It's Never too Late

Frowning, Addy wrapped a towel around Nonnie’s head, used a second to drape her neck and helped her to sit up. “No one’s come forward?” she asked. “Even after he accepted?”

“Nope. I got my ways of findin’ out things and, hard as I tried, I couldn’t find a damn thing.”

The situation was definitely odd. She’d get to the bottom of it. Now that she had personnel concerns, scholarships were further down on her list of avenues to investigate, but she would look into it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MARK WAS WAITING for Addy when she got out of her last class Wednesday morning. They’d compared their class schedules and locations the night he’d stayed with her after she’d had her nightmare. It was hard to believe that had been just three nights ago.

She saw him leaning against the side of the building as she exited the doors with the rest of the crowd leaving the lecture hall. In his usual uniform of jeans, a polo shirt and leather shoes he should have looked ordinary to her.

But he didn’t.

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday,” he said, taking her books from her as he walked beside her toward the parking lot as easily as if they made the trek every day. Which they had, considering this was only her second day of class.

“No need to thank me,” she said. “Being with Nonnie is a treat. She reminds me of Gran.”

“For some reason I thought your grandmother was conservative. Proper.”

“She was.”

“Nonnie’s outrageous.”

“She’s smart. Savvy. Perceptive. And most of all, she adores you more than anything in the world.”

His head dropped and she added, “My gran was the same way with me. It’s nice. Everyone should have someone so firmly in their corner.”

“Tell me she didn’t tell you about me spitting out my peas in my dresser drawer.”

Addy laughed. “You spit your peas in your dresser drawer?”

“I’d seen it on TV or something. A way kids could get out of eating vegetables they didn’t like.”

He didn’t like peas. Good to know. For what purpose, she had no idea.

It was time to change the subject. To stop being friends.

Because she wasn’t who he thought she was.

They weren’t even halfway across campus yet.

She had to focus on the job she was there to do.

“I read the most incredible story.” She heard herself say the words before she’d fully decided to utter them. “I was looking up professorial ratings, checking out my botany professor.” She altered the circumstances by which she’d found the information on Sunday to fit her current situation. But she needed to run this by someone—to get another reaction. “And that made me curious about the woman at the top of the ratings charts, so I looked her up.” She was skating a fine line. Melding reality with fiction. Adrianna with Adele.

If she wasn’t careful, people would get hurt.

“They have professorial ratings?”

“Yes. I’m not sure all universities do, but I know that Montford prides itself on maintaining the highest levels of academic excellence. I did a lot of research before choosing a college,” she ad-libbed as she floated close to dangerous waters.

And scooted closer to him to avoid a pedestrian crash. The main sidewalk through campus was crowded, with lanes of students hurrying in all directions. It felt like she and Mark were a bubble in the throng, part of the rest, but separate, too.

“So who was the professor with top marks?” he asked. She couldn’t talk to Will. Or anyone. Her job at Montford completely isolated her. Had Will screwed up beyond her ability to help him? Could she be friends with Mark without letting things go too far? “A woman named Christine Evans. She taught English.”

“As in past tense? She’s not here anymore?”

They turned a corner, embarking on another, less-traveled pathway, and Addy shook her head. “She had a sister, Tory, who drove out here with her when Christine was hired to start her new job as an English professor at Montford. Tory was divorced from a rich, influential, abusive older man. He was after her, which was why she was coming out here to live with Christine in Shelter Valley. Christine, the older sister, thought Tory would be safe here. They were still in New Mexico when the ex-husband’s henchmen found them. There was a car accident and, according to the coroner, Tory was killed.