Free Scandalous by Tilly Bagshawe

It would silence all the envious mutterings about him being a phony academic, a pretty face with a head for numbers but not a
real
scientist. It would change his life. But would he get away with it?
    Why not? It’d be my word against hers, a professor against an infatuated undergraduate.
    “Theo!” Sasha’s voice brought him reluctantly back to reality. She’d pulled on a T-shirt and panties, but still had that flushed, tousled, postcoital look that never failed to give him a hard-on. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine.” He closed the file, making an effort to keep his tone casual. “There’s some interesting stuff here. Definitely.”
    Sasha’s face lit up.
    “But it does need work. Particularly in the first section, some of your equations look shaky to me. Given how much you’re extrapolating from those foundations…hey, don’t look so crestfallen.” He kissed her. “This is good stuff, Sasha. You can’t expect to get it pitch-perfect on a first draft.”
    “I suppose not.”
    “Look, I tell you what. Make me a copy of it. If you like I’ll look at the problems in more detail over the summer.”
    “Would you really have time?”
    “Well, not really. But I’ll make time,” he said magnanimously, pulling on his jeans and buttoning up his shirt. Sasha looked so utterly ravishable he was half tempted to screw her again. But until he had that document safely in his possession, he knew he wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.
    “I’ll e-mail it to you when we get back to college,” said Sasha.
    “No, no, don’t do that,” said Theo hastily. “I hate e-mail. Just stick it on a disc and drop it in my mail slot before you go.”
    Sasha watched him stand up and brush the grass and dust off his clothes.
    He’s so perfect. Handsome, brilliant, kind, the whole package. How on earth am I going to survive the summer without him?

    Two weeks later Theresa Dexter sat at her desk at home, watching Theo scribbling feverishly at
his
desk, and said a silent prayer of thanks.
    Thank you, God, for making him happy again. For bringing him back to me.
    Eighteen months ago Theo had been as miserable as she’d ever known him. Theresa knew that the spiteful gibes of his fellow physicists were hurtful to him. She also suspected that her husband felt the absence of a child in their lives much more keenly than he admitted to her. But she felt sure that his depression was more than that. Something was wrong, and as hard as she tried to discover what it was and to reconnect with him, she couldn’t.
    Then miraculously, around Christmas of that year, Theo’s spirits had lifted. He still came home tired. But he
left
home full of the joys of spring, bouncing out of the house like Tigger. It made Theresa’s heart sing to watch him. By the spring, their sex life had begun to revive, and in the last six months it had positively exploded. It was like dating a teenager, the energy, the
enthusiasm
…Theresa’s hands were shaking when she screwed up her courage and asked Theo if they could try IVF. Ever since the meeting with Dr. Thomas, he’d been implacable on that score: it was expensive, and it wouldn’t work. But to Theresa’s delighted amazement, he agreed right away, even taking her out to their favorite curry house to celebrate the decision with chickenjalfrezi and two large Cobras. Walking home hand in hand, happily bloated on naan and beer, Theresa realized what had been missing in her marriage for so long: fun. She didn’t know what had wrought the change in Theo, and she didn’t care.
We’re going to be happy again.
    Theresa finished her own book in the spring but never published it. Theo, meanwhile, was still struggling with his follow-up edition to
Prospective Signatures
. It was the one part of his life that clearly still troubled him. And the one area where Theresa, whose knowledge of physics would have fit comfortably on the back of a stamp, was completely unable to help him.
    But God,