Beauty And The Brain

Or rather, into Willis Random’s chest. Then again, seeing as how his chest had grown to roughly the size of Montana since she’d last seen him, it was kind of hard for her to miss it.

“Whoa,” he said as he reached out an arm to steady her. “Where’s the fire?”

She glanced up to find herself staring into midnight-blue eyes she remembered way too well for her own good, and she immediately identified the source of the fire he asked about. It was where it had always been whenever she’d had to deal with Willis, and she didn’t like the realization of that now any better than she had fifteen years ago.

Oh, God, it really was Willis, she thought. He was back. And he was beautiful.

“Oh, God,” she muttered aloud this time.

“Rosemary, please,” her mother said. “Be nice to Willis. He’s going to be a guest in your house for the next few weeks.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, a moment Rosemary spent drinking in the sight of the man who had been her high school nemesis. The last time she’d seen Willis, he’d still stood eye-to-eye with her, in spite of his having shot up some in their junior year. His face had been a road map of state capitals, and he’d always reeked of Clearasil and Lavoris. But this Willis was so...so...so...

Wow.

He was huge. Huge. A good four inches taller than her own five-eight, and broad enough to block the sunlight streaming into the hallway from the door across the way. His skin was flawless now, deeply tanned and creased with sun-etched lines around his eyes and mouth. And what a mouth. She’d never noticed before just what beautifully formed features Willis had. And instead of Clearasil and Lavoris, he smelled of the great outdoors. Like pine trees and thunderstorms and life.

“Willis?” she finally said, her voice emerging as little more than a squeak.

“I’m baaaaack,” he sang out with a smile that was completely lacking in humor. “Didja miss me?”

Even the sound of him was different, she thought, feeling as if she were descending into some kind of weird trance. His voice had deepened and grown rough over the years, just as everything else about him had seemed to do. For a moment, Rosemary could do nothing but stare at him. She simply could not believe he was the same boy who had tormented her so throughout high school. Although the potential for torment was still there, she knew without question that, these days, it would be of a decidedly less adolescent nature.

“Rosemary?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.” But she couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

Willis twisted his lips into an expression she recognized all too well. “I see you still have that vast, scintillating vocabulary I remember so well,” he muttered sarcastically.

That brought her up short, and she frowned back at him. So the first shot had been fired, had it? That meant war. Willis might have changed completely on the outside, but inside, he was still the same vicious little cretin who was always putting her down and trying—usually with success—to make her feel like a fool.

Rosemary straightened, pushing herself back until she was more than an arm’s length away from him. “And I see you’re still Mr. Know-It-All,” she countered.

She groaned inwardly. Was that the best she could do for a put-down? Dammit, Willis had always made her feel like an empty-headed, unimportant, inconsequential little gnat. Somehow, her mind had always ceased functioning whenever he was around, and not only could she never think of anything even moderately interesting to say, but she could never come up with a good comeback to his numerous assaults on her intelligence. It had just reinforced his argument that she was, quite simply, really, really stupid.

And now, here Willis stood, in her own home no less, making her feel really, really stupid all over again. It was almost more than she could bear.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Instead of waiting for an answer, she turned to her mother. “Mom, what’s he doing here?”

Her mother smiled that soothing, complacent smile that had always made Rosemary feel anything but soothed or complacent.

“Willis is here for the Comet Festival, darling.”

“I’m here to study Bobrzynyckolonycki,” he announced shortly at the same time.

Rosemary blinked at the eight-syllable word that rolled so effortlessly off his tongue. “You’re here to study what?” she asked. “Bobra...Bobriz...” She gave up and asked, instead, “Is that something in the water we should know about?”

Willis frowned at her again. She remembered now that he had always frowned at her, and that she’d actually wondered a time or two what he would look like if he had smiled just once, even with the sunlight glinting off his braces.

“Bob,” he clarified through gritted teeth, as if he couldn’t stand the sound of the word. “Bobrzynyckolonycki is ‘Bob’ to members of the laity, like you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. She wasn’t sure what he meant by “laity,” but his tone of voice indicated that whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t anything good. Before she could question him about it, however, her mother began to speak again.

