Memories of You
Memories of You
Margot Dalton
Bestselling AuthorCamilla Pritchard hadn't seen Jon Campbell in nearly twenty years. Now he's shown up in her classroom posing as one of her students. His presence brings back all her memories of the worst days of her life and threatens to destroy everything she's worked so hard to build.Why is he here? Surely the successful rancher and father of four–including the most adorable seven-year-old twins–has better things to do. And why is he pretending not to recognize her? She'd have known him anywhere.For years she's seen his face in her dreams–and her nightmares."Margot Dalton's creativity dazzles…" –Bethany Campbell, bestselling author of See How They Run and Don't Talk to Strangers
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ubf0ca466-55e6-572c-999b-160b46c423d2)
Excerpt (#ucb4480ca-ddf5-59f0-9925-3152bca6177f)
About the Author (#u32ef0a60-123b-5670-b820-9d79c15eb656)
Title Page (#ub0cd558f-277b-5e9a-89f3-c3258623630f)
Prologue (#u1666d414-38be-5dae-bb3b-adb7b2417de8)
Chapter One (#u10518f7a-6329-5e10-94b2-b37c59202bb6)
Chapter Two (#u2c1718ea-02e7-55f5-bf57-d48e1c0ed00a)
Chapter Three (#u9de1d949-40d5-5a70-93d2-c16f84451391)
Chapter Four (#u0a68955a-fe80-56f1-bd86-7ab032d620f9)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I can’t believe what I’m about to do.”
Camilla carried her cat into the bedroom, brooding as she rested her chin on his head. She’d been worrying about her safety ever since the beginning of the school term when Jon Campbell had turned up in her classroom and scared her half to death.
But despite her fear, she was taking more and more risks—edging farther out onto thin ice with every day that passed
“I really can’t believe I’m doing this, Elton. I’m falling in love with his kids, and now I’ve actually agreed to go to his ranch this weekend. What on earth is wrong with me?”
She tossed the cat onto the bed, where he curled up and watched with interest as she opened her closet door.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what to pack.” She hauled down a couple of leather duffel bags from an upper shelf. “What exactly do you wear for a weekend jaunt with a man who terrifies you?”
(#u33e6f03c-d29d-5f88-b4a6-bd5de2729712)ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Memories of You, Margot Dalton’s seventeenth Superromance novel, is set in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she and her husband have recently decided to spend their winters. For Margot, it’s like coming home. She was born in Alberta, and despite the cold temperatures, she takes pleasure in the clear, crisp, sunny days.
In addition to her Superromance novels, this bestselling author has also written seven books in Harlequin’s popular Crystal Creek series. She has an upcoming title in the new Delta Justice series, and has contributed novellas to two anthologies. As well, she writes mainstream novels for MIRA Books.
Memories of You
Margot Dalton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
(#u33e6f03c-d29d-5f88-b4a6-bd5de2729712)PROLOGUE
June 1977
TODAY WAS MY seventeenth birthday; nobody remembered but me.
The rain is coming in the window again where some of the glass has broken away. Last week I nailed a scrap of tar paper across the opening, but it keeps coming loose. The rain blows in and falls onto my face and shoulders. I’m so cold.
I can hear them outside my room, so I turn my face to the wall and try to concentrate on the rain. It rattles on the metal body of the trailer like gunshots, and the whole thing shakes in every gust of wind.
They’re both drunk, but my mother is worse. She’s been screaming and throwing things. Now she’s starting to cry, so it won’t be long till she passes out. That’s the way it always happens.
I wonder what shape the man is in. This is a new one, a guy she picked up last week at the bar. I don’t know him yet, so I’m afraid. They’re all like wild animals, you have to learn their habits so you can feel safe around them. This one looks at me sometimes, but he’s never made a move.
He’s so ugly. It makes my stomach heave, thinking about him. I’m not sure my mother even realizes anymore how ugly they are. He’s got a big roll around his middle and a spotty little beard, and his breath stinks. One of his front teeth is missing, too.
A bug scurries over my blankets, and I flick it away and hope it’s gone. God knows what else is living in here. It’s always so dirty. I try to clean things up but. it’s impossible because every night my mother brings some filthy man home to drink with her. They drop food and knock things over, then pass out on the floor or on her bed. They spill liquor, too, and it makes sticky pools that draw the bugs.
I can’t hear my mother’s voice anymore. She must be asleep. The man’s singing some kind of drunken song. I remember how he looked at me earlier and I wonder if he’s going to try to come in here tonight.
If he does, I intend to kill him. I have a hunting knife under the pillow and I’m not afraid to use it. I’m not.
Today is my seventeenth birthday.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_4429f436-d193-5697-94b9-32b9dd5a2771)
Twenty years later
JON CAMPBELL WATCHED in surprise as the beautiful woman at the back of the classroom stared at him across the row of desks. It was just a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity that their eyes locked, and the colour drained from her face.
Could she be startled because he was so much older than the rest of the class? Somehow her reaction seemed disproportionate.
He certainly wasn’t the only middle-aged man who’d ever gone back to college to finish a degree. Even Jon had been surprised by the number of people his age he’d encountered on this first day of classes.
In fact, Jon wasn’t the oddity he’d feared he might be. And the campus was big enough that he wouldn’t be an embarrassment to his children, especially his son Steven who was a freshman at the same college.
While he was puzzling over the professor’s reaction, the woman turned abruptly and made her way to the front of the room.
“Good morning,” she said, moving away from her desk to stand in the middle of the room. “My name is Dr. Camilla Pritchard, and this class is intended to develop your creative-writing skills as well as to examine the work of some well-known authors. There is an extensive reading list that I will distribute at the conclusion of today’s session. You will need to read every book promptly in order to be prepared for assignments and class discussions.”
Her voice was crisp, but her hands, gripping a notebook, trembled slightly. Again Jon wondered at her nervousness. Did she feel threatened by one of her students?
They all looked so young. This was a senior class, but the participants still seemed like babies, freshfaced and anxious. A couple of them were chewing gum, while the thin boy sitting across the aisle from Jon appeared to be asleep.
“The workload is quite heavy,” the professor went on. “And, as you may have heard, I’m not tolerant of slackers.”
Jon grinned privately, amused by the contrast between her face and manner.
Oh, I’ll bet you’re not nearly as tough as you pretend, he told her silently.
She glanced at him almost as if he’d spoken aloud, and her cheeks turned faintly pink. She looked away quickly.
“There will be a daily writing assignment in addition to research papers and regular class work. If you feel this may be too much for you, I encourage you to drop the course immediately while you’re still in time to transfer to a different class. Otherwise, you run a very real risk of being assigned a failing grade or an incomplete rating.”
No wonder some of the students complained about Dr. Camilla Pritchard, Jon thought. He’d overheard a group of young men earlier in the day, loudly discussing this English professor.
A “dragon,” one of them had called her. And then, practically in the same breath, a “real babe.”
Now that Jon had seen her, he could certainly understand the boy’s conflicting reaction. Camilla Pritchard was tall and graceful. Her face was finely carved, with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes, and she had an elegant straight nose.
But her beauty went beyond these physical attributes. There was something in the depths of that face, those remarkable eyes, that hinted at a person hidden in a complex private world.
Jon shifted awkwardly in the little desk as she began to discuss the process of creative writing, putting a few terms on the blackboard like “stream of consciousness” and “constructionism.” Jon tried to pay attention, but the sun from the adjacent window was warm on his back, and the room was so quiet, and he was not accustomed to this complete lack of physical activity.
Eventually his mind began to wander down sunlit paths of its own. He found himself wondering idly what the blond professor would look like in a bikini— or completely naked.
He shifted in his desk, aware suddenly of an uncomfortable stirring in his groin.
At that moment, the professor caught his eye. She’d moved nearer to ask a question of a student in the next row. Jon looked down hastily.
What a fool, he thought. Like a kid in seventh grade with a crush on the teacher, getting aroused by his daydreams. Next she’d ask him to go to the blackboard and he’d have to figure out some way to save himself from real embarrassment.
But the professor seemed reluctant to have anything to do with him. She directed rapid-fire questions at most of the others, but none at her oldest student.
Again Jon thought about that strange moment when their eyes had first met. She’d been so shaken.
Could they have met somewhere?
There was something about her that was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t get close to the memory. It was as elusive as the disappearing image of a half-forgotten dream. Maybe he was simply experiencing déjà vu.
After all, if he’d actually met somebody like her, he wouldn’t be likely to forget her. Because she, without a doubt, was one of the most beautiful, desirable women he’d ever seen.
She moved toward the back of the room and stopped by the desk of the sleeping young man, who gave a start and looked up in alarm.
“Your name?” she asked.
The boy swallowed hard and cleared his throat. He was pale and obviously scared. He looked even younger than his classmates.
Probably no more than nineteen, Jon thought. Awfully young to be in a senior-level English class.
“Enrique,” he whispered at last. “My name is Enrique Valeros.”
“Do you intend to sleep through every class, Mr. Valeros?”
The boy had a shock of black hair, expressive dark eyes and clothes that were shabby but well tended. His voice was softly accented with the musical cadences of Spanish, and his thin hands trembled on the wooden surface of the desk. Jon couldn’t tell if the tremor was because of fear, or fatigue.
“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “It won’t happen again.”
Something about the boy tugged at Jon’s heart. He wondered why Enrique Valeros was so tired, or what he was afraid of. A quick glance at the professor’s blue eyes convinced Jon she shared these feelings of sympathy, though she was trying to remain stern and expressionless.
“I really hope it doesn’t happen again, Mr. Valeros,” she said.
She moved to the front of the room and picked up one of the books on her desk, a thick volume on grammar, punctuation and usage.
“This will be our only formal textbook,” she told the class. “I expect you to obtain a copy and use it as your guide. Failure to comply will result in immediate deductions from your grade on all written assignments. Are there any questions?”
A sullen-looking young woman near the front of the class asked for more details about the daily written assignment and the reading list. Dr. Pritchard clarified her expectations. Without another word, the girl picked up her books and left the classroom.
The professor surveyed the group. “Anybody else?” she asked. “Let me repeat that it’s much better to leave now if you feel incapable of handling the work. In two or three weeks, dropping the course will no longer be an option.”
The students listened silently.
“Mr. Valeros,” she said, moving partway down the aisle, though she was still careful to keep a row of desks between herself and Jon, “have you had occasion to read Silas Marner?
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy whispered. “I have read it.”
“And what can you tell us about Eliot’s narrative style in that book?”
“It…The book is much more…” Enrique struggled for words while the teacher watched him in silence. “It is more gentle and poetic than Adam Bede, or Middlemarch, he said at last. “It shows George Eliot’s…it shows her quiet, mystical side.”
The professor’s eyebrows rose in surprise and approval. “Very good, Mr. Valeros. I’m pleased to see you’ve already done some of the required reading.”
Enrique relaxed visibly under her praise. “I got the list a couple of weeks ago, ma’am,” he said in a shy, almost inaudible voice.
“Well, that’s excellent. Now, if you can find a way to stay awake in class, we’ll get along just fine.”
But her voice belied the sharpness of her words, and she gave the young man a brief, teasing smile before she turned away.
When Jon saw that glow on her face, he was totally undone. The woman’s smile was like a ray of sunlight in a darkened room, illuminating all kinds of treasures. For a fleeting moment her face was light and sparkling, young and sweet.
Young…
Again that elusive image tugged at his memory. Something to do with warmth and youth, a distant place and time…
He shook his head in frustration and watched as she moved around the room, probing first one student and then another with her skillful questioning, trying to gauge their knowledge and understanding.
“Hey, Enrique,” Jon whispered, leaning across the aisle.
“Yes?” the boy asked.
“You did good, son. I think you really impressed the professor.”
His words were rewarded by another shy smile. The poor kid might be dead on his feet, but he was still courteous and friendly.
Jon glanced at the boy’s frayed shirt cuffs, the worn-out shoes and patched jeans, the thin body and shaking hands and general air of fatigue.
He wondered how he could learn a little more about Enrique Valeros.
The class continued with a discussion of plotting techniques. The professor never asked him a question or directed a comment at him. Jon found himself both relieved and annoyed by the omission.
When the class ended and the students began to disperse, Jon approached her desk.
Dr. Pritchard’s head was bent over her work. She had dark blond hair with a few streaks of sunny highlights, cut short and combed back in a simple, elegant style. Her hands were ringless, with the nails neatly trimmed and free of polish.
“I like that perfume,” he said as he drew near.
She looked up, and her eyes widened in alarm. He could sense that she had to force herself to meet his eyes, though her gaze was calm and steady.
“Thank you,” she said.
“What is it?”
“What?”
“The perfume.”
Her cheeks turned faintly pink. “I doubt that it’s any concern of yours, Mr….”
“Campbell. Jonathan Campbell. People usually call me Jon.”
“I see.” She gave him a wintry smile and returned to her work, clearly dismissing him.
Jon watched her for a moment, fighting the unsettling urge to reach out and stroke her shining hair or touch her bare arm.
“Is there something else. Mr. Campbell?” she asked without looking up.
“I was just wondering why you never called on me during the session. Do you think I’m not capable of answering questions?”
“The fact is, I didn’t really think about you at all.”
“I believe that’s not altogether true,” Jon said quietly. “When you first noticed me sitting over there, you acted like you recognized me.”
“You must be imagining things.” She got to her feet, gathered the pile of books on her desk and moved toward the door.
“Have we met somewhere?” he asked, following her. “Because I can’t believe I’d ever forget a woman like you.” She looked back at him, and this time he caught a trace of genuine panic in her eyes, a fear that was urgent and almost childlike. But her voice was cool when she answered.
“I really don’t think so, Mr. Campbell. Please excuse me.”
Then she was gone, vanishing down the crowded hallway until all he could glimpse of the woman was the distant gleam of overhead lights on her smooth blond head.
THE CALGARY UNIVERSITY sprawled over many acres of prairie in the northwest section of the city. A number of apartment buildings were located on campus but most faculty members chose to live elsewhere, preferring to leave their jobs behind when they went home at night.
Camilla Pritchard, however, lived on the university grounds. Her apartment was just a few steps from the building where she taught most of her classes.
She hurried down the leafy paths of the campus, heading home for lunch on the first day of school, anxious to reach her apartment. She could hardly wait to be safely inside the door, out of sight of everybody.
Camilla had suffered for years from intense shyness, and a personal reserve that gave her an air of detachment bordering on rudeness. Except when she was in her own home—a bright and comfortable place, filled with whimsical ornaments, bright woven afghans and wall hangings, nature prints, Aztec pottery and throw rugs. And masses of plants, crowded on every available windowsill.
She also had two cats, both illegal according to the rules of the buildings but tactfully overlooked by the apartment supervisor, who liked Camilla and found her a perfect tenant except for her pets.
In return for the super’s indulgence, Camilla kept the cats out of sight. They were sleek gray tabbies called Madonna and Elton. Madonna had a boisterous, exhibitionist nature, while Elton, the smaller of the two, was timid and affectionate, named for the heavy black markings around both eyes that resembled the frames of the glasses worn by the famous pop star.
Today Elton was waiting when she came through the door. He promptly lay upside down on the rug in a golden ray of sunshine, his paws waving lazily.
“Okay Elly, I’ll scratch your tummy for a second,” she said. “But I have too much to do to stay here all day and play with you.”
She sighed and dropped an armful of books onto the table, feeling a deep anxiety on this first day of classes. Normally she enjoyed the prospect of a new term, a horde of fresh faces, another fall and winter.
But not this year. Not after seeing one face in particular at the back of her classroom…She sighed again as she bent to rub Elton’s tummy.
Madonna appeared in the kitchen entryway and arched her tail, rubbing herself sensuously against the door frame.
“I know it’s him,” Camilla stood up and addressed Madonna. “He’s sitting right there in my English class, and I haven’t got the slightest idea what to do about it.”
Madonna licked one of her paws and rubbed it across her whiskers, then advanced with exaggerated stealth toward Elton, who still lay in the sunshine with his eyes closed. The cat pounced stiff-legged onto her unsuspecting partner. Elton yowled and scurried for cover beneath the couch, where his black-framed eyes could be seen peeping out fearfully from the darkness.
“Oh, sweetie.” Camilla knelt on the carpet and peered under the couch. “Come out, Elly. Madonna didn’t mean to scare you, she was just playing. Come, let’s sit in the armchair and cuddle.”
Elton whimpered and edged forward a couple of inches.
“Come on,” she coaxed, reaching under the couch to stroke his furry paw. “Come out and sit with me. Madonna won’t hurt you.”
He crept toward her. Finally Camilla was able to grip his body gently and drag him out. She sat in an armchair and cuddled the shivering cat, resting her chin on the top of his head.
As she stroked the cat with rhythmic, soothing strokes, her mind kept going back to that shocking moment in class when she’d first seen Jon Campbell.
Even though he’d been seated, she could tell he was tall and well built. His square face was tanned and pleasantly masculine, his eyes clear and direct. He had thick brown hair dusted with gray, and his hands were hard and callused.
After that first horrifying moment of recognition, Camilla had kept hoping maybe he wasn’t the man she remembered. But when he’d turned away to glance over at Enrique and she saw the hard line of his cheek, the aquiline profile, she knew it was true.
She clutched Elton tightly in her arms, trying to battle rising surges of memory. But the images were too insistent.
A boy, a motorcycle on a deserted road, a hot weekend in summertime…
Once more she tried to tell herself it couldn’t possibly be the same person.
That all happened twenty years ago, and far away from here. This was a different world.
But Camilla knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jon Campbell was the man she remembered. Somehow he’d managed to find her again. And his presence here on this campus spelled terrible danger. It could mean an end to the whole careful life she’d struggled for twenty years to build.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_222aae39-3ae6-5a58-a80d-7d7dbdc7ca13)
CAMILLA FINALLY LEFT her cats and her apartment, feeling a little comforted but still worried and tense. She locked the door, hurried down the hall and entered the elevator. Three other people stood inside the little enclosure, a couple of graduate assistants and a young janitor with a mop and pail. Camilla greeted him with a smile.
The elevator doors opened as they reached the lobby. Camilla walked down a shady path to one of the buildings in the English department, then made her way through a maze of corridors to a suite of cramped, book-filled offices where she shared a secretary with three other professors.
“Hi, Camilla.” The secretary looked up from her computer keyboard with a bright smile. “Did you have a nice summer?”
“Very nice, Joyce.” Camilla took a bundle of files from one of the compartments. “How about you?”
Joyce shrugged. “I’m glad to be back at work. My kids were really driving me crazy.”
“Didn’t you manage to get away for that vacation in Banff? I remember how much you were all looking forward to it.”
“Oh, that was fun, all right, but it only lasted two weeks. The kids always get so bored by the end of August.”
“How old are they now?” Camilla paused, then shook her head. “My goodness, Jamie must be ten already. I can hardly believe it.”
