What was really fascinating within the story, were the opposites attract kind of characters and  also, the reasons how they were accidentally brought together  : Professor Nicole Hathaway’s book promotion tour and  because she needed an assistant to travel with all over the world. Actually, she chased away the rest of the assistants, because she didn’t want them. Lilly’s uncle brought them to work together as he knew Lily needed a break from the spotlight of the TV lawyer that chased her family’s dark past and that Nicole needed support for her voyage. Their different characters brought up sparks at their first meeting, but Lily landed in Nicole’s home and somehow having tea with her mother and sister was right.

They develop a friendship that unavoidable turns into a wild attraction. Yet, until they realized they truly love each other, there’s a full amount of adventure and especially that they believe the other’s straight.  Lilly respects Nicole and hides her past and she’s afraid of the way her feelings for Nicole develop during their voyages and she’s fully aware that her past can destroy everything she builds now. She enjoys her new life with Nicole, every new city, every bookstore or university Nicole gets to speak about her book and softly advises her to lower her scientist love manual tone and she actually listens. In some places, Lilly finds a bar for the gender and has a one night affair and feels terrible about it, they land in Geneva, and even at a lesbian party in Brighton beach, yet still they don’t open themselves to each other, nor their love for women. Lilly had a wonderful childhood in a rich american family, and traveled a lot during her youth and even adult years until the her parents were discovered to have done economic fraud and committed suicide, she had  the life stroke her and although, she had no involvement in the issue she’s been stalked down by the media and especially one shark journalist that found her now, next to Nicole. She felt all those feelings she hid for : fear, humiliation and horror that everything she was now could be put to the ground by the words of a audience hungry journalist.

Nicole is a behavioral professor, she’s an introvert, and she didn’t expect her book „Love by numbers” to have such success and now she was forced to do a world tour to promote her ideas and although, she is so different from Lily (blonde, awesome looks, high heels, fashion designer clothes and confident), she wanted to have the chance to be Cole (a leather jacket confident lesbian lover), she could be that at home, living with her mother and her Indian descent represented by her uncles that wanted to see her married. She wanted desperately to love a woman, she went out in clubs to find somehow love, because this is the only good thing about this trip, until Lilly. Nicole was fascinated by her beauty and care, she felt that she slowly was falling in love with her, although she saw the way the men around were also charmed by Lilly, she believed she had no chance. She liked the way Lilly organized everything, how she knew so many languages, even a bit of Russian, her courage, her weakness when they met that crazy journalist that was saying horrible things about her and Nicole felt terribly about it and surprised even herself when she stood up for Lilly and with scientific truths she pointed out to the journalist to back off and mind her own issues. She felt then how much she wanted to protect Lilly and she was afraid of that feeling, because she knew she had no chance to stop falling in love. 

I enjoyed the adventure of getting lost in Russia because of the GPS and how they were rescued by locals and treated very kind in the Russian country side. They had to sleep on the same mattress and it felt wonderfully.

 

„Love.

Her of all people, in love and changed by love.Curious, the way despair felt through the denial and distance necessary to keep her norepinephrineand epinephrine at bay. Equally curious how admitting that her brain was high on the Love Drug left her feeling oddly relieved. Was this how she handled euphoria and panic? Push the fear away, and wallow in false contentment?

Lily listening to music. Lily laughing at a billboard. Lily reveling in a horseback ride in the middle of Russia, and sleeping like a baby on a mattress in front of a fire. Lily was everywhere in her memories. Would she, for the rest of her life, feel the pulse of excitement in her blood and the thick sensation of arousal whenever she smelled the vanilla and cherry blend of Lily’s favorite shampoo?

Her wandering path had turned back in the direction of her hotel. Music poured out of a little club that reminded her of the one in Edinburgh, though the volume was not as painful. She wasn’t ready to settle in for the night, and a frozen drink like the ones she saw other pedestrians enjoying was appealing. Dr. Hathaway knew that alcohol was not the most useful sleep aid, but Nicole, woman in love, thought it might help. She couldn’t afford to lay awake, fantasizing about the impossible beauty of Lily’s hair on the pillow next to her.”

The climax was expected, the way the go separately at a club and Nicole rescues Lilly from a scene, and holds her close, yet Lilly is too proud and needs no hero, still they leave the place and find themselves at the hotel, each one at her door step, yet they didn’t wanted to get in separately, and somehow they get to spend the night together and make love in Nicole’s room. Her sister gave birth and Nicole’s mother called at 4 am and Lilly answered (that was a funny situation) so they are separated and met when Lilly decides to go back to Nicole’s hometown, but Nicole’s not ready to tell her family about Lilly, so she leaves and they only meet again when Nicole comes to Lilly and asks her to go with her to Geneva, where she got a job as a professor for 1 year and she wants them to get married. And they do, that was a bit to early in the end of the book, but it was the right thing to do.

Loved the ass discussion :

„Her drink ordered—the house’s specialty Hurricane—she surveyed the dance floor. There were several petite blondes in the crowd. If she didn’t look too closely she could pretend they were all Lily. Lily, Lily everywhere, but not a drop to drink, not for her. There, she could imagine the one in the black dress and stilettos, dancing with her back to the bar, was Lily. Or the one in the green sequined sheath—Lily could easily wear something like that.