“Willis is on sabbatical, dear. MIT has sent him back here to figure out why Bob’s appearances are so regular, and why he always makes his closest pass to the planet right above Endicott. Isn’t that nice?”

Rosemary turned back to look at Willis. She should have expected something like this. He’d always been fascinated by that damned comet.

“MIT?” she echoed.

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” he clarified

She frowned at him. “I know what MIT stands for,” she told him.

He arched his brows in surprise.

“I just want to know why you’re here, exactly.”

He nodded. “It’s really very simple, Rosemary. I’ve designed a telescope that will enable me to gauge Bobrzynyckolonycki’s approach to the earth—and, consequently, Endicott—in a rather, shall we say, unorthodox manner. That part—” he added in an offhand tone of voice “—is really much too difficult for someone like you to understand, so I won’t waste my time trying to explain it. Suffice it to say that my study might potentially provide the answers to a number of questions that have puzzled the scientific community for decades.”

Rosemary was too busy steaming at his easy dismissal of her intelligence to respond to his oration. Which was just as well, because evidently, there was a lot more her mother wanted to add.

“Willis has five degrees,” Janet gushed. “Isn’t that amazing? Five, Rosemary. In physics, mathematics, astronomy...” Her voice trailed off and she turned to Willis for help. “What are your other two in, dear?”

“Astrophysical engineering and accounting,” he told her.

Rosemary narrowed her eyes at him again. “Accounting?” she asked, finding that one a trifle out of place.

He smiled, blushing a bit. “For two wild and crazy semesters, I went a little off the deep end and thought about becoming an accountant,” he told her.

She nodded, but refrained from comment.

“There, uh...” he added little sheepishly. “There was a girl involved.”

Rosemary smiled inwardly. His announcement gave her the perfect opportunity to give as good as she was getting. “A girl?” she repeated, punctuating the question with what she hoped was a look of stunned disbelief. “You were actually involved with a girl? Don’t tell me—let me guess. She was an exchange student who couldn’t speak a word of English, from some unreachable little village in the Upper Volta where the average age of the local bachelors was seventy-two.”

Willis eyed her venomously. “Oh, listen to you. You wouldn’t know the Upper Volta from Butternut, Wisconsin.”

Rosemary eyed him back, just as malignantly. “Oh, wouldn’t I?”

Before the argument could escalate, Janet March cut in again. “And here you dropped out of the community college and beauty school, Rosemary.” She punctuated her disappointment with a cluck of regret.

Rosemary bit her lip and dropped her gaze to the floor. More like she’d flunked out of the community college, she recalled. But she’d never tell her mother that, let alone Willis. And beauty school just hadn’t been her thing—there had been too much chemistry involved. Besides, she loved her job as a travel agent. What was the big deal about college anyway?

When she looked up again, Willis was smirking at her. Actually smirking. That pizza-faced little...

Okay, so he was just a twerp now, she amended. His smirk told her that he knew exactly what was going through her head with her little self-evaluation of her failures. It also told her that he agreed more with her mother’s less-than-satisfactory assessment of her.

Rosemary swallowed with some difficulty, reminded herself that she was a thirty-year-old woman with a good job and a full life, and that nobody, not her mother, not even Willis Random, was going to make her feel the way she’d always felt about herself when she was a teenager.

Self-esteem was an insidious thing, very difficult to hold on to. It had taken Rosemary years to build hers up once she’d graduated from high school, and she wasn’t going to let Willis, with his five degrees and his own state-of-the-art engineering feat, tear her down again. She just wasn’t.

“I have a good job, Mom,” she reminded her mother in as level a voice as she could manage.

“You could have been a computer programmer,” her mother reminded her back, “if you’d stayed enrolled at the community college.”

Willis barked out a laugh at that. “You?” he asked Rosemary incredulously. “You were studying computer programming? You’re joking, right? You couldn’t possibly fathom anything as mentally challenging as that.”