“He sure is. And Susan’s eight. Little monsters,” Joyce said darkly, but her smile was fond.
Camilla tried to imagine what it would be like to spend a whole summer with children that age.
Most of her experience with younger children involved the primary-school study group at the university. This class was made up of about fifteen gifted children aged six to ten years. The children came from all the western provinces to receive an accelerated education. They were also tested and observed by some of the senior professors who were doing research into intelligence.
“So, did you go home for the summer?” Joyce was asking.
“No,” Camilla said after a brief hesitation. “I had a couple of papers to get ready for publication, so I stayed here and worked.”
“What a pity. It must be beautiful in New England at this time of year,” the secretary said wistfully.
“New England?” Camilla asked.
“Barry says your people have a summer home out there, near the Kennedy compound.”
Camilla shifted the stack of books to her other arm, putting the files on top. “Well, I haven’t been to New England in a long time,” she said.
“Okay.” Joyce gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Whatever you say.”
Camilla hesitated for a moment, wondering what to say, then nodded and let herself into her little office. She dumped the books and files onto her desk, troubled by the secretary’s words.
These rumors about Camilla’s family had started circulating around campus a few years ago, and grew more outlandish all the time. By now, her half-hearted denials only served to make people more convinced that she came from a lavishly privileged, aristocratic background and chose for some reason to keep her private life a secret.
Although Camilla was sometimes dismayed by the exaggerated stories, she was grateful that they served to keep her colleagues a little intimidated. People seldom invited her to functions like staff parties and backyard barbecues, assuming that she wouldn’t want to attend. As a result, she wasn’t forced to get close to people, or form any relationships that required an uncomfortable level of disclosure about her personal life.
She was almost always lonely, but she was safe at home with her plants and books, her cats and her research work. And safety was more important to Camilla Pritchard than anything else.
Much more important…
She crossed the room and stood for a moment looking out the window at the throngs of students, wondering what her colleagues would think if they ever discovered the truth.
But, of course, none of these people could possibly learn the truth about Camilla Pritchard. As long as she kept everybody at arm’s length, there was no danger.
She pushed aside the fears, sat down at her desk and began to work.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” she called.
The door opened and Gwen Klassen appeared, looking brisk and cheerful. She was one of the professors who shared their suite of offices and taught the class of gifted primary children in their bright, toy-filled study center down the hall.
“Hi, Camilla,” she said, coming into the room. “I need to borrow a couple of your books on cognitive processes. Are you all ready for the new term?”
Camilla moved some papers so her colleague could sit on the corner of the desk. “Actually, I’m even less ready than usual.”
“You?” Gwen asked. “Go on. You’re so superorganized, I thought you always prepared about three years ahead,” she said as she perched on the desk, swinging her feet in their white running shoes.
Gwen was about fifty, with a slim figure, a shock of gray hair and a manner so sunny and engaging that even Camilla’s shyness and reserve tended to melt under its warmth. A born teacher, Gwen Klassen treated her scholarly colleagues exactly the way she did her little students, with a humorous, gentle indulgence that endeared her to everybody.
Camilla examined the file on her desk, containing class lists and an outline of her teaching schedule for the fall term. “I mean, I’m not emotionally prepared. I feel less ready every term,” she said in a rare display of her personal feelings. “I love teaching, but I keep thinking maybe I’m missing something. Like there should be…I don’t know.” She moved books around restlessly on her desk, trying to smile. “Maybe I’m just getting old.”
Gwen looked down at her with surprise and sympathy. “It sounds more like you’re getting burned out, honey. Why don’t you consider applying for a sabbatical? You know they’d give it to you in a minute, because there’s nobody on staff who deserves it more. You could spend a whole year doing research and writing, and come back feeling like a brand-new woman.”
“I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I took a sabbatical,” Camilla said. “A year off from teaching would be too long. I just need…some kind of change, I guess.”
“Like what?”
Camilla shrugged and leafed through some papers, embarrassed at having revealed so much of herself.
“Why don’t you come over to my place on Friday night?” Gwen said casually. “Dan and I are having a few people over. Barry and his wife, and Gail and Joe from the administration office, and one of the new professors who’s a whiz on the electric guitar. It should be a good time.”
“I don’t think so, thanks.” Camilla smiled regretfully at the other woman. “It sounds like fun, but I have…I have a prior commitment.”
To Camilla’s relief, Gwen didn’t ask about the commitment. Instead, she changed the subject with her usual tact.
“Did you go away at all?”
“Not really. I pretty much stayed home and looked after my cats, and did a lot of writing.”
“That’s not what Barry’s been telling people,” Gwen said with a brief grin.
Camilla sighed.
Barry Bellamy was another of their office-mates. He taught modern drama. He was a terrible gossip, and seemed fascinated by all the myths about Camilla’s background. In some perverse way, he enjoyed retelling and embroidering these far-fetched stories, as if contact with such an imposing personage somehow gave him additional status.
Camilla found it all embarrassing, but she didn’t know how to stop the man from gossiping and meddling in her life without revealing the dreadful truth about herself.
“Barry’s too much,” she said. “I don’t know where he comes up with all the stories he keeps telling people.”
Gwen gave her a keen, thoughtful glance. “So, have you looked over your class lists?” she asked after a moment.
“Briefly. The freshman class is pretty huge, but at least my senior-level creative-writing courses still look to be a decent size. I guess the full impact of the budget cuts hasn’t reached us yet.”
Gwen smiled happily. “Well, I’ve got a nice little group this year. You’ll love them, Camilla. Your first session with my kids is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it?”
Camilla checked her calendar. “That’s right,” she said. “Two o’clock. I’m planning to do a study with some of them on the relationship between symbol recognition and the early development of reading skills. I’ve been collecting the research materials all summer.”
“We’ve got the cutest pair of twins this year,” Gwen said. “Seven years old, named Aaron and Amelia. Just darlings, both of them.”
“Twins?” Camilla said with interest. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had twins before.”
“I know. Even though they’re fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, they look almost identical. Wait till you see them, Camilla. They’ve got the sweetest smiles, and IQ’s so high we haven’t even been able to measure them properly. But they’re both quite reserved. I’m having a hard time getting close to them.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Out in western Saskatchewan. They were living on their family’s cattle ranch, attending first grade at an elementary school so far away they had to spend almost two hours on the bus every day.”
“Are they boarding at the university?” Camilla asked.
Gwen shook her head. “Their father bought a property on the edge of the city. He’s divorced—I’m not sure where the mother lives. But he moved out here with them so they could attend the study group.”
“What about the ranch? Did he have to sell it?”
“Apparently, money is no problem for this guy. He turned over the ranch to a foreman and flies his own plane back to Saskatchewan every weekend to oversee the ranching operation.”
“All this,” Camilla asked, “just to get his kids into an accelerated program for a few years?”
“Not entirely. He also has a couple of other children who’ll benefit from the better schooling opportunities in the city. In fact, one of them’s a freshman here on campus. And guess what?”
“What?” Camilla asked.
“The man… Jonathan Campbell, that’s his name…he’s actually taking a full load of courses himself. He says it’s a good way to fill his time since he has to spend the winter in the city, and—” Gwen stopped midsentence. “Camilla,” she said in alarm. “You’re as white as a sheet. Is something wrong?”
Camilla began to gather books and papers. “No, I’m fine. This man,” she said with forced casualness, “the twins’ father…how old is he?”
“Oh, probably about forty, I’d guess. Quite a handsome fellow in a rugged, Clint Eastwood kind of way. Apparently, he had a couple of years of college when he was young but never finished his degree, so now he’s decided to go back to school along with his kids.”
Camilla got to her feet and lifted the pile of books. “Well, I’m looking forward to meeting these brilliant little twins of yours,” she said. “Help yourself to whatever books you need, Gwen. I’ll see you later this afternoon, okay?”
She hurried out of the office and down the hall, trying to calm herself as she walked.
After all, she wasn’t in any danger, Camilla reminded herself. Now that she was a fully tenured professor, her academic position here and her life were both utterly secure.
Being granted tenure had been, for many years, the most important concern in her life. She’d passionately wanted the security of that position.
Once she managed to acquire tenure, she was guaranteed a future that nobody could ever take away, no matter what happened.
She’d achieved this coveted status almost three years ago, and had hoped that, for the first time in her life, maybe she’d begin to feel safe.
But it hadn’t worked that way. The fears remained, stirred by feelings of anxiety whenever people began to speculate about her personal background.
And now that Jonathan Campbell had inexplicably popped up once more in the middle of her life, she was more afraid than ever.
THE SUN WAS still hanging above the mountains when Jon finally bought the last of his textbooks, checked some materials out of the library and left the campus. He drove through the city of Calgary and headed west toward his new property, a sprawling acreage in the foothills of the Rockies.
He parked the car in the garage, walked past the aluminum hangar where his six-seater airplane was kept and strolled toward the house, which seemed unnaturally quiet in the early-autumn afternoon.
He glanced at his watch and realized it was almost time for supper. The kids liked to eat early, leaving plenty of time for their various activities in the evening. In fact, they might already be waiting for him. Margaret always had them wait for their father if there was any chance he might be home in time for dinner.
Jon quickened his steps, still looking at the big house. It was a modern split-level made of pale field-stone, with a brown-tiled roof and banks of high, sharply angled windows.
A lot different from the comfortable old clapboard mansion at the ranch, with its shady veranda and white picket fences.
Again he reminded himself that this move was necessary. Besides, it was only temporary. In a few years when the twins were older the bus ride wouldn’t be so hard on them. Then they’d all be able to go back to the ranch full-time.
He walked up a path at the side of the house and let himself inside, pausing to wash his hands and hang up his hat and jacket. Then he entered the kitchen where a storm was brewing.
“You little animal,” Vanessa shouted, gripping the telephone receiver in one hand as she glared across the room at her seven-year-old brother. “You absolute beast. Ari, give me that before I kill you!”
Aaron smiled up at her with maddening calm. He stood in the doorway holding a book in his hands. Amelia hovered just behind him, eyeing their sister with a cautious, frightened expression.
The twins were beautiful children with curly dark hair clipped short around their heads, and slim, straight bodies. Amelia had green eyes while Ari’s were gray, and she was a little smaller than her brother. Apart from these slight differences, they were very similar in appearance.
During their early years, the twins had hardly spoken to anyone but each other, and they still inhabited a private world that few adults were allowed to enter. Ari was usually the instigator, impulsive and creative. Amelia acted as his partner and support, always ready to help him carry out his schemes.
While Vanessa watched in speechless outrage, Ari opened the book and pretended to read from it. “I just love Jason Weatherly,” he said in a loud, exaggerated voice. “When he smiles at me across the room in math class, I go all—”
Vanessa screamed, dropped the receiver and lunged at her little brother.
Ari dodged away from her and ran around the kitchen, still reading. “I go all shivery inside, and then I feel…”
The teenager continued to scream. Steven, Jon’s elder son, watched idly from the adjoining family room where he lounged on a couch, watching television. None of the children seemed to be aware of Jon’s arrival on the scene.
Vanessa tripped on the kitchen tiles and fell sprawling to her knees. She crouched on the floor, glaring furiously, long dark hair falling messily around her face.
When Jon strode into the middle of the room, an abrupt silence fell. He crossed the kitchen, lifted the telephone and said, “Vanessa will call you back.”
Then he hung up and turned to face his children.
“Where’s Margaret?”
Nobody answered. The only sounds were Vanessa’s heavy breathing and the roar of gunfire on the television.
Jon looked from one young face to another. “Where’s Margaret?” he repeated.
“In the garden,” Steven said at last. “She went out to pick some tomatoes for the salad.”
“I see.” Jon turned to his younger son, who stood near the archway leading to the family room. “What’s that book, Ari?”
“Van’s diary,” Ari said reluctantly.
“What are you doing with your sister’s diary?” Jon asked. “You know better than to go into somebody else’s bedroom.”
“It wasn’t in her room,” Ari said.
Amy stood close behind him, lending support with her presence. She nodded earnestly.
“Where was it?” Jon asked.
“Under the couch.” Ari gestured toward Steven in the family room. “She left it right over there in plain sight. We found it when Margaret made us clean up our Lego.”
“You horrible little monsters,” Vanessa muttered, getting to her feet. “Do something, Daddy,” she added bitterly. “You always let them get away with everything.”
Jon looked at his elder daughter with a familiar mixture of sympathy and exasperation. At sixteen, Vanessa was a beautiful girl, and bright enough that she was already in her final year of high school. But her looks and personality were so similar to her mother’s that he often worried about her.
Jon and Shelley Campbell had suffered through a dozen years of a stormy, unhappy marriage, complicated by the fact that they shared almost nothing in the way of tastes, dreams or attitudes. In fact, they shared nothing at all except their children, and Shelley’s interest in her offspring had always been so limited that even this tie was tenuous at best.
Jon had met her when he she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. It had been immediately after the most distressing experience of his life, a painful time that he still remembered with frustrated sorrow.
Lonely and desolate, Jon had been an easy target. He’d mistaken Shelley’s sexuality for warmth, her frenetic gaiety for intelligence, her possessiveness for loyalty. By the time he discovered his mistake, it was too late. She was pregnant with Steven, and both Jon and Shelley came from families where getting married was the only possible course of action.
After Steven’s birth, Jon couldn’t bring himself to leave, for fear of losing his child, though the marriage was increasingly miserable. By the time Vanessa was born, less than two years later, Shelley had interests of her own and was seldom home.
The twins had been the unexpected result of a final attempt at a reconciliation. Shelley was appalled when she discovered her third pregnancy. She demanded an abortion.
Jon had talked her into carrying the twins to term, but it was the last straw for their marriage. Soon after the birth, angry and bitter, claiming that the kids were all he’d ever cared about, Shelley dumped all four children with him and left for good.
At the moment she was living in Switzerland, using her lavish divorce settlement to support the young ski instructor who was her current lover. She barely managed a couple of trips a year back to the States to see her brood of growing children, and when she did fly in for visits, all of them were invariably hurt and disappointed by her flippant, erratic manner.
Still, she was a beautiful woman, Jon thought ruefully. Even at forty, Shelley looked a lot like her older daughter, with the same violet-blue eyes, delicate complexion and slim figure. But Vanessa at least had an excuse for her selfish behaviour, since she was caught in the miserable throes of adolescence. Jon had hopes that his daughter might yet develop into a mature and caring person. Shelley, on the other hand, simply refused to grow up.
Jon turned from Vanessa to look at Ari. “Just because Van left her diary out here doesn’t give you the right to read it,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to privacy and respect for their belongings, Ari. Give me the book.”
Ari moved forward silently and handed the diary to his father.
Behind him, Amy’s green eyes filled with tears. Jon knew his children well enough to understand a little of what was going on with the twins.
They’d never known the security of a mother who loved and cared about them. Over the years Jon had tried hard to make up for their loss, but he knew they were as hurt and confused as the older children by their mother’s carelessness. As a result, they tended to cling fiercely to familiar and comforting things.
Now they’d been uprooted from the isolated ranch home they both loved. Their security was further disrupted by this move to a strange new environment, a different kind of school and a modern, unwelcoming house.
Their loneliness and homesickness tore at Jon’s heart. He knelt on the kitchen floor and took Amy’s little body in his arms, reaching for her brother. “Come here, Ari,” he said.
Ari hesitated, then pressed against him.
“Tell Van you’re sorry,” Jon whispered. “Tell her you’ll never do it again.”
Ari gulped, swallowed hard and turned to Vanessa. “We’re sorry,” he mumbled.
“We won’t touch any of your stuff ever again,” Amy added.
“Daddy, for God’s sake,” Vanessa began furiously. “Don’t let them get away with this! You should make them…”
But Jon was holding the twins again, cuddling them tenderly. “How would you both like to come with me to the ranch this weekend?” he murmured against their dark curls.
Ari’s gray eyes shone. “Really, Daddy?” he whispered huskily.
“Really. But you have to be super-good between now and then.” Jon kissed Amy’s cheek and wiped her tears. “Now run and wash your face, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Let’s eat our supper.”
While the twins ran out of the kitchen, he got up and seated himself at a big oak table that was neatly set for seven.
When the twins came back, all four children joined him silently. A side door opened, and Margaret came in from the garden, carrying a basket of ripe tomatoes.
The housekeeper was a big, friendly young woman with a mop of red hair and plump freckled arms. She had a boyfriend who worked on the oil rigs north of Edmonton, and who came home infrequently to visit his sweetheart. This erratic courtship seemed to suit both of them well enough, much to Jon’s relief. Margaret was the only housekeeper he’d ever found who was able to deal patiently and lovingly with all the children, and he dreaded the thought of losing her.
She greeted Jon with a smile and carried the tomatoes to the sink.
“What’s all this?” she asked when she saw Amy’s reddened cheeks.
“They’ve been reading my diary,” Vanessa said sullenly. “But Daddy refuses to punish them, as usual. Little monsters,” she muttered, glowering at Amy, whose eyes began to glisten with tears again.
“Poor little chicks.” Margaret ruffled Amy’s dark curls. “That’s all right, love. You know, Ari, you shouldn’t have touched that book,” she said, turning to the other twin. “Did you apologize to your sister? Poor Vanessa, she has to put with an awful lot from the pair of you. Steven Campbell, don’t you dare start eating till your daddy has a chance to dish up the food.”
The tension left the room with her cheerful arrival and evenhanded approach. All the children watched as Margaret served bowls of salad and sliced tomatoes along with a macaroni casserole.
Jon sat at the head of the table, looking around at the young faces that were so dear to him.
The twins had obviously been comforted by their promised trip to the ranch. Even Vanessa appeared somewhat mollified. Only Steven was quiet, his handsome face looking bored.
Steven resembled his father more than any of the other children, but nowadays he lacked any trace of Jon’s casual air or easy smile.
Jon felt increasingly troubled about the boy.
When Steve was a child, they’d had a warm, open relationship. Father and son had spent long hours together on their windswept prairie ranch as they fished, rode horses and tramped through the coulees. These days, though, Steve was slipping further away from the entire family, wrapped up in some mysterious world that Jon could no longer enter.
“How are your classes, Steve?” he asked.
The boy shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
Jon glanced at his elder son again, but didn’t press. Instead, he turned and addressed the twins. “Tom called me last night. He says the calves are just about ready to sell.”
“What else did he say?” Ari asked.
Tom Beatch was the foreman at the ranch, a grizzled old cowboy who was a great favorite with the twins.
Jon told the children the news from Tom and the other cowboys, including the latest in Tom’s sporadic courtship of Caroline, who ran a lunch counter in a Saskatchewan border town.
“Those two will never get together,” Margaret said placidly from the sink. “Tom Beatch doesn’t want to get married any more than my Eddie does.”
“When’s Eddie coming back?” Jon asked the housekeeper.
“Next month,” Margaret said, beaming. “He’ll be home for a whole week at least, then off north to look for work again.”
