“Of course.” She liked the way he didn’t even hesitate to do as she asked, yet at the same time, she felt threatened by his easy compliance. She couldn’t have him wanting anything from her in return.
“I spoke with Becca Parsons and I have a message for you,” she told him, ensuring that he didn’t get the wrong idea.
Ben nodded and continued on to his seat, once again a student like all the rest.
A couple of weeks ago he’d asked Tory for her friendship. For a split second there, she’d been tempted to give it to him. But only until she’d remembered that she didn’t have anything to give.
Her life was a lie.
She was an imposter.
Tory Evans was dead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“TELL ME WHY you like ‘The Children’s Hour’ so much,” Ben said, walking with Tory toward her office. “It’s not considered one of Longfellow’s major poems, but it’s obviously special to you.”
By the time she’d finished answering questions immediately after class, another class had been preparing to start and there hadn’t been time to speak with Ben in private.
She had a message for him from Becca Parsons, just as she’d said. And a favor to ask. Not something that could be done with his fellow students milling about. So she’d asked him to walk along with her.
“Special to me?” she asked, relaxing a bit as she accepted his presence.
He’d taken to walking Tory to her office almost every day after their class. He’d explained that he had another class in a building on the same side of campus the following hour. During these brief walks, they’d fallen into the habit of discussing whatever had been the class topic that day, and Tory had begun to enjoy the stolen moments. Today, however, had been the first time she’d been the one to suggest he accompany her.
Because she was on a mission for Becca Parsons. Not because she was still jittery from this morning’s episode in the parking lot and wanted the reassurance of his company.
“Special to you,” Ben repeated.
“How do you know it is special to me?” she asked, careful as usual to keep enough distance between them that they never touched as they walked.
“I have to cover a lot of ground in this class—not every poem or story is going to be among my personal favorites.”
“Ah, but this one really is, isn’t it?” he insisted, grinning at her.
“What makes you so sure?” She grinned back.
“The look in your eyes when you recited it.” He’d grown serious, was moving too close.
Tory increased her pace, wishing they’d reached her office already. “I can feel the love Longfellow felt for his daughters,” she told him, and it was the simple truth. “I’ve been to his house, and I could almost sense his personality. ‘From my study I see in the lamplight,/Descending the broad hall stair,/Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,/And Edith with golden hair,”’ she quoted. “I’ve stood in the study he was sitting in when he wrote that poem, looked up at the stairs—and on the wall are three portraits in descending order. Alice looks grave, pensive, Allegra is laughing, and Edith has beautiful golden hair.” She paused, tried to describe the experience. “Being in a writer’s house makes it so real. There’s kind of an aura about a place like Longfellow’s home, or Alcott’s or Hawthorne’s.”
“You make me want to go to New England. To tour all these places you’ve seen. To have this all come alive…and inspire me.”
“Isn’t that what a teacher is supposed to do? Inspire her students?”
Except that she wasn’t a teacher.
Or was she?
“History certainly comes to life when you’re right there seeing it, touching it,” she murmured.
“History and historical figures.”
“For some people,” he said, moving aside as a young man sailed between them on a skateboard. “I imagine there are a lot of people who tour those homes, see the same things you saw, and remain unimpressed.”
Feeling warm, though not from the October sun, Tory said, “Maybe.”
“It’s like those hats you told us about, the ones on Emerson’s hat rack in his home. The way you described them, I could see the men who once owned them, sitting there discussing the state of the world. And it made Emerson’s essays, his whole world, more real to me. Less abstract.”
She had no idea how he managed to see such good in her. And more amazing, to make her feel good about herself, during these few minutes she was with him.
Or was it Christine he made her feel good about?
“Phyllis and I had lunch with Becca Parsons on Saturday,” she said, slowing as they neared her building. She wanted her message delivered before they got there. She didn’t want him to have any excuse to come inside with her.
“The president’s wife, the one who did the biography on my great-grandfather.”
“That’s right,” Tory said, stopping outside the door of her office building. “She wants to meet you, Ben, to hear everything you’re willing to tell her about your great-grandmother and the subsequent generations on that side of the family.”
He frowned. “I’m not sure I—”
“You don’t have to tell her anything you don’t want to,” Tory assured him hastily. “Becca doesn’t pry. You just find yourself talking to her. And she respects silence.” Tory had found herself growing fond of the older woman as the three of them turned a one-hour lunch on Saturday into a three-hour discussion. They’d only left then because Becca had to get home to breastfeed her baby. Will jealously guarded his private time with his daughter, but there were some things he just couldn’t do.
Shaking his head, Ben opened the door for her, then followed her inside and down the hall.
“She’s eager to share what she knows about the Montfords with you, as well,” Tory said.
She didn’t know why getting Becca and Ben together had become so important to her. Her normal course was to stay out of other people’s lives. Besides, she’d never been around long enough to play much of a part in them.
Except for Christine’s, and look what a stellar job she’d done there.
