The wings and halo didn’t fit. He knew that without trying them on for size. “I’m not the only one taking photographs of the world’s trouble spots.”
He was minimizing his work. “No, but you are contributing to the world’s awareness of them. Photographs are used to make people aware of things they might rather not see. You’ve won awards for your work.” She saw the disparaging expression on his face, and pressed on. “And if everyone suddenly abandoned their cameras, their videotapes, we’d be plunged into mental darkness,” she insisted. Her voice throbbed with emotion she wanted to deny. “With that kind of reasoning, inhumanities would go undetected, except by the perpetrators and by the victims. That’s not the kind of world either one of us wants.”
She sounded so fierce, so sincere, she almost succeeded in making him believe in himself. The way he had once. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t feel guilty.”
Rachel knew it was too easy, but she grasped at it anyway. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He laughed softly. And felt, oddly enough, somewhat at peace, as if a little of the guilt had been siphoned away. “You always had a way of twisting things around to fit in with your view.”
“No, I always had a way of being able to look at something from all angles,” she told him smugly. “You told me that. You were annoyed at the time, too.”
No, he’d never been annoyed with her, only with the situation. “Funny Face, I appreciate what you’re trying to do—”
“No, you don’t.” She knew that he didn’t want her taking his side at all. But that didn’t stop her. “And I’m only trying to make you see reason. You didn’t do anything to condemn yourself for. Who knows if you could have even saved that man—”
His mouth hardened. Every night for a month afterward, he had relived that man’s death, had seen the pistol being raised by his executioner and then being fired at point-blank range. It had haunted him, waking and sleeping, melding into his nightmares, until he had finally come home.
“If I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder, I might have seen what was going to happen before it actually did. I could have tried—”
“Yes,” she agreed, barely suppressing her annoyance at his stubbornness. “And you could have died. Two men dead, instead of one. I don’t see that as a plus.” She leaned over the small table, her eyes intense. “You were just doing what you were supposed to do. Bringing the news home. The only way we can fight something, change something, improve something, is by being made aware that it exists. You do that very well.”
Though he didn’t fully agree, for the moment he let her win the round. He had a feeling they’d be here all day otherwise. Rachel was like a junkyard dog when she believed in something. She wouldn’t let go. It both humbled him and awed him that she believed in him to such a degree.
He smiled at her fondly. “And you could argue the ears off a stone statue.”
She leaned back in her chair. It wobbled a little. “We all do what we’re good at.”
Saturday night flashed through his mind. Her skin, soft and silky by moonlight. Her mouth, hot and feverish against his. He felt himself becoming aroused again. “That’s not the only thing you’re good at.” He saw the slight blush rise to her cheeks and found it endearing. Kirk felt his blood warming. “Just how large is that cubicle of yours?”
“Not very. And it’s also not as private as I’d like.” Rachel thought of the evening to come. “You’re picking Ethan up at school, aren’t you?”
Kirk nodded. He was actually looking forward to seeing Ethan again. “Yes.”
“Stay for dinner?”
He pretended to think it over. “What are you having?”
Rachel arched a brow in disbelief. “Are you getting fussy?”
Kirk spread his hands wide. “A man has the right to know what he’s going to be eating.” As she laughed Kirk glanced over toward the table in the corner. There was a student sitting alone, a book propped up before him. But he was staring, rather intently, over the top of the book and in their direction.
Kirk inclined his head subtly toward the student. “You know him?”
Rachel looked, then nodded a greeting. “That’s Stuart Bowman. He’s in two of my classes.” She thought of the recent session she’d spent with him in her cubicle. “I’ve been giving him some extra help. He’s very bright, but his mind doesn’t seem to be on his work. It’s as if he’s preoccupied with something.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure this one out. “Maybe it’s his teacher.”
That had never occurred to her. She looked at Kirk. “Why, Kirk, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”
Jealous. It had an odd ring to it. He began to deny it, then realized that he’d be lying if he did. “Maybe that’s because I am.”
Rachel’s mouth dropped open at his admission. But she was no more surprised by it than he was. And far less uncomfortable.
He was quick to attempt to mend the breach in the fence. “I always thought of you as my mascot.”
“Very romantic.” But the smile on her face told him that she knew she had him.
“I didn’t entertain a single romantic thought about you.” He had never lied to her. He wasn’t about to start now. “Until I returned to Bedford.”
Rachel propped her head up on her hand, fascinated. “And after that?”
He had already said more than he should have, on a lot of counts. “I think that this is the part that should be censored.”
“Rats.”
He looked at the clock on the wall behind her. “Isn’t it time for your next class?”
She glanced at her watch. She had just enough time to make it to her class, but not much more than that.
“Double rats. Saved by the bell, Callaghan. Literally. But this discussion will be continued tonight, in one form or another. For now, I’ve got to dash.”
Impulsively, she leaned over and brushed his lips with her own. She felt the quickening in her pulse as his lips moved over hers.
“Later...” she breathed.
He watched her leave, and knew he had no business feeling the way he did about Cameron’s little sister. It didn’t help.