Jon looked at the twins, whose animation at the mention of Tom seemed to have disappeared. They were picking at their food, looking disconsolate. Apparently, their homesickness was as deep as ever. He sighed and cut up a tomato, searching for something else to say.
“Tom’s getting real worried about me,” he told the children finally. “He wonders what I’m going to do with myself for a whole winter here in the city.”
Steven gazed out the window at the trees bordering the front driveway, clearly lost in his own thoughts. The twins exchanged an unhappy glance and continued to move bits of macaroni around on their plates while Margaret watched them.
Only Vanessa, who seemed to have recovered from her sulks, was interested in what her father was saying. “I know what I’d do,” she told him. “I’d spend the whole day shopping. I’d buy every single thing I ever wanted, and spend all day trying clothes on.”
Jon watched her pretty face, wondering whether her preoccupation with material things was just a teenage phase—something she would outgrow. “Well, Van, I know what I’m going to do, too,” he said calmly. “I’ve got it all planned. In fact, I started today.”
“What’s that, Mr. C.?” Margaret got up and began to load the dishwasher.
“I’m going back to school.” Jon helped himself to more casserole while the others watched in astonishment. “I had my first two classes today.”
Vanessa’s jaw dropped. “Back to school?” she said at last. “Like, to college, you mean?”
Jon smiled at his elder daughter. “Don’t look so amazed,” he said. “I took two years of college when I was young, then had to quit before I graduated. I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finish my degree.”
Vanessa gripped her fork and continued to stare at her father, aghast. “You’re going to university?“ she asked. “On the same campus with Steven? The same place I’ll be going next year?”
“The very same,” Jon told her solemnly.
She dropped her fork, speechless with horror. Privately, Jon was a little amused by her reaction, but took care not to show it. In fact, he often tried deliberately to ruffle Vanessa’s feathers to keep her from getting as self-absorbed as her mother.
But this time, judging from her look of whitelipped shock, it seemed Jon might have pushed his daughter too far.
“It’s a big campus, Van,” he told her gently. “Thousands and thousands of students. Nobody’s going to notice me.”
“But what if you’re in one of my classes next year?” she wailed. “God, I’d just die.”
Steven’s lip twisted. “Oh, shut up, Van,” he muttered. “Why do you always have to be such an idiot?”
Jon frowned at him and turned back to Vanessa. “I won’t be in any of your classes, You’ll be a freshman. I’ll be taking fourth-year courses next term.”
“But having my father on the same campus…” Her face twisted with distress. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said tragically. “The totally, absolute worst.” She pushed her chair back, got up and ran from the room.
There was a brief silence in the kitchen.
“She’ll get over it, Mr. C.,” Margaret said comfortably. “She gets upset about a dozen times a day, and every time it’s the very worst thing that’s ever happened to her.”
Jon looked at the doorway where his daughter had vanished. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “She won’t be so upset once she realizes that our paths are never likely to cross on that big campus.”
Steven’s brief spurt of animation had vanished. He ate macaroni in gloomy silence.
“How about you, son?” Jon asked. “Will it bother you, having me on campus?”
Steven shrugged. “Why should I care?”
“You don’t seem to care about much of anything these days,” Jon said, trying to keep his voice casual. “What’s the matter, son?”
Steven looked at him with a brief flash of emotion, and Jon held his breath, hoping the boy was about to say something meaningful. But the moment passed and they all returned to their meal, eating in silence while Margaret continued to load the dishwasher.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, on a hill near the house, Ari lay on his stomach in the slanted rays of evening sunlight. He drummed his feet on the ground as he chewed a spear of grass.
“Churks,” he muttered. “Fizzlespit.”
Amy looked at her brother with tense sympathy. These words were part of their private language, seldom used and shockingly profane. The fact that Ari was saying them now showed how sad and lonely he was.
“We get to fly to the ranch this weekend,” she said, watching a dark green beetle as it lumbered through the tangle of grass. “Daddy promised. It’ll be fun to see Tom and ride our ponies, won’t it?”
But Ari wasn’t ready to be comforted. “I wish Daddy would get married.” He plucked another blade of grass. “We need a mother.”
Amy turned to him in confusion. “We already have a mother.”
“I mean, we need one who lives in our house. If Daddy got married, we’d all move back to the ranch and live together and be like a family.”
“Do you think so?” she asked wistfully.
“If Daddy was married, he wouldn’t worry so much what school we went to. When Mummy was home, Daddy and Van and Steve all lived on the ranch together. I hate being in this place.”
“It’s not so bad here,” Amy said loyally. “Daddy wants us to go to school without having to ride so far on the bus, and Mrs. Klassen is really nice. I like the aquarium at school,” she added. “And the model of the hydrogen molecule. Don’t you?”
Ari scowled. “I want to go back to the ranch. We need to find a lady for Daddy to marry.”
“Maybe he could marry Margaret.”
“You’re so dumb,” Ari said. “Daddy could never marry Margaret.”
“Why not? She’s nice to us all the time, and she cooks and cleans and everything.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted after a few moments of deep concentration. “But it can’t be Margaret. It needs to be somebody different”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know,” Ari repeated. “But I’ll think of somebody.”
The twins lay quietly for a while. Then, like birds or fish moving in response to an invisible signal, they got up at the same moment and began to run, swooping down the grassy hill with their arms spread wide and their legs flying.
They ran until they were exhausted, then climbed another hill, heading for one of their favorite places on the new farm. It was the oldest building on the property, a big stone barn nestled at the foot of the hill and surrounded by trees.
The previous owner had used the barn to house a couple of vintage automobiles, and several improvements had been added to protect the valuable cars. All the windows were stoutly boarded, and a metal overheard door that was operated from outside by pressing a button had been installed. The control button was inside a panel that could be secured with a padlock.
Although the lock had been removed along with the contents of the barn, the control button remained functional. Ari loved to press it and watch the big door slowly open and close, sliding as if by magic.
When Vanessa reported on the existence of the automatic door, Margaret had immediately forbade the twins to play anywhere near the barn because they might get locked inside, a suggestion that made Ari scoff privately in derision.
“How could we get locked inside?” he asked Amy when they were alone. “You have to be outside to push the button. Margaret doesn’t know anything.”
So they ignored the housekeeper’s order and continued to frequent the barn. Amy was a little anxious about their disobedience, but her loyalty to Ari always outweighed her caution.
Now she followed him down the hill and crept along behind him as he edged toward the old building. The door was open which meant that somebody was inside.
Ari glanced over his shoulder and nodded. Amy understood at once, following him to the base of one of the trees beside the barn. The twins climbed silently into the middle branches, then moved out of the tree onto the shingled roof and crept up toward the row of air vents.
These vents were about two feet square and situated near the peak of the roof. Each twin stopped at the edge of an open vent. They clung to the rough shingles and slithered forward until they could peer down into the shadowy depths of the barn.
Steven’s yellow sports car was parked in the shadows, and Steven himself sat with three other boys on some baled hay as they passed a skinny cigarette back and forth.
The twins exchanged a wide-eyed, startled glance, then edged forward for a better look.
They’d never seen these boys, who must have slipped onto the property through a back road. They were a tough-looking group, hard-faced and scary, not at all like the happy neighboring kids who used to be Steven’s friends on the ranch.
The twins watched the four boys for a moment, then withdrew from the vents and looked at each other in alarm.
They slid back down the roof, melted into the tree branches and considered their next move.
“We should tell Daddy,” Amy said in a hushed voice. “Let’s bring him over here. They’re not supposed to be smoking.”
Ari shook his head.
“Why not?” Amy whispered. “The hay might catch on fire. Then the barn would be wrecked.”
“It can’t burn,” Ari muttered. “It’s made of stones.”
“But we should—”
He waved a hand to silence her. She settled more comfortably on the branch and swung her foot, liking the feeling of being up in the sky, hidden like a bird among the rustling green leaves.
But she didn’t like the boys who were down in the barn with Steven. They looked mean and threatening, like bad dogs who might bite you for no reason.
“We could push the button and close the door,” Ari said at last. “If we do, they can’t get out. They’ll be trapped.”
Amy shivered. “No, Ari. It’s so dark and scary in there.”
“Serves them right,” Ari said. “They’re bad, and Steve shouldn’t be with them. Dad would be mad if he knew what they were doing.”
“But it’s really mean to lock them inside the barn. You know it is.”
He avoided her eyes, looking down at a long scratch on his ankle.
“Besides,” Amy went on, “if we close the door and trap them, Daddy will lock up the button so we can’t open the door by ourselves anymore. He was going to do it last week but he forgot. Let’s just go away and leave them alone.”
Ari was on the point of climbing down from the tree. He scowled and hesitated.
Amy pressed her advantage. “It’s so much fun to play in there, Ari. If Daddy locks the barn, we won’t be able to get inside.”
“We could get a rope and swing down from the air vents like mountain climbers.”
Amy thought about the peak of the barn, almost as tall as the tree they were sitting in. “It’s too high. Besides, how would we get back up?”
“We could climb the rope,” he argued, but Amy could tell that he was weakening.
With relief, she turned and began to climb down the tree, slipping rapidly through the leaves and branches until she dropped to her feet on the hillside.
Ari joined her, and they ran back up the hill toward the flaring colors of the sunset, their small bodies lost in the vastness of the prairie sky.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_0369b17b-b83e-50a1-88ca-e65334b518bc)
SOMEHOW, CAMILLA MANAGED to get through the remainder of the first day in a blur of classes, meetings and seminars. By the time she finished her office work and sent her reading lists to the library to be posted, it was twilight.
The campus was peaceful in the slanting rays of light, with small groups of students strolling and talking quietly. Thunderheads were beginning to mass beyond the snowcapped mountains and the sky was vivid with sunset colors—streaks of orange and dusty pink and violet.
Though it was still early in September, the air already carried a hint of frost, and some of the trees were beginning to wither. A few leaves drifted to the sidewalk in front of her, crunching underfoot as she walked toward her apartment.
Camilla looked down at the fallen leaves, lost in a deepening melancholy.
Madonna and Elton were both at the door when she entered her apartment They welcomed her with enthusiasm, mewing and rubbing frantically against her legs, which only happened when they wanted something. Camilla soon determined that Elton was hungry, while Madonna was eager to go outside.
Camilla opened the glass balcony door to let Madonna escape into the branches of the adjacent poplar, then set her pile of books on the kitchen table and filled Elton’s bowl with dry cat food.
While-he was eating, Camilla went into the bathroom and ran the tub, adding a liberal dash of scented bubbles. She stood at the counter to take out her contact lenses, then stored them in their little plastic case. She rubbed her eyes with relief as she looked at herself in the mirror.
The change was always so dramatic, because her eyes weren’t blue at all. They were actually a clear, pale gray, like the sky on a cloudy day.
She’d chosen the tinted lenses mostly for practical reasons, because they were easier to find if she dropped or misplaced one of them. But tonight she was gratified to see again how much the lenses altered her appearance.
When Jon Campbell had seen her all those years ago, she’d had gray eyes….
Camilla touched the bridge of her nose, then picked up a hand mirror to study her profile critically. The plastic surgeon had repaired the cartilage in her nose skillfully. But back in that long-ago summer, her nose had been freshly broken and wasn’t healing properly. It had been noticeably crooked, and somewhat thicker at the bridge.
And her hair, too, had darkened a lot over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, her long braid had been pale blond, almost silver, hanging all the way to her waist.
Camilla put the mirror aside, stripped off her clothes, turned off the faucet and stepped into the tub, settling with a weary sigh among the fragrant mounds of bubbles.
Perhaps the man wasn’t lying, after all. It seemed quite possible that he didn’t recognize her, and he’d only arrived in her classroom by some kind of ghastly coincidence.
When their eyes first met, he’d looked puzzled by her own shocked reaction. There’d been no answering spark of recognition from him, no meaningful smirk or veiled threat. Just a look of good humour, masculine admiration and a readiness to smile and respond if she gave him any encouragement.
Jon Campbell seemed too blunt and forthright to carry off some kind of sinister deception. Still, she could hardly dare to hope that the man truly had forgotten what happened between them twenty years ago in that dirty motel room.
Camilla lowered herself among the bubbles so the water came to her chin. She lifted a slim foot and touched the faucet with her toe, idly tracing the outlines of the gleaming brass.
Maybe, for once in her life, she was going to be lucky. Perhaps the tinted contact lenses, her nose surgery, darkened hair and a few more inches of height were going to be enough to disguise her real identity from Jon Campbell.
Briefly she wondered what the man was like, how he’d turned out after all these years.
He seemed similar in some ways to the boy she remembered, but there were subtle differences, as well. Jonathan Campbell now had a look of wealth and power, despite the casual air. He was obviously a man with a privileged background and enough money to do anything he wanted—even go back to college full-time if he chose.
In fact, he seemed to be everything the campus myths claimed her to be. Camilla smiled grimly at the irony, then sobered and reached out to run more hot water into the tub.
Regardless of what he’d become, he was a threat to Camilla, and she knew she had to get the man out of her life quickly to preserve her own safety.
Elton wandered into the room, licking his whiskered chops with satisfaction. He stood erect, with his front paws resting on the edge of the tub, and stared at her solemnly. Camilla blew a couple of soap bubbles into his face, making him blink.
She smiled sadly. “Too bad a professor can’t just walk out of a class the way her students do. Should I drop that creative-writing class, Elton?”
The cat watched her with his usual inscrutable expression.
“Oh, I know. You’re right, of course,” Camilla said. “Dr. Pritchard can hardly drop a class simply because…”
Because the professor happens to share some unpleasant and embarrassing sexual history with one of her students.
Camilla’s throat tightened with anxiety. Of course, she had the power to remove a student from her class, but in order to do that she’d need a good reason.
Maybe if the work was hard enough, the man would quit of his own accord. After all, he’d probably been away from college for more than twenty years, presumably doing a lot of rugged, outdoor work, if his callused hands were any indication. No doubt he was going to find it difficult to adjust to the daily grind of classes and homework.
Camilla’s spirits lifted a bit.
Maybe she could give out the individual research assignments a couple of weeks early, and find some way to make Campbell work harder than anybody else. But she’d have to do it soon—before he had a lot more opportunities to sit at the back of that room and study every detail of her face and body.
Camilla climbed from the tub, dried herself on a big green towel and slipped into a terry-cloth robe and slippers, then made her way to the kitchen with Elton at her heels. She brewed a pot of herbal tea, put a small frozen entrée into the microwave and spread her books out on the glass-topped table.
What assignment could she give Jon Campbell? It had to be something tedious enough to convince the poor man that he wasn’t really interested in completing a senior writing class.
Camilla put on her reading glasses and began to work. After a few minutes, the microwave beeped and she got up, carried the tray to the table, picked up a fork and ate without tasting the food.
A short while later Camilla returned to her problem.
Maybe an analysis of character development in Chaucer?
How about a comparison of editorial styles of seven major newspapers, or a definitive look at the American novel from Hawthorne to Updike…
The pages blurred in front of her eyes. Camilla took off her glasses and dropped her head into her hands, rubbing her temples wearily.
It was beginning to rain. She could hear the heavy drops flowing down the windowpanes, pattering on the floor of the balcony. The sound was seductive, almost mesmerizing, carrying her back through the years.
Back to 1977, and the terrible events of that early summer…
July 1977
IT’S RAINING AGAIN, but I’m so cold and dirty that I don’t care anymore. It’s weird how people are always so afraid of being caught in the rain, as if getting wet is the worst thing that can happen to them. I’ve spent the last three nights out in the rain, sitting in the ditch by the highway with a jacket over my head. My clothes are filthy, my hair’s all stringy and I haven’t eaten since…I can’t remember the last time I had anything to eat.
It’s been a couple of days at least, but the hunger pangs have mostly passed. I’m dizzy a lot of the time and I still feel like throwing up whenever I remember what happened.
My knife didn’t help me a bit when he finally came to my room. He just laughed and snatched it from me like it was some kind of toy. When I tried to fight back, he hit me so hard that I could feel my nose breaking. The taste of blood in my throat sickened me almost as much as the things he was doing to me.
I can’t bear to think about the things he did. I won’t think about it. I won’t…
After he was finished, he rolled over and fell asleep. I got up, found the knife on the floor and jammed it as far as I could into his chest. He shouted and thrashed around, clutching at the knife handle. I don’t know if I killed him, but I hope so. I didn’t stay long enough to find out, I just grabbed some clothes and money and ran away.
My mother was passed out in the living room when I left. She never even knew what happened.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. After what he did to me, nothing matters anymore. It doesn’t matter what I do.
But I have to eat if I want to stay alive, so I’ll probably get to the city and start selling myself on the street. I’ll have to find some way to get cleaned up first, though. Nobody would pay to have sex with a girl who looks the way I do right now. It’s been two weeks since I ran away, and I haven’t seen a mirror for a long time so I don’t know if my nose has started to heal. It doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore, but I think it’s still pretty swollen.
I’m kind of scared at the thought of being a prostitute. Until he did what he did, I’d never even… nobody had ever touched me before. But now it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I just have to find some way to get a little money. I have to clean myself up and wash my hair, and find some clothes somewhere.
The sky is starting to lighten, and the sun will be rising soon. Meadowlarks are singing on the prairie all around me. They sound almost crazed with happiness. It’s amazing how the dawn can still be so clean and beautiful when it shines down on a world as ugly as this.
I’m sitting on a piece of cardboard in a wide, grassy ditch, and I’m stiff and cold, sore all over. I’d give anything to have a hot meal and a bath. A hot bath would be the most wonderful thing in the world.
Maybe I can flag down one of the semitrailers that keep passing on the highway, and get to the city that way. But people are such busybodies. The driver will want to know where I came from. He’ll take me to the police and they’ll either put me in jail for murder or send me back home.
Home.
God, what a laugh. I’ll die before I go back there. But I don’t know what else to do, and I’m so scared. I’m really scared. The mist is clearing and I can see for a little way down the ditch. There’s a man over there by the intersection. He must have stopped sometime during the night. He’s got his motorcycle pulled off the highway, and he’s been camping in a little tent. Now he’s up and moving around. He’s got a portable stove set up on some rocks. I can smell bacon frying.
Oh, Lord, it smells so good! I think he’s brewing coffee, too. Maybe a guy on a motorcycle won’t be so likely to call the cops.
Before I can lose my nerve, I get up and begin walking down the ditch toward him. It’s funny, I’m putting one foot in front of the other but I’m not sure if I’m still upright. The world is spinning, and all of a sudden there’s sky where the ground is supposed to be.
I feel somebody kneeling beside me, lifting me. Now I can see a face. It’s not really a man at all, just a boy not much older than me. He’s got blue eyes and thick brown hair, and he looks so nice….
SHE LOOKED BLANKLY at the streaming window. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, then fumbled in her pocket for a wad of tissues.