For some reason, getting Ben to meet with Becca mattered. And she was afraid it mattered because she knew how much it would mean to him. He’d seemed starved for family connection that day he’d introduced her to his great-grandfather. Helping him find more of himself was a small thing she could do to thank him for the many times he’d unknowingly bolstered her these past weeks.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said as they reached Christine’s office door. “I’ll meet with her if you’ll come along.”
Tory stared at him. “Me?” she asked, pulling her keys out of the front pocket of her satchel. “Why should I be there?”
“Because I know you, and you know Becca Parsons.”
And that was the only way he would agree to do this; Tory read it in his eyes. Despite her unease, she took only a moment to make her decision.
“Okay, I’ll set up a time.” She inserted her key into the lock. “What’s good for you?”
“Any evening after five.”
“I’ll let you know….”
Tory turned to say goodbye to him before he could follow her into the office. She’d originally hoped to avoid even this much contact. Now she needed some space, some breathing room, a chance to get hold of herself. Fortunately, he was already heading down the hall.
“See ya,” he called over his shoulder.
“Okay.” Tory’s relief was lost in the realization that Ben Sanders’s butt looked darn good in snug blue jeans.
WEDNESDAY MORNING, Buddy peed on Ben’s tennis shoe.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked the puppy none too nicely, as he held the little guy’s neck so he could look him straight in the eye.
Buddy’s tail drooped.
“You know better than this.” Still holding the puppy’s head, Ben swabbed up the mess with a paper towel. “Your papers are over there, the door’s that way, and you know how to communicate. W
hat do you think barking’s for?”
Not fighting his captivity, Buddy watched. And listened. Or seemed to be listening.
“We’ve been over this before.”
He’d thought the puppy was housebroken. Potty-training Alex had been easier.
Throwing his sneaker into a sinkful of soapy water, Ben slipped on a pair of brown leather tie-up shoes, the ones he usually reserved for wearing with Dockers, not with faded blue jeans. Then he grabbed his backpack and hurried out. The truck needed gas and he was now late.
The first station he went to had an electrical problem and the pumps were out of order.
Grumbling, he drove to the only other station in town, just a block away, for pumps that worked. The gas was ten cents more per gallon.
There were no parking spots left in his usual lot when he finally got to school. He had to drive around to his second choice to find one. And getting out of the truck, he dropped his keys as he reached for the backpack he’d thrown on the seat earlier.
He bumped his head when he bent down to get the keys.
And swore a blue streak. Damn fine day this was turning out to be.
Christine had already started class by the time Ben got there. Embarrassed, he mouthed an apology from the doorway and hurried to his seat.
She was talking about James Fenimore Cooper, giving an overview of the man’s life, the circumstances under which he wrote.
“Let’s consider The Last of the Mohicans,” she said. Ben pulled out the copy he’d reread over the weekend.
“On the surface, we have a heroic story, a savior…”
Ben nodded along with a few other people—probably the only other students who’d actually read the book. The rest were scribbling furiously, expecting to pass a test on a book they’d never read by taking notes in class.
“It’s what made The Last of the Mohicans a classic, wouldn’t you say?”
Everyone nodded.
She stood, as always, behind her desk, a barrier between her and the class. She was wearing one of her prim-and-proper suits—navy today—and although Ben couldn’t see her feet, he could guess which shoes she had on.
The woman was drop-dead gorgeous. Now that he’d seen her in street clothes, he realized that she knew how to dress, how to accentuate her beauty. So why in hell did she become so mousy in the classroom? She seemed to know her subject inside out, yet when she spoke about anything else, it was with a lack of confidence that amazed him.
“The Last of the Mohicans is a pop-culture epic written by a man for men,” Christine said with more vehemence than he’d heard all semester.
It was the first time she’d been full of crap, too.
“Mark Twain had some pretty scathing things to say about Cooper’s writing, but I didn’t need his help to determine that The Last of the Mohicans is filled with shock tactics—or what would have been considered shock tactics at that time—plus gratuitous violence and a hero who’s little more than an ego-bound male chauvinist posing as the good guy.”
“I disagree.” Ben hadn’t meant to speak out loud. Hadn’t realized he had until Christine’s gaze pinned him to his seat. Every one of his twenty or more classmates was staring at him, too.
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Hawkeye was a hero in every sense of the word. He fought for what was right, for what was true. He fought for the woman he loved, for her family and for the country.”
“He fought for his pride.”
She’d been so right about everything the entire semester. How could she be so far off course now?
“You’d rather a man not have any pride?” he challenged, sliding down in his seat, his legs out in front of him. “That’s heroic?”
“This isn’t about me.” Christine crossed her arms over her chest—distracting him. “We’re talking about a man who wrote fantasy for other men. Cooper spoke of his times, tells us of his times, through story.”
“Hawkeye risked his life, repeatedly, for a battle that wasn’t even his own,” Ben said, although he told himself to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t even as if he cared all that much. He was just feeling ornery; it wasn’t her fault he was having a bad day.
