Page 5 of Ulune's Daughter

It is impressive that he remembered my order. I didn’t think he was even listening.

“Research assistant implies that you can also doresearch.”

“I’m at the top of my class. In the running for salutatorian. But if you don’t believe me, set me a sample assignment. I’m not afraid of tests.”

I shake my head at his cockiness. After Rowan and Mitch, I have a certain aversion to overconfident males in an academic setting. But Luca’s a student, not a rival. And Luca’s interest in a subject that’s closest to my heart is endearing.

“Okay,” I agree. “I’ll email you an assignment this week. You research the question and send me a two-thousand-word essay with your answer by this time next week and I’ll consider it.”

Most Bevington students, even overachieving seniors, would balk at a two-thousand-word essay in addition to the pile of assignments he’ll undoubtedly get this week. Bevvy professors are notorious for starting the semester with a bang. And by “bang,” I mean a freaking avalanche of homework.

“If I get it to you by Friday, could I start working with you this weekend?” he asks.

“Hold your horses, bucko,” I tell him with a small laugh, which dies as I realize I’ve used one of Rowan’s sayings without thinking about it. “Let’s take it one step at a time. Get the assignment. Research the assignment. Write the essay. Turn in the essay and give me more than a hot minute to read it. Then I’ll decide if your research skills are up to the task.”

He flicks one of his gleaming canines with the point of his tongue. “I’m up to the task,” he says. His tone isn’t boasting. He says it as a statement of fact. “But I appreciate you giving me a chance. Jane Serpa’s been shooting me down for three years.”

I snort. He suckered me. I should have asked Jane about him before I agreed to coffee.

“Well, now I’ll have to ask her why.”

“She comes up with a new excuse each semester.” His grin flashes. “Pretty sure she just doesn’t like me. Too pushy or something.”

I roll my eyes. “I can’t imagine why she’d think that.”

“I don’t know where I get this reputation. It’s totally undeserved.”

“I bet.”

“You were her TA when you were a student at Bevvy, weren’t you?”

I nod. “For two years. And she was my thesis advisor when I started researching the Magi of the Mist.”

He shakes his head. A strand of his combed-back, dark blond hair falls over his forehead. Between that and the lack of white contacts, he looks much less creepy. He’s actually very good looking, in a lead-singer-for-a-goth-band way.

“I would honestly kill for that,” he says. “To make the discovery you made. To find somethingnewinstead of retreading the tired magick every student who has come here since the dawn of time has learned.”

“It’s exciting,” I admit, before I spout the party line. “But you never know what you’re going to find on any project you start. Discoveries like the Magi of the Mist could be just around the corner.”

He curls his lip at me. “Did Dean Quinn write that?”

I laugh and hold up my hands. “Yes, okay. I just got lucky?—”

He leans in again, raking my face with that intense gaze. “Sure, luck had a little to do with it, but the rest was all you. You’re out there, turning over rocks, diving into caves. You’re Indiana Jones. You’re Lara Croft. You’re out theredoingit while the rest of us sit here with our thumbs up our assesreadingabout it.”

Iwasout there doing it. Now I’m back in Bevington’s ivory tower, making students read about it. The faint sense that I’m not where I should be rubs along my nerves.

I push it away. Bevington has offered me matchless opportunities. They’ve given me a whole semester with barely any teaching responsibilities so I can focus on the exhibit and publication. They’ve given mecarte blanchewith the exhibit design. When I dragged my feet about coming back for fall semester rather than next spring, they made noises about tenure track and full professorship. It’s a huge feather in Bevington’s cap that I’ve come here instead of Madavar; but they’ve also bent over backward for me, particularly when all they’ve seen from me so far are short holding papers.

I’m not going to screw up my career opportunities over this pushy man-boy, no matter how compelling his gaze.

Instead, I divert with humor. Tipping my head to the side, I peer under the table. “You don’t look like you have your thumb up your ass.”

He eases back with a grin. “You’re kind of a brat, do you know that?”

The word tightens my throat. In another place, with another man, that term would have a very different meaning and I would own it. But not here. Not with a student.

“Fairly sure what you meant to say was, thank you for challenging my perspective, Professor Wyndham.”

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