Chapter 14
Kirk stared at the door, lost in thought, long after Rachel had left the coffee shop. As a stringently obeyed rule, he had never allowed himself to need anyone before, not since he was a child. Not since his parents emotionally abandoned him.
But he needed Rachel.
It was a dependency he wasn’t certain he could live with. He wrapped his hands around the empty mug, slowly rotating it back and forth, an outward sign of his internal debate. And if he couldn’t live with it, with the idea of depending on her, of needing her, it wasn’t fair to her for him to hang around.
Yet he didn’t want to go. Not yet. He couldn’t go.
“You and Ms. Reed got a thing going?”
Kirk raised his eyes from the mug to see a pair of neatly pressed trousers that appeared to be hanging on the thin frame they were adorning by sheer will and little more. The young man standing before him looked to be barely out of his teens. He was painfully slender.
“Excuse me?”
The same student who had observed Rachel and him so blatantly earlier now stood before him. Oversize hands shifted three textbooks from one bony hip to the other and then back again, as if he were attempting to find a home for them.
Bowman. Stuart Bowman, Kirk recalled Rachel saying his name was. If Bowman’s Adam’s apple hadn’t been hidden by the collar of his navy-blue turtleneck sweater, Kirk was certain he would have seen it riding spasmodically up and down the long, thin column of his throat, like a yo-yo in perpetual motion.
A younger version of Don Quixote, Kirk thought, amused despite the man’s invasion.
Pipe cleaner shoulders squared themselves, as if Bowman thought he was about to face an opponent in combat. Perhaps in his mind, Kirk thought, he was.
“Ms. Reed,” Bowman repeated, t
he pitch of his voice increasing, threatening to crack like an adolescent boy’s. “Are you and she, um, seeing each other?”
He’d been right in his guess, Kirk thought. Bowman did have a crush on her. It should have amused him, but it didn’t. The strange, possessive feeling filtering through him was jealousy. Kirk examined the sensation like a scientist discovering an entirely new life form. Awestruck and curious, he felt decidedly uncomfortable in its presence.
“And if we were?” The reply was guarded as Kirk studied the elongated, mournful-looking face. Under no circumstances could Bowman be thought of as competition, so why was there this feeling of protecting what was his?
Besides, there was nothing to protect, he insisted silently. Rachel was her own person, just as he was his.
Bowman seemed to know the glint of danger when he encountered it. Comically, he took a half step back. “Then I guess I’d back off. If you were.”
Kirk regarded the man before him. Was he one of those obsessive stalkers who periodically surfaced to tantalize the scandal-hungry public? Instinctively he came to attention.
“Back off? As in how?”
Bowman’s nostrils flared as he fumbled for words. “Well, seeing her.” He swallowed as he shifted his books again. One slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. He stooped to pick it up, taking another step back. “Or trying to.”
This student was no more a threat to Rachel than he was to world security, Kirk decided. He’d just overreacted. Just why he had, he’d examine later, when he was feeling a little more saner.
Now that he wasn’t worried about Rachel, Kirk found he was a great deal more tolerant of the awkward young man. “Is she aware of this?” he asked gently.
Bowman looked like a sweater that was about to come unraveled because a single thread had been pulled. He scratched his head nervously and pursed his lips until they disappeared entirely. “Well, I go to her for help.” He looked up quickly. “Not that I really need it, but just because...”
Bowman’s voice trailed off. He seemed to be searching for a way to explain his feelings. Then he brightened, as if the answer had fallen into his lap. “It’s her perfume.”
“Perfume?” Kirk repeated, intrigued. He couldn’t remember ever being this young, not even as a child. He hadn’t had that luxury.
“Yeah.” Bowman sighed. “She wears it all the time, and it just kinda pulls me in, you know what I mean?” His small, marblelike eyes focused in on Kirk to see if the other man understood.
Kirk thought of the way her fragrance had gotten under his skin. The way it had drugged him when they made love. His tone remained emotionless. It didn’t betray his thoughts. He’d trained himself that way. “I think I do.”
Bowman looked at Kirk’s eyes and seemed satisfied. “Anyway, do you have a thing going with her or not?”
Bowman suddenly made Kirk feel very, very old. He doubted that there was more than ten years, if that much, separating them. Ten years, and a world of experience. Bowman’s most traumatic experience to date had probably been running out of ink during a test.
“Don’t you think you should choose someone your own age to focus your attentions on?”
The sophomore frowned at the advice. “There’s nobody else quite like her.”
Kirk laughed shortly. “There I would have to agree with you.”
The look on Bowman’s face said that there had never been any doubt about it. Then his face fell several degrees, as the implication of Kirk’s words hit him. “So you are seeing her?”
Kirk never discussed his private life with anyone. He didn’t mean to begin with a complete stranger. But if he answered negatively, or not at all, Kirk had a feeling that Bowman’s attentions toward Rachel would become more ardent. For Rachel’s sake, he decided that the best course to take was to make Bowman believe that he and Rachel were involved.
“Yes.”
If Bowman’s face fell any farther, Kirk estimated, it would have to be physically lifted from the floor. “Damn, you’re lucky.”
