“Yes. Since I’m going to school full-time, I rented a small house.”
“An older one?”
“How did you know?”
“There are a lot of them here. It’s a very quaint little town. Reminds me of Georgetown. I lived there the last few years I was in Washington.”
“Oh.” She felt terribly gauche. He had hobnobbed with the elite, the beautiful, the powerful. How provincial she must seem to him.
She made a move to retrieve her books. “I don’t want to keep you—”
“You’re not. I’m finished for the day. As a matter of fact, I was going to get a cup of coffee somewhere. Would you join me?”
Her heart pounded furiously. “No, thank you, Mr. Chapman, I—”
His laughter stymied her objection. “Really, Shelley, I think you can call me by my first name. You’re not in high school any longer.”
“No, but you’re still my teacher,” she reminded him, slightly perturbed that he had laughed at her.
“And I’m delighted to be. You decorate my classroom. Now more than ever.” She wished he had kept laughing. That was easier to handle than his intent scrutiny of her features. “But, please, don’t categorize me as a college professor. The word ‘professor’ conjures up a picture of an absentminded old man with a headful of wild white hair searching through the pockets of his baggy tweed coat for the eyeglasses perched on top of his head.”
She laughed easily. “Maybe you should try teaching creative writing. That was a very graphic word picture you painted.”
“Then you get my point. Make it Grant, please.”
“I’ll try,” was all she would promise.
“Try it out.”
She felt like a three-year-old about to recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for the first time. “Really, I—”
“Try it,” he insisted.
“Very well.” She sighed. “Grant.” The name came more easily to her tongue than she had imagined. In all her fantasies over the past ten years, had she called him by his first name? “Grant, Grant,” she repeated.
“See? See how much better that is? Now, how about coffee? You don’t have another class do you? Even if you do, you’re late, so …”
Still she hesitated. “I don’t—”
“Unless you’d rather not be seen with me.” His change of tone brought her eyes flying up to his. The words had been spoken quietly, but there was a trace of bitterness lying just below the surface.
She caught his meaning instantly. “You mean because of what happened in Washington?” When he answered by silently piercing her with those gray-green eyes, she shook her head vehemently. “No, no, of course not, Mr… . Grant. That has nothing to do with it.”
She was touched that his relief was so apparent. “Good.” He raked strong, lean fingers through his hair. “Let’s go for coffee.”
Had the look in his eyes and that boyishly vulnerable gesture not compelled her to go with him, the urgency behind his words would have. “All right,” she heard herself say before a conscious decision was made.
He smiled, turned to pick up her stack of books and his own folder of notes, and propelled her toward the door. When they reached it, he leaned across her back to switch off the lights. She was aware of his arm resting fleetingly on her back and held her breath.
For an instant, his hand closed around the base of her neck before sliding to the middle of her back. Though the gesture was nothing more than common courtesy, she was acutely aware of his hand through the knit of her sweater as they walked across the campus.
Hal’s, that microcosm of society that is on every college campus in the country, was noisy, smoky, crowded. Neil Diamond was lamenting his loneliness from the speakers strategically embedded in the ceiling. Waiters with red satin armbands on their long white sleeves were carrying pitchers of draft beer to cluttered tables. Students of every description, from preppies and sorority girls to bearded intellectuals to muscled jocks, were smelted together in convivial confusion.
Grant took her arm and steered her to a relatively private table in the dim far corner of the tavern. Having secured them their seats, he leaned across the table and said in a stage whisper, “I hope I don’t have to show my I.D.” At her puzzled frown he explained, “I don’t think anyone over thirty would be welcomed in here.” Then, at her laughing expression, he clapped his hand to his forehead, “By God, you’re not even thirty, are you? Why do I suddenly feel more and more like our white-haired, doddering professor?”
When the waiter came whizzing by, Grant slowed him long enough to call, “Two coffees.”
“Cream?” the fleeing waiter asked over his shoulder.