Finally, she pushed the books aside, stumbled into her living room and curled on the couch, hugging her knees. She switched on the television and let waves of brightly coloured images wash over her, drowning the painful memories in gusts of canned laughter.
NEXT MORNING, Camilla crossed the campus and went into the arts building. She bypassed her office and headed straight for the large theater where she taught freshman English.
Ninety-six students were registered this term, practically an impossible number. She sighed when she looked up at the tiered rows of seats filled with anxious young people.
While they stared down at her in hushed stillness, she moved across the front of the room, set her books on the desk and found the class list.
“Good morning. My name is Dr. Pritchard.”
There was a nervous murmur of greeting.
“When I read your name,” Camilla went on, “please indicate your presence with the word here and a raised hand so I’m able to check you off on the list. Regular attendance in class is vital because we’ll be moving rather quickly through a very large body of material. Anybody who skips more than two sessions without a valid excuse will receive a grade of incomplete on the term. Is that understood?”
The students nodded.
Camilla looked down at her alphabetized class list. “Aaronson?”
“Here.”
“Anders?”
“Here.”
“Appleby?”
“Yo, Doc!”
Camilla glanced up sharply. Appleby, who wore a bandanna and a couple of earrings, gave her a cherubic smile and waved. Camilla ignored him and went on reading names.
The sixth name was Campbell, and Camilla looked up at the speaker.
My God, it’s Jon! she thought in confusion. But how can it possibly…that was twenty years ago, and I saw the man yesterday in my…
She struggled to get her thoughts under control while the students watched her curiously.
Of course. This had to be Jon Campbell’s son.
He was no more than eighteen or nineteen, but he looked exactly like Jon as a young man. This boy had the same clean-cut good looks and direct blue eyes, the thick brown hair highlighted by streaks of gold after long days in the summer sun…
Camilla took herself firmly in hand and continued to call off the students’ names, stealing a couple of glances at Steven Campbell as she read.
Despite the physical resemblance, he certainly didn’t have the same open, pleasant look that Jon used to have. This boy seemed sullen and morose, coldly withdrawn.
Still, the unexpected appearance of him in her class was unnerving. And yet, deep down, there was a warm and unsettling feeling of excitement, too, when she looked up at the boy and remembered…
Twenty years ago, she told herself. Long ago, lost in the past.
Not even Jon Campbell remembered.
She shoved the thoughts out of her mind and finished taking attendance, then spoke to the students.
“Open your notebooks and write me a two-page essay about your goals in life,” she said amid a chorus of groans.
“What if I don’t have any?” Appleby inquired, grinning around at his fellow students.
Camilla gave the boy a thoughtful glance. “Goals don’t necessarily have to be personal, Mr. Appleby. If you have no goals for yourself, perhaps you have some for the human race, or for the planet. At any rate, I want a two-page essay on goals, and I want it to be accompanied by your full name, and your class and student number so I can begin to get to know each of you.”
Steven Campbell glared into the distance for a while, concentrating, then began to write. Although she was still badly shaken by the boy’s presence, Camilla found herself looking forward to reading his essay.
She moved around the room, up and down the tiers of seats while her students worked, and passed the time answering questions, offering advice on punctuation and style.
She paused briefly by Steven Campbell’s desk, looking down at his thick, gold-streaked hair and his broad shoulders. Even his hands were shaped like Jon’s, lean and strong, with square fingernails.
Camilla remembered those hands…
“Is your father by any chance a student here on campus, Mr. Campbell?” she murmured, wanting to hear his voice.
The boy gave her a noncommittal glance. “Yeah,” he said. “My dad’s taking some classes. My little brother and sister are here, too,” he added grudgingly, looking down at his paper.
“I beg your pardon?” Camilla asked.
“My twin brother and sister,” the boy repeated. “They’re seven years old. They’re in some kind of special class for egghead kids.”
“That’s our accelerated study group. In fact, I think I’ll probably be meeting your brother and sister later this afternoon.”
The boy nodded without interest as she moved away.
A couple of tiers higher, Camilla noticed a darkhaired girl laboring over her paper. Tears glittered in the young woman’s eyes. Camilla mounted the stairs unobtrusively to stand next to her.
“Is something the matter?” she whispered.
The girl looked up at her in anguish. “I can’t do this!”
“It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece,” Camilla said. “Just a few words about yourself and your goals.”
The student shook her head. “I mean this whole college thing. I’ve been out of school for four years, working and saving to come here. Now I’m in a panic. It’s all so hard, and there’s a ton of reading to do, and I—” Her voice broke.
Camilla knelt beside the girl’s desk and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know it feels pretty overwhelming at this stage,” she murmured, “but it’ll all fall into place within a week or two. Trust me, you’re going to feel a whole lot better after a few more classes. In the meantime,” she added, “drop by my office anytime and I’ll do what I can to help out.”
The girl looked up, her face clearing a little. “Really, Dr. Pritchard?”
Camilla got to her feet, one hand still resting on the student’s shoulder. “I was a freshman once, too,” she said. “And I was even more terrified than you are. I’ll be glad to help.”
The girl managed a trembling smile. Camilla smiled back, then moved up the steps to watch as the others toiled away at their essays.
They’re my children, Camilla thought. All these young people are the children I’ve never had.
Involuntarily, she glanced at Steven Campbell’s bent head and felt a deep wave of sadness.
CONSIDERING ALL the bizarre things that were happening to her this term, it took a lot of courage for Camilla to head over to Gwen’s classroom after lunch and keep her appointment with the study group.
She went down the hall and knocked on the door of a comfortable suite of rooms where the gifted children learned everything from chemistry to judo.
“Come in,” Gwen called, and Camilla entered to find a lively session in progress.
The students, about a dozen of them ranging from six to ten years old, were constructing a solar system out of papier-måché, hanging their planets in proper scale from a sunlamp in the center of the room.
“Children, this is Dr. Pritchard,” Gwen told the students. “She’s going to be dropping in to play games with us and ask some of you a whole lot of questions. Say hello, class.”
“Hello,” Camilla said, smiling at them.
“Hello, Dr. Pritchard,” the children chorused, then went back to their project.
Gwen drew Camilla aside. “Look, I don’t know how you were planning to begin your study, but could you possibly take the twins for a few hours?” she whispered. “I need to work out a special program for them, but I haven’t had time yet.”
She indicated a corner of the room where two curly-haired children lay on their stomachs near the aquarium, sharing a book.
“What are they reading?” Camilla whispered back.
“A. A. Milne. They like to memorize stories.”
Camilla chuckled. “Definitely children after my own heart. Why aren’t they making planets like the others?”
“They’ve already done this same project at home with their father, working out the orbits and distances all by themselves. They’re bored with the whole idea by now. The thing is, I still haven’t had time to work out something that’s going to challenge them properly. So if you could…”
“Would I be able to include both of them in my study, do you think?” Camilla asked.
“Kiddo, if you can take those kids off my hands for a few hours a week, I’ll be eternally grateful,” Gwen murmured.
“Would it be okay if I took them down to my office? I need some time to get to know them properly before I start testing.”
“Sure. But you’ll find they’re pretty tense little kids,” Gwen warned. “It’s hard to get them to relax and open up, unless…Jason,” she called to the group, “I think we need to move Neptune a little farther out. You’d better check the book, okay?”
She turned back to Camilla who was frowning thoughtfully.
“How about my apartment? They might be more comfortable if they could sit around in a homey setting and play with my cats.”
“That’s a good idea,” the teacher said. “Just tell me before you take them out of the building, okay? I need to know where they are.”
“Of course.” Camilla moved closer to the two children, accompanied by their teacher.
“Ari and Amy, listen to me.” Gwen stood above their prone figures. “This is Dr. Pritchard. She’s a very, very nice lady who’s going to be working with us quite a bit over the next few months.”
Two pairs of wide eyes looked up at them, green and gray, quietly watchful. Camilla was relieved to find that these children, at least, looked nothing at all like Jon Campbell.
She knelt beside the twins, then sat next to them on the carpeted floor while Gwen returned to the rest of the group.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Stories about Pooh and Piglet,” Ari said. “We like to memorize them.”
“Why?” Camilla asked.
“So we can say them to each other when we don’t have the book.” He pointed at one of the pictures. “See? Pooh’s got his head stuck in the honey pot and he can’t get out.”
“Piglet’s coming to help,” Amy chimed in. “But Pooh keeps getting lost.”
“Eeyore is my favorite,” Camilla said. “I like his cheerful outlook on life.”
Ari and Amy exchanged a glance. Camilla could see the silent message passing between them and sensed to her relief that for some reason they’d decided to trust her. Ari giggled, then moved closer to lean against her. “I like Baby Roo. It’s neat the way his mother takes such good care of him.”
Camilla touched the little boy’s rounded cheek, “I like that, too.”
Amy smiled and edged toward them, pressing against Camilla’s other side. Together they finished reading the story, speaking quietly to avoid disturbing the others, and laughed over the whimsical illustrations.
At last she got up, drawing the twins along with her. “Let’s go somewhere to talk, okay?” she said. “I want you kids to help me with something I’m working on.”
Ari began to look anxious again. “We’re not supposed to go anywhere with strangers. Daddy says…”
“It’s all right, dear.” Gwen came back across the room. “Dr. Pritchard is a teacher, too, and you can go anywhere she wants to take you.”
“Does Daddy know we’re going?” Amy asked.
“I told your daddy that Dr. Pritchard will be working with you and he knows we’re all taking very good care of you,” Gwen replied. “Now, Dr. Pritchard wants to take you to her office and play some games with you, that’s all.”
“What kind of games?” Ari asked.
“The kind of games that are your very favorite, dear. Flash cards and films, memory games, things like that.”
Ari brightened and turned to Camilla with a questioning glance.
“That’s right,” she told him. “Lots of games.”
“Better have them back here by four, okay?” Gwen called. “That’s when their housekeeper comes to pick them up.”
“We’ll be back,” Camilla promised.
She walked down the hallway, enjoying the feeling of a little warm hand in each of hers. “What’s your housekeeper’s name?” she asked.
“Sixty-four,” Ari muttered, apparently counting the tiles under his feet. “Amy, what’s the square root? Quick!”
“Eight,” the little girl said absently. “Margaret,” she added with a smile for Camilla.
“The housekeeper’s name is Margaret?” she asked.
Ari nodded. “Eighty-one.”
“Nine,” Amy said.
“Margaret has a boyfriend,” Ari said. “His name’s Eddie. He works way up north on the oil rigs. And Tom has a girlfriend, but Margaret says they’ll never get married.”
“Who’s Tom?” Camilla asked.
“He’s the foreman at the ranch.”
“Your father’s ranch?”
Amy giggled. “Once, Ari put Tom’s brand-new cowboy boots into the rain barrel.”
“They were made out of alligator skin,” Ari said. “I wanted to see if they’d float.”
Camilla laughed. “And did they float?”
Ari shook his head, looking glum. “Tom was real mad at us. He wouldn’t let me ride my pony for a whole week. But after that, he said it didn’t matter because those boots needed to shrink a bit anyhow.”
Something in the child’s voice made Camilla stop and kneel beside him again.
“Do you miss the ranch, dear?”
Ari looked away from her while Amy waited silently nearby.
After a moment, Camilla got to her feet again. “I’ll tell you what,” she said with sudden decision. “Let’s forget about those tests for now, okay? Let’s go down to the cafeteria and get some ice-cream cones.”
They spent a long time in the cafeteria choosing the flavors of their cones. Finally Ari selected pistachio and Amy took raspberry.
“What kind should I get?” Camilla asked.
The twins exchanged a glance. “Butterscotch ripple,” Amy said firmly.
“Why?” Camilla said, intrigued.
“Because you’re all white and gold,” Ari said.
“I see,” she sad, smiling.
“How long has Margaret been your housekeeper?” Camilla asked idly while they were sitting on a rock ledge outside the cafeteria.
“A long time. Since we were babies. Look,” Amy said, pointing to a black bird worrying a scrap of bread on the grass. “That’s a raven.”
“Nevermore,” Ari croaked, then laughed. “It’s not a raven, it’s a crow. Ravens are bigger. Did you know that our daddy goes to this college?” he asked Camilla with one of the lightning changes of subject she was becoming accustomed to.
“I certainly do. He’s in one of my classes, and so is your brother, Steven.”
The twins considered this. Camilla took advantage of their brief silence to return to the topic of Jon Campbell’s household.
“Does Margaret help your mother with the cooking and everything?”
“Our mother lives in Switzerland,” Amy said, “where all the mountains are.”
“There’s mountains here, too,” Ari said. “Look, you can see them from here.” He waved his hand toward the western horizon.
Camilla felt guilty about pumping small children for personal information, but the temptation was too great. “When did your mother go to Switzerland?”
“When we were born.” Ari pulled off some bits of the cone and tossed them toward the crow.
“You mean she took you away to Switzerland?”
“No, she left us here and went by herself because she didn’t love Daddy anymore. She says he’s a selfish pig who only cares about himself, so she went away.”
The child’s tone was flat and unemotional as he stared at the big bird.
Camilla thought about Ari’s words. The accusation against Jon Campbell seemed extreme, especially coming from a woman who’d apparently abandoned her own children. But perhaps Jon Campbell wasn’t the man she’d always thought. Maybe he was actually the kind of person who’d use his wealth and power to separate a woman from her newborn babies.
“When are we going to play games?” Ari was asking, tugging at her arm.
“Right away.” Camilla got to her feet and brushed at her skirt. “Let’s go to my office and see how much fun we can have.”
They went inside the building again. In the crowded hallway, the twins moved to each side of her and reached for her hands. The three of them walked along the corridor, swinging their arms, and in spite of her nagging fears, Camilla felt a wholly unexpected surge of happiness.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_46ceb7f1-1b1e-5ae0-8df6-51bf66cdbf8b)
“A VITALLY IMPORTANT part of creative writing,” Camilla told her senior class, “is the ability to give your reader a sense of place. This is accomplished by means of descriptive passages, but they have to be used sparingly or they’ll overpower the narrative.”
“Like garlic salt,” one of the students suggested, and Camilla smiled.
“Like garlic salt,” she agreed. “A little bit is delicious, but too much will spoil the dish. As you work your way through the reading list, I think you’ll find that all of the great writers are masters at description. Now, for your next assignment, I want you to take some time this weekend and do a couple of pages describing the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen.”
Hands shot up all over the room. “Can it be an imaginary place? What if it’s something that’s only beautiful to me, but nobody else? How many words should the essay be?”
She moved around the room to answer their questions, conscious of Jon Campbell watching her steadily from his seat at the back.
This was the fifth session of this class, and she was becoming accustomed to having him nearby. But it was still disturbing to see him lounge in his desk as he watched her with that thoughtful blue gaze.
By now, though, Camilla was convinced that the man really didn’t remember. Maybe the incident had meant so little to him that he’d forgotten it as soon as it happened.
Or maybe, like her, he’d repressed the past, buried all of those memories in some deep place where they were never disturbed.
She still had hopes that he might be intimidated enough by the major assignment he’d been given to drop the course altogether. But even this faint hope was beginning to fade. Jon Campbell didn’t appear to be a man who was easily intimidated, and his written work showed a surprising degree of skill.
The main problem for Camilla was that her own dark vault of memory seemed to be opening, slowly but relentlessly.
For instance, the nightmares were creeping back, although it had been years since they’d last haunted her. She found herself waking abruptly at three in the morning, drenched with perspiration, shaking in terror.
And there were other disturbing flashes of memory that leaped at her from unexpected places, things so much at odds with the carefully controlled life she’d made for herself that she could hardly bear the pain….
“That’s all for today,” she told the class with a glance at her watch. “I’ll be in my office this afternoon if any of you want help related to your major research papers. Thank you, and have a nice weekend.”
She went to the desk and began to gather her papers, conscious of Jon Campbell’s approach. Her senses seemed to be so finely attuned to this man that her body had some mysterious way of knowing when he was nearby. The fine hairs on her forearms actually lifted, and her pulse quickened.
“I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things in my life,” he said quietly. “It’s hard to choose just one.”
What did he mean by that?
She forced herself to look up him, but his eyes were mild and steady, not at all threatening.
Camilla hefted an armload of books and started for the door. “Why don’t you describe something at your home?”
“My home is a ranch on the dry prairie.” Jon fell into step beside her. “A lot of people wouldn’t think there was anything beautiful about it.”
His sleeve brushed against her arm, and she could smell the pleasant masculine scent of clean skin and shaving lotion. She closed her eyes briefly, struggling to maintain her composure. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. Campbell.”
“It sure is.” She could feel him looking down at her, but she was afraid to meet his eyes again. “I understand you’ve met my kids,” he added.
“Yes, I have. All three of them.” She paused by the door. “The twins are helping me with some research I’m doing into the development of reading ability. And Steven is in my freshman English class.”
“Actually, I have four kids,” he said with a smile. “The only one you haven’t met is Vanessa. She’s sixteen, in twelfth grade.”
“Is she as bright as Steven and the twins?”
“I think so.” His smile faded. “I wasn’t aware Steve was in your English class. He doesn’t seem to tell me things anymore.”
Camilla was urgently tempted to ask the man some questions. She wanted to know a lot more about that handsome, unhappy boy who looked so much like his father. And the shy, brilliant twins, and their mysteriously absent mother…
Enrique Valeros passed them with a timid nod, stumbling a little as he went into the hallway. He carried a huge pile of library books, and his face was pale with fatigue. Camilla and Jon watched in silence as the dark-haired boy moved down the corridor with an unsteady gait.
“That poor kid always looks like he’s dead on his feet,” Jon observed. “His hands were shaking again today. I wonder if he’s sick, or taking drugs or something.”
Camilla frowned. “No, I don’t think it’s drugs,” she said at last. “His written work is beautiful, very concise and disciplined. It’s particularly impressive for somebody for whom English is a second language. The students who abuse drugs tend to be rambling and disconnected, although,” she added dryly, “they always believe that their work is wonderfully eloquent.”
“Then why do you think Enrique’s so tired all the time?”
“I don’t know.”
She felt a treacherous urge to move closer to Jon Campbell, to nestle against the man and feel his arms around her. It was surprisingly pleasant to stand here with him like this, talking and hearing his voice in reply.
Abruptly the years fell away and she was seventeen again, overcome with a stormy passion she’d never expected to feel….
“Goodbye, Mr. Campbell,” she said hastily, starting down the hallway toward the administrative wing. “Have a pleasant weekend.”
“HI, GRETCHEN.” Camilla stopped at the bursar’s office and dropped her books onto the counter with a sigh. “I wonder if you can tell me something about one of my students.”