Mrs.- March sighed again, this time with even more disappointment. “Yes, I suppose her father and I should have realized when Rosemary started that it wasn’t really the thing for her. But she seemed so intent on it at the time. It was almost as if she were trying to prove something. I just didn’t have the heart to try to talk her out of it.”

Something cold and wet landed hard in the pit of Rosemary’s stomach, but she turned to face Willis fully. “Yeah, me,” she said. “I studied computer programming for a whole semester. Then I realized that you were right about me, Willis. I wasn’t cut out for college. And I certainly wasn’t cut out for science. So I found a job I like just fine. And I’m good at it, too, okay?”

He was silent for a moment, and she wished more than anything in the world that she could understand what that intense expression on his face meant. “So what do you do for a living these days?” he finally asked her.

She almost believed he cared. Almost. “I’m a travel agent,” she replied, telling herself there was no reason for her to feel so defensive.

He nodded. “Then I guess you finally get to visit all those places you used to talk about visiting, hmm?”

Her mother waved her hand airily and smiled. “Oh, Rosemary never goes anywhere, do you, darling? She has a terrible fear of flying, not to mention claustrophobia, and she suffers from violent motion sickness.”

Willis threw Rosemary another odd look at that, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it meant. Instead she cursed him for coming back to Endicott, and wondered at her mother’s assertion that he would be a guest in her house.

“Why are you here?” she asked again.

“I told you, dear,” her mother interjected. “He’s studying the comet.”

Rosemary turned to face her mother. “No, I mean, what’s he doing here—in my house?”

Janet March smiled that unsettling smile again. “He’s going to be staying here at the house with you dunng Bob’s visit.”

Rosemary’s eyebrows shot up at that. “I beg your pardon?”

Her mother opened her mouth to reply, but Willis raised a hand to stop her. “Allow me, Mrs. March.”

He looked down at Rosemary, silently for a moment, as if he were trying to figure out just how to say what he had to say so that an imbecile would understand it. She felt her back go up. Fast.

“Your house is situated perfectly for me to view Bobrzynyckolonycki,” he said. “The trajectory—” He stopped, as if he feared any word with more than two syllables might be too big a challenge for her.

“I know what a trajectory is,” she told him crisply.

He seemed genuinely surprised. “Do you?”

She nodded, but suddenly felt less certain. “I think.”

“Well, let me just put it this way,” he began again. “Your house is situated perfectly for me to observe both the comet’s approach and its departure.”

“Why my house?”

“It’s well outside the city limits and up here on a hill all by itself. There are no lights from downtown Endicott to interfere with my viewing of the night sky. And the chemical reaction from traffic and industry is minimal—thus they won’t interfere with atmospheric conditions. And it’s quiet and secluded, which will be enormously helpful while I’m collecting and analyzing my data. Best of all, your attic windows are almost perfectly aligned with the comet’s path—all we’ll have to do is take out the slats. And with your attic being the massive size that it is, I can set up my telescope with little difficulty.”

“You see?” her mother concluded with a smile, taking each of Rosemary’s hands affectionately in her own. “This is the perfect place for Willis to perform his work. So he’ll be staying here in the house with you for the duration of his study.”

Rosemary looked first at Willis, then at her mother, then back at Willis. “The hell he will,” she said.

Her mother frowned at her. “Rosemary, don’t you dare swear in my presence.”

She felt immediately and properly chastened, and blushed deeply. “I’m sorry, Mom.” However, she quickly recovered enough to add, “But he can’t stay here.”

“Of course he can.”

“No, he can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want him to.”

Janet March’s smile returned, and it grated on Rosemary even more than usual. “Darling, that’s perfectly understandable,” her mother cooed, “given the history the two of you share.” She dropped one of her daughter’s hands and curled her fingers around Willis’s solid arm to include him in the discussion. “But you’re both adults now, and I know you’re above all that adolescent bickering you used to engage in.”

“But, Mom—” Rosemary began.

