Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69877 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69877 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Kidding.
Mostly.
But the more I think about it, the more I like the way it’s played out. I like that Christian seems to value my brain and field of study. Most guys’ eyes glaze over the second I mention the big bang, and that had even included Daniel.
And the fact that he’d trust me to even meet his daughter? It’s romantic, in its own way. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself these past couple of weeks.
When I’d called him, Christian had been on his way to London for a weeklong business trip, and the week after that his daughter, Kylee, was traveling to Orlando to visit her maternal grandparents.
Today was the first available day for the three of us to meet, and I’m excited.
Okay, fine, I’m so nervous that I nearly threw up when I was brushing my teeth this morning.
Which is ridiculous.
I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman, I’m comfortable speaking in front of hundreds of people, I no longer bat an eye when I appear live on national television to talk about lunar eclipses.
But for some reason, a perfectly friendly businessman and his nine-year-old daughter are sending me into a tailspin.
It’s just that… I have this eerie feeling that my horoscope was right about that meeting with Christian. That it was important. And this morning, the same day I’m meeting them, it just so happens I’m beginning a relationship with “lasting impact.”
Even more eerie is that we were supposed to meet yesterday. Yesterday, when my horoscope had said nothing about an important meeting of any kind. I’d had to push the meeting to today after my dishwasher sprang an aggressive leak.
(Incidentally, yesterday’s horoscope had mentioned a household emergency…)
Even if I wasn’t committed to living my horoscope life as purely and fully as possible, the coincidence level of it all feels high.
To tame the butterflies, I’ve tried to shift my focus from Christian to Kylee, and the prospect of tutoring her.
Although academia was always my goal, I’ve never really considered teaching children. Or even high school students. It was always going to be Dr. Reed, always college students, always at a prestigious college…
Which I realize makes it sound like I was a precocious child likely to turn into an elitist, insufferable adult. I’m working on that last part.
But the point is that teaching kids has never been on my radar. And now that the seed’s been planted, I can’t stop thinking about it. The prospect of being able to shape a young mind, to foster her excitement about physics, promises a completely different sort of satisfaction than I’m used to.
A couple of minutes ahead of their scheduled arrival, I do a quick scan of the kitchen, making sure my astrology books are tucked well out of sight. As much as I’m trying to own the whole Horoscope Project thing, I just can’t bring myself to introduce a child to the concept of being a Scorpio, or whatever she is, until she understands first and foremost that it’s a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, nestled near the center of the Milky Way. I want her to understand what it is before she decides to take the leap of faith that it has any bearing on her life here.
Of course, I have to get hired first.
The doorbell rings just as I’m tucking the moon chart I’ve started keeping on the refrigerator into a drawer.
I open the door to father and daughter, and…
Holy butterflies.
He’s better than I remembered. So much better. And the connection when his eyes meet mine feels even more charged.
A little unnerved by my own reaction, I force my attention to his daughter.
Kylee is cute in a wide-eyed, serious kind of way. She has long dark curly hair pulled into a drooping ponytail, huge blue eyes, and braces.
“Hi there! You must be Kylee,” I say, deliberately focusing my attention on the girl to stop my gawking.
“Obviously. Did you think he was Kylee?” she asks with a tilt of her head, though there’s a noticeable lack of snottiness, just a genuine curiosity over my stating of the obvious.
Her father lets out the tiniest of sighs. “Kylee.”
She looks up. Blinks. “What?”
I smile to reassure them both that I take no offense and shift my gaze back to the handsome man in my doorway. “Come on in. Thanks so much for the last-minute reschedule.”
Christian smiles again. “Not a problem. We’re just excited that we could meet with the Dr. Reed.”
I raise my eyebrows, and he smiles, meeting my eyes. “I did a bit of research.”
“Ah yes. My infamous Wikipedia page,” I say with a bit of a groan. I’ve never minded having such a public profile in the past, but now that I’m no longer in the public eye, it’s strangely vulnerable to know that someone might learn more about me from the internet than from me.