He might have shut up, too, in spite of all that, if he hadn’t been so sure she was wrong.
If he hadn’t spent another weekend thinking about her.
If he hadn’t started thinking about the body beneath the clothes she wore—and the person inside that prim exterior.
“…which is why I agree with Ben,” a girl a couple of rows over said. Ben had missed her argument, tuning in only for the last few words.
“But it’s why he fought those battles that’s the crux of the story,” Christine said, not backing down an inch. “He fought because he was proving something. He was a man proving to other men what real manhood was all about.”
“He fought because he cared,” Ben said softly.
“Cared about what?”
Her gaze met and held his. Tapping his pen against his desk, Ben considered her question. Hawkeye cared about his woman, her sister and family. He cared about the wrongs being done to native Americans, cared about right and wrong.
But he also cared about his pride, about his own sense of manhood, about proving himself.
Ben might be completely right. And so might she.
He held his tongue.
“I SPOKE WITH Becca Parsons,” Christine told Ben on Friday as he walked with her to her office on the way to his next class. He hadn’t accompanied her after the previous English class, on Wednesday; he’d opted to head out to his truck, instead, and keep his disgruntled mood to himself. “She’s invited us both to dinner next Friday night.”
Dinner with Christine on Friday was really all Ben heard.
“Can you make it, or should I tell her another time would be better?”
Mentally checking his social calendar took about two seconds. “Next Friday’s fine.”
“You’re sure you don’t have other plans?” Christine asked, keeping her usual distance from him.
“I shoot hoops with Zack Foster now and then, when he can get away. Which isn’t often, because his partner, Cassie Tate, is out of town a lot with her pet-therapy project,” Ben said. “I walk my dog every day. That’s the extent of my social life.”
“Oh.”
“How about you? Don’t you have something planned for a Friday night?”
She grinned at him, almost as though for a moment there, she’d forgotten she was his teacher and he her student. “I water Phyllis’s plants, occasionally do things with her and some of her friends. That’s the extent of my social life.”
Hands in the pockets of his jeans, Ben grinned back at her.
“Becca and Will have a new baby,” Christine said, looking straight ahead again, her brows drawn together in a slight frown he was beginning to recognize all too well. No one could worry as much as this woman appeared to.
“You sound as though that’s a warning,” Ben said, enjoying the balmy late-October seventy-degree weather.
Christine shrugged. “A lot of people aren’t comfortable around children.”
Guess it depended on what kind of people you associated with.
“I love kids,” Ben told her. “How old is their baby?”
“Not quite two months.”
With a pang, Ben remembered Alex at that age. She’d been following him with her eyes by then, able to focus and recognize him. She’d smiled some, too, though Mary had insisted it was only gas. Ben knew better.
“I remember those days well,” he murmured. He’d barely been eighteen when Alex was born, but he’d been so crazy about her that fatherhood hadn’t daunted him a bit. Supporting Alex’s mother—and putting up with her—had done that.
“Those days?”
They’d reached Christine’s building.
“I told you I’d married young,” Ben said, reaching for the door to the building.
Nodding, Christine stopped just outside.
> “It was because my wife was pregnant.”
Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. “You have a child?”
“That’s so hard to believe?” Ben motioned her through the door, following her inside.
“Yes! Well—” she turned, looked at him again “—no, I guess not, but you never said anything.”
He shrugged. “What was there to say? I loved. I lost. End of story.”
Her office door was straight ahead. Christine fished her key out of her leather satchel, unlocked the door.
“I just can’t picture you as a father.”
Ben walked into her office and half closed the door, just enough to ensure privacy. In deference to her skittishness, he had to leave it partially open.
“I was a damn good father,” he said, his voice calm and clear. There was to be no misunderstanding that. Raising Alex was the one thing he’d done right in the past seven years, the only thing that made the passage of those years palatable.
“Was? You aren’t anymore?” Christine stood behind her desk, but the warmth in her eyes reached out to him.
“Nope.” He toyed with the rock that served as a paperweight on her desk.
She sank into her chair. “What happened?” she whispered. “Did the baby die?”
He hadn’t intended to have this conversation. Ben perched stiffly on the other chair. “The baby was a girl and no, she didn’t die. She’s living in California with her mother and new father.”
“You don’t visit her at all? Even out-of-state fathers get a weekend a month, or the summer and some holidays.”
“I’m not her father.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“EXCUSE ME?”
Christine frowned, although the warmth was still very apparent in her eyes, very apparent in its effect on him.
“Mary, my ex-wife, told me the child was mine.” He shrugged, looked away from her. “We’d been…together only a few times.” His gaze found hers again. “But I believed her.”
“How long did you support her before you found out you were off the hook?”
She’d changed on him again, become the woman who didn’t believe—not in a father’s love, not in heroism, not in much of anything, it seemed. What got to him most, though, was that she didn’t sound bitter or hard. Her voice was as soft, as understanding as it had been since the whole crazy conversation began.
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