The Perfect Lover

She was still fully dressed. She hadn’t eaten, but she knew that the very thought of food was totally repugnant to her. As she got up she caught sight of the discarded notes that Katie had given her, and her heart gave a small, anxious thud.

Gareth Simmonds wasn’t like old Professor Lewis. There was no way she would be able to sweet-talk him into overlooking the falling standard of her work—and Louise knew that it had been falling—but how could she be expected to concentrate on her studies when her thoughts, her heart, her whole self had been focused so totally on Saul?

‘Ah, Louise. Good. Thank you for returning to Oxford at short notice. Did your sister come with you?’

Despite the calm and apparently friendly tone of his voice as he invited her into his study, Louise was not deceived by her tutor’s apparent affability, nor by the way he’d emphasised the words ‘your sister’.

Her plan of action, before her arrival here in Gareth Simmonds’ study, had been to attempt to bluff things out, and to stick determinedly to the fiction that she had attended all his lectures and that he was at fault in mistaking her for Katie. But one look at his face, one brief clash between her own still sore and aching dark beautiful eyes and his far too clear and penetrative navy blue gaze, had been enough to alert her to the disastrous potential of such an unwise course of action.

‘Sit down,’ he instructed her when she failed to make any response—a first for Louise. She was not normally short of quick, sassy answers to even the most awkward questions.

It was a new experience for her to feel unnerved enough to hold her tongue and apprehensively await events. She could see a mixture of pity and irritation on his face that hurt her pride. How dared he pity her?

To her chagrin, she could feel her eyes starting to burn with the betraying sting of her emotions. Quickly she ducked her head. The last thing she wanted was for the urbane, controlled and hatefully superior man seated in front of her to guess that she wasn’t feeling anywhere near as sure of herself as she was trying to pretend, and that in fact, far from not giving a damn about what he was saying to her—as she was desperately trying to show—she was feeling thoroughly and frighteningly vulnerable, and shocked by the situation she had got herself into.

Blinking furiously to banish her tears, she was unaware of the fact that Gareth Simmonds had got up from behind his desk until she suddenly realised that he was standing beside her, the muscled bulk of his body casting not just a heavy shadow but inexplicably causing the air around her suddenly to feel much warmer.

‘Louise. The last thing I want to do is to make things hard for you. I know things haven’t been...easy for you and that emotionally...If there’s a problem that I...’

Immediately Louise stiffened. It had been bad enough having to cope with the mingled anger and pity of her family, but to have Gareth Simmonds offering her his lofty, condescending ‘understanding’ was more than she could bear.

‘The only problem I have right now is you,’ she told him aggressively, relieved to be able to stir up her own anger and use it to keep the humiliating threat of her tears at bay.

She thought she heard him catch a swiftly indrawn breath, and waited for his retaliation, but instead he simply said humorously, ‘I know that legally you’re an adult, Louise, but right now you remind me more of my six-year-old niece. I’m not your enemy, you know. I’m simply trying to help you.’

‘Don’t you dare patronise me. I am not your niece,’ Louise retaliated, standing up, her cheeks flushed with temper, fully intending to storm out of his office.

But before she could do so he stopped her, taking hold of her wrist and gently but determinedly pushing her back down into her chair. And then, before she could voice her anger, to her consternation he knelt down beside her chair, so that their eyes were level as he told her, ‘Stop making things so hard for yourself. You’ve got a first-class brain but it won’t do you any good whatsoever unless you stop letting it be overruled by that stiff-necked pride of yours. We all go through times in our lives when we need other people’s help, you know, Louise—’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Louise interrupted him rudely, adding fiercely, ‘And even if I did, the last person I would turn to for it would be you.’

There was a long pause before he finally said softly. ‘That’s a very interesting statement, Louise, and if I may say so, a rather dangerously challenging one.’

He was, Louise recognised with a sharp thrill of awareness, looking not into her eyes any more but at her mouth.

‘He is just so sexy,’ she remembered her fellow female students saying when they talked about him, and now, like someone hurtling recklessly into unexpected danger, she knew exactly what they meant.

As immediate as that recognition, and twice as powerful, was her panicky, virginal rejection of it. She didn’t want to see Gareth Simmonds as a sexually compelling and desirable man. She was only allowed to have that kind of reaction to Saul.

‘I want to go,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I...’

‘Not yet. I haven’t finished talking to you,’ he had countered calmly. But he stepped back from her, as though somehow he had guessed just what she was feeling and wanted to make things just that little bit easier for her—which was totally impossible, of course. Louise knew that he disliked her every bit as much as she did him, and that he enjoyed making life difficult and unpleasant for her.

Holding her gaze, he said, ‘Very well, Louise, if you want to do this the hard way then that’s your choice. I do know what’s been going on, Louise, so don’t bother to waste my time or your own apparently failing brain power in trying to lie to me. In your shoes it would be pointless wasting the energy and intelligence you very obviously need for your studies on dreaming up unrealistic scenarios.