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Margot Dalton
Bestselling AuthorCamilla Pritchard hadn't seen Jon Campbell in nearly twenty years. Now he's shown up in her classroom posing as one of her students. His presence brings back all her memories of the worst days of her life and threatens to destroy everything she's worked so hard to build.Why is he here? Surely the successful rancher and father of four–including the most adorable seven-year-old twins–has better things to do. And why is he pretending not to recognize her? She'd have known him anywhere.For years she's seen his face in her dreams–and her nightmares."Margot Dalton's creativity dazzles…" –Bethany Campbell, bestselling author of See How They Run and Don't Talk to Strangers
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ubf0ca466-55e6-572c-999b-160b46c423d2)
Excerpt (#ucb4480ca-ddf5-59f0-9925-3152bca6177f)
About the Author (#u32ef0a60-123b-5670-b820-9d79c15eb656)
Title Page (#ub0cd558f-277b-5e9a-89f3-c3258623630f)
Prologue (#u1666d414-38be-5dae-bb3b-adb7b2417de8)
Chapter One (#u10518f7a-6329-5e10-94b2-b37c59202bb6)
Chapter Two (#u2c1718ea-02e7-55f5-bf57-d48e1c0ed00a)
Chapter Three (#u9de1d949-40d5-5a70-93d2-c16f84451391)
Chapter Four (#u0a68955a-fe80-56f1-bd86-7ab032d620f9)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I can’t believe what I’m about to do.”
Camilla carried her cat into the bedroom, brooding as she rested her chin on his head. She’d been worrying about her safety ever since the beginning of the school term when Jon Campbell had turned up in her classroom and scared her half to death.
But despite her fear, she was taking more and more risks—edging farther out onto thin ice with every day that passed
“I really can’t believe I’m doing this, Elton. I’m falling in love with his kids, and now I’ve actually agreed to go to his ranch this weekend. What on earth is wrong with me?”
She tossed the cat onto the bed, where he curled up and watched with interest as she opened her closet door.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what to pack.” She hauled down a couple of leather duffel bags from an upper shelf. “What exactly do you wear for a weekend jaunt with a man who terrifies you?”
(#u33e6f03c-d29d-5f88-b4a6-bd5de2729712)ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Memories of You, Margot Dalton’s seventeenth Superromance novel, is set in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she and her husband have recently decided to spend their winters. For Margot, it’s like coming home. She was born in Alberta, and despite the cold temperatures, she takes pleasure in the clear, crisp, sunny days.
In addition to her Superromance novels, this bestselling author has also written seven books in Harlequin’s popular Crystal Creek series. She has an upcoming title in the new Delta Justice series, and has contributed novellas to two anthologies. As well, she writes mainstream novels for MIRA Books.
Memories of You
Margot Dalton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
(#u33e6f03c-d29d-5f88-b4a6-bd5de2729712)PROLOGUE
June 1977
TODAY WAS MY seventeenth birthday; nobody remembered but me.
The rain is coming in the window again where some of the glass has broken away. Last week I nailed a scrap of tar paper across the opening, but it keeps coming loose. The rain blows in and falls onto my face and shoulders. I’m so cold.
I can hear them outside my room, so I turn my face to the wall and try to concentrate on the rain. It rattles on the metal body of the trailer like gunshots, and the whole thing shakes in every gust of wind.
They’re both drunk, but my mother is worse. She’s been screaming and throwing things. Now she’s starting to cry, so it won’t be long till she passes out. That’s the way it always happens.
I wonder what shape the man is in. This is a new one, a guy she picked up last week at the bar. I don’t know him yet, so I’m afraid. They’re all like wild animals, you have to learn their habits so you can feel safe around them. This one looks at me sometimes, but he’s never made a move.
He’s so ugly. It makes my stomach heave, thinking about him. I’m not sure my mother even realizes anymore how ugly they are. He’s got a big roll around his middle and a spotty little beard, and his breath stinks. One of his front teeth is missing, too.
A bug scurries over my blankets, and I flick it away and hope it’s gone. God knows what else is living in here. It’s always so dirty. I try to clean things up but. it’s impossible because every night my mother brings some filthy man home to drink with her. They drop food and knock things over, then pass out on the floor or on her bed. They spill liquor, too, and it makes sticky pools that draw the bugs.
I can’t hear my mother’s voice anymore. She must be asleep. The man’s singing some kind of drunken song. I remember how he looked at me earlier and I wonder if he’s going to try to come in here tonight.
If he does, I intend to kill him. I have a hunting knife under the pillow and I’m not afraid to use it. I’m not.
Today is my seventeenth birthday.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_4429f436-d193-5697-94b9-32b9dd5a2771)
Twenty years later
JON CAMPBELL WATCHED in surprise as the beautiful woman at the back of the classroom stared at him across the row of desks. It was just a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity that their eyes locked, and the colour drained from her face.
Could she be startled because he was so much older than the rest of the class? Somehow her reaction seemed disproportionate.
He certainly wasn’t the only middle-aged man who’d ever gone back to college to finish a degree. Even Jon had been surprised by the number of people his age he’d encountered on this first day of classes.
In fact, Jon wasn’t the oddity he’d feared he might be. And the campus was big enough that he wouldn’t be an embarrassment to his children, especially his son Steven who was a freshman at the same college.
While he was puzzling over the professor’s reaction, the woman turned abruptly and made her way to the front of the room.
“Good morning,” she said, moving away from her desk to stand in the middle of the room. “My name is Dr. Camilla Pritchard, and this class is intended to develop your creative-writing skills as well as to examine the work of some well-known authors. There is an extensive reading list that I will distribute at the conclusion of today’s session. You will need to read every book promptly in order to be prepared for assignments and class discussions.”
Her voice was crisp, but her hands, gripping a notebook, trembled slightly. Again Jon wondered at her nervousness. Did she feel threatened by one of her students?
They all looked so young. This was a senior class, but the participants still seemed like babies, freshfaced and anxious. A couple of them were chewing gum, while the thin boy sitting across the aisle from Jon appeared to be asleep.
“The workload is quite heavy,” the professor went on. “And, as you may have heard, I’m not tolerant of slackers.”
Jon grinned privately, amused by the contrast between her face and manner.
Oh, I’ll bet you’re not nearly as tough as you pretend, he told her silently.
She glanced at him almost as if he’d spoken aloud, and her cheeks turned faintly pink. She looked away quickly.
“There will be a daily writing assignment in addition to research papers and regular class work. If you feel this may be too much for you, I encourage you to drop the course immediately while you’re still in time to transfer to a different class. Otherwise, you run a very real risk of being assigned a failing grade or an incomplete rating.”
No wonder some of the students complained about Dr. Camilla Pritchard, Jon thought. He’d overheard a group of young men earlier in the day, loudly discussing this English professor.
A “dragon,” one of them had called her. And then, practically in the same breath, a “real babe.”
Now that Jon had seen her, he could certainly understand the boy’s conflicting reaction. Camilla Pritchard was tall and graceful. Her face was finely carved, with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes, and she had an elegant straight nose.
But her beauty went beyond these physical attributes. There was something in the depths of that face, those remarkable eyes, that hinted at a person hidden in a complex private world.
Jon shifted awkwardly in the little desk as she began to discuss the process of creative writing, putting a few terms on the blackboard like “stream of consciousness” and “constructionism.” Jon tried to pay attention, but the sun from the adjacent window was warm on his back, and the room was so quiet, and he was not accustomed to this complete lack of physical activity.
Eventually his mind began to wander down sunlit paths of its own. He found himself wondering idly what the blond professor would look like in a bikini— or completely naked.
He shifted in his desk, aware suddenly of an uncomfortable stirring in his groin.
At that moment, the professor caught his eye. She’d moved nearer to ask a question of a student in the next row. Jon looked down hastily.
What a fool, he thought. Like a kid in seventh grade with a crush on the teacher, getting aroused by his daydreams. Next she’d ask him to go to the blackboard and he’d have to figure out some way to save himself from real embarrassment.
But the professor seemed reluctant to have anything to do with him. She directed rapid-fire questions at most of the others, but none at her oldest student.
Again Jon thought about that strange moment when their eyes had first met. She’d been so shaken.
Could they have met somewhere?
There was something about her that was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t get close to the memory. It was as elusive as the disappearing image of a half-forgotten dream. Maybe he was simply experiencing déjà vu.
After all, if he’d actually met somebody like her, he wouldn’t be likely to forget her. Because she, without a doubt, was one of the most beautiful, desirable women he’d ever seen.
She moved toward the back of the room and stopped by the desk of the sleeping young man, who gave a start and looked up in alarm.
“Your name?” she asked.
The boy swallowed hard and cleared his throat. He was pale and obviously scared. He looked even younger than his classmates.
Probably no more than nineteen, Jon thought. Awfully young to be in a senior-level English class.
“Enrique,” he whispered at last. “My name is Enrique Valeros.”
“Do you intend to sleep through every class, Mr. Valeros?”
The boy had a shock of black hair, expressive dark eyes and clothes that were shabby but well tended. His voice was softly accented with the musical cadences of Spanish, and his thin hands trembled on the wooden surface of the desk. Jon couldn’t tell if the tremor was because of fear, or fatigue.
“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “It won’t happen again.”
Something about the boy tugged at Jon’s heart. He wondered why Enrique Valeros was so tired, or what he was afraid of. A quick glance at the professor’s blue eyes convinced Jon she shared these feelings of sympathy, though she was trying to remain stern and expressionless.
“I really hope it doesn’t happen again, Mr. Valeros,” she said.
She moved to the front of the room and picked up one of the books on her desk, a thick volume on grammar, punctuation and usage.
“This will be our only formal textbook,” she told the class. “I expect you to obtain a copy and use it as your guide. Failure to comply will result in immediate deductions from your grade on all written assignments. Are there any questions?”
A sullen-looking young woman near the front of the class asked for more details about the daily written assignment and the reading list. Dr. Pritchard clarified her expectations. Without another word, the girl picked up her books and left the classroom.
The professor surveyed the group. “Anybody else?” she asked. “Let me repeat that it’s much better to leave now if you feel incapable of handling the work. In two or three weeks, dropping the course will no longer be an option.”
The students listened silently.
“Mr. Valeros,” she said, moving partway down the aisle, though she was still careful to keep a row of desks between herself and Jon, “have you had occasion to read Silas Marner?
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy whispered. “I have read it.”
“And what can you tell us about Eliot’s narrative style in that book?”
“It…The book is much more…” Enrique struggled for words while the teacher watched him in silence. “It is more gentle and poetic than Adam Bede, or Middlemarch, he said at last. “It shows George Eliot’s…it shows her quiet, mystical side.”
The professor’s eyebrows rose in surprise and approval. “Very good, Mr. Valeros. I’m pleased to see you’ve already done some of the required reading.”
Enrique relaxed visibly under her praise. “I got the list a couple of weeks ago, ma’am,” he said in a shy, almost inaudible voice.
“Well, that’s excellent. Now, if you can find a way to stay awake in class, we’ll get along just fine.”
But her voice belied the sharpness of her words, and she gave the young man a brief, teasing smile before she turned away.
When Jon saw that glow on her face, he was totally undone. The woman’s smile was like a ray of sunlight in a darkened room, illuminating all kinds of treasures. For a fleeting moment her face was light and sparkling, young and sweet.
Young…
Again that elusive image tugged at his memory. Something to do with warmth and youth, a distant place and time…
He shook his head in frustration and watched as she moved around the room, probing first one student and then another with her skillful questioning, trying to gauge their knowledge and understanding.
“Hey, Enrique,” Jon whispered, leaning across the aisle.
“Yes?” the boy asked.
“You did good, son. I think you really impressed the professor.”
His words were rewarded by another shy smile. The poor kid might be dead on his feet, but he was still courteous and friendly.
Jon glanced at the boy’s frayed shirt cuffs, the worn-out shoes and patched jeans, the thin body and shaking hands and general air of fatigue.
He wondered how he could learn a little more about Enrique Valeros.
The class continued with a discussion of plotting techniques. The professor never asked him a question or directed a comment at him. Jon found himself both relieved and annoyed by the omission.
When the class ended and the students began to disperse, Jon approached her desk.
Dr. Pritchard’s head was bent over her work. She had dark blond hair with a few streaks of sunny highlights, cut short and combed back in a simple, elegant style. Her hands were ringless, with the nails neatly trimmed and free of polish.
“I like that perfume,” he said as he drew near.
She looked up, and her eyes widened in alarm. He could sense that she had to force herself to meet his eyes, though her gaze was calm and steady.
“Thank you,” she said.
“What is it?”
“What?”
“The perfume.”
Her cheeks turned faintly pink. “I doubt that it’s any concern of yours, Mr….”
“Campbell. Jonathan Campbell. People usually call me Jon.”
“I see.” She gave him a wintry smile and returned to her work, clearly dismissing him.
Jon watched her for a moment, fighting the unsettling urge to reach out and stroke her shining hair or touch her bare arm.
“Is there something else. Mr. Campbell?” she asked without looking up.
“I was just wondering why you never called on me during the session. Do you think I’m not capable of answering questions?”
“The fact is, I didn’t really think about you at all.”
“I believe that’s not altogether true,” Jon said quietly. “When you first noticed me sitting over there, you acted like you recognized me.”
“You must be imagining things.” She got to her feet, gathered the pile of books on her desk and moved toward the door.
“Have we met somewhere?” he asked, following her. “Because I can’t believe I’d ever forget a woman like you.” She looked back at him, and this time he caught a trace of genuine panic in her eyes, a fear that was urgent and almost childlike. But her voice was cool when she answered.
“I really don’t think so, Mr. Campbell. Please excuse me.”
Then she was gone, vanishing down the crowded hallway until all he could glimpse of the woman was the distant gleam of overhead lights on her smooth blond head.
THE CALGARY UNIVERSITY sprawled over many acres of prairie in the northwest section of the city. A number of apartment buildings were located on campus but most faculty members chose to live elsewhere, preferring to leave their jobs behind when they went home at night.
Camilla Pritchard, however, lived on the university grounds. Her apartment was just a few steps from the building where she taught most of her classes.
She hurried down the leafy paths of the campus, heading home for lunch on the first day of school, anxious to reach her apartment. She could hardly wait to be safely inside the door, out of sight of everybody.
Camilla had suffered for years from intense shyness, and a personal reserve that gave her an air of detachment bordering on rudeness. Except when she was in her own home—a bright and comfortable place, filled with whimsical ornaments, bright woven afghans and wall hangings, nature prints, Aztec pottery and throw rugs. And masses of plants, crowded on every available windowsill.
She also had two cats, both illegal according to the rules of the buildings but tactfully overlooked by the apartment supervisor, who liked Camilla and found her a perfect tenant except for her pets.
In return for the super’s indulgence, Camilla kept the cats out of sight. They were sleek gray tabbies called Madonna and Elton. Madonna had a boisterous, exhibitionist nature, while Elton, the smaller of the two, was timid and affectionate, named for the heavy black markings around both eyes that resembled the frames of the glasses worn by the famous pop star.
Today Elton was waiting when she came through the door. He promptly lay upside down on the rug in a golden ray of sunshine, his paws waving lazily.
“Okay Elly, I’ll scratch your tummy for a second,” she said. “But I have too much to do to stay here all day and play with you.”
She sighed and dropped an armful of books onto the table, feeling a deep anxiety on this first day of classes. Normally she enjoyed the prospect of a new term, a horde of fresh faces, another fall and winter.
But not this year. Not after seeing one face in particular at the back of her classroom…She sighed again as she bent to rub Elton’s tummy.
Madonna appeared in the kitchen entryway and arched her tail, rubbing herself sensuously against the door frame.
“I know it’s him,” Camilla stood up and addressed Madonna. “He’s sitting right there in my English class, and I haven’t got the slightest idea what to do about it.”
Madonna licked one of her paws and rubbed it across her whiskers, then advanced with exaggerated stealth toward Elton, who still lay in the sunshine with his eyes closed. The cat pounced stiff-legged onto her unsuspecting partner. Elton yowled and scurried for cover beneath the couch, where his black-framed eyes could be seen peeping out fearfully from the darkness.
“Oh, sweetie.” Camilla knelt on the carpet and peered under the couch. “Come out, Elly. Madonna didn’t mean to scare you, she was just playing. Come, let’s sit in the armchair and cuddle.”
Elton whimpered and edged forward a couple of inches.
“Come on,” she coaxed, reaching under the couch to stroke his furry paw. “Come out and sit with me. Madonna won’t hurt you.”
He crept toward her. Finally Camilla was able to grip his body gently and drag him out. She sat in an armchair and cuddled the shivering cat, resting her chin on the top of his head.
As she stroked the cat with rhythmic, soothing strokes, her mind kept going back to that shocking moment in class when she’d first seen Jon Campbell.
Even though he’d been seated, she could tell he was tall and well built. His square face was tanned and pleasantly masculine, his eyes clear and direct. He had thick brown hair dusted with gray, and his hands were hard and callused.
After that first horrifying moment of recognition, Camilla had kept hoping maybe he wasn’t the man she remembered. But when he’d turned away to glance over at Enrique and she saw the hard line of his cheek, the aquiline profile, she knew it was true.
She clutched Elton tightly in her arms, trying to battle rising surges of memory. But the images were too insistent.
A boy, a motorcycle on a deserted road, a hot weekend in summertime…
Once more she tried to tell herself it couldn’t possibly be the same person.
That all happened twenty years ago, and far away from here. This was a different world.
But Camilla knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jon Campbell was the man she remembered. Somehow he’d managed to find her again. And his presence here on this campus spelled terrible danger. It could mean an end to the whole careful life she’d struggled for twenty years to build.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_222aae39-3ae6-5a58-a80d-7d7dbdc7ca13)
CAMILLA FINALLY LEFT her cats and her apartment, feeling a little comforted but still worried and tense. She locked the door, hurried down the hall and entered the elevator. Three other people stood inside the little enclosure, a couple of graduate assistants and a young janitor with a mop and pail. Camilla greeted him with a smile.
The elevator doors opened as they reached the lobby. Camilla walked down a shady path to one of the buildings in the English department, then made her way through a maze of corridors to a suite of cramped, book-filled offices where she shared a secretary with three other professors.
“Hi, Camilla.” The secretary looked up from her computer keyboard with a bright smile. “Did you have a nice summer?”
“Very nice, Joyce.” Camilla took a bundle of files from one of the compartments. “How about you?”
Joyce shrugged. “I’m glad to be back at work. My kids were really driving me crazy.”
“Didn’t you manage to get away for that vacation in Banff? I remember how much you were all looking forward to it.”
“Oh, that was fun, all right, but it only lasted two weeks. The kids always get so bored by the end of August.”
“How old are they now?” Camilla paused, then shook her head. “My goodness, Jamie must be ten already. I can hardly believe it.”
“He sure is. And Susan’s eight. Little monsters,” Joyce said darkly, but her smile was fond.
Camilla tried to imagine what it would be like to spend a whole summer with children that age.
Most of her experience with younger children involved the primary-school study group at the university. This class was made up of about fifteen gifted children aged six to ten years. The children came from all the western provinces to receive an accelerated education. They were also tested and observed by some of the senior professors who were doing research into intelligence.
