Page 72 of Inventing Mr Darcy

“When you see someone with a gift,” I tell him instead, “you want them to be able to use it.”

“So it all comes back to this choose happiness philosophy of yours—”

“It’s not really mine,” I explain. “But yeah.”

“I’m not sure it holds up to scrutiny,” Mr. Rational cautions, cocking one eyebrow. “Surely sometimes happiness isn’t a choice.”

“Then we do the best we can. It’s the act of choosing that matters most.”

He shifts so I can sit up and move closer to him. “You took a huge risk, coming all this way. What if I felt my only choice was to stay, to be here for my dad?”

“Then at least you’d get to choose. It wasn’t really your choice before.”

He slips a hand around the side of my head, brushes his thumb across my cheek. “And what about your happiness?”

I think about my dream job offer at Grantham College, which doesn’t offer a doctoral degree in mathematics. I still have no idea how or if we’ll be able to work everything out.

“How could I be happy,” I tell him, “knowing you weren’t?”

He draws me to him for a lingering kiss. “I know I told you I don’t believe in luck, but that isn’t entirely true. Because I am so incredibly lucky to have you. You’re so clever, so insightful, so … sharp,” he says, tipping our foreheads together so I can’t avoid his eyes. There’s an urgency to his tone, like he knows that sometimes I doubt myself and he needs me to believe him. “And I especially love that you looked both me and my dad in the eye and weren’t afraid to speak your mind.”

“Wait.” I pull back a fraction in genuine disbelief. “Are you actually saying you like me for my impertinence?”

“Impertinence?” A tiny wrinkle of confusion darts between his brows, then smooths away as his smile broadens into a grin and he leans in for another kiss. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

SEVEN-AND-TWENTY

By the time I head home a few days later, the Davises have had dozens of conversations: between Fisher and his dad; among all the Davises, with Gaby on video chat and Fisher acting as tech support; between Mr. and Mrs. Davis (I assume), in private; and of course between Fisher and his sister. Together, they’ve managed to work out an arrangement that will bring Gaby back into the Davis Investment Group fold and prepare her to take over from her father someday. She sounds more excited every time Fisher talks to her, which he tends to do late in the evenings, with me sitting right beside him.

But eager as she is for a career change, she can’t drop everything in California at a moment’s notice, so Fisher has agreed to stay in New York for as long as needed, probably into the spring as his dad is under strict orders to avoid strain and minimize stress. Once the transition is made, or Mr. Davis’s doctors decide he’s well enough, Fisher is free to leave and pursue his own goals.

“But there’s always a job here, if you want it,” his dad assures him more than once.

They both know he’ll never take his dad up on that offer.

Fisher smooths over any lingering hard feelings by volunteering to take over his father’s seat on the board of the Davis Family Foundation permanently—one less thing for his dad to worry about. The role of philanthropist suits Fisher, I think, and his mother is thrilled by the ready excuse for him to come back here a few times a year.

When he drops me off at the airport, Fisher confides, “I was waiting until I had you alone to tell you about an email I got this morning.” I raise my eyebrows in anticipation. “I’ve been accepted into my top-choice doctoral program. It’s a chance to work with one of the top theorists in discrete mathematics and graph coloring, a Fields Medal winner—that’s like the Nobel Prize of math.”

“Congratulations!” People are bustling all around us, and I haven’t forgotten the incident at Rockefeller Center, but the light in his eyes makes it impossible for me to resist kissing him. He’s the one who waited until we were in a public place to spring this on me, after all. Then I slide back to my own two feet. “I, uh, I didn’t realize you’d already applied.”

“Yeah, last fall. On a whim—with Professor Zhang’s encouragement. I wasn’t sure anything would come of it. But I wanted to know if I even had a chance.”

I snag my lower lip between my teeth. “So, um … where?”

Yale, surely. Or Harvard. Maybe the west coast. But we can make it work, right?

His expression is nothing short of devilish. “The University of Minnesota.”

“You’ll be in Minneapolis?”

“Actually”—he snatches my hands, dips his head so it’s level with mine—“I was planning to commute from Grantham. My dad took the house off the market, and he’s signing it over to me, as a thank you for coming back here when I needed him.”

Naturally, I burst into tears.

“Elle?” He searches my face with worried eyes. “I, um, I kinda hoped you’d be happy at the news.”

I snuffle and shake my head. “Not just happy,” I tell him. “Completely and perfectly and incandescently happy.”