That night she let him take off her bra and kiss her breasts. He had been delighted; she, disappointed. It didn’t feel as good as she had expected it to. But then it wasn’t the man she had always imagined… .
And now that man was back in her life and she was no better equipped emotionally to handle her feelings for him than she’d ever been. Except she was older and presumably wiser now. Or was she? She knew the wise thing to do would be to drop Grant Chapman’s class; she also knew she wouldn’t.
After weighing her decision for hours, wasting time she should have used for studying by staring into space, wondering how she would fend off his attempts to see her alone again, she knew a keen disappointment when he didn’t try to contact her at all.
Her heart had been hammering in her chest when she opened the door to the classroom the next time it convened, but she had arrived ahead of him. She took her seat near the back of the room and jumped each time the door opened until Grant blustered through it, his hair windblown, his expression beleaguered. “Sorry I’m late, everyone,” he apologized as he dropped his notes and texts onto the desk.
He didn’t speak to her as she left. Relief and aggravation warred within her. She told herself she should be glad he had come to his senses and converted to her way of thinking. Why then was she ruled by a feeling of discontent?
She didn’t see him on campus, but at the next meeting of her class he treated her with the same detachment. Only as she passed his desk on her way out did he say a cool, “Hello, Mrs. Robins.” To which she replied with an even cooler, “Mr. Chapman.”
“Damn him!” she cursed as she threw her pile of heavy textbooks onto her kitchen table. Kicking off her shoes, she went to the refrigerator and yanked open the door. “He’s doing it to me again.”
In reality, he wasn’t doing anything and that was what rankled. “I didn’t concentrate on anything but him my whole junior year in high school. He ruined it for me.” Of course it hadn’t been his fault that she’d had an asinine crush on him then, any more than it was his fault now. The bottles and jars in the refrigerator rattled when she slammed its door closed.
“He won’t disrupt my life a second time. He won’t!” she said, ripping off the tab on the top of a soda can. Along with it, she ripped off the tip of a fingernail. She covered her face, weeping and cursing in anguish. “I’ll get him out of my system if it’s the last thing I ever do. I swear I will.”
That resolution lasted for all of two days. Laden with assignments and reading lists, she trudged up the marble steps of the library, determined to devote single-minded attention to her studies.
Grant Chapman was the first person she saw as she entered the austere building.
He was sitting at a long table with a group of faculty members from the political-science department. He didn’t see her, so she took the opportunity to study him with a fascination that had never diminished.
In spite of the silver in the hair at his temples, he looked more like a student than a teacher. He was wearing a casual pair of tan slacks and a navy pullover, V-necked sweater. The sleeves had been pushed to his elbows. His chin was resting on his fists as he leaned over the table to hear what one of his colleagues was saying.
Grant offered a comment and everyone laughed softly, especially the woman sitting next to him. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties and was attractive in a bespeckled, bookish sort of way. Grant smiled back at her.
“Hiya, Shelley.”
She whirled around to face a young man who was in her economics class. “Hi, Graham. How’s the reading?”
“Boring,” he said as he passed her on his way to the exit.
Calling a soft good-bye to him, she was still smiling when she turned around. Her smile froze when her eyes collided with Grant’s. He was staring at her from under lowered brows, paying little or no attention to the professor who was speaking earnestly to the others. He defied her to ignore him, so she merely nodded her head once in greeting and turned on the heel of her loafer toward the stairs.
She found an empty table in a deserted corner of the third-floor stacks and spread out the mound of books she had to read. Graham was right. The material was boring at best. A half hour later, the words were blurring before her eyes and running together meaninglessly.
To occupy her wandering mind, she tracked the approaching footsteps that tapped lightly on the tile floor. Walk, walk, stop. Turn. Go back. Forward. Stop. Walk, walk …
Suddenly he was standing in front of her at the end of a long canyon formed by towering bookshelves. A smile of gratification tugged at the corners of his mouth. Had he been looking for her?
Quickly she lowered her eyes to the text in front of her. In her peripheral vision, she saw his trousered legs coming closer until he stood directly in front of her across the narrow table. When he set down a folder stuffed with papers, she raised her eyes to his, then glanced pointedly at an unoccupied table a few feet away.
“Is this seat taken?” he asked with exaggerated politeness, bowing slightly at the waist.
“No. And neither is that one.” She indicated the other table with a nod of her head.
He gave it only a cursory look over his shoulder. “The lighting is better over here.” He tried to pull the chair out, but met resistance. Bending down to see what was keeping it from sliding out from under the table, he chuckled softly. “This chair is taken.” Her stockinged feet were propped on it.
She lowered them to the floor and he sat down. Why had she
pretended to be annoyed by his intrusion? Actually, her heart was jumping with glee that he had sought her out. If the depth of feeling she saw in his eyes was any indication, he was just as glad to be alone with her. For long, silent moments, they stared at each other. Then, fighting the need to reach out and touch him, she lowered her head back to her book and feigned interest.
“Here,” he said, patting his thigh under the table.
“What?” she asked breathlessly, bringing her head back up. She ought to act as though she were engrossed in her studies, as though he had interrupted her. Why didn’t she gather up her things and leave?
“Put your feet in my lap.”