“So, did you go home for the summer?” Joyce was asking.
“No,” Camilla said after a brief hesitation. “I had a couple of papers to get ready for publication, so I stayed here and worked.”
“What a pity. It must be beautiful in New England at this time of year,” the secretary said wistfully.
“New England?” Camilla asked.
“Barry says your people have a summer home out there, near the Kennedy compound.”
Camilla shifted the stack of books to her other arm, putting the files on top. “Well, I haven’t been to New England in a long time,” she said.
“Okay.” Joyce gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Whatever you say.”
Camilla hesitated for a moment, wondering what to say, then nodded and let herself into her little office. She dumped the books and files onto her desk, troubled by the secretary’s words.
These rumors about Camilla’s family had started circulating around campus a few years ago, and grew more outlandish all the time. By now, her half-hearted denials only served to make people more convinced that she came from a lavishly privileged, aristocratic background and chose for some reason to keep her private life a secret.
Although Camilla was sometimes dismayed by the exaggerated stories, she was grateful that they served to keep her colleagues a little intimidated. People seldom invited her to functions like staff parties and backyard barbecues, assuming that she wouldn’t want to attend. As a result, she wasn’t forced to get close to people, or form any relationships that required an uncomfortable level of disclosure about her personal life.
She was almost always lonely, but she was safe at home with her plants and books, her cats and her research work. And safety was more important to Camilla Pritchard than anything else.
Much more important…
She crossed the room and stood for a moment looking out the window at the throngs of students, wondering what her colleagues would think if they ever discovered the truth.
But, of course, none of these people could possibly learn the truth about Camilla Pritchard. As long as she kept everybody at arm’s length, there was no danger.
She pushed aside the fears, sat down at her desk and began to work.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” she called.
The door opened and Gwen Klassen appeared, looking brisk and cheerful. She was one of the professors who shared their suite of offices and taught the class of gifted primary children in their bright, toy-filled study center down the hall.
“Hi, Camilla,” she said, coming into the room. “I need to borrow a couple of your books on cognitive processes. Are you all ready for the new term?”
Camilla moved some papers so her colleague could sit on the corner of the desk. “Actually, I’m even less ready than usual.”
“You?” Gwen asked. “Go on. You’re so superorganized, I thought you always prepared about three years ahead,” she said as she perched on the desk, swinging her feet in their white running shoes.
Gwen was about fifty, with a slim figure, a shock of gray hair and a manner so sunny and engaging that even Camilla’s shyness and reserve tended to melt under its warmth. A born teacher, Gwen Klassen treated her scholarly colleagues exactly the way she did her little students, with a humorous, gentle indulgence that endeared her to everybody.
Camilla examined the file on her desk, containing class lists and an outline of her teaching schedule for the fall term. “I mean, I’m not emotionally prepared. I feel less ready every term,” she said in a rare display of her personal feelings. “I love teaching, but I keep thinking maybe I’m missing something. Like there should be…I don’t know.” She moved books around restlessly on her desk, trying to smile. “Maybe I’m just getting old.”
Gwen looked down at her with surprise and sympathy. “It sounds more like you’re getting burned out, honey. Why don’t you consider applying for a sabbatical? You know they’d give it to you in a minute, because there’s nobody on staff who deserves it more. You could spend a whole year doing research and writing, and come back feeling like a brand-new woman.”
“I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I took a sabbatical,” Camilla said. “A year off from teaching would be too long. I just need…some kind of change, I guess.”
“Like what?”
Camilla shrugged and leafed through some papers, embarrassed at having revealed so much of herself.
“Why don’t you come over to my place on Friday night?” Gwen said casually. “Dan and I are having a few people over. Barry and his wife, and Gail and Joe from the administration office, and one of the new professors who’s a whiz on the electric guitar. It should be a good time.”
“I don’t think so, thanks.” Camilla smiled regretfully at the other woman. “It sounds like fun, but I have…I have a prior commitment.”
To Camilla’s relief, Gwen didn’t ask about the commitment. Instead, she changed the subject with her usual tact.
“Did you go away at all?”
“Not really. I pretty much stayed home and looked after my cats, and did a lot of writing.”
“That’s not what Barry’s been telling people,” Gwen said with a brief grin.
Camilla sighed.
Barry Bellamy was another of their office-mates. He taught modern drama. He was a terrible gossip, and seemed fascinated by all the myths about Camilla’s background. In some perverse way, he enjoyed retelling and embroidering these far-fetched stories, as if contact with such an imposing personage somehow gave him additional status.
Camilla found it all embarrassing, but she didn’t know how to stop the man from gossiping and meddling in her life without revealing the dreadful truth about herself.
“Barry’s too much,” she said. “I don’t know where he comes up with all the stories he keeps telling people.”
Gwen gave her a keen, thoughtful glance. “So, have you looked over your class lists?” she asked after a moment.
“Briefly. The freshman class is pretty huge, but at least my senior-level creative-writing courses still look to be a decent size. I guess the full impact of the budget cuts hasn’t reached us yet.”
Gwen smiled happily. “Well, I’ve got a nice little group this year. You’ll love them, Camilla. Your first session with my kids is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it?”
Camilla checked her calendar. “That’s right,” she said. “Two o’clock. I’m planning to do a study with some of them on the relationship between symbol recognition and the early development of reading skills. I’ve been collecting the research materials all summer.”
“We’ve got the cutest pair of twins this year,” Gwen said. “Seven years old, named Aaron and Amelia. Just darlings, both of them.”
“Twins?” Camilla said with interest. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had twins before.”
“I know. Even though they’re fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, they look almost identical. Wait till you see them, Camilla. They’ve got the sweetest smiles, and IQ’s so high we haven’t even been able to measure them properly. But they’re both quite reserved. I’m having a hard time getting close to them.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Out in western Saskatchewan. They were living on their family’s cattle ranch, attending first grade at an elementary school so far away they had to spend almost two hours on the bus every day.”
“Are they boarding at the university?” Camilla asked.
Gwen shook her head. “Their father bought a property on the edge of the city. He’s divorced—I’m not sure where the mother lives. But he moved out here with them so they could attend the study group.”
“What about the ranch? Did he have to sell it?”
“Apparently, money is no problem for this guy. He turned over the ranch to a foreman and flies his own plane back to Saskatchewan every weekend to oversee the ranching operation.”
“All this,” Camilla asked, “just to get his kids into an accelerated program for a few years?”
“Not entirely. He also has a couple of other children who’ll benefit from the better schooling opportunities in the city. In fact, one of them’s a freshman here on campus. And guess what?”
“What?” Camilla asked.
“The man… Jonathan Campbell, that’s his name…he’s actually taking a full load of courses himself. He says it’s a good way to fill his time since he has to spend the winter in the city, and—” Gwen stopped midsentence. “Camilla,” she said in alarm. “You’re as white as a sheet. Is something wrong?”
Camilla began to gather books and papers. “No, I’m fine. This man,” she said with forced casualness, “the twins’ father…how old is he?”
“Oh, probably about forty, I’d guess. Quite a handsome fellow in a rugged, Clint Eastwood kind of way. Apparently, he had a couple of years of college when he was young but never finished his degree, so now he’s decided to go back to school along with his kids.”
Camilla got to her feet and lifted the pile of books. “Well, I’m looking forward to meeting these brilliant little twins of yours,” she said. “Help yourself to whatever books you need, Gwen. I’ll see you later this afternoon, okay?”
She hurried out of the office and down the hall, trying to calm herself as she walked.
After all, she wasn’t in any danger, Camilla reminded herself. Now that she was a fully tenured professor, her academic position here and her life were both utterly secure.
Being granted tenure had been, for many years, the most important concern in her life. She’d passionately wanted the security of that position.
Once she managed to acquire tenure, she was guaranteed a future that nobody could ever take away, no matter what happened.
She’d achieved this coveted status almost three years ago, and had hoped that, for the first time in her life, maybe she’d begin to feel safe.
But it hadn’t worked that way. The fears remained, stirred by feelings of anxiety whenever people began to speculate about her personal background.
And now that Jonathan Campbell had inexplicably popped up once more in the middle of her life, she was more afraid than ever.
THE SUN WAS still hanging above the mountains when Jon finally bought the last of his textbooks, checked some materials out of the library and left the campus. He drove through the city of Calgary and headed west toward his new property, a sprawling acreage in the foothills of the Rockies.
He parked the car in the garage, walked past the aluminum hangar where his six-seater airplane was kept and strolled toward the house, which seemed unnaturally quiet in the early-autumn afternoon.
He glanced at his watch and realized it was almost time for supper. The kids liked to eat early, leaving plenty of time for their various activities in the evening. In fact, they might already be waiting for him. Margaret always had them wait for their father if there was any chance he might be home in time for dinner.
Jon quickened his steps, still looking at the big house. It was a modern split-level made of pale field-stone, with a brown-tiled roof and banks of high, sharply angled windows.
A lot different from the comfortable old clapboard mansion at the ranch, with its shady veranda and white picket fences.
Again he reminded himself that this move was necessary. Besides, it was only temporary. In a few years when the twins were older the bus ride wouldn’t be so hard on them. Then they’d all be able to go back to the ranch full-time.
He walked up a path at the side of the house and let himself inside, pausing to wash his hands and hang up his hat and jacket. Then he entered the kitchen where a storm was brewing.
“You little animal,” Vanessa shouted, gripping the telephone receiver in one hand as she glared across the room at her seven-year-old brother. “You absolute beast. Ari, give me that before I kill you!”
Aaron smiled up at her with maddening calm. He stood in the doorway holding a book in his hands. Amelia hovered just behind him, eyeing their sister with a cautious, frightened expression.
The twins were beautiful children with curly dark hair clipped short around their heads, and slim, straight bodies. Amelia had green eyes while Ari’s were gray, and she was a little smaller than her brother. Apart from these slight differences, they were very similar in appearance.
During their early years, the twins had hardly spoken to anyone but each other, and they still inhabited a private world that few adults were allowed to enter. Ari was usually the instigator, impulsive and creative. Amelia acted as his partner and support, always ready to help him carry out his schemes.
While Vanessa watched in speechless outrage, Ari opened the book and pretended to read from it. “I just love Jason Weatherly,” he said in a loud, exaggerated voice. “When he smiles at me across the room in math class, I go all—”
Vanessa screamed, dropped the receiver and lunged at her little brother.
Ari dodged away from her and ran around the kitchen, still reading. “I go all shivery inside, and then I feel…”
The teenager continued to scream. Steven, Jon’s elder son, watched idly from the adjoining family room where he lounged on a couch, watching television. None of the children seemed to be aware of Jon’s arrival on the scene.
Vanessa tripped on the kitchen tiles and fell sprawling to her knees. She crouched on the floor, glaring furiously, long dark hair falling messily around her face.
When Jon strode into the middle of the room, an abrupt silence fell. He crossed the kitchen, lifted the telephone and said, “Vanessa will call you back.”
Then he hung up and turned to face his children.
“Where’s Margaret?”
Nobody answered. The only sounds were Vanessa’s heavy breathing and the roar of gunfire on the television.
Jon looked from one young face to another. “Where’s Margaret?” he repeated.
“In the garden,” Steven said at last. “She went out to pick some tomatoes for the salad.”
“I see.” Jon turned to his younger son, who stood near the archway leading to the family room. “What’s that book, Ari?”
“Van’s diary,” Ari said reluctantly.
“What are you doing with your sister’s diary?” Jon asked. “You know better than to go into somebody else’s bedroom.”
“It wasn’t in her room,” Ari said.
Amy stood close behind him, lending support with her presence. She nodded earnestly.
“Where was it?” Jon asked.
“Under the couch.” Ari gestured toward Steven in the family room. “She left it right over there in plain sight. We found it when Margaret made us clean up our Lego.”
“You horrible little monsters,” Vanessa muttered, getting to her feet. “Do something, Daddy,” she added bitterly. “You always let them get away with everything.”
Jon looked at his elder daughter with a familiar mixture of sympathy and exasperation. At sixteen, Vanessa was a beautiful girl, and bright enough that she was already in her final year of high school. But her looks and personality were so similar to her mother’s that he often worried about her.
Jon and Shelley Campbell had suffered through a dozen years of a stormy, unhappy marriage, complicated by the fact that they shared almost nothing in the way of tastes, dreams or attitudes. In fact, they shared nothing at all except their children, and Shelley’s interest in her offspring had always been so limited that even this tie was tenuous at best.
Jon had met her when he she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. It had been immediately after the most distressing experience of his life, a painful time that he still remembered with frustrated sorrow.
Lonely and desolate, Jon had been an easy target. He’d mistaken Shelley’s sexuality for warmth, her frenetic gaiety for intelligence, her possessiveness for loyalty. By the time he discovered his mistake, it was too late. She was pregnant with Steven, and both Jon and Shelley came from families where getting married was the only possible course of action.
After Steven’s birth, Jon couldn’t bring himself to leave, for fear of losing his child, though the marriage was increasingly miserable. By the time Vanessa was born, less than two years later, Shelley had interests of her own and was seldom home.
The twins had been the unexpected result of a final attempt at a reconciliation. Shelley was appalled when she discovered her third pregnancy. She demanded an abortion.
Jon had talked her into carrying the twins to term, but it was the last straw for their marriage. Soon after the birth, angry and bitter, claiming that the kids were all he’d ever cared about, Shelley dumped all four children with him and left for good.
At the moment she was living in Switzerland, using her lavish divorce settlement to support the young ski instructor who was her current lover. She barely managed a couple of trips a year back to the States to see her brood of growing children, and when she did fly in for visits, all of them were invariably hurt and disappointed by her flippant, erratic manner.
Still, she was a beautiful woman, Jon thought ruefully. Even at forty, Shelley looked a lot like her older daughter, with the same violet-blue eyes, delicate complexion and slim figure. But Vanessa at least had an excuse for her selfish behaviour, since she was caught in the miserable throes of adolescence. Jon had hopes that his daughter might yet develop into a mature and caring person. Shelley, on the other hand, simply refused to grow up.
Jon turned from Vanessa to look at Ari. “Just because Van left her diary out here doesn’t give you the right to read it,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to privacy and respect for their belongings, Ari. Give me the book.”
Ari moved forward silently and handed the diary to his father.
Behind him, Amy’s green eyes filled with tears. Jon knew his children well enough to understand a little of what was going on with the twins.
They’d never known the security of a mother who loved and cared about them. Over the years Jon had tried hard to make up for their loss, but he knew they were as hurt and confused as the older children by their mother’s carelessness. As a result, they tended to cling fiercely to familiar and comforting things.
Now they’d been uprooted from the isolated ranch home they both loved. Their security was further disrupted by this move to a strange new environment, a different kind of school and a modern, unwelcoming house.
Their loneliness and homesickness tore at Jon’s heart. He knelt on the kitchen floor and took Amy’s little body in his arms, reaching for her brother. “Come here, Ari,” he said.
Ari hesitated, then pressed against him.
“Tell Van you’re sorry,” Jon whispered. “Tell her you’ll never do it again.”
Ari gulped, swallowed hard and turned to Vanessa. “We’re sorry,” he mumbled.
“We won’t touch any of your stuff ever again,” Amy added.
“Daddy, for God’s sake,” Vanessa began furiously. “Don’t let them get away with this! You should make them…”
But Jon was holding the twins again, cuddling them tenderly. “How would you both like to come with me to the ranch this weekend?” he murmured against their dark curls.
Ari’s gray eyes shone. “Really, Daddy?” he whispered huskily.
“Really. But you have to be super-good between now and then.” Jon kissed Amy’s cheek and wiped her tears. “Now run and wash your face, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Let’s eat our supper.”
While the twins ran out of the kitchen, he got up and seated himself at a big oak table that was neatly set for seven.
When the twins came back, all four children joined him silently. A side door opened, and Margaret came in from the garden, carrying a basket of ripe tomatoes.
The housekeeper was a big, friendly young woman with a mop of red hair and plump freckled arms. She had a boyfriend who worked on the oil rigs north of Edmonton, and who came home infrequently to visit his sweetheart. This erratic courtship seemed to suit both of them well enough, much to Jon’s relief. Margaret was the only housekeeper he’d ever found who was able to deal patiently and lovingly with all the children, and he dreaded the thought of losing her.
She greeted Jon with a smile and carried the tomatoes to the sink.
“What’s all this?” she asked when she saw Amy’s reddened cheeks.
“They’ve been reading my diary,” Vanessa said sullenly. “But Daddy refuses to punish them, as usual. Little monsters,” she muttered, glowering at Amy, whose eyes began to glisten with tears again.
“Poor little chicks.” Margaret ruffled Amy’s dark curls. “That’s all right, love. You know, Ari, you shouldn’t have touched that book,” she said, turning to the other twin. “Did you apologize to your sister? Poor Vanessa, she has to put with an awful lot from the pair of you. Steven Campbell, don’t you dare start eating till your daddy has a chance to dish up the food.”
The tension left the room with her cheerful arrival and evenhanded approach. All the children watched as Margaret served bowls of salad and sliced tomatoes along with a macaroni casserole.
Jon sat at the head of the table, looking around at the young faces that were so dear to him.
The twins had obviously been comforted by their promised trip to the ranch. Even Vanessa appeared somewhat mollified. Only Steven was quiet, his handsome face looking bored.
Steven resembled his father more than any of the other children, but nowadays he lacked any trace of Jon’s casual air or easy smile.
Jon felt increasingly troubled about the boy.
When Steve was a child, they’d had a warm, open relationship. Father and son had spent long hours together on their windswept prairie ranch as they fished, rode horses and tramped through the coulees. These days, though, Steve was slipping further away from the entire family, wrapped up in some mysterious world that Jon could no longer enter.
“How are your classes, Steve?” he asked.
The boy shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
Jon glanced at his elder son again, but didn’t press. Instead, he turned and addressed the twins. “Tom called me last night. He says the calves are just about ready to sell.”
“What else did he say?” Ari asked.
Tom Beatch was the foreman at the ranch, a grizzled old cowboy who was a great favorite with the twins.
Jon told the children the news from Tom and the other cowboys, including the latest in Tom’s sporadic courtship of Caroline, who ran a lunch counter in a Saskatchewan border town.
“Those two will never get together,” Margaret said placidly from the sink. “Tom Beatch doesn’t want to get married any more than my Eddie does.”
“When’s Eddie coming back?” Jon asked the housekeeper.
“Next month,” Margaret said, beaming. “He’ll be home for a whole week at least, then off north to look for work again.”
Jon looked at the twins, whose animation at the mention of Tom seemed to have disappeared. They were picking at their food, looking disconsolate. Apparently, their homesickness was as deep as ever. He sighed and cut up a tomato, searching for something else to say.
“Tom’s getting real worried about me,” he told the children finally. “He wonders what I’m going to do with myself for a whole winter here in the city.”