Kirk’s mouth curved. He wondered what it must feel like to be so simply enamored with someone. He almost envied Bowman. “I guess I am at that.”
“Guess?” Bowman echoed the word incredulously as he stared at Kirk. “There’s no guessing about it. If she were my girl—my woman,” he hurriedly corrected, “there’s absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for her. When those gorgeous blue eyes look at you...”
His voice trailed off, and he sighed deeply. Then, as if realizing how he sounded, Bowman clutched his textbooks to his chest and scrambled backward, in the direction of the door, giving the impression of a squirrel running to high ground at the first sign of a flash flood. His eyes never left Kirk’s face. “If you change your mind, let her down easy. A lady like that doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”
“No.” Kirk rose and tossed the price of the coffees, plus a tip, on the table. He nodded toward the man behind the counter. “She doesn’t.”
And she would be hurt, Kirk thought. If they remained involved any longer she would be hurt.
“Nice talking to you,” Bowman blurted out as he reached the door. In a moment, he had darted through it, as if he were afraid that Kirk would follow him outside.
“You too,” Kirk called after him.
Bowman turned and fairly beamed, reminding Kirk of the Cheshire cat.
* * *
How did he go about pulling out of a life he had always been a part of? Kirk wondered as he hurriedly walked to his car. How did he pull out, Kirk mused, especially when part of him really didn’t want to?
The minivan was in the visitors’ parking area, standing directly in front of the liberal arts building. All around him, students were rushing by, cutting across the parking lot to get to their next classes. Each represented a life in progress—a life, usually, just beginning to unfold. He found himself envying them, even though he wasn’t that much older than most of them.
He felt older. A great deal older.
Kirk leaned against his van, watching a sea of humanity shuffle and reshuffle itself. Faces and bodies merged and separated. Nothing really registered, except for the conversation he’d had with Rachel’s would-be suitor.
He had only given Rachel the condensed version of part of what had been troubling him. It had been the proverbial straw. Even so, she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t looked at him with condemning eyes, the way he would have expected. Hell, she hadn’t even seen why he was torturing himself, why he was going through such agony over what he had done, or failed to do. With a few words, Rachel had absolved him.
Kirk shook his head in wonder as he thought about it now. Like a cleansing rain falling from the sky onto a dusty, dirty plain, she’d absolved him. Washing him clean.
Just like that, without so much as a moment’s hesitation. Not because she didn’t care, but because she did.
He wondered what it was that she saw in him that he didn’t, and whether there was a chance that she could be right.
Kirk sighed as he felt stirrings within him. The same stirrings that seemed to occur every time he thought of her lately. How the hell did he walk away from a woman like that?
Quickly, he told himself. Before the scars that would be formed by their relationship went too deep into her heart.
He had a sinking feeling that they were already there, just waiting to bleed. Rachel was good for him—she always had been. But he was so different from her, and he feared that, in an everyday relationship, he would drag her down. In her extroverted way, she’d always been able to keep him from going down for the third time. She’d been his life jacket. It wouldn’t be fair to inflict a lifetime of lifeguard duty. She needed support, too. She needed a partner, not an anchor.
God, this was getting complicated. He’d come home to heal, to renew himself, not to hurt anyone—especially not Rachel.
In the distance, someone yelled out a greeting, slicing through his thoughts. The greeting wasn’t directed at him, but it brought his attention to th
e people around him. The hurrying clusters were beginning to thin out as students reached their destinations.
He’d never gone to college himself, though he had entertained the possibility for a while. He’d decided that he preferred to leap right into life. Besides, there’d been no money for college then. Money was no longer a problem, not that he cared about it. All he required was food and a place to stay.
Someone jostled him as they hurried by. It was a breathless young woman. She threw a hasty “Sorry” in her wake and ran to join another student just walking up the stairs to the building. Both of them had a glow of excitement about them. Maybe he’d missed something by not finding a way to attend college, he mused now.
Maybe...
An idea began to form, snowballing down the slope of his mind. He wasn’t certain where it would ultimately land.
Kirk stared at the liberal arts building thoughtfully. What if he remained? Only for a few months, of course, but what if he decided to remain in Bedford?
He began to walk. Away from his car, and toward the three-story liberal arts building. It wouldn’t hurt to entertain the possibility....
A wise man, he knew, always tested the integrity of his net before he even thought of leaping from a tall perch. And while Kirk considered himself far from wise, he wasn’t exactly stupid, either.
The idea of leaping was beginning to show some merit.
* * *
An hour later, Kirk let himself into his house. There was a good four hours remaining before he had to pick up Ethan at school. He wanted to work on the album a little more. Perhaps even plan where he would take his next photographs for it.
His thoughts turned to Ethan. It was like leafing through a page of his own past. The boy had taken to photography with the same enthusiasm and gusto that he had. For Kirk it had been a way to find himself, to prove his self-worth, if only to himself. It was the only avenue of expressing himself that he had. And it afforded him a living that let him remain on the outside, without forming attachments. For Ethan, Kirk knew, it was just a wonderful hobby.
Perhaps, in time, it would be more.
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