The Measure of a Man. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ to look at them, she was going to need to unlock the door to the room where they were all archived.

      Which meant she needed a key. Either that or a handy burglar.

      She couldn’t ask anyone in the administration office to unlock the door. They’d want to know what she was doing. Most likely, they’d want to go down to the basement with her. She couldn’t very well say she was hunting for documentation showing what an excellent man and educator the professor was. Word undoubtedly would get back to Broadstreet and then they really wouldn’t be able to get at the files. There was no telling if someone in the administration office was trying to curry favor with Broadstreet. She had a feeling the man had spies everywhere.

      What she needed, Jane thought, was to approach someone she felt confident was in no one’s pocket. Someone who would never run and tell Broadstreet or the board what she was up to.

      Outside, it was beginning to rain. Within a blink of an eye, her office was cast into shadow, turning afternoon into practically night.

      She reached across her desk and turned on the lamp. As light filled the room, Jane smiled to herself.

      There was someone she could ask. Someone, she instinctively knew, who was in no one’s pocket and never would be.

      Chapter Four

      Some twenty minutes after she’d put in a call to Thom Dolan in the maintenance department, requesting that he send Smith Parker up to her office, there was a quick, sharp rap on her door.

      Before she could say, “Come in,” he did.

      Looking, Jane thought, not unlike a thundercloud casting ominous shadows over the western plains. There were even some drops of rain clinging to his hair, as the rain had just let up.

      It was obvious that Smith didn’t care for being summoned, but that couldn’t be helped. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting until their paths crossed again, especially since they did so seldomly.

      Smith moved closer to her desk, his very presence making the room feel even smaller than it was. The man had muscles, she thought absently.

      “What’s the emergency?” he all but growled.

      Without intending to, she pushed her chair back a little. “No emergency,” Jane answered. “I just needed to talk to you.”

      Wheat-colored eyebrows pulled together over the bridge of his finely shaped nose. Smith looked at her very skeptically, as if waiting for a punch line. “You called me in here to talk?”

      Now that Smith was actually here, she wasn’t sure just how to proceed, how to phrase her request. Except for today outside the professor’s office, whenever they did run into one another, the most she’d say was hello because she didn’t know whether or not he wanted her to acknowledge the fact that they knew one another.

      When she’d first seen him wearing the navy-blue jumpsuit with the university’s logo across the back and the title of Maintenance Engineer finely stitched across his breast pocket, she had been completely dumbstruck. She remembered thinking that there had to be some mistake, or maybe even some kind of a joke. Either that, or the maintenance man was a dead ringer for the student who had sat two rows away from her. They couldn’t possibly be one and the same.

      The Smith Parker she was acquainted with had been very bright. When he’d abruptly left Saunders shortly after those accusations had been brought against him, she’d just assumed that Smith had gone on to attend another college. And a man with a college degree didn’t concern himself with clogged pipes unless they were in his own house.

      But then she’d heard him say something to one of the teachers and she knew it had to be Smith. His voice, low in timbre, sensual even if he were merely reciting the alphabet, was unmistakable. With every syllable he uttered, his voice seemed to undulate right under her skin.

      Just the way it seemed to do now.

      Feeling suddenly nervous, Jane cleared her throat. “Actually, I wanted to see you because I need a favor from you.”

      Smith put down the toolbox he’d brought with him and looked at her as if she was speaking in riddles.

      “A favor,” he echoed slowly, taking the word apart letter by letter, as if that would reveal something beneath it. When she nodded and he was no closer to an answer than before, Smith prodded, “What kind of favor?”

      As he asked, he glanced around the office. The size of a broom closet on steroids, it still managed to be cheery because of the few personal touches she had added to it. On the wall directly behind her was a poster of a kitten, its front paws wrapped around a tree branch as its back legs dangled in midair. The animal looked precariously close to falling. For some reason that eluded him, the kitten made him think of her.

      Beneath it, in white script, was the slogan “Hang in There.” He wondered how many times a day Jane said that to herself. Subconsciously he’d been saying something along those lines to himself for some time now. Of late, he’d had this feeling that something better was going to be coming his way if he was just patient enough to wait it out.

      He guessed that maybe his spirit wasn’t entirely dead the way he’d once believed it to be.

      Aside from the poster, Jane had left the walls un-adorned. Looking at them now, he could see that they could stand a fresh coat of paint.

      He made a judgment call as to the nature of her as yet unspoken request. “Would that favor have anything to do with giving this room a makeover?”

      About to cautiously put her case before him, Smith’s words threw her. She looked at him quizzically. Where would he have gotten that idea from? She’d never complained to anyone about her office. After being part of a large collective over in the administration building, she valued this little bit of turf that was her own—for as long as she had her job.

      “Excuse me?”

      Confusion made her look adorable.

      The observation had slipped in out of nowhere, surprising him. Smith sent it packing back to the same place.

      Waving his hand around the space around him, he elaborated, “The room, it could stand a paint job. Is that the reason you sent for me?” he asked, enunciating each word slowly because she looked as if he’d lapsed into a foreign tongue.

      Jane could almost feel every single word moving along her body before it faded away.

      Nerves, just nerves, she told herself. She wasn’t accustomed to asking for favors, even if it wasn’t for herself. It made her uncomfortable.

      But this wasn’t about her, Jane reminded herself. It was about the professor. Who had been there for her when she’d needed someone.

      She shook her head dismissively. “Maybe someday, but no, that wasn’t what I meant.”

      Smith didn’t appear to hear her. His attention had obviously wandered and so had he. Over to the weeping fig tree she’d bought a month ago. It had been on sale, standing in front of a local florist shop. Passing it, the tree had caught her eye and she could envision it brightening up the dark corner of her office. Ficus benjamina was its botanical name. She called it “Benny” for short.

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