Second Time Around

by Beth Kendrick

  “That’s not what that money is for. Her lawyer specifically said you’re supposed to put it toward paying off debt and starting a new career, and I agree. With your freelance work drying up and everything that’s going on between us right now, I think it’s good you have a hobby.”

  She let that comment hang between them for a moment.

  Too late, he realized his misstep. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “Allow me to enlighten you about a few things,” she said primly. “First of all, baking isn’t a hobby, it’s a science and an art form.” He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Second, you were right about us needing a break. Go do whatever it is you need to do over in Brussels, and I’ll hole up here for a while with the girls.”

  “And when I get back? Will we be okay?”

  “Let’s be honest, Jonas. We haven’t been okay for a long time. A couple of months and a few time zones aren’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference at this point.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Honestly, I’m not.” And to her surprise, she realized this was the truth. Her anger had dulled into a steady, almost soothing numbness.

  “Okay. I’ll call you?”

  She stared up at the thick green tangles of ivy. “If the spirit so moves you.”

  A few moments after Anna hung up, Jamie rushed over. Her cheeks were flushed beneath her freckles. “See that woman over there in the navy pantsuit and the pearls?” Jamie pointed out a genteel-looking lady with fabulous shoes and an elegant silver pageboy. “She wants me to coordinate her daughter’s wedding next month. Just like that! We’re meeting tomorrow morning to go over the details. I’m going to have a real client. I’m officially an event planner! This is so much easier than I thought it would be!”

  Anna forced a smile. “That’s great, Jame.”

  “And she wants you to do the cake. She says she’ll pay whatever you charge.”

  “Sure. Of course. No problem.”

  “And I was thinking we could—” Jamie broke off mid-sentence when she noticed Anna’s expression. “Oh boy. What happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You lie.”

  “I lie,” Anna admitted. “Do you think Brooke would mind if I moved up into one of her spare bedrooms for few months? I think my break with Jonas may be turning into a breakup.”

  “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction …”

  —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

  Cait leaned back in her chair and assessed the total lack of progress she’d made that morning.

  The blank computer screen and blinking cursor seemed to demand she fill the space with something worthy of her potential. Something insightful and moving. All these years, while she studied and lectured and ducked-and-covered through the front lines of departmental politics, she’d sensed deep down that her real talent lay in writing rather than researching. If only, had been her wistful refrain. If only she could eke out the time and resources to apply herself to her true calling.

  Well, here she was, hunkered down in Henley House of all places, with her laptop and the whole day stretching out in front of her, and nothing to do but write. Days and weeks and months ahead.

  And nothing to do but write.

  She chewed her lower lip and clicked open her Web browser to check email again. A flock of Canadian geese flew over the house, honking madly, and Cait realized that, though the breeze this afternoon was still warm, soon enough she would awaken to find frost on her windowsill. The nights would get longer, the tree branches would go bare, and another season of her life would be gone.

  The cursor kept winking, ticking off the passing seconds with unrelenting precision.

  Screw this. She switched off the computer and got to her feet, determined to salvage something of the day. Maybe a brisk walk through town would jump-start her creative juices.

  She changed into dark jeans and a fitted green T-shirt, shoved her feet into flip-flops and then, without stopping to analyze her motives, ducked into the bathroom to scrunch a bit of shine wax into her long reddish-brown hair and swipe on a bit of lipstick and mascara.

  Her mood improved dramatically as soon as she stepped outside. She turned her face up to the sun and wandered past houses and parks and the public library with no particular goal in mind, until she found herself turning right at the intersection of Birch Street and Highland Avenue, which just happened to be where Professor Gavin Clayburn had lived when she was an undergraduate.

  Not that she’d stalked him or anything. God, no. She’d never been that unhinged, even in her hormonal heyday. But Thurwell was a very small town, and since she hadn’t had a car in college, she’d mostly gotten around on foot. She’d just happened to enjoy the scenery in Professor Clayburn’s neighborhood.

