The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love (Love's Academic, #1)

by India Holton

Her plain brown coat, accompanied by a small hat, gloves, and air of cultivated intelligence, triggered fear in any man who glanced her way: one catcall, and she might educate them.

“I thought you were a nice girl,” he said. She looked him in the eye steadily. “That doesn’t mean I’m weak.”

He wanted to undress her brain, stroke her perspective, make her gasp out the most fascinating theory she hid from all other men. (He also wanted to kiss the hell out of her, but that went without saying.)

Men had always been vague shapes at the edge of her awareness, rambling on about sports or telling her how to do something she’d mastered in adolescence.

After all, fun was lovely and kisses were sweet, but tenure was forever.

Beth found herself driven to the verge of frowning. Why people—?! (That was the full extent of the sentence. Extroverts need not trouble themselves asking for an explanation.)

“I will always come for you, Beth. You are my sunlight.” She would have swooned, were it not for the present circumstances. Leaning into the warmth and comfort of his hand, she smiled at him in return. “You are my wild wind.”