‘In my experience there are generally two reasons why a student suddenly fails to live up to his or her forecast academic expectations. One of those is that quite simply, and unfortunately for them, they can’t. By some fluke of fate and the examination board they’ve managed to get themselves onto a degree course they are in no way intellectually equipped to handle. The other...’

He paused and looked calmly at her. ‘The other is that for reasons of their own they have decided that they don’t want to, that there are other and no doubt more important matters to claim their attention. The solution in both cases is, however, the same. For those who don’t have the ability to continue with their course, to bring it to a swift end is, I think, the kindest way to end their misery. To those who have the ability, but who don’t wish to use it... It isn’t so much their misery one wants to bring to an end, but one’s own, and that of their fellow students...’

Louise stared at him in furious disbelief.

‘You’re threatening to have me sent down. You can’t do that,’ she told him flatly.

Gareth Simmond’s dark eyebrows had risen.

‘No? I rather think you’ll find that I can. But forgive me, Louise, I assumed that this must be what you wanted. After all...’ he picked up her course work and threw it disdainfully across his desk towards her ‘...to judge from this, continuing with your course is the last thing you really want to do.

‘Look,’ he went on, when Louise continued to glare at him. ‘If I’ve got it wrong, and the problem is that the work is too taxing for you, please tell me and I’ll try my best to get you transferred onto a less... demanding course. There are university standards,’ he reminded her, with deceptive gentleness, ‘and I’m afraid that-we do still strive for excellence rather than the mere pedestrian. If you feel that you’re not up to the work—’

‘Of course I’m up to it,’ Louise snapped angrily at him, her eyes flashing. How dared he stand there and suggest that she wasn’t up to the work? His predecessor had told her on more than one occasion, albeit perhaps in a roundabout way, that he considered her to be one of his most promising students. His predecessor... Louise clenched her fists.

‘When a student’s grades suddenly start to fall, some people believe that it’s more the teaching that’s at fault, rather than the pupil,’ she challenged him feistily.

Gareth eyed her thoughtfully.

‘Some people might,’ he agreed coolly. ‘But others might more intelligently suspect that the pupil’s nonappearance at nearly half her lectures and tutorials might have something to do with the situation. Wouldn’t you agree? I’m not a fool, Louise,’ he said, at her look of surprise. ‘I know very well that your sister has been standing in for you at my lectures.

‘Look,’ he continued, when Louise made no reply, ‘we could argue about this all day. The fact is, Louise, that you’ve been skipping lectures and missing out on vital course work. And you’ve lost weight,’ he told her abruptly, causing Louise to stare at him in astonishment. How on earth could he tell? Not even her twin or her mother had commented or appeared to notice—and with good reason, since she had taken to wearing loose baggy tops over her regulation jeans, knowing how much her mother would start to fuss if she thought for one moment that she wasn’t eating properly.

Olivia’s mother, although only a Crighton by marriage, had suffered from bulimia for many years, and her behaviour during the years of her marriage to David, her father’s brother, had left its scars on the family. Her own mother was fervently keen on healthy, sensible eating—mealtimes, until Louise had left home, had been old-fashioned family affairs, with everyone seated around the same table. Not that Louise had any problem with that—at least, not usually. She liked her food, and had a good healthy appetite, but just recently she had found herself unable to eat, too sick with longing and need, too hungry for Saul’s love to satisfy her appetite with anything else.

‘I appreciate that you’re having personal problems...’ Gareth said now.

But before he could finish, and suggest that she might benefit from talking them over with someone, she jumped in, demanding aggressively, ‘Who told you that? They—’

‘You did,’ Gareth interrupted her levelly as he studied her mutinous face. ‘You’ve lost weight You’re obviously not sleeping and you’re certainly not working,’ he reminded her quietly. ‘The facts speak for themselves. I don’t need a degree in psychology to interpret them.

‘Professor Lewis told me that he confidently expected you to get a double first. On the basis of your current course work I’d say you’d be lucky to make a third. It’s up to you, Louise. Either start giving your work some serious attention or...’

‘You’ll have me thrown out,’ Louise guessed bitterly.

Without giving him the opportunity to say any more, she snatched up her papers and stormed angrily out of his room.

God, but she hated him. Hated him!

‘Well, how did it go?’ Katie demanded. She had been waiting anxiously for Louise to return from her interview and now, as she came hurtling out into the quadrangle, almost running, Katie had trouble keeping up with her.

‘Slow down,’ she begged her, catching hold of her arm, ‘and tell me what he said.’

‘He said... He threatened to have me sent down,’ Louise told her flatly.

‘What? Oh, Lou, no! Did you tell him, explain...? Did you...?’

‘Tell him what?’ Louise asked bitterly.

‘About... about Saul... Did you explain? Did you—?’

Abruptly Louise stopped moving and turned round to face her twin.