  Her pace slowed as she approached the white clapboard two-story house with green shutters and screened front porch. In the fading daylight, she could make out the name “Clayburn” on the mailbox. She paused for a moment, staring at the tidy lawn and the dark windows. Just as she turned around to head back toward the college campus, a classic wood-paneled Jeep rounded the corner and pulled in to the driveway of the white and green house.

  Cait darted across the street and crouched behind a parked minivan. She held her breath as the teacher who’d played such a prominent role in her postadolescent fantasies emerged from the Jeep.

  Wow. He looked even better than she remembered: broad shoulders, long limbs, and thick, dark hair falling over his forehead. Nary a trace of an Arthurian mullet. And somehow, his blue chambray shirt and subdued blazer only served to enhance his air of rugged masculinity. He looked commanding, capable.

  He also looked irritated.

  “Hey, you!” Professor Clayburn tossed his briefcase back into the car and pointed at her.

  Cait gasped and instinctively glanced behind her.

  “Yeah, you!” He charged into the street. “I see you. I know what you’re doing!”

  Panicking, Cait staggered backward. The side of her face slammed into the crossbar of a For Sale sign hanging in the yard behind her, and her line of vision exploded into a hundred popping flashbulbs. She dropped to her knees, cupping her cheek.

  She heard footsteps pounding and then his voice as he crouched down beside her. “Are you okay?”

  She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her head. “I … ouch.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She felt his fingers trail along her temple and pry her hand away from her face. Then he announced, “You’re gonna have a black eye.”

  “I was just out for a walk,” she stammered. “I wasn’t, you know, doing anything.”

  “Of course not.” Now he sounded as chagrined as she did. “This is all my fault. Again, I apologize. I thought you were one of my overzealous female students. Every now and then, one of them gets carried away and sort of, well, stalking sounds over the top, but—”

  Cait’s cheek ached when she smiled. “Actually, I find that easy to believe.”

  He froze, staring at her. “I know you.”

  “You used to.”

  “Hang on. Don’t tell me.” He snapped his fingers. “Irish Literature, right? Second row?”

  “Ding, ding, ding. I took your Romantic Poetry seminar, too.” She extended her right hand. “Caitlin Johnson. Graduated ten years ago. I’m surprised you remember me. I barely said a word in class.”

  “I remember your papers. Very insightful.” He took her hand in his and guided her toward his house. “Okay, Miss Johnson, let’s get some ice on that eye before it swells shut.”

  “Call me Cait,” she said. “‘Miss Johnson’ makes me feel about eighteen.”

  “Then you have to call me Gavin. ‘Professor Clayburn’ makes me feel about seventy-five, and I’m probably only seven or eight years older than you.”

  “Thirty-two,” she confessed.

  “Forty next month.”<
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  He ushered her up the front walk, through the sparsely decorated screened porch, and into a small white kitchen where every available surface—the table, the counters, even the stovetop—was littered with books.

  She nodded toward the literature-laden burners. “I take it you’re not much of a chef?”

  “I gave up after I burned a can of soup. Guys like me are why sandwiches and pizza delivery were invented. My housekeeper has given up trying to organize the clutter. She just cleans around the piles now.” He rummaged through the top shelf of his refrigerator and handed her a cold can of Foster’s lager, which she promptly popped open and sipped.

  He looked taken aback for a moment, then grinned. “I meant that for your eye, actually, but by all means, drink up.”

  “Oh.” Heat flooded into her cheeks. “Oh. Right.”

  “I don’t have any ice packs and I’m out of frozen vegetables, so a cold beer’s the best I can do.” He handed her another can for first-aid purposes, then rummaged through the cabinet next to the sink. “Now, before you chug the rest of that, take a quick water break and swallow these.”

  He tapped two white tablets out of a bottle.

  She glanced at the label. “Excedrin Migraine? But I don’t have a headache.”

