Cassie had forgotten how much she enjoyed this, the talk and the laughter. The conversation shifted between individuals and the entire group, ranging from university politics to tourist bashing to the food in the cafeteria, and always coming back to science. It wasn't difficult to avoid speaking to Rob. The neurophysiologists were a sociable bunch, and several other friends of theirs joined them as the evening went on. Periodically she would remember what Rob had done to her, but it was easier to think of this as a trip back to her first years of grad school when they had been casual friends.
The pitchers of beer went around several times, with lively arguments over the merits of light and dark beer. "Real scientists drink dark beer," one of the post-docs said, eyeing Cassie's lager.
She fluttered her lashes at him. "I'm just a southern belle, after all," she said with a convincing drawl.
He laughed. "Great accent. Are you really from the south?"
Cassie shook her head. "I spent four years in North Carolina, and I'm good at accents."
"Where are you from, then?"
To Cassie's surprise, Rob stepped in. "Cassie's an incredible mimic. Come on, Cass, show them your imitation of Jim."
The others laughed as she did one imitation after another at their request. It had been years since she had done this party trick, but it came back easily. After all, the voice she used every day was nothing more than an accent she had put on in college to disguise her origins and was now habit.
She let herself be talked into going to the movie in the MBL auditorium, an old Marx Brothers film she had never seen before. It felt good to be part of a group in the dark auditorium, laughing at the slapstick on the screen; to remember there was a community at the MBL, not just researchers alone in their labs.
Cassie was still flushed with laughter as they straggled out of the auditorium after the film. It was starting to drizzle, the light pattering rain with a stiff breeze that often presaged a summer storm. One of the neurophysiologists complained he would get soaked on the walk home.
Cassie was in no hurry to leave her new friends and return to her cottage. "I can give you a ride. Anybody else need one?"
"Do you really have a car here?"
Cassie looked over her shoulder at Rob. "Yes, it's one of those faculty perks. Now that I'm in my third year as an investigator, I finally warrant a parking permit."
"Golden girl. Always rubbing it in." Rob's ribbing was good-natured. "I'll take a ride if you're offering."
In the end she had four passengers squeezed into her car, and she joked about providing taxi service as she dropped them at their shared houses on the fringes of Woods Hole. By chance Rob was the furthest afield of them, which didn't register with her until the last of the other post-docs stepped out of the car. She had become more comfortable with him over the course of the evening, but it was one thing to be in a group together and another to be alone in a car in the dark.
They both kept an uncharacteristic silence, apart from the directions Rob gave her. When she pulled up in front of his apartment, he lingered before opening his door. "Thanks for coming tonight, Cassie. It was nice."
She kept her eyes straight ahead, watching the windshield wipers swish back and forth among the raindrops. "Thanks for asking me." The ease she had felt in his company was gone, replaced by the familiar sense of awkwardness and inadequacy. It had been nice while it lasted.
"I hope it helped take your mind off whatever was bothering you."
Cassie had managed to keep it at the fringes of her mind, but now it came rushing back. Calder, deceiving her about his book, listening to her praise without acknowledging it, and now what little use he had for her had passed. It wasn't worth his while to take a stroll into town to say hello, even when he had nothing else to do. Nothing else, nothing else. The refrain beat in her mind in time with the wiper blades. When had Calder gained this power to hurt her?
"Cassie? Are you okay?" Rob touched her hand as it lay on the steering wheel.
She took a deep breath and then forced a smile to her face as she turned to the other man who had once wanted her and then lost interest. "I'm fine."
He cupped his hand on her cheek and then kissed her. She froze in surprise, but then responded to the familiarity of the sensation as he traced his tongue along her lips. It was natural to kiss Rob back.
He drew back slowly, pausing just a few inches from her face. "Yeah," he said.
His voice stirred her self-protective instincts. "Rob, we shouldn't be doing this." It came out sounding more hesitant than she meant it to.
"Why not?"
"I don't do this kind of thing for old time's sake."
He kissed her again, more briefly this time, but enough to leave her wondering why she was saying one thing and doing another. "What about for the sake of starting over?"
Starting over? He couldn't mean it. Jim had hinted at a continuing interest on Rob's part, but Cassie had taken it as wishful thinking. "It was a long time ago."
Rob took her hand and squeezed it. "Can we go inside and talk about this? There are some things I'd like to tell you."
What if he had more than talking on his mind? She didn't want to have to fend him off. "Can we talk out here instead?"
"How about if I promise not to try anything? At least not much."
"If I go in, I'm only agreeing to talking." She should tell him not to kiss her again.
His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating manner. "Understood."