Steven gazed out the window at the trees bordering the front driveway, clearly lost in his own thoughts. The twins exchanged an unhappy glance and continued to move bits of macaroni around on their plates while Margaret watched them.
Only Vanessa, who seemed to have recovered from her sulks, was interested in what her father was saying. “I know what I’d do,” she told him. “I’d spend the whole day shopping. I’d buy every single thing I ever wanted, and spend all day trying clothes on.”
Jon watched her pretty face, wondering whether her preoccupation with material things was just a teenage phase—something she would outgrow. “Well, Van, I know what I’m going to do, too,” he said calmly. “I’ve got it all planned. In fact, I started today.”
“What’s that, Mr. C.?” Margaret got up and began to load the dishwasher.
“I’m going back to school.” Jon helped himself to more casserole while the others watched in astonishment. “I had my first two classes today.”
Vanessa’s jaw dropped. “Back to school?” she said at last. “Like, to college, you mean?”
Jon smiled at his elder daughter. “Don’t look so amazed,” he said. “I took two years of college when I was young, then had to quit before I graduated. I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finish my degree.”
Vanessa gripped her fork and continued to stare at her father, aghast. “You’re going to university?“ she asked. “On the same campus with Steven? The same place I’ll be going next year?”
“The very same,” Jon told her solemnly.
She dropped her fork, speechless with horror. Privately, Jon was a little amused by her reaction, but took care not to show it. In fact, he often tried deliberately to ruffle Vanessa’s feathers to keep her from getting as self-absorbed as her mother.
But this time, judging from her look of whitelipped shock, it seemed Jon might have pushed his daughter too far.
“It’s a big campus, Van,” he told her gently. “Thousands and thousands of students. Nobody’s going to notice me.”
“But what if you’re in one of my classes next year?” she wailed. “God, I’d just die.”
Steven’s lip twisted. “Oh, shut up, Van,” he muttered. “Why do you always have to be such an idiot?”
Jon frowned at him and turned back to Vanessa. “I won’t be in any of your classes, You’ll be a freshman. I’ll be taking fourth-year courses next term.”
“But having my father on the same campus…” Her face twisted with distress. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said tragically. “The totally, absolute worst.” She pushed her chair back, got up and ran from the room.
There was a brief silence in the kitchen.
“She’ll get over it, Mr. C.,” Margaret said comfortably. “She gets upset about a dozen times a day, and every time it’s the very worst thing that’s ever happened to her.”
Jon looked at the doorway where his daughter had vanished. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “She won’t be so upset once she realizes that our paths are never likely to cross on that big campus.”
Steven’s brief spurt of animation had vanished. He ate macaroni in gloomy silence.
“How about you, son?” Jon asked. “Will it bother you, having me on campus?”
Steven shrugged. “Why should I care?”
“You don’t seem to care about much of anything these days,” Jon said, trying to keep his voice casual. “What’s the matter, son?”
Steven looked at him with a brief flash of emotion, and Jon held his breath, hoping the boy was about to say something meaningful. But the moment passed and they all returned to their meal, eating in silence while Margaret continued to load the dishwasher.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, on a hill near the house, Ari lay on his stomach in the slanted rays of evening sunlight. He drummed his feet on the ground as he chewed a spear of grass.
“Churks,” he muttered. “Fizzlespit.”
Amy looked at her brother with tense sympathy. These words were part of their private language, seldom used and shockingly profane. The fact that Ari was saying them now showed how sad and lonely he was.
“We get to fly to the ranch this weekend,” she said, watching a dark green beetle as it lumbered through the tangle of grass. “Daddy promised. It’ll be fun to see Tom and ride our ponies, won’t it?”
But Ari wasn’t ready to be comforted. “I wish Daddy would get married.” He plucked another blade of grass. “We need a mother.”
Amy turned to him in confusion. “We already have a mother.”
“I mean, we need one who lives in our house. If Daddy got married, we’d all move back to the ranch and live together and be like a family.”
“Do you think so?” she asked wistfully.
“If Daddy was married, he wouldn’t worry so much what school we went to. When Mummy was home, Daddy and Van and Steve all lived on the ranch together. I hate being in this place.”
“It’s not so bad here,” Amy said loyally. “Daddy wants us to go to school without having to ride so far on the bus, and Mrs. Klassen is really nice. I like the aquarium at school,” she added. “And the model of the hydrogen molecule. Don’t you?”
Ari scowled. “I want to go back to the ranch. We need to find a lady for Daddy to marry.”
“Maybe he could marry Margaret.”
“You’re so dumb,” Ari said. “Daddy could never marry Margaret.”
“Why not? She’s nice to us all the time, and she cooks and cleans and everything.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted after a few moments of deep concentration. “But it can’t be Margaret. It needs to be somebody different”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know,” Ari repeated. “But I’ll think of somebody.”
The twins lay quietly for a while. Then, like birds or fish moving in response to an invisible signal, they got up at the same moment and began to run, swooping down the grassy hill with their arms spread wide and their legs flying.
They ran until they were exhausted, then climbed another hill, heading for one of their favorite places on the new farm. It was the oldest building on the property, a big stone barn nestled at the foot of the hill and surrounded by trees.
The previous owner had used the barn to house a couple of vintage automobiles, and several improvements had been added to protect the valuable cars. All the windows were stoutly boarded, and a metal overheard door that was operated from outside by pressing a button had been installed. The control button was inside a panel that could be secured with a padlock.
Although the lock had been removed along with the contents of the barn, the control button remained functional. Ari loved to press it and watch the big door slowly open and close, sliding as if by magic.
When Vanessa reported on the existence of the automatic door, Margaret had immediately forbade the twins to play anywhere near the barn because they might get locked inside, a suggestion that made Ari scoff privately in derision.
“How could we get locked inside?” he asked Amy when they were alone. “You have to be outside to push the button. Margaret doesn’t know anything.”
So they ignored the housekeeper’s order and continued to frequent the barn. Amy was a little anxious about their disobedience, but her loyalty to Ari always outweighed her caution.
Now she followed him down the hill and crept along behind him as he edged toward the old building. The door was open which meant that somebody was inside.
Ari glanced over his shoulder and nodded. Amy understood at once, following him to the base of one of the trees beside the barn. The twins climbed silently into the middle branches, then moved out of the tree onto the shingled roof and crept up toward the row of air vents.
These vents were about two feet square and situated near the peak of the roof. Each twin stopped at the edge of an open vent. They clung to the rough shingles and slithered forward until they could peer down into the shadowy depths of the barn.
Steven’s yellow sports car was parked in the shadows, and Steven himself sat with three other boys on some baled hay as they passed a skinny cigarette back and forth.
The twins exchanged a wide-eyed, startled glance, then edged forward for a better look.
They’d never seen these boys, who must have slipped onto the property through a back road. They were a tough-looking group, hard-faced and scary, not at all like the happy neighboring kids who used to be Steven’s friends on the ranch.
The twins watched the four boys for a moment, then withdrew from the vents and looked at each other in alarm.
They slid back down the roof, melted into the tree branches and considered their next move.
“We should tell Daddy,” Amy said in a hushed voice. “Let’s bring him over here. They’re not supposed to be smoking.”
Ari shook his head.
“Why not?” Amy whispered. “The hay might catch on fire. Then the barn would be wrecked.”
“It can’t burn,” Ari muttered. “It’s made of stones.”
“But we should—”
He waved a hand to silence her. She settled more comfortably on the branch and swung her foot, liking the feeling of being up in the sky, hidden like a bird among the rustling green leaves.
But she didn’t like the boys who were down in the barn with Steven. They looked mean and threatening, like bad dogs who might bite you for no reason.
“We could push the button and close the door,” Ari said at last. “If we do, they can’t get out. They’ll be trapped.”
Amy shivered. “No, Ari. It’s so dark and scary in there.”
“Serves them right,” Ari said. “They’re bad, and Steve shouldn’t be with them. Dad would be mad if he knew what they were doing.”
“But it’s really mean to lock them inside the barn. You know it is.”
He avoided her eyes, looking down at a long scratch on his ankle.
“Besides,” Amy went on, “if we close the door and trap them, Daddy will lock up the button so we can’t open the door by ourselves anymore. He was going to do it last week but he forgot. Let’s just go away and leave them alone.”
Ari was on the point of climbing down from the tree. He scowled and hesitated.
Amy pressed her advantage. “It’s so much fun to play in there, Ari. If Daddy locks the barn, we won’t be able to get inside.”
“We could get a rope and swing down from the air vents like mountain climbers.”
Amy thought about the peak of the barn, almost as tall as the tree they were sitting in. “It’s too high. Besides, how would we get back up?”
“We could climb the rope,” he argued, but Amy could tell that he was weakening.
With relief, she turned and began to climb down the tree, slipping rapidly through the leaves and branches until she dropped to her feet on the hillside.
Ari joined her, and they ran back up the hill toward the flaring colors of the sunset, their small bodies lost in the vastness of the prairie sky.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_0369b17b-b83e-50a1-88ca-e65334b518bc)
SOMEHOW, CAMILLA MANAGED to get through the remainder of the first day in a blur of classes, meetings and seminars. By the time she finished her office work and sent her reading lists to the library to be posted, it was twilight.
The campus was peaceful in the slanting rays of light, with small groups of students strolling and talking quietly. Thunderheads were beginning to mass beyond the snowcapped mountains and the sky was vivid with sunset colors—streaks of orange and dusty pink and violet.
Though it was still early in September, the air already carried a hint of frost, and some of the trees were beginning to wither. A few leaves drifted to the sidewalk in front of her, crunching underfoot as she walked toward her apartment.
Camilla looked down at the fallen leaves, lost in a deepening melancholy.
Madonna and Elton were both at the door when she entered her apartment They welcomed her with enthusiasm, mewing and rubbing frantically against her legs, which only happened when they wanted something. Camilla soon determined that Elton was hungry, while Madonna was eager to go outside.
Camilla opened the glass balcony door to let Madonna escape into the branches of the adjacent poplar, then set her pile of books on the kitchen table and filled Elton’s bowl with dry cat food.
While-he was eating, Camilla went into the bathroom and ran the tub, adding a liberal dash of scented bubbles. She stood at the counter to take out her contact lenses, then stored them in their little plastic case. She rubbed her eyes with relief as she looked at herself in the mirror.
The change was always so dramatic, because her eyes weren’t blue at all. They were actually a clear, pale gray, like the sky on a cloudy day.
She’d chosen the tinted lenses mostly for practical reasons, because they were easier to find if she dropped or misplaced one of them. But tonight she was gratified to see again how much the lenses altered her appearance.
When Jon Campbell had seen her all those years ago, she’d had gray eyes….
Camilla touched the bridge of her nose, then picked up a hand mirror to study her profile critically. The plastic surgeon had repaired the cartilage in her nose skillfully. But back in that long-ago summer, her nose had been freshly broken and wasn’t healing properly. It had been noticeably crooked, and somewhat thicker at the bridge.
And her hair, too, had darkened a lot over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, her long braid had been pale blond, almost silver, hanging all the way to her waist.
Camilla put the mirror aside, stripped off her clothes, turned off the faucet and stepped into the tub, settling with a weary sigh among the fragrant mounds of bubbles.
Perhaps the man wasn’t lying, after all. It seemed quite possible that he didn’t recognize her, and he’d only arrived in her classroom by some kind of ghastly coincidence.
When their eyes first met, he’d looked puzzled by her own shocked reaction. There’d been no answering spark of recognition from him, no meaningful smirk or veiled threat. Just a look of good humour, masculine admiration and a readiness to smile and respond if she gave him any encouragement.
Jon Campbell seemed too blunt and forthright to carry off some kind of sinister deception. Still, she could hardly dare to hope that the man truly had forgotten what happened between them twenty years ago in that dirty motel room.
Camilla lowered herself among the bubbles so the water came to her chin. She lifted a slim foot and touched the faucet with her toe, idly tracing the outlines of the gleaming brass.
Maybe, for once in her life, she was going to be lucky. Perhaps the tinted contact lenses, her nose surgery, darkened hair and a few more inches of height were going to be enough to disguise her real identity from Jon Campbell.
Briefly she wondered what the man was like, how he’d turned out after all these years.
He seemed similar in some ways to the boy she remembered, but there were subtle differences, as well. Jonathan Campbell now had a look of wealth and power, despite the casual air. He was obviously a man with a privileged background and enough money to do anything he wanted—even go back to college full-time if he chose.
In fact, he seemed to be everything the campus myths claimed her to be. Camilla smiled grimly at the irony, then sobered and reached out to run more hot water into the tub.
Regardless of what he’d become, he was a threat to Camilla, and she knew she had to get the man out of her life quickly to preserve her own safety.
Elton wandered into the room, licking his whiskered chops with satisfaction. He stood erect, with his front paws resting on the edge of the tub, and stared at her solemnly. Camilla blew a couple of soap bubbles into his face, making him blink.
She smiled sadly. “Too bad a professor can’t just walk out of a class the way her students do. Should I drop that creative-writing class, Elton?”
The cat watched her with his usual inscrutable expression.
“Oh, I know. You’re right, of course,” Camilla said. “Dr. Pritchard can hardly drop a class simply because…”
Because the professor happens to share some unpleasant and embarrassing sexual history with one of her students.
Camilla’s throat tightened with anxiety. Of course, she had the power to remove a student from her class, but in order to do that she’d need a good reason.
Maybe if the work was hard enough, the man would quit of his own accord. After all, he’d probably been away from college for more than twenty years, presumably doing a lot of rugged, outdoor work, if his callused hands were any indication. No doubt he was going to find it difficult to adjust to the daily grind of classes and homework.
Camilla’s spirits lifted a bit.
Maybe she could give out the individual research assignments a couple of weeks early, and find some way to make Campbell work harder than anybody else. But she’d have to do it soon—before he had a lot more opportunities to sit at the back of that room and study every detail of her face and body.
Camilla climbed from the tub, dried herself on a big green towel and slipped into a terry-cloth robe and slippers, then made her way to the kitchen with Elton at her heels. She brewed a pot of herbal tea, put a small frozen entrée into the microwave and spread her books out on the glass-topped table.
What assignment could she give Jon Campbell? It had to be something tedious enough to convince the poor man that he wasn’t really interested in completing a senior writing class.
Camilla put on her reading glasses and began to work. After a few minutes, the microwave beeped and she got up, carried the tray to the table, picked up a fork and ate without tasting the food.
A short while later Camilla returned to her problem.
Maybe an analysis of character development in Chaucer?
How about a comparison of editorial styles of seven major newspapers, or a definitive look at the American novel from Hawthorne to Updike…
The pages blurred in front of her eyes. Camilla took off her glasses and dropped her head into her hands, rubbing her temples wearily.
It was beginning to rain. She could hear the heavy drops flowing down the windowpanes, pattering on the floor of the balcony. The sound was seductive, almost mesmerizing, carrying her back through the years.
Back to 1977, and the terrible events of that early summer…
July 1977
IT’S RAINING AGAIN, but I’m so cold and dirty that I don’t care anymore. It’s weird how people are always so afraid of being caught in the rain, as if getting wet is the worst thing that can happen to them. I’ve spent the last three nights out in the rain, sitting in the ditch by the highway with a jacket over my head. My clothes are filthy, my hair’s all stringy and I haven’t eaten since…I can’t remember the last time I had anything to eat.
It’s been a couple of days at least, but the hunger pangs have mostly passed. I’m dizzy a lot of the time and I still feel like throwing up whenever I remember what happened.
My knife didn’t help me a bit when he finally came to my room. He just laughed and snatched it from me like it was some kind of toy. When I tried to fight back, he hit me so hard that I could feel my nose breaking. The taste of blood in my throat sickened me almost as much as the things he was doing to me.
I can’t bear to think about the things he did. I won’t think about it. I won’t…
After he was finished, he rolled over and fell asleep. I got up, found the knife on the floor and jammed it as far as I could into his chest. He shouted and thrashed around, clutching at the knife handle. I don’t know if I killed him, but I hope so. I didn’t stay long enough to find out, I just grabbed some clothes and money and ran away.
My mother was passed out in the living room when I left. She never even knew what happened.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. After what he did to me, nothing matters anymore. It doesn’t matter what I do.
But I have to eat if I want to stay alive, so I’ll probably get to the city and start selling myself on the street. I’ll have to find some way to get cleaned up first, though. Nobody would pay to have sex with a girl who looks the way I do right now. It’s been two weeks since I ran away, and I haven’t seen a mirror for a long time so I don’t know if my nose has started to heal. It doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore, but I think it’s still pretty swollen.
I’m kind of scared at the thought of being a prostitute. Until he did what he did, I’d never even… nobody had ever touched me before. But now it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I just have to find some way to get a little money. I have to clean myself up and wash my hair, and find some clothes somewhere.
The sky is starting to lighten, and the sun will be rising soon. Meadowlarks are singing on the prairie all around me. They sound almost crazed with happiness. It’s amazing how the dawn can still be so clean and beautiful when it shines down on a world as ugly as this.
I’m sitting on a piece of cardboard in a wide, grassy ditch, and I’m stiff and cold, sore all over. I’d give anything to have a hot meal and a bath. A hot bath would be the most wonderful thing in the world.
Maybe I can flag down one of the semitrailers that keep passing on the highway, and get to the city that way. But people are such busybodies. The driver will want to know where I came from. He’ll take me to the police and they’ll either put me in jail for murder or send me back home.
Home.
God, what a laugh. I’ll die before I go back there. But I don’t know what else to do, and I’m so scared. I’m really scared. The mist is clearing and I can see for a little way down the ditch. There’s a man over there by the intersection. He must have stopped sometime during the night. He’s got his motorcycle pulled off the highway, and he’s been camping in a little tent. Now he’s up and moving around. He’s got a portable stove set up on some rocks. I can smell bacon frying.
Oh, Lord, it smells so good! I think he’s brewing coffee, too. Maybe a guy on a motorcycle won’t be so likely to call the cops.
Before I can lose my nerve, I get up and begin walking down the ditch toward him. It’s funny, I’m putting one foot in front of the other but I’m not sure if I’m still upright. The world is spinning, and all of a sudden there’s sky where the ground is supposed to be.
I feel somebody kneeling beside me, lifting me. Now I can see a face. It’s not really a man at all, just a boy not much older than me. He’s got blue eyes and thick brown hair, and he looks so nice….
SHE LOOKED BLANKLY at the streaming window. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, then fumbled in her pocket for a wad of tissues.
Finally, she pushed the books aside, stumbled into her living room and curled on the couch, hugging her knees. She switched on the television and let waves of brightly coloured images wash over her, drowning the painful memories in gusts of canned laughter.
NEXT MORNING, Camilla crossed the campus and went into the arts building. She bypassed her office and headed straight for the large theater where she taught freshman English.