Janet turned to her and interrupted, “And, Rosemary, darling, not only is Willis working on a very important study for the scientific community, what he’s doing will add beautifully to the festival.”

“But, Mom—”

“Imagine the media coverage. It will be good PR. And you know how important that is to Endicott.”

“But, Mom—”

“The revenue generated during the Comet Festival is what keeps this town afloat. And I don’t have to remind you that we only have the opportunity to take advantage of it every fifteen years.”

“But, Mom—”

“And besides, darling, this is still my house.”

Well, that certainly shut Rosemary up. Her mother had never invoked ownership privilege for anything before.

“And speaking as both mayor and citizen of Endicott, I’m inviting Willis to be a guest in my house for as long as he needs to be.” She fixed her gaze intently on her daughter. “Will that be a problem, Rosemary?”

Rosemary returned her mother’s gaze, feeling a heavy weight descend upon her shoulders. Her mother was right—the house belonged to her. She could invite whomever she pleased to be a guest, and there wouldn’t be a whole lot Rosemary could do about it. Still, it would have been nice if, just once, her mother had taken her daughter’s feelings into consideration over what might be best for the community.

But Janet March was a much better mayor than she had ever been a mother. It’s why she’d spent three consecutive terms in office and would doubtless be elected to another.

It wasn’t bitterness on Rosemary’s part that caused her to draw such a conclusion. It was simply a fact of her life that her mother had never taken as much interest in the wants and needs of her children as she had her own civic activities. Oh, Janet had been a nice enough mother, and even considerate in her own, rather shortsighted way. But she’d never been particularly good at mothering. And, if pressed, even Janet herself would probably laugh and admit that such a thing was true.

Rosemary knew there was no way her mother would bend on the idea of having Willis stay right here in the big English stucco with her. Short of moving out herself, Rosemary was stuck with him as a house guest for the next few weeks, if that was what Mayor Janet March decreed. And there was no way Rosemary would be moving out. Even if she could have afforded to rent something else for that length of time, thanks to the Comet Festival, there wasn’t a room available within a hundred miles of Endicott.

And even though Angie and Kirby would probably open their homes to her, Rosemary couldn’t find it in herself to impose on her friends for that length of time. Angie’s apartment was barely big enough for one. And besides, Angie was way too busy investigating the appearance in town of that lowlife, scumbag, murdering slug Ethan Zorn to want Rosemary bothering her.

And although Kirby had an extra bedroom at her house, Rosemary didn’t want to crimp her friend’s style trying to snag a man. Even though there was little chance that Kirby, the Endicott equivalent to Mother Teresa, was ever going to land herself a local boy, because all the local boys just thought Kirby was far too sweet and far too nice to ever try something like...like...like that with her. Not that Kirby hadn’t tried.

It was a big house, Rosemary told herself. With any luck at all, she and Willis wouldn’t even have to see each other during his stay. With any luck at all, he’d banish himself to the attic with his notebook and his telescope and his scientific equations, which he found infinitely more interesting than he found her anyway. With any luck at all, he’d leave her alone and keep to himself.

And with any luck at all, she thought further with a helpless sigh, she wouldn’t find herself feeling like the know-nothing jerk she’d always been convinced she was whenever she was around Willis.

“Fine,” she capitulated reluctantly. Swallowing a groan, she turned to her old nemesis and added halfheartedly, “Welcome home, Willis. It hasn’t been the same around here without you.”

And with that, she spun around and made her way back downstairs, completely uncaring that her coffee still sat untouched in her bedroom. It was just her first indication that things were only going to get worse.

Two

What had she meant by that? Willis wondered. Why had Rosemary said Endicott hadn’t been the same without him? Was that good? Or was that bad? Surely it must be the former. She’d always hated his guts. Or was she just trying to confuse him, trying to tie him up in knots again, the way she always had when they’d been in school?

God, he hated having to do this. If it wasn’t for the fact that his need to explain the comings and goings of Bobrzynyckolonycki far outweighed any lingering ill will he harbored toward Rosemary March, he’d pick up his bags and his telescope and head back to Cambridge in a heartbeat. But he knew he wouldn’t do that, because the comet had haunted him for fifteen years.