She opened the car door and stepped out into the pouring rain. Ducking her head, she half-ran to the apartment door, standing in the shelter of the eaves while Rob hunted for his key. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.
It was cool inside the dark apartment. As Rob flicked on the light, Cassie brushed a few drops of rain from her arms.
Rob cleared his throat. "Can I get you something to drink?"
"No, thanks." She wanted to be free to leave quickly if she needed to. Looking around the anonymously modern room, she chose the armchair over the couch. "You said you had something to tell me."
He sat across from her on the sofa, his arm resting along the back of it. For a moment he was quiet, a look of thought Cassie remembered well. "Breaking up with you was a mistake. A huge one. It wasn't what I wanted at all."
That was ridiculous. He'd engineered the whole breakup. Cassie crossed her arms, still damp from the rain. "Then why did you do it?"
"You were obsessed with that damn spawning project of Jim's. I was feeling neglected. So I thought if I threatened to end it, you'd pay attention. But you didn't even look surprised, just said you were leaving, and you'd collect your things when you found a place to live."
Cassie remembered the agonized wrenching she had felt that day, the sense that her world had suddenly lost any value. "You were trying to get a reaction out of me? Why didn't you just ask me how I felt?"
He met her eyes levelly. "I was afraid of what you'd say."
"Why? I told you often enough that…" Cassie couldn't bear to say the word love to him. "I find this hard to believe."
"I wouldn't lie about it. If I wanted to play games with someone, you'd be the last person I'd pick. I still need a good recommendation from Jim."
It was hard to argue with such a blatantly practical point. "Why now? Why didn't you tell me this years ago?"
"I've been thinking about it since that day in the cafeteria last summer, when I realized you did care about our relationship. Before that… well, I was angry. I felt like I'd never mattered to you, or you wouldn't have just walked away."
Could he really have misread her so badly for so long? Hadn't it been obvious how much she was suffering at the time, how much it hurt her every time she had to talk to him in lab as if nothing had happened? She carefully steadied her voice. "I'm sorry you had the wrong impression. I cared a lot."
"So did I."
This was moving out of control. She rose to her feet. "I think I'd better go."
"Wait." He crossed t
o stand in front of her and set his hands on her waist. "Is there somebody else? Is that it?"
She wasn't used to this much physical contact. "No. There's nobody else." The words were hard to say.
His lips brushed the corner of her jaw and then traveled across her face until he found her mouth. "Then why not give it a try?"
It was hard to resist his persuasion when her other choice was to remember the pain. "I don't want to get hurt again."
"Neither do I."
She let him kiss her, trying to remember the reasons this had seemed like a bad idea. "North Carolina is a long way from Philadelphia."
"University of Delaware has a good marine biology program. I could do a post-doc there and commute." He slid his arms around her, urging her closer to him.
"What about my past? I'm still not willing to talk about any of that."
His lips stopped moving along her skin. "I'm not thrilled, but I can accept it. I talked to Jim about it, and he reminded me you don't do irrational things. So if you don't want to tell me something, I'll assume you have a rational reason for it."
A rational reason. Cassie only wished she was always rational. If she were, she would never have slept with Calder, much less let herself care about him. It was certainly irrational to consider letting Rob back into her life after what had happened last time.
Or was it so irrational? Tonight was more fun than she had in a long time, and whatever their other differences, Rob understood her work in a way few other men could. And she knew him. She would never go to lunch with one of his friends and discover he had an entire life she hadn't known about.
"You don't have to say anything now. We can take it one day at a time. Commitment or no commitment, whatever you want."
"No commitment? You know I don't do that." Except with Calder, and it hadn't served her well. Perhaps it was time for her to remember Calder Westing wasn't the only man in the world.
Rob smiled. "I remember."
She leaned against him, feeling his comforting solidity. "This is very sudden."
"For you, yes. I've been thinking about it for a long time." His mouth sought out hers. "So, am I released from my promise not to try anything?"
Cassie wavered. Going home alone had no appeal, and unlike Calder, Rob wanted her. Closing her eyes, she said, "Yes."
Rob leaned over Chris's shoulder. "What if you limited the variable to anaerobic bacteria? Try running some quick numbers and see what you get."
"Okay." Chris erased a column of numbers and pulled out his calculator.
It was a good thing Rob's advice on Chris's research project was sound, since Cassie suspected Chris would follow his instructions if Rob told him to use the signs of the zodiac as a variable. Chris had developed a serious case of hero worship when Rob started dividing his time between Cassie's lab and Jim's. It didn't hurt that Chris's research interests dovetailed so neatly with Rob's.
She was distracted by the ringing phone. It was Scott, making sure Erin was still due to arrive on schedule.