  “The caffeine will help your blood vessels constrict to prevent swelling,” he explained. “Tonight, you’re going to want to keep your head elevated. Sleep with a few extra pillows and try not to put pressure on this side of your face. Keep putting cold compresses on it for the next day and a half, then switch to a heating pad or a hot-water bottle.”

  “You sure know a lot about black eyes. Are you an EMT in addition to being an English prof?”

  “Nah, I played hockey in high school.” He leaned back against the counter and gave her a long, assessing look.

  Cait stared down at the floor as the shock wore off and self-consciousness set in. “So …”

  “So what brings you back to Thurwell?”

  “I’m taking a sabbatical from my job,” she hedged, still not meeting his gaze. “I’m an English professor, too, now. Shayland College in Connecticut.”

  “Well done.” He sounded genuinely impressed, despite the fact that Shayland was ranked several tiers beneath Thurwell. “Then we’re colleagues.”

  “No,” she said, still smarting from the last time she’d been attracted to a man she considered one of her peers. “I’m taking a break from teaching. Doing a little writing.”

  “Poetry?”

  She shook her head. “Novel.”

  “Ambitious.”

  “Not as ambitious as publishing a short story collection that’s been favorably compared to Dubliners.”

  He laughed and rolled his eyes. “One short story collection, published years ago.”

  “Yeah, but what a collection. Are you working on anything new these days?”

  “Not really. Just dabbling. Guess I burned out after one book. What’s your novel about?”

  As she scrambled to come up with a response, a thin ribbon of blood trickled down from the cut on her cheek onto her shirt. She had never been so grateful for an open wound in her life. “I’m bleeding. Do you mind if I go wash off a bit?”

  “Of course. The guest bathroom’s right upstairs, first door on the left. There should be clean towels under the sink and Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet.”

  She started up the stairs and he called after her, “Let me know if you need anything. Sorry about the mess.”

  What mess? His bathroom was as spartan as his kitchen—clean and serviceable, but without any wall art, ruffled shower curtains, or froufrou skin care products. The pile of white towels stacked beneath the sink smelled faintly of fabric softener. The hand soap was generic, still in the plastic pump bottle.

  She leaned over the basin to splash her face with cold water, then patted her cut dry with tissue. She was studying her reflection in the mirror, debating whether she should apply butterfly Band-Aids, when she noticed the silver lock gleaming in the hallway.

  The second story of Gavin’s house had three doors in addition to the bathroom. One of these was ajar, and one was closed, but the third was secured from the outside with a formidable steel contraption that looked like a padlock on steroids.

  Cait cast a long, speculative look at the door before returning downstairs, where Gavin was waiting with car keys in hand.

  “Do you need stitches? I can drive you to the hospital.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. It’s just a scratch.”

  “You sure?” he asked. She nodded. “Then I’ll drive you home.”

  “Oh, I can walk back.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s getting dark, and you never know what might go down on the mean streets of Thurwell after night falls.”

  “How chivalrous.” She knew it wasn’t any of her business but had to ask. “Hey, I couldn’t help noticing—what’s with the mysterious locked door up there?”

  He flashed her a rakish grin. “That would be Mr. Rochester’s lunatic wife, of course.”

  She laughed and waited for him to elaborate, but he changed the subject immediately. “Listen, I’d like to take you to dinner sometime. We can go out, grab a bottle of wine, talk teaching, writing, hockey injuries. What do you say?”

  For a moment, she just stared at him, flustered, every fiber of her being screaming, Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! Somehow, this internal riot of enthusiasm translated to her blinking several times in succession and volleying back with, “Okay.”

  “Great. Does Friday night work? Say around seven?”

  Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! “Okay.”

  Cait unlocked the front door to Paradise Found and waved to Gavin, who put the Jeep into gear and pulled away from the curb. She had hoped to slip into the house and up to her room without an interrogation, but Jamie, Brooke, and Anna were all lounging around the living room eating pizza and waiting for her.

