He nuzzled her throat. 'But I have an idea. A compromise. We'll make it a rule between us that we don't make love on campus. When we can we'll sneak away to the No-Tell Motel or something and go nuts, but at The Ingraham we stay strictly platonic.'
Quinn tried to see his face in the dark. Was this one of his put-ons? She wished she knew because it sounded perfect to her.
'Where'd you come up with that?'
'Oh, I don't know. I just put myself inside a very practical, borderline-nerdy mind and tried to imagine what that mind could come up with.'
She punched him lightly on the shoulder and he winced.
'Ouch!'
'Sorry. But is that what you think of me?'
'Isn't that what you'd have come up with?'
Reluctantly, she had to agree.
He said, 'But there's got to be an angle we can work with this. Maybe we can apply to Dr. Alston for extra credit when we make our little off-campus trips.'
'Extra credit?'
'Sure. Extracurricular studies in anatomy. Or how about human sexuality lab? Gotta be worth something. In fact I think I'm ready to earn a few extra credits right now.'
Quinn slid her hand down his abdomen. 'Yes, you are. Yes, you are indeed.'
MONITORING
'What the hell happened to you?'
Verran was staring at Kurt's swollen, purpling nose as he and Elliot arrived in the control room.
'The kid got in a lucky one when I wasn't looking.' He sounded like he had a bad cold.
'Great. Just great. That means you're going to have to stay out of sight until that thing heals.'
'What the hell for?'
'Because Brown saw you in the student lot before he left and your nose was fine then. If he knows he clocked one of the guys who attacked him on the nose and then he sees you with a freshly busted beak—'
'Aw, he'd never put the two together.'
'Maybe not. But these kids ain't here because they're dummies. Just to be sure, I'm keeping you on the graveyard shift till that heals up.'
'Aw, Lou.'
Verran held out his hand. 'Where's the bug?'
Elliot leaned forward and dropped it into Verran's palm.
'Safe and sound, Chief.'
Verran stared at it. Such a tiny thing to cause so goddamn much trouble.
'Want me to see if I can fix it?' Elliot said.
'Are you kidding?'
Verran bent and placed the errant bug on the concrete floor, straightened, then ground it flat under his heel.
'That's the last time that little sonovabitch will give us any grief.'
Elliot grinned and headed for his console while Kurt went to find some ice for his nose. Verran surveyed the varicolored meters, terminals, and LEDs of his little domain with quiet satisfaction. Only one problem remained to mar his serenity: the Cleary broad.
Elliot had run an exhaustive, comprehensive check on her SLI unit yesterday and had found everything in perfect working order, but tightass Alston was still insisting that there had to be something wrong with it. Verran knew there wasn't. As far as he was concerned, the problem wasn't with the unit, it was with the girl.
And since it was Alston's responsibility to screen the students, that put the ball in his court.
Which was a big relief to Verran. He'd solved his own missing bug problem; let Dr. Tightass figure out the Cleary problem.
As far as Louis Verran was concerned, it was back to business as usual in the control room.
DECEMBER
THE WORLD'S LONGEST CONTINUOUS
FLOATING MEDICAL BULL SESSION
(III)
Tim had dragged Quinn to another session tonight in Harrison's room. He told her the usual: She was working too hard lately and needed a break. But that wasn't the main reason. He simply needed to be with her a little more.
During the weeks since Atlantic City, despite the awful time he'd had keeping his hands off her, Tim had stayed true to his word and abided by their agreement, hands-off on campus. And when he'd suggested some HSR lab—HSR being their code for human sexual response—Quinn had never turned him down. She'd even suggested it a couple of times herself. After Thanksgiving break she'd told him she'd started on the pill, but still she insisted he wear a condom. One very careful lady.
They didn't get to the Quality Inn that often, but when they did she left Tim wrecked for days.
Those nights were like his wildest dreams come true. For all the no-nonsense prudishness Quinn projected when she was fully dressed, between the sheets she was a different species. Her inhibitions seemed to slough off with her clothes. She approached sex like she approached everything else—seriously, practically, with boundless enthusiasm. She attacked it, she
But for Tim the sex was the icing on the cake. It cemented the substance of their relationship, which for him was simply being with her, sharing her presence. He never seemed to get enough of her. Between the hours they were required to spend in class and in the various labs, plus Quinn's job as Dr. Emerson's research assistant, and the wasted hours grudgingly surrendered to sleep, there wasn't any time for them simply to be together.