"Now, don't go telling me your plans," Cassie told him. "I'd rather be able to plead total ignorance, thank you."
"Are you going to tell her I know she's coming?" Scott sounded anxious.
"I expect so. I'd rather be honest with her."
She had reckoned without Erin's stubbornness. She tried to raise the subject on the day Erin arrived, mentioning she had seen Scott a few weeks earlier.
"Please, Cassie, I don't want to hear this." Erin's face was frozen.
"There's just one thing I'd like to tell you, though."
"I don't want to hear about Scott," said Erin firmly, though her voice shook a little. "I don't want to talk to Scott, and I don't want to hear from Scott."
Cassie held her hands up in front of her in surrender. "Okay, not another word, then." She wondered whether she should call Scott and warn him to stay away. She didn't know his phone number, and it would certainly not be listed. She could always email Calder for it. He had sent her another brief email, despite her lack of response to his previous one, and she had forced herself to move it to the trash file. She fought down the part of her that would welcome an excuse to be in contact with Calder again. It was simply too dangerous, and there was Rob to consider now. Scott would have to take care of himself.
Cassie returned her attention to Erin. "While we're on the subject of men you don't want to hear about, I should tell you I'm seeing Rob Elliott again."
"You're what?" Erin's horrified disbelief didn't surprise Cassie. Erin had borne the brunt of Cassie's misery after Rob broke up with her.
"He's here for the summer, and we've decided to give it another chance."
"Why? Didn't he hurt you enough last time?"
"It's not too serious at the moment. He can be good company."
Erin nodded, as if it made sense to her. She hugged Cassie. "It's hard to be alone, isn't it?"
Cassie swallowed hard. Her relationship with Rob wasn't about not wanting to be alone. They had a lot in common. "Yes, it is."
To Cassie's relief, Erin didn't show any of her doubts the next morning when Rob strolled into the lab for a quick hello. She was grateful they could be civil; Rob had worried that Erin might scare her off him. He stayed only a few minutes and then pleaded his own work and left.
Erin watched him depart. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Cassie?"
"With Rob? We've talked about what happened last time, and I think he's grown up a lot. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt." Cassie laid out microscope slides in a neat row.
"I can't forget what he did to you before. How do you know it won't happen again?"
Using an eyedropper, Cassie carefully put a drop of water on each slide. "Isn't that supposed to be my line? I thought I was the one who was always suspicious of men's motives."
Erin shook her head. "I'm done with trusting men."
Scott's voice came from the doorway behind them. "Is that for my benefit?"
Startled, Cassie squeezed the eyedropper too hard, squirting the water across a slide. By the time she had cleaned up the mess with a paper towel, Scott was standing next to them. Erin looked stunned.
"Erin, I need to talk to you."
Erin turned her face away. "I don't have anything to say to you. As you said last fall, what's over is over."
"One of the many stupid things I've said in my life. I was confused about what I wanted."
"And what I wanted didn't matter."
"Of course it mattered. I felt terrible about hurting you."
Erin looked straight at him and raised her chin. "Not terrible enough to be willing to talk about it then. You made up your mind. I was out, and that was that."
"Erin, please. I want to tell you how I've changed, not rehash the past."
"I'm not any more willing to talk about it now than you were then."
Scott's expression changed. "Is this turnabout, then?"
"No. It's that I don't trust you, and nothing you do can change that. I want you to leave."
"Erin…"
Cassie looked up from the microscope slides she had been examining as if a Nobel Prize depended on them. "Scott, she asked you to leave. I'm sorry."
He continued to study Erin, and for a moment Cassie was afraid he was going to be difficult. But then, without a word, he turned abruptly and left.
Chapter 11
THE END OF THE summer was rapidly approaching. Cassie began to wrap up the season's work. Chris moped around the lab for a few days until Cassie took pity on him and told him she'd be happy to have him back next summer, assuming her new grant came through. She could understand his feelings, remembering her own student days and how she had schemed to get back to Woods Hole each year.
Jim stopped by her lab one morning, a pile of papers under his arm. "Rob seems happy these days."
Cassie carefully measured the marsh water remaining in the beaker and marked down the amount. "That's good, but don't let him apply to University of Delaware yet
."
"You're not as happy with him?"
She was happy enough, but Rob wanted to move too fast. "How do you find any time to do science with all this matchmaking? Everything's fine. I'm just not sure about it yet."
"Ever hear from your friend Calder again?"
"Jim!" Why did he have to mention that name to her? "Not recently."
"Just wondered." He dropped the stapled papers on the lab bench in front of her.
"What's this?" She picked it up.