  “Look who’s finally back,” Jamie said. “Grab a plate and make yourself comfortable. We have news. Big news!”

  Cait closed the door and turned around, giving everyone a good look at her face.

  Brooke raised her hand to her lips in dismay. “Caitlin!”

  “Oh my God.” Anna winced. “What happened to your eye?”

  “Oh, that.” Cait tried to look nonchalant. “I ran into Professor Clayburn.”

  Jamie’s eyes were huge. “In the middle of a bar brawl?”

  “Not exactly. He asked me out. We’re going to dinner on Friday.”

  “What?”

  “Good evening, ladies, I have to go write.” She dashed up the stairs.

  “Oh no, you don’t!”

  “Get back here right now, missy, and spill your guts! We demand every last detail!”

  “Sorry,” she called, high-fiving Mr. Wonderful with her index finger as she rounded the landing. “The muse calls, and I must answer!”

  She locked the bedroom door behind her and opened her laptop with subversive glee. Forget the Great American Novel. Tonight she would just indulge in a little warm-up exercise:

  Helena Barnett glanced up from the pages of her book as a thunderclap rattled the library windows and a bolt of lightning streaked across the night sky. She pushed her spectacles farther up on her nose and prepared to resume reading when another flash of lightning revealed a man racing a massive stallion up the drive through the tempestuous storm. The book slipped from her fingers as she blew out her candle and pressed her brow against the windowpane, her eyes searching through the dark for a second look.

  Why would such a man be riding in such weather, at such a dark hour of the night, toward the quietest estate in the dullest county in all of Britain? What business could such a man have with her placid, even-tempered father?

  Lightning flashed and she glimpsed the rider again. He was much closer now, and she could tell that he was well formed; tall and broad-shouldered beneath his greatcoat. Her pulse quickened and her mind raced in a bid to recover her c
omposure. She snatched up the book that had tumbled down to the thick Brussels rug and furtively tucked the leather-bound volume into the folds of her white muslin nightdress. Her father had long ago resigned himself to the fact that Helena preferred libraries to ballrooms and fictional heroes to flesh-and-blood suitors. But if he ever discovered the nature of her late-night reading material—scandalous novels such as this copy of Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses—he would certainly take away her pin money, and her beloved books along with it.

  Over a distant roll of thunder, Helena heard the pounding of the front door’s brass knocker. Curiosity overruled good sense, and she crept down to the shadowed stairway landing. There, she crouched behind the embroidered damask divan, a vantage point that afforded her an unobstructed view of the foyer below.

  Her father, clad in his plaid silk dressing robe, was murmuring to a stranger who seemed to fill up the entryway with his commanding presence. Water pooled around the soles of his well-worn boots, and his dark hair was wind-whipped across the hard planes of his face. He appeared as unforgiving and fierce as the storm he’d ridden through.

  He looked, in short, like one of the heroes from Helena’s beloved books.

  As her father continued to address him in hushed tones, the stranger raised his face until his eyes locked on Helena’s. She shrank back with a gasp, but he seemed able to stare straight through the divan and her modest ruffled gown. His amber eyes belied his severe countenance—they were smoldering, the color of warm whiskey.

  Unequal to the frank, assessing nature of his gaze, she turned and fled back up the stairs to the safety of her chamber and locked her door behind her. But sleep eluded her and the prospect of reading held no pleasure for her now. A single glance from that dark, sensual stranger evoked thoughts more scandalous than anything printed on the pages of a forbidden French novel.

  By the next day, Helena was wild with curiosity. Her father had left the house before she’d come down for breakfast, and her many questions about the stranger’s identity and intentions went unanswered. And now her investigation would have to wait until later, for even here in Surrey, there were teas to attend and razor-tongued social critiques to endure. Helena nibbled a strawberry and inwardly smiled at the spiteful old tabbies whispering around the refreshment table at the back of the salon: