CHAPTER 1
She had purposely chosen a seat near the back of the classroom in order to study him without being obvious. It was remarkable how unchanged he was. Physically, the ten years since they’d seen one another had enhanced his masculine appeal. During his twenties he had held the promise of being a magnetic, virile man; in his thirties that promise had been realized.
Shelley’s pen scratched across her tablet as she took notes on his lecture. This was only the second week of the fall semester, but he was already well into the topics he wanted to cover before the final exams just before Christmas. He held the class’s rapt attention.
The political-science courses were conducted in one of the oldest buildings on campus. Its ivy-covered walls suggested a prestigious East Coast university rather than a college located in a northeastern Oklahoma township.
The age of the building, its pleasantly creaking hardwood floors, and high-ceilinged, hushed hallways lent it a sedate atmosphere that appealed to the prelaw students.
The instructor, Grant Chapman, was propped against the desk at the front of the classroom. The desk was solid oak. It had survived over thirty years of professors leaning against it and bore its years well.
As did the man, Shelley thought. Mr. Chapman was as muscularly solid as he had been ten years before. Many a young heart had fluttered when he played on the faculty basketball team against the varsity. Wearing basketball trunks and a tank top, Grant Chapman had rendered the girls of Poshman Valley High School breathless. Shelley Browning included. Ten years had only honed those sleek muscles to a mature strength.
Silver now threaded the dark hair that was just as carelessly styled as it had been then. There had been a stringent rule against long hair at Poshman Valley High School, and the handsome young civics teacher had been one of its most frequent violators.
Shelley could vividly remember the day she’d first heard of Grant Chapman.
“Shelley, Shelley, wait until you see the dreamy new government teacher!” It was enrollment day after summer vacation. Her friend’s face was flushed with excitement as she ran up to greet Shelley with the news. “We have him second period and he’s absolutely beautiful. And he knows that when you talk about Chicago you’re not talking about a city in Illinois. He’s young! Government’s going to be a gas,” the girl had squealed, running off to inform someone else of their good fortune. “Oh, and his name is Mr. Chapman,” she had called over her shoulder.
Shelley now listened to the deep resonance of his voice as he answered a question from a student. But his thorough answer didn’t register any more than had the question asked him. Shelley was concentrating only on his voice. Leaning over her desk and unobtrusively closing her eyes, she remembered the first time she had heard those low, well-modulated tones.
“Browning, Shelley? Are you here?”
Her heart had plummeted to her feet. No one wanted to be called on the very first day back to school. Twenty pairs of curious eyes were riveted on her. She raised a trembling hand. “Yes, sir.”
“Miss Browning, you’ve already lost your gym shorts. You may pick them up in the girls’ locker room office. Miss Virgil sent a note.”
The class broke up and there were several catcalls and whistles. She stammered a thank-you to the new teacher, her cheeks flaming scarlet. He’d think she was a ninny. Funny, his opinion had meant more to her then than had that of her peers.
As she filed out of class that day he had stopped her at the door. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” he said apologetically. Her girl friends were standing by, wide-eyed and envious.
“That’s all right,” Shelley had said timidly.
“No, it’s not. You get five grace points on the first exam.”
She had never gotten those five extra points because she made a one hundred on the first exam and on most of them after that. Government was her favorite subject that semester.
“Are you talking about before Vietnam or after?” Mr. Chapman was currently asking the student who had inquired about the influence of public opinion on presidential decisions.
Shelley shifted back to the present. He’d never remember “Browning, Shelley” and her lost gym shorts. She doubted if he’d remember at all those four brief months he’d taught at Poshman Valley High School. Surely not after all he’d been through. One didn’t climb up through the ranks of Congress to become a valuable senatorial aide by being sentimental. One didn’t survive the public scandal Grant Chapman had survived by dwelling on incidents that had happened years earlier in a small farming community that played such an insignificant role in his colorful life.
Maybe that was why he seemed so unchanged to her. She had seen him on television often when reporters were still hounding him for a comment on the scandal that had rocked Washington society. She had studied the pictures of him accompanying the newspapers’ headline accounts. Unflattering as newspaper pictures usually were, she could see no deterioration in the face that had emblazoned itself on her mind and refused, even after ten years, to be dismissed.
Shelley was sure he wouldn’t know her. At sixteen she had been coltishly slende
r. No less svelte now, she was softer, rounder, fuller in a very feminine way. The years had melted away the childish plumpness in her face to leave behind an interesting bone structure. High cheekbones accentuated her smoke-blue eyes.
Gone were the long bangs that had characterized her schoolgirl hairstyle. Now her hair was swept back to show her finely arched brows and heart-shaped hairline. A true brunette, she was blessed with richly textured hair that fell over her shoulders like dark wine with sunlight shimmering through it.
Gone was the round-cheeked girl in cheerleader’s uniform. Gone also was the innocence, the idealism. The woman was all too aware of the world and its selfishness and injustice. Grant Chapman knew something of that, too. They weren’t the same people they had been ten years before, and she asked herself for the thousandth time why she had signed up for his class.
“Consider President Johnson’s position at that time,” he was saying.
Shelley glanced down at her watch. Only fifteen minutes of the class remained and she had taken exactly two lines of notes. If she weren’t careful, she wouldn’t excel in this class as she had in the government class that first semester of her junior year.
She recalled a cold windy day after that season’s first norther.