Passion in Secret. Catherine Spencer

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СКАЧАТЬ By then it was after five o’clock and the building was pretty much deserted except for the cleaning staff. In fact, when she heard the door open, she was so sure it was the janitor, come to empty the waste bins and clean up the sinks, that she said, “I’ll be out of your way in just a second,” without bothering to look up from her task.

      The door clicked closed which, in itself, should have alerted her to trouble. “No rush. I’ve got all the time in the world,” came the reply, and there it was: the dark, gravelly voice which had so captivated the school secretary earlier.

      It didn’t captivate Sally. It sent shock waves skittering through her. The stack of papers in her hand flipped through her fingers and slithered over the floor. Flustered, she dropped to her knees and began gathering them together in an untidy bundle.

      “I’d no idea teachers put in such long hours,” Jake said, his cane thudding softly over the floor as he came toward her. “Let me help you pick those up.”

      “No, thank you!” Hearing the betraying edge of panic in her voice, she took a deep breath and continued more moderately, “I don’t need your help. In fact, you shouldn’t be here at all. If Tom Bailey finds out—”

      “He won’t. His was the only car in the parking lot and he was leaving as I arrived. We’re quite alone, Sally. No one will disturb us.”

      She was afraid of that! “Oh, really? What about the cleaning staff?”

      “They’re busy in the gym and won’t get down to this end of the building for at least another hour.” His hand came down and covered hers as she scrabbled with the pages still slipping and sliding from her grasp. “You’re shaking. Are you going to faint again?”

      “Certainly not!” she said, scooting away from him before he realized how easily his touch scrambled her brains and stirred up memories best left untouched. “I just don’t like people creeping up and taking me by surprise, that’s all.”

      “I’m not ‘people,’ and I didn’t creep.” He tapped his bad leg. “It’s a bit beyond my capabilities, these days.”

      “No, you’re the wounded hero come home to bury his wife, but if you insist on being seen with me at every turn, you’re going to lose the public outpouring of sympathy you’re currently enjoying, and become as much of a pariah as I have.”

      “I’m not looking for sympathy, my lovely. I’m looking for information.”

      My lovely…that’s what he’d called her in the days when they’d been in love; when they’d made love. And the sound of it, falling again from his lips after all this time, brought back such a shock of déjà vu that she trembled inside.

      Late August, the summer she’d turned seventeen, just weeks before he started his junior year at university, two hundred miles away…wheeling gulls against a cloudless sky, the distant murmur of the incoming tide, the sun gilding her skin, and Jake sliding inside her, with the tall grass of the dunes whispering approval in the sea breeze. “I miss you so much when we’re apart,” he’d told her. “I’ll love you forever.”

      But he hadn’t. Thirteen months later, she’d spent two months studying art in France. When she returned, she found out from Penelope that he’d been seeing a college coed while she’d been gone.

      She’d been crushed, although she really shouldn’t have been. As her weeks abroad passed, there’d been signs enough that trouble was brewing. His phone calls had dwindled, become filled with long, awkward pauses. He wasn’t there to meet her as promised, when she came home again. He didn’t even make it back for Thanksgiving. And finally, when there was no avoiding her at Christmas, he’d shamelessly flaunted her replacement in her face.

      “Jake Harrington’s a two-timing creep,” sweet sympathetic Penelope told her, “and you’re too smart to let such a worthless jerk break your heart. Forget him! There are better fish in the sea.”

      But she hadn’t wanted anyone else. As for forgetting, it was a lot easier said than done for an eighteen-year-old who’d just discovered she was pregnant by the boy she adored and who’d passed her over for someone new.

      The spilled assignments at last cradled in her arms, Sally struggled to her feet with as much grace as she could muster and crammed the papers into her briefcase. “We went over all this on Saturday. I’ve told you everything there is to know.”

      “Okay.” He shrugged amiably. “Then I won’t ask you again.”

      Elation flooded through her. “I’m glad you finally believe me.”

      “Of course I do,” he said. “You’re not the kind of person who’d hold out on me about something this important, are you?”

      Guilt and suspicion nibbled holes in her relief. “Then why did you come here to begin with?”

      “Mostly to find out if you’ve forgiven me for landing you in such a mess an Saturday. If I’d known Colette was going to go after you like that—”

      “You had no way of knowing she’d react so badly. Consider yourself forgiven.”

      “A lot of women wouldn’t be so understanding,” he said diffidently. “But then, you never were like most women.”

      Diffident? Jake Harrington?

      She’d have laughed aloud at the idea, had it not been that the hair on the back of her neck vibrated with warning. He was up to something! She could almost hear the wheels spinning behind that guileless demeanor! “And?”

      “Hmm?” Doing his best to look innocently virtuous, he traced a herringbone pattern over the floor with the tip of his cane.

      “You said ‘mostly’—that you were here mostly to find out if I’d forgiven you. What’s the other reason?”

      He tried to look sheepish. Would have blushed, if he’d had it in him to do such a thing. “Would you believe, nostalgia got the better of me? When I heard you were on staff here, I couldn’t stay away.” He leaned against one of the cabinets holding supplies and sent her a smile which plucked unmercifully at her heartstrings. “This is where we met, Sally. We fell in love here. I kissed you for the first time next to the lockers right outside this room. You had blue paint on the end of your nose.”

      “I’m surprised you remember,” she said, warmth stealing through her and blasting her reservations into oblivion.

      “I remember everything about that time. Nothing I’ve known since has ever compared to it.”

      The warmth turned to melting heat. Against her better judgment, she found herself wanting to believe him. “You don’t have to say that. You shouldn’t say it.”

      “Why not? Don’t I have as much right to tell the truth as you do?”

      He sounded so sincere, she found herself wondering. Was he playing mind games with her? Trying to trip her up? Or was she seeing entrapment where none existed?

      Deciding it was better to err on the side of caution and put an end to the meeting, she indicated the bulging briefcase and said, “I should get going. I’ve got a full evening’s work ahead.”

      He eased himself away from the desk. “Me, too. I’m СКАЧАТЬ