She pivoted to face him. “Okay,” she shouted. No longer the infatuated student in awe of him, she was a woman meeting an adversary on equal footing. “I can’t stay in your class after what happened the other night. I should never have let you kiss me.”
“You didn’t let me kiss you. You were doing your fair share.”
“I … I was … To satisfy my curiosity. That’s all.” She was lying, buying time, and he knew it.
“What did your fancy doctor-husband do to you to make you afraid of sex?”
“I’m not!”
“You’re afraid of something.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then why are you standing there so tense and rigid? Surely you know I would never hurt you. What did Daryl Robins do to you to make you so guarded around men?”
“Nothing!”
“Tell me!”
“He taught me what heartless, self-serving, selfish creatures they are!” she yelled, her breasts heaving in agitation.
His head went up and back as if she’d clipped him under the chin with a right hook. There were several moments of charged silence.
Now that she’d dropped her bomb, Shelley took a deep breath and continued. “His father didn’t come through as Daryl had hoped. In order to support us, I had to quit school and go to work. I worked in an office with a hundred others just like me. I started as a file clerk and gradually worked my way up to the typing pool. For five years I spent eight back-breaking hours a day pounding on that machine.
“When I got home from work I did the shopping, the housework, the laundry, the cooking. Then I typed Daryl’s reports. All through his last two years of premed, three years of med school, and one year of residency, I never complained. I was doing my wifely duty. Never mind that I was becoming boring as hell because all I had to talk about was the gossip in the office.
“Daryl worked, too. He studied. I’ll give him that much credit. It paid off. He was put on staff at one of the major hospitals in the city.”
She paused, taking in another gulp of air. “One night I cooked beef stroganoff, one of his favorites. He came in, sat down to dinner and said, ‘Shelley, I don’t love you anymore. I want a divorce.’ ‘Why?’ I cried. ‘Because I’ve outgrown you. We have nothing in common anymore.’
“Now, can you see why I don’t want any hassles in my life? I won’t be some man’s unsalaried housekeeper and bedmate. I’m a free and independent agent. I don’t want entanglements or disruptions. Even if you weren’t who you are, even if it weren’t already impossible that we become involved, I wouldn’t want you in my life.”
Exhausted, she collapsed into a chair, rested her head on the back cushion and closed her eyes. The woeful tale of her marriage had never been revealed even to her parents. Why she had blurted out the cold hard facts to Grant, she didn’t know. But now maybe he’d understand why she refused to see him on any terms.
The only element she had left out of her story was her sexual relationship with Daryl. In five years, it had never improved after a nightmarish wedding night. She had finally learned to tolerate his sweaty, vigorous lovemaking. Through a kind of self-hypnosis, she had trained her body to accept him even though her mind rejected him. Nothing he did stirred her. She lay beneath him as one dead.
Admittedly she had been unfair to Daryl. She had married him for all the wrong reasons. At that time in her life she had believed womanhood and marriage were one and the same. Every woman got married. It was the only truly accepted thing to do. Conforming to other people’s standards had been a way of life to Shelley Browning and it never entered her mind to buck the system.
She might have been able to make Daryl happy, and vice-versa, but for the one essential ingredient lacking in their marriage. She didn’t love him and never had. Still carrying a secret torch that nonetheless burned brightly and continually in her heart, she had settled for someone else because the man she wanted was out of her reach.
“Shelley.” His quiet voice, coming to her from across the room, across the years, was like a caress. In self-protection, she didn’t open her eyes. “I’m sorry for the unhappiness you’ve known. I don’t want to be a disruption in your life.”
She wanted to scream that he’d always been a disruption. Instead she opened her eyes and said wearily, “Then you won’t pursue this relationship?”
He shook his head sadly. “I can’t let you slip through my fingers again. I thought if I could see you in class every other day, it might be enough until the semester was over. But after what happened the other night, I know I can’t wait any longer. We were off limits to each other before. Not now.”
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“Yes now. More than ever. Too much has happened to both of us.”
“You’ve been spurned and I’ve lost my own naiveté. Neither of us is idealistic any longer. We can help each other.”
“We can also hurt each other.”
“I’m willing to chance that.”
“I’m not,” she cried desperately and jumped up from her chair. “You come roaring into my life like a steam-roller from out of the past and expect me to fall all over myself. Okay, Mr. Chapman, if it elevates your ego to know, I did have a crush on you. I worshiped the ground you walked on. My world revolved around the afternoons I spent with you. Everything I said and did was weighed against what you’d think of it. When my boyfriend kissed me, I pretended it was you. There, does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?”