; When she was a few feet away from his desk, when she had run out of excuses not to look at him, she lifted the screen of dark lashes from her eyes and met Grant Chapman’s gaze fully for the first time in ten years.
“Hello, Shelley.”
She gasped. Or at least she felt the soft gasp rise to her throat and only hoped later that she had caught it in time. “Hello, Mr. Chapman.”
A chuckle formed in his throat, but he, too, stopped it before it made a sound. His wide, sensually molded lips smiled easily, but his eyes were busy taking an inventory of her face. They took note of her hair, the unknowingly vulnerable eyes, the slender elegance of her nose, her lips. He studied her lips for a long time, and when her tongue came out nervously to moisten them, she cursed it for doing so.
It was dangerously still and quiet in the room. He had come away from the desk to stand directly in front of her. He had always seemed so overwhelmingly tall. Not frighteningly so, but protectively so.
“I … I didn’t think you’d know me.”
“I knew you the first day you came to class.” Standing close like this, his voice sounded huskier. When he projected it during one of his lectures, it lost the intimate pitch that was now wreaking havoc on her equilibrium. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to go through the entire semester without even saying hello.”
Ten years of maturity were swept away by his gentle teasing and she felt as young and callow as the first day she met him.
“I didn’t want to embarrass you by speaking and having you struggle to remember me. That would have put you in an awkward position.”
“I appreciate your concern, but it was unnecessary. I remember you well.” He continued to peruse her face analytically and she wondered if he thought the years had embellished or detracted from her features. She herself didn’t feel that she had become less attractive or more so; she only knew she was different from the girl who had so painstakingly graded his papers.
Had he known about her infatuation for him? Had he discussed it with a lady friend? “You should see her, sitting there so prim and proper, her hands perspiring. Every time I move, she jumps like a scared rabbit.” She imagined him shaking his head ruefully and laughing.
“Shelley?”
He routed her out of her unpleasant musing by speaking her name as though he’d had to repeat it several times. “Yes?” she asked breathlessly. Why was oxygen suddenly so scarce?
“I asked how long you’ve been Mrs. Robins.”
“Oh, uh, seven years. But then I haven’t been Mrs. Robins for two years.”
His brows, which were a trifle shaggy and thoroughly masculine, lifted in silent query.
“It’s a long, boring story.” She glanced down at the toe of her flat-heeled cordovan shoe. “Dr. Robins and I parted company two years ago. That’s when I decided to go back to school.”
“But this is an undergraduate course.”
Had any other man worn jeans and western boots with a sportcoat he would have looked as though he were imitating a film star, but Grant Chapman looked absolutely devastating. Did it have anything to do with the open throat of his plaid cotton shirt, which revealed a dark wedge of chest hair?
She forced her eyes away from it to answer him. “That’s what I am. An undergraduate, I mean.” She had no idea how delectable her mouth looked when she smiled naturally. For the last few years smiles hadn’t come easily. But when they did, the weariness that had been etched on her face by unhappiness was relieved, and her lips tilted at the corners and were punctuated with shallow dimples.
Grant Chapman seemed intrigued by those indentations at either side of her mouth. It took him a long time to reply. “I would have thought that since you were such a good student, you would have gone to college as soon as you graduated from Poshman Valley.”
“I did. I went to the University of Oklahoma, but …” She glanced away as she remembered her first semester in Norman and how meeting Daryl Robins had changed the course of her life. “Things happen,” she finished lamely.
“How are things in Poshman Valley? I haven’t been back since I left. God, that’s been …”
“Ten years,” she supplied immediately and then wanted to bite her tongue. She sounded like a good little girl giving her teacher the correct answer. “Something like that,” she added with deliberate casualness.
“Yes, because I went to Washington directly from there. I left before the year was up.”
Self-defensively she averted her eyes. The next hour of afternoon classes must have begun. Only a few students drifted by on the sidewalks outside the multipaned windows.
She couldn’t talk about his leaving. He wouldn’t remember, and she had tried for ten years to forget. “Things in Poshman Valley never change. I get back fairly often to see my folks. They still live there. My brother is teaching math and coaching football at the junior high.”
“No kidding!” He laughed.
“Yes. He’s married and has two children.” She adjusted her armload of heavy books into a more comfortable position against her breasts. When he saw the gesture, he leaned forward to take them from her and set them on the desk behind him. That left her without anything to do with her hands, so she folded them awkwardly across her waist, hoping he wouldn’t guess how exposed she felt.
“Do you live here in Cedarwood?”