Falling for Your Madness by Katharine Grubb Read Free Book Online Page B

glance. He just ate his small, precisely-cut bites of tandoori chicken and watched me.
     
    I gave it to him. “What do you think?” He took his time to answer. I’d learned by my work with clients that these silences were extremes. Either the work was loved and the client was too moved to speak, which rarely happened to me, or it was so terribly bad that the client was having a hard time thinking of something positive to say.
     
    “You, my dear, are exquisitely talented. This is magnificent. May I keep it?”
     
    “Yes, of course.” I was a tiny bit disappointed that I couldn’t kiss that picture. I consoled myself that perhaps I’d be kissing the real thing very soon.
     
    “Now I have another question.”
     
    “Professor, is it on the test?”
     
    “Oh, dear, sweet Laura, you have no idea …” He blushed. He really liked me. It was going to be all I could do to get through this meal. “Who do you think has the most power in a relationship? Men or women? And please, back up your answers with selections from the reading.”
     
    “Wow. That’s quite a question. Do you ask it in your class?”
     
    “I asked it today. It’s one of my favorites to ask. As I expected, it generated a lively discussion. I usually ask it right about the time that we’re talking about Arthurian legends and the concept of chivalry. And then, almost without fail, I write it on a board behind me, get chalk dust all over my jacket, and have the whole front row laughing at me. You, dear, have the question without the humiliating spectacle.”
     
    “Lucky me.”
     
    “No, lucky me. I am, by far, the lucky one here. But on to the question.”
     
    “I’m going to say men.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “Because they get to do whatever they want. And they …” Why was he taking me there? I didn’t want to think about Trey, and before him, Andrew, and before him, Chase. I really didn’t want to think about how I’d flirted with them and gotten their attention and then had had to fight to keep it. I didn’t want to think about how they’d resented putting aside their video games when I would call them. And it had never occurred to any of them to restrict their hands and lips to specific points on the southern hemisphere of my lovely face. They had other power too. A kind that wasn’t always welcome. One that started out fun and didn’t always end that way. I had a tear in my eye and really didn’t want David to see it. “I’m going to say men because they expect me to put up with their nonsense. And I feel powerless.” This was too hard of a question, Professor. Don’t quiz me on it. I’ll probably fail.
     
    He offered me his handkerchief. “Please forgive me for upsetting you. It was not my intention.”
     
    “It’s okay.” Could I hold his hand? Was that against the rules? “Maybe I need to ask it more often. I am going to stick with my answer. Men have the power.”
     
    “I don’t disagree with you. But please indulge me, for just a moment, for the sake of discussion. Do you think that it’s possible that women have more power? Could the powerlessness that you describe, which is very valid and is always brought up in my class, be experienced by women who either don’t know that they have power over men or choose not to use it?”
     
    “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” Then I remembered. I had too thought about it. My little sister knew about this, and sometimes, I was shocked at how she used her power.
     
    “While we’re friends, I’d like for you to seriously think about it. One of the reasons that I have this project, this quest for a bride, set up the way I do is so that the women in my life feel like they have power, like they have control of where we’re headed as a man and a woman.” He swallowed. He looked nervous. “Do you find it suits you?”
     
    “David, the best part of this arrangement is that I do know what’s going to happen. It’s very freeing. But you