The bass beat was low and throbbing. Nicole doubted she would remember it later, because all she could feel was the excruciating almost-brush of Lily’s arms against hers. She resisted all her practice at dancing to seduce. Didn’t inch closer, couldn’t keep eye contact. She was aware of all the people around them, men and women, but couldn’t keep her eyes on Lily for fear of what might show. Lily seemed to melt into Nicole and they rocked together. For a long, peaceful moment, Nicole held her close and acknowledged that nothing in her life had ever felt quite so right.”

 

“Why did you do that? It wasn’t necessary. You don’t do things that aren’t necessary. Your whatever-tonin is never unbalanced. You picked me up nearly off the street this afternoon and didn’t even look like it was a strange thing to have to do.”

“You were fainting. It was necessary.”

“Well grabbing my ass in a bar wasn’t.”

“I did not grab your ass!”

“I beg to differ. It was my ass, after all.” Lily’s hands were on her hips as she tapped the toe of one stiletto.

“If my hand ended up on your ass I’d remember, believe me. It’s not something I would be likely to forget!”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Yes. Your ass is terrific!”

“Okay then,” Lily snapped. “Good night.” She pivoted expertly on her heels and stalked to her door.

Nicole knew that an escape to her own room was essential as the enormity of what she’d just said sank in. But in all defiance of the desperate messages from her brain, her feet wouldn’t move.

So much for an elegant exit, Lily thought. Her key card didn’t work on the first try, and she wasn’t sure at all why she was so angry, she just was. And she was scared, scared that on the dance floor she’d cuddled with Nicole and inhaled the surprisingly arousing scent of leather and really liked it, that is until she’d realized that Nicole was just rescuing her again. She’d let down her guard and the highly observant Nicole could figure out that she felt…more than she should.

Nicole lifted Lily’s chin with one fingertip. Lily gasped at the naked expression of desire on Nicole’s face. She’d never seen her so unguarded, so exposed. For her? Was that possible? The wonder of it set off a chain reaction flush that prickled her scalp and simultaneously tightened her nipples and threatened to buckle her knees. Nicole slowly stooped close enough to kiss the corner of Lily’s mouth. She tried not to moan and failed completely. This wasn’t some anonymous tryst. Tomorrow would arrive with a suitcase full of consequences if Nicole realized that it meant more than sex to Lily. But she hadn’t a clue how to pretend otherwise. She tried one last time to save herself from the inevitable regrets. “Cole, what are you doing?”

“I’m kissing you and not grabbing your ass.”

Her skin was hot against Nicole’s. She tried to stay rooted in what her body felt, to revel in the physical, but with every touch, every kiss, it felt as if Nicole was caressing her heart.

Too late, she thought, too late. The damage was done. Nicole was everywhere inside her that mattered, in places that would be cold and empty in future days. She begged for more and Nicole gave it to her. She said earthy, needy words that Nicole answered.

For hours her body rose to Nicole’s touch, possessed with a wild, unleashed abandon

“I’m feeling things I didn’t even know I could.” An unwise admission, Lily thought.

“I don’t want to leave until I’m sure my mother can cope with Kate being at home, and transporting her to the hospital to be with Juliet every day. But I can’t wait…” Nicole tightened her arms around

Lily. “I can’t wait to spend the nights with you.”

Lily closed her eyes and tried not to again hear a double-edged compliment. Only the nights? And yet what possible basis did Lily have to expect more?”

A beautiful love story, mixed with scientific thought of wisdom that I have found very attractive!

“How can people who are, on the surface, as different as crustaceans and corn, meld into a satisfying, enduring relationship? Based on the research it all comes down to chemistry. Today I want to talk about how our DNA determines our brain’s response to the chemicals of passion and love.”

“A complex and uniquely tuned mixture of chemicals is pumping through all of our brains right now. No two people, the world over, have the same mixture. We can, however, have similar mixtures. When we feel attraction or experience good sex our brains load up on oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine. Even scientists refer to the mixture as the Love Drug, and it’s powerful stuff. No doubt all of us know someone who, under the influence of the Love Drug, did something they would have

never otherwise contemplated.” Nicole nodded along with many in the crowd. “But we also know people who didn’t lose their mind—literally—when they were obviously pumped full of the Love Drug. Researchers have determined that specific strands of DNA sequencing are what control how our brain handles the Love Drug cocktail. What I found in my study is that people with the same type of response had relationship lengths at least twenty percent longer than those with different responses to the Love Drug’s effect.

Good question—that’s an easy leap of logic to make, but it would be an incorrect one. Physical manifestation of the Love Drug in our system is only one indicator of its presence, and perhaps of how much of it is present, but it’s not a consistent measure of what’s actually going on in our brains. Sexual attraction can evidence itself in a telltale blush, a shaky voice, averting of eyes. But another person with the same amount of the Love Drug releasing in their brain may look nonchalant. On the inside, by their own standards however, they may feel as if they’re going insane with these foreign feelings. That person might have…”

“That person might have…The person you describe might have a higher resistance to the physical impact of the Love Drug, that’s all. But I want to clarify that the exterior response to our brain chemicals varies both because of biological reasons—it’s in our hard wiring—and for social reasons. For example, most men feel the urge to cry as often as women do, but social conditioning has taught them to tamp down the physical response. So it would be a mistake to think that just because we’re hardwired to respond in a certain way that we don’t have some measure of control. It’s equally a mistake to think that because we have a measure of control we’re not sometimes incapable of mastering our hard wiring.” She glanced at Lily, then back at the audience. “An example from my own life would be that my mother’s hard wiring is to shriek, loudly, at the sight of a spider. When I was little and she did that it frightened me and when I was in my twenties I realized that she had learned how not to scream for my sake.”