Of course, so had Rosemary March, he reminded himself. But for entirely different reasons. Where Willis had never been able to pinpoint the comet’s motivation for its activities, he’d more than understood Rosemary’s. She had despised him—that was all there was to it. Doubtless she despised him still. Then again, he supposed he had no one but himself to blame for that. He hadn’t exactly made it easy on her all those years ago.

And he wasn’t making it easy on her now, either, he thought, an odd kind of guilt nagging at him. Why had he had to go and shoot his mouth off about her being too stupid to understand something like computer programming? That had been uncalled for, even if it was true. He’d just been smarting from her suggestion that no woman in her right mind would ever take an interest in him, and he’d struck back without thinking.

It was going to be a long few weeks.

He turned to Rosemary’s mother and forced a smile. “Thanks again, Mrs. March, for putting me up this way,” he said. “Especially on such short notice.”

She returned his smile. “You should really be thanking Rosemary, not me. Even though this is my house, I hate pulling rank on her like this. Still, it’s for the good of the community, isn’t it?”

“It’s for the good of the world,” Willis corrected her. “If I can ultimately decipher a reason for why Bobrzynyckolonycki’s movements through the cosmos are what they are, this year’s festival will go down in history.”

And, of course, he thought further with a satisfied smile, so would he. And that ought to show Rosemary March once and for all that he was a lot more than the pizza-faced little twerp she’d always considered him to be.

God, where had that come from? he wondered. What did he care what Rosemary thought of him? Her opinion of him today mattered about as much to him now as it had when he was thirteen years old. So there.

He followed Mrs. March back outside, then bade her goodbye beside his Montero—loaded to the gills with all of his paraphernalia—that he’d parked on the street in front of the house. The parts for his telescope would be arriving the following day, so he had twenty-four hours to unpack, get settled and reacquaint himself with his surroundings. Twenty-four hours to prowl Endicott and remember what his life as a boy had been like all those years ago.

Because his parents had moved to Florida after he graduated from high school and his sister had headed west, Willis hadn’t had any reason to come back to the community where he’d grown up. When he’d left Endicott for MIT thirteen years ago, he’d known he would be returning for the Comet Festival this year. But he’d had no idea he would have such mixed feelings about his return. He had never been particularly fond of his hometown, or of many of its residents. Thanks to his brilliant mind and geek status, he’d just never felt as if he belonged here. The town was too cozy, too comfortable, too set in its ways. And in no way conducive to scientific thought.

He was already looking forward to getting back to Boston, back to the wealth of academic and thought-provoking opportunities available there. That city was teeming with life for people like Willis—people who needed constant mental exercise and continuous cerebral challenge. He felt alive when he was in the city.

Intellectually, at least. What difference did it make if his social life had lain dormant for some time? Who needed romantic entanglements when they had a brain like his? As far as he was concerned, the heart, as an organ, was highly overrated, in spite of its necessity for sustaining life.

After all, what good was living if you couldn’t experience life at its fullest? And how could you experience life at its fullest unless you had the intellectual capacity to appreciate it? Any scientist worth his NaCl would tell you that the head, not the heart, was where the greatest stimulation occurred.

Willis popped open the back door on the Montero and wondered what to unload first—boxes of books, cartons of astronomical charts or stacks of scientific data he’d been collecting for the last fifteen years. So intent was he on his decision that he didn’t hear Rosemary come up behind him. What alerted him to her arrival was the light fragrance of something soft and fresh and sweet, an aroma that immediately carried him backward in time fifteen years.

Whatever Rosemary sprayed on herself now, she’d been using it for at least a decade and a half. And it wreaked all kinds of havoc with both Willis’s olfactory senses and his carnal ones—just as it had when he was a teenager. In spite of the antagonism that had erupted between the two of them whenever they were close, he’d always thought Rosemary March smelled wonderful. When he spun around to face her, he found her shrugging into a navy blue blazer and eyeing him with trepidation.