Beauty And The Brain

So her mother had offered use of the big stone-and-stucco to Rosemary if she paid the insurance and taxes, and Rosemary had jumped at the chance to live there. She’d always adored the place, and associated with it nothing but good times and warm feelings. At least, she had until she’d glanced up this morning to find a man claiming to be Willis Random haunting it.

The memory jolted her into action, and she went to her closet to tug her work uniform off its hangers. She set down her coffee long enough to throw on her straight, navy blue skirt and crisp white blouse, embroidered discreetly above the pocket Jet-Set Travels. She was still buttoning up the latter when she ducked out her bedroom door and into the hallway and ran right into Willis Random.

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...