Her Secret, His Child

“PROFESSOR RADCLIFF? Jamie Archer here.” The heavy beating of her heart was due to the speed with which she’d made it from the garage to her office after dropping the girls off at school. Nothing more. With Karen’s news still fresh in her mind the next morning, Jamie was in a hurry to immerse herself in business. Or so she told herself.

“Jamie!” The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.” He paused. “And what’s this ‘Professor’ bit? I’m ‘Kyle,’ remember?”

Yeah. She remembered. “I’m missing some receipts.”

“Okay.”

His voice cooled a bit. And Jamie hated herself for being disappointed.

“I’ll see if I can find them. What do you need?”

Reading from the list she’d prepared before falling into bed early that morning, Jamie told him.

“I don’t know if I even have all this stuff, but I can check this afternoon,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll bring them by this evening.”

“No!” Thinking only of Ashley, Jamie panicked. “I mean, um, I’ll be out this evening.” She paused. Swallowed. “Tomorrow’s soon enough. I’ll come to your office.”

“Since you’re going to be out, why don’t you come here to pick up the receipts tonight?” he asked, sounding more cheerful. “I’ll be home.”

“That won’t be necessary. Tomorrow at your office is fine.”

“It’s just that with some of this stuff, I’m not sure exactly what all you need. It might be better if you look things over yourself. It’ll probably save you another trip.”

Deforming a paper clip, Jamie blurted, “I might be out late.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be up grading essays, anyway.”

It was hard to picture him as an English professor. She would have been much more comfortable if he’d turned out to be an ambulance-chasing lawyer or something.

“What kind of essays?” She didn’t want to know.

“We’re doing an in-depth study of Clemens, his political and religious views.”

“Huckleberry Finn.” She’d loved the American-literature class she’d taken on Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain.

“And ‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.’”

“Tom Sawyer, ” she said, remembering.

“Yeah, what’s with Aunt Polly? You think she’s a woman ahead of her time—or a small-minded old bat?”

“She loved Tom.”

“You go for small-minded, huh?”

Jamie picked up another paper clip. “She did her best. Life hadn’t dealt her an easy hand, raising a hellion like Tom.”

“You think the cards you’re dealt are an excuse to be small-minded?”

“No!” Jamie almost laughed. And then caught herself. What was she doing? “And this has nothing to do with your taxes,” she reminded them both.

“So you’re coming by tonight?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Don’t trust yourself?”

“Of course I trust myself.” Jamie forced every bit of disapproving indignation she could muster into her reply.

“You don’t trust me?”

“Why wouldn’t I trust you?” Why, indeed? But that was something they weren’t going to talk about.

He rattled off the directions to his house. “Come anytime. I’ll be up,” he said. And then rang off before Jamie could tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she would not be stopping by his home that night, taxes or no.

When she rang back, she got his answering machine. Throughout the rest of that day, the man never answered his phone. Jamie didn’t know if it was her imagination that had her thinking he was purposely avoiding her—or if she was just growing unnaturally paranoid. But because she couldn’t get hold of him to make other arrangements and because she needed those receipts if she was going to get his taxes done and out of her life, she asked Karen to keep Ashley that evening.

IT HAD BEEN so LONG since he’d cared enough to impress a woman that Kyle was a little unsure of himself as he unpacked enough stuff to make his house look like home. A home minus most of his furniture, of course. There’d been a little mix-up with that.

Give him a classroom full of know-it-all six-foot punks who hated English, and he was comfortable. But give him an hour to win over a 110-pound woman with a heart of gold, and he was at a complete loss.

In the first place, he didn’t even know why he was having to win her over again. He thought he’d done that—quite thoroughly—five years before. He couldn’t have imagined those phenomenal hours with her. Couldn’t have imagined her response.

And couldn’t understand why she’d disappeared.

But one thing he did know for sure: now that he’d found her, he wasn’t letting her get away again.

“At least not without knowing why,” he muttered. “Now, where are those damn files?”

Spying an unopened box across the kitchen, he grabbed his razor knife and headed over. The box was full of files. Surely the ones he needed were in there. Pulling off his glasses and tossing them on the counter, he crouched down to investigate.

“Oh, good, there you are,” he said a few minutes later as he opened what was probably his twentieth manila folder to reveal the extra set of lesson plans he’d worked up for the semester. He’d had to turn in the set he’d brought with him in his briefcase and had forgotten to make a copy first. At least now he’d be spared the relatively humiliating experience of having to go ask the department secretary for a copy.

The doorbell rang just after eight. He’d finally found the travel receipts Jamie had requested—at the bottom of a box of socks and skivvies. They’d all been in a suitcase together, left over from his visit to New England, where he’d visited the homes and graves of most of his idols—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott.

“This isn’t late,” he said as he opened the door. He had to say something. Drooling over his reluctant accