Her heart pounded wildly. “No,” she said in a whisper, glancing over her shoulder.
“There’s no one around,” he said, and she was drawn under the bewitching spell of his low voice. “Please. Aren’t they cold?”
She wouldn’t admit they were. “You shouldn’t have left your meeting,” she said, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.
“It was over.”
“I’m sure you have something else to do.”
“I do,” he said, opening the folder and smiling benignly. “I have some reading to catch up on. Now come on, lift your feet up.”
“Grant … Mr. Chapman … I can’t sit here with my feet in your lap. What if someone saw us?”
His grin faded a trifle and he weighed her words. “Does it matter to you that much? What people think of you?”
It wasn’t a casual question and she didn’t treat it as such. She faltered, lowering her eyes from the penetrating power of his. “Yes. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does. Doesn’t it matter to you what people think?” She looked up at him again.
He considered her question. “No,” he answered softly, but with conviction. “Maybe I should pay more attention to the opinions of other people. It might be safer, more judicious. But I could waste a lot of valuable time guessing at what someone thought of me, and then I’d probably be wrong. In the long run, it’s better to do what you feel is right for you than to do what you think others feel is right for you. Within the limits of decency and the law, of course.” He smiled, but she wasn’t ready to dismiss his philosophy without more discussion. She wanted so badly to understand him.
“Is that how you were able to bounce back after the Washington scandal? If something like that had happened to me, I’d want to sequester myself and never come out. Whether I was guilty or innocent, if everyone thought I was guilty, I’d never want to face the world again. You joke, you laugh,” she said, remembering the jest he’d made to his colleagues just that evening. “I don’t think I’d be able to laugh for a long while if something like that happened to me.”
He smiled gently. “I’m a fighter, Shelley. Always have been. I didn’t do anything wrong and I’ll be damned before I’ll let erroneous public opinion keep me from living as happy and full a life as possible.” He reached across the table and took her hand. It never occurred to her to pull away. “Frankly,” he said with chagrin, “there were times when if I hadn’t laughed, I would have cried.”
Later, she didn’t recall ever lifting her legs and letting him secure her feet between his thighs. But at some point she became aware of him pressing the hard muscles of his thighs against them and massaging the soles with his thumbs.
“I guessed right. They’re cold,” he whispered.
Why was he whispering? Minutes had ticked by and they hadn’t said a word, gazing at each other over the ink-stained table piled with neglected papers. No one had invaded their privacy. The dim halls of the library were hushed. The tall shelves of dusty volumes formed a stockade around them. He whispered because even though they were in a public building, the moment was intimate and belonged exclusively to them.
“It’s chilly in here,” she murmured, mindless of what she was saying. It didn’t matter. She was speaking to him. He was so close to her she could count the fine lines that edged his eyes, hear his faintest whisper. For years she had yearned for the sight of him. Now she gluttonously feasted on it.
“You could put your sweater on.” The sleeves of a cardigan were knotted around her neck.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.” Actually she was becoming uncomfortably warm. Her head felt incredibly heavy and as light as a bubble at one and the same time. She was somnambulant, but aware of every tingling sensation in her body.
She hadn’t experienced this conflict of emotions since the days when she had sat in his classroom at Poshman Valley and graded papers while he worked nearby. One moment she had wanted to dance, to express the excitement that surged through her. The next she had wanted to surrender to blissful lassitude, to lie down and be blanketed by his weight. She felt that same way now.
For a while they read—or pretended to read. Shelley could only vouch for herself, but she thought Grant might be having as hard a time concentrating on the printed words in front of him as she was. He continued to massage her feet. No longer systematic, his movements were idle, somehow sexual. When he had to turn a page in his book, he held both her feet in one hand until he could return the other one.
She loved to watch his eyes as they traveled across the page. Imagining them moving over her body that way caused her to blush hotly. He raised his head and looked at her inquiringly, smiling slightly at the intent way she was studying him and the warm color mounting in her cheeks.
“It just occurred to me that I don’t know anything about you,” she blurted out. “Your home, your family. You weren’t from Poshman Valley.”
“I grew up in Tulsa. I was the second of three sons. My father died while I was in college. I had a very normal, happy childhood. I guess being the middle child accounts for my fighter instincts and the knack I have for getting into trouble. Maybe I’m still only trying to attract attention.”
She smiled. “I was the older child and always having to set a good example. Where are your brothers now? And your mother?”
“I lost my youngest brother in the Vietnam war. Mother, whose heart wasn’t all that strong, died within months of him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. She’d never lost anyone in her immediate family. Though she’d been away from home for years, she knew her parents were there, should she need them. The only time she’d disappointed them was with the divorce. It had distressed them greatly; they never had been able to understand the need for it. She hadn’t told them that at the time she’d had no choice. Daryl had filed the papers before he saw fit to discuss the divorce with her.
“My older brother lives in Tulsa with his wife and children. I think he’s embarrassed by me,” he admitted sadly. “I stopped to see them before coming here from Washington. He was friendly and loving enough, but there was an undeniable restraint there.”
“Maybe he’s only in awe of you.”
“Maybe.” Grant sighed. “Since there are only the two of us left, I’d like for us to be closer than we are.” His eyes scanned her face intently. “I guess it’ll be up to his sons to carry on the family name.”
She swallowed and glanced down at the page of the periodical she was supposed to be studying. It was filled with line after line of print that she should have digested by now. “It’s funny that you … that you never married.”