Ninety-six students were registered this term, practically an impossible number. She sighed when she looked up at the tiered rows of seats filled with anxious young people.
While they stared down at her in hushed stillness, she moved across the front of the room, set her books on the desk and found the class list.
“Good morning. My name is Dr. Pritchard.”
There was a nervous murmur of greeting.
“When I read your name,” Camilla went on, “please indicate your presence with the word here and a raised hand so I’m able to check you off on the list. Regular attendance in class is vital because we’ll be moving rather quickly through a very large body of material. Anybody who skips more than two sessions without a valid excuse will receive a grade of incomplete on the term. Is that understood?”
The students nodded.
Camilla looked down at her alphabetized class list. “Aaronson?”
“Here.”
“Anders?”
“Here.”
“Appleby?”
“Yo, Doc!”
Camilla glanced up sharply. Appleby, who wore a bandanna and a couple of earrings, gave her a cherubic smile and waved. Camilla ignored him and went on reading names.
The sixth name was Campbell, and Camilla looked up at the speaker.
My God, it’s Jon! she thought in confusion. But how can it possibly…that was twenty years ago, and I saw the man yesterday in my…
She struggled to get her thoughts under control while the students watched her curiously.
Of course. This had to be Jon Campbell’s son.
He was no more than eighteen or nineteen, but he looked exactly like Jon as a young man. This boy had the same clean-cut good looks and direct blue eyes, the thick brown hair highlighted by streaks of gold after long days in the summer sun…
Camilla took herself firmly in hand and continued to call off the students’ names, stealing a couple of glances at Steven Campbell as she read.
Despite the physical resemblance, he certainly didn’t have the same open, pleasant look that Jon used to have. This boy seemed sullen and morose, coldly withdrawn.
Still, the unexpected appearance of him in her class was unnerving. And yet, deep down, there was a warm and unsettling feeling of excitement, too, when she looked up at the boy and remembered…
Twenty years ago, she told herself. Long ago, lost in the past.
Not even Jon Campbell remembered.
She shoved the thoughts out of her mind and finished taking attendance, then spoke to the students.
“Open your notebooks and write me a two-page essay about your goals in life,” she said amid a chorus of groans.
“What if I don’t have any?” Appleby inquired, grinning around at his fellow students.
Camilla gave the boy a thoughtful glance. “Goals don’t necessarily have to be personal, Mr. Appleby. If you have no goals for yourself, perhaps you have some for the human race, or for the planet. At any rate, I want a two-page essay on goals, and I want it to be accompanied by your full name, and your class and student number so I can begin to get to know each of you.”
Steven Campbell glared into the distance for a while, concentrating, then began to write. Although she was still badly shaken by the boy’s presence, Camilla found herself looking forward to reading his essay.
She moved around the room, up and down the tiers of seats while her students worked, and passed the time answering questions, offering advice on punctuation and style.
She paused briefly by Steven Campbell’s desk, looking down at his thick, gold-streaked hair and his broad shoulders. Even his hands were shaped like Jon’s, lean and strong, with square fingernails.
Camilla remembered those hands…
“Is your father by any chance a student here on campus, Mr. Campbell?” she murmured, wanting to hear his voice.
The boy gave her a noncommittal glance. “Yeah,” he said. “My dad’s taking some classes. My little brother and sister are here, too,” he added grudgingly, looking down at his paper.
“I beg your pardon?” Camilla asked.
“My twin brother and sister,” the boy repeated. “They’re seven years old. They’re in some kind of special class for egghead kids.”
“That’s our accelerated study group. In fact, I think I’ll probably be meeting your brother and sister later this afternoon.”
The boy nodded without interest as she moved away.
A couple of tiers higher, Camilla noticed a darkhaired girl laboring over her paper. Tears glittered in the young woman’s eyes. Camilla mounted the stairs unobtrusively to stand next to her.
“Is something the matter?” she whispered.
The girl looked up at her in anguish. “I can’t do this!”
“It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece,” Camilla said. “Just a few words about yourself and your goals.”
The student shook her head. “I mean this whole college thing. I’ve been out of school for four years, working and saving to come here. Now I’m in a panic. It’s all so hard, and there’s a ton of reading to do, and I—” Her voice broke.
Camilla knelt beside the girl’s desk and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know it feels pretty overwhelming at this stage,” she murmured, “but it’ll all fall into place within a week or two. Trust me, you’re going to feel a whole lot better after a few more classes. In the meantime,” she added, “drop by my office anytime and I’ll do what I can to help out.”
The girl looked up, her face clearing a little. “Really, Dr. Pritchard?”
Camilla got to her feet, one hand still resting on the student’s shoulder. “I was a freshman once, too,” she said. “And I was even more terrified than you are. I’ll be glad to help.”
The girl managed a trembling smile. Camilla smiled back, then moved up the steps to watch as the others toiled away at their essays.
They’re my children, Camilla thought. All these young people are the children I’ve never had.
Involuntarily, she glanced at Steven Campbell’s bent head and felt a deep wave of sadness.
CONSIDERING ALL the bizarre things that were happening to her this term, it took a lot of courage for Camilla to head over to Gwen’s classroom after lunch and keep her appointment with the study group.
She went down the hall and knocked on the door of a comfortable suite of rooms where the gifted children learned everything from chemistry to judo.
“Come in,” Gwen called, and Camilla entered to find a lively session in progress.
The students, about a dozen of them ranging from six to ten years old, were constructing a solar system out of papier-måché, hanging their planets in proper scale from a sunlamp in the center of the room.
“Children, this is Dr. Pritchard,” Gwen told the students. “She’s going to be dropping in to play games with us and ask some of you a whole lot of questions. Say hello, class.”
“Hello,” Camilla said, smiling at them.
“Hello, Dr. Pritchard,” the children chorused, then went back to their project.
Gwen drew Camilla aside. “Look, I don’t know how you were planning to begin your study, but could you possibly take the twins for a few hours?” she whispered. “I need to work out a special program for them, but I haven’t had time yet.”
She indicated a corner of the room where two curly-haired children lay on their stomachs near the aquarium, sharing a book.
“What are they reading?” Camilla whispered back.
“A. A. Milne. They like to memorize stories.”
Camilla chuckled. “Definitely children after my own heart. Why aren’t they making planets like the others?”
“They’ve already done this same project at home with their father, working out the orbits and distances all by themselves. They’re bored with the whole idea by now. The thing is, I still haven’t had time to work out something that’s going to challenge them properly. So if you could…”
“Would I be able to include both of them in my study, do you think?” Camilla asked.
“Kiddo, if you can take those kids off my hands for a few hours a week, I’ll be eternally grateful,” Gwen murmured.
“Would it be okay if I took them down to my office? I need some time to get to know them properly before I start testing.”
“Sure. But you’ll find they’re pretty tense little kids,” Gwen warned. “It’s hard to get them to relax and open up, unless…Jason,” she called to the group, “I think we need to move Neptune a little farther out. You’d better check the book, okay?”
She turned back to Camilla who was frowning thoughtfully.
“How about my apartment? They might be more comfortable if they could sit around in a homey setting and play with my cats.”
“That’s a good idea,” the teacher said. “Just tell me before you take them out of the building, okay? I need to know where they are.”
“Of course.” Camilla moved closer to the two children, accompanied by their teacher.
“Ari and Amy, listen to me.” Gwen stood above their prone figures. “This is Dr. Pritchard. She’s a very, very nice lady who’s going to be working with us quite a bit over the next few months.”
Two pairs of wide eyes looked up at them, green and gray, quietly watchful. Camilla was relieved to find that these children, at least, looked nothing at all like Jon Campbell.
She knelt beside the twins, then sat next to them on the carpeted floor while Gwen returned to the rest of the group.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Stories about Pooh and Piglet,” Ari said. “We like to memorize them.”
“Why?” Camilla asked.
“So we can say them to each other when we don’t have the book.” He pointed at one of the pictures. “See? Pooh’s got his head stuck in the honey pot and he can’t get out.”
“Piglet’s coming to help,” Amy chimed in. “But Pooh keeps getting lost.”
“Eeyore is my favorite,” Camilla said. “I like his cheerful outlook on life.”
Ari and Amy exchanged a glance. Camilla could see the silent message passing between them and sensed to her relief that for some reason they’d decided to trust her. Ari giggled, then moved closer to lean against her. “I like Baby Roo. It’s neat the way his mother takes such good care of him.”
Camilla touched the little boy’s rounded cheek, “I like that, too.”
Amy smiled and edged toward them, pressing against Camilla’s other side. Together they finished reading the story, speaking quietly to avoid disturbing the others, and laughed over the whimsical illustrations.
At last she got up, drawing the twins along with her. “Let’s go somewhere to talk, okay?” she said. “I want you kids to help me with something I’m working on.”
Ari began to look anxious again. “We’re not supposed to go anywhere with strangers. Daddy says…”
“It’s all right, dear.” Gwen came back across the room. “Dr. Pritchard is a teacher, too, and you can go anywhere she wants to take you.”
“Does Daddy know we’re going?” Amy asked.
“I told your daddy that Dr. Pritchard will be working with you and he knows we’re all taking very good care of you,” Gwen replied. “Now, Dr. Pritchard wants to take you to her office and play some games with you, that’s all.”
“What kind of games?” Ari asked.
“The kind of games that are your very favorite, dear. Flash cards and films, memory games, things like that.”
Ari brightened and turned to Camilla with a questioning glance.
“That’s right,” she told him. “Lots of games.”
“Better have them back here by four, okay?” Gwen called. “That’s when their housekeeper comes to pick them up.”
“We’ll be back,” Camilla promised.
She walked down the hallway, enjoying the feeling of a little warm hand in each of hers. “What’s your housekeeper’s name?” she asked.
“Sixty-four,” Ari muttered, apparently counting the tiles under his feet. “Amy, what’s the square root? Quick!”
“Eight,” the little girl said absently. “Margaret,” she added with a smile for Camilla.
“The housekeeper’s name is Margaret?” she asked.
Ari nodded. “Eighty-one.”
“Nine,” Amy said.
“Margaret has a boyfriend,” Ari said. “His name’s Eddie. He works way up north on the oil rigs. And Tom has a girlfriend, but Margaret says they’ll never get married.”
“Who’s Tom?” Camilla asked.
“He’s the foreman at the ranch.”
“Your father’s ranch?”
Amy giggled. “Once, Ari put Tom’s brand-new cowboy boots into the rain barrel.”
“They were made out of alligator skin,” Ari said. “I wanted to see if they’d float.”
Camilla laughed. “And did they float?”
Ari shook his head, looking glum. “Tom was real mad at us. He wouldn’t let me ride my pony for a whole week. But after that, he said it didn’t matter because those boots needed to shrink a bit anyhow.”
Something in the child’s voice made Camilla stop and kneel beside him again.
“Do you miss the ranch, dear?”
Ari looked away from her while Amy waited silently nearby.
After a moment, Camilla got to her feet again. “I’ll tell you what,” she said with sudden decision. “Let’s forget about those tests for now, okay? Let’s go down to the cafeteria and get some ice-cream cones.”
They spent a long time in the cafeteria choosing the flavors of their cones. Finally Ari selected pistachio and Amy took raspberry.
“What kind should I get?” Camilla asked.
The twins exchanged a glance. “Butterscotch ripple,” Amy said firmly.
“Why?” Camilla said, intrigued.
“Because you’re all white and gold,” Ari said.
“I see,” she sad, smiling.
“How long has Margaret been your housekeeper?” Camilla asked idly while they were sitting on a rock ledge outside the cafeteria.
“A long time. Since we were babies. Look,” Amy said, pointing to a black bird worrying a scrap of bread on the grass. “That’s a raven.”
“Nevermore,” Ari croaked, then laughed. “It’s not a raven, it’s a crow. Ravens are bigger. Did you know that our daddy goes to this college?” he asked Camilla with one of the lightning changes of subject she was becoming accustomed to.
“I certainly do. He’s in one of my classes, and so is your brother, Steven.”
The twins considered this. Camilla took advantage of their brief silence to return to the topic of Jon Campbell’s household.
“Does Margaret help your mother with the cooking and everything?”
“Our mother lives in Switzerland,” Amy said, “where all the mountains are.”
“There’s mountains here, too,” Ari said. “Look, you can see them from here.” He waved his hand toward the western horizon.
Camilla felt guilty about pumping small children for personal information, but the temptation was too great. “When did your mother go to Switzerland?”
“When we were born.” Ari pulled off some bits of the cone and tossed them toward the crow.
“You mean she took you away to Switzerland?”
“No, she left us here and went by herself because she didn’t love Daddy anymore. She says he’s a selfish pig who only cares about himself, so she went away.”
The child’s tone was flat and unemotional as he stared at the big bird.
Camilla thought about Ari’s words. The accusation against Jon Campbell seemed extreme, especially coming from a woman who’d apparently abandoned her own children. But perhaps Jon Campbell wasn’t the man she’d always thought. Maybe he was actually the kind of person who’d use his wealth and power to separate a woman from her newborn babies.
“When are we going to play games?” Ari was asking, tugging at her arm.
“Right away.” Camilla got to her feet and brushed at her skirt. “Let’s go to my office and see how much fun we can have.”
They went inside the building again. In the crowded hallway, the twins moved to each side of her and reached for her hands. The three of them walked along the corridor, swinging their arms, and in spite of her nagging fears, Camilla felt a wholly unexpected surge of happiness.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_46ceb7f1-1b1e-5ae0-8df6-51bf66cdbf8b)
“A VITALLY IMPORTANT part of creative writing,” Camilla told her senior class, “is the ability to give your reader a sense of place. This is accomplished by means of descriptive passages, but they have to be used sparingly or they’ll overpower the narrative.”
“Like garlic salt,” one of the students suggested, and Camilla smiled.
“Like garlic salt,” she agreed. “A little bit is delicious, but too much will spoil the dish. As you work your way through the reading list, I think you’ll find that all of the great writers are masters at description. Now, for your next assignment, I want you to take some time this weekend and do a couple of pages describing the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen.”
Hands shot up all over the room. “Can it be an imaginary place? What if it’s something that’s only beautiful to me, but nobody else? How many words should the essay be?”
She moved around the room to answer their questions, conscious of Jon Campbell watching her steadily from his seat at the back.
This was the fifth session of this class, and she was becoming accustomed to having him nearby. But it was still disturbing to see him lounge in his desk as he watched her with that thoughtful blue gaze.
By now, though, Camilla was convinced that the man really didn’t remember. Maybe the incident had meant so little to him that he’d forgotten it as soon as it happened.
Or maybe, like her, he’d repressed the past, buried all of those memories in some deep place where they were never disturbed.
She still had hopes that he might be intimidated enough by the major assignment he’d been given to drop the course altogether. But even this faint hope was beginning to fade. Jon Campbell didn’t appear to be a man who was easily intimidated, and his written work showed a surprising degree of skill.
The main problem for Camilla was that her own dark vault of memory seemed to be opening, slowly but relentlessly.
For instance, the nightmares were creeping back, although it had been years since they’d last haunted her. She found herself waking abruptly at three in the morning, drenched with perspiration, shaking in terror.
And there were other disturbing flashes of memory that leaped at her from unexpected places, things so much at odds with the carefully controlled life she’d made for herself that she could hardly bear the pain….
“That’s all for today,” she told the class with a glance at her watch. “I’ll be in my office this afternoon if any of you want help related to your major research papers. Thank you, and have a nice weekend.”
She went to the desk and began to gather her papers, conscious of Jon Campbell’s approach. Her senses seemed to be so finely attuned to this man that her body had some mysterious way of knowing when he was nearby. The fine hairs on her forearms actually lifted, and her pulse quickened.
“I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things in my life,” he said quietly. “It’s hard to choose just one.”
What did he mean by that?
She forced herself to look up him, but his eyes were mild and steady, not at all threatening.
Camilla hefted an armload of books and started for the door. “Why don’t you describe something at your home?”
“My home is a ranch on the dry prairie.” Jon fell into step beside her. “A lot of people wouldn’t think there was anything beautiful about it.”
His sleeve brushed against her arm, and she could smell the pleasant masculine scent of clean skin and shaving lotion. She closed her eyes briefly, struggling to maintain her composure. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. Campbell.”
“It sure is.” She could feel him looking down at her, but she was afraid to meet his eyes again. “I understand you’ve met my kids,” he added.
“Yes, I have. All three of them.” She paused by the door. “The twins are helping me with some research I’m doing into the development of reading ability. And Steven is in my freshman English class.”
“Actually, I have four kids,” he said with a smile. “The only one you haven’t met is Vanessa. She’s sixteen, in twelfth grade.”
“Is she as bright as Steven and the twins?”
“I think so.” His smile faded. “I wasn’t aware Steve was in your English class. He doesn’t seem to tell me things anymore.”
Camilla was urgently tempted to ask the man some questions. She wanted to know a lot more about that handsome, unhappy boy who looked so much like his father. And the shy, brilliant twins, and their mysteriously absent mother…
Enrique Valeros passed them with a timid nod, stumbling a little as he went into the hallway. He carried a huge pile of library books, and his face was pale with fatigue. Camilla and Jon watched in silence as the dark-haired boy moved down the corridor with an unsteady gait.
“That poor kid always looks like he’s dead on his feet,” Jon observed. “His hands were shaking again today. I wonder if he’s sick, or taking drugs or something.”
Camilla frowned. “No, I don’t think it’s drugs,” she said at last. “His written work is beautiful, very concise and disciplined. It’s particularly impressive for somebody for whom English is a second language. The students who abuse drugs tend to be rambling and disconnected, although,” she added dryly, “they always believe that their work is wonderfully eloquent.”
“Then why do you think Enrique’s so tired all the time?”
“I don’t know.”
She felt a treacherous urge to move closer to Jon Campbell, to nestle against the man and feel his arms around her. It was surprisingly pleasant to stand here with him like this, talking and hearing his voice in reply.
Abruptly the years fell away and she was seventeen again, overcome with a stormy passion she’d never expected to feel….
“Goodbye, Mr. Campbell,” she said hastily, starting down the hallway toward the administrative wing. “Have a pleasant weekend.”
“HI, GRETCHEN.” Camilla stopped at the bursar’s office and dropped her books onto the counter with a sigh. “I wonder if you can tell me something about one of my students.”
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Margot Dalton
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Bestselling AuthorCamilla Pritchard hadn′t seen Jon Campbell in nearly twenty years. Now he′s shown up in her classroom posing as one of her students. His presence brings back all her memories of the worst days of her life and threatens to destroy everything she′s worked so hard to build.Why is he here? Surely the successful rancher and father of four–including the most adorable seven-year-old twins–has better things to do. And why is he pretending not to recognize her? She′d have known him anywhere.For years she′s seen his face in her dreams–and her nightmares."Margot Dalton′s creativity dazzles…" –Bethany Campbell, bestselling author of See How They Run and Don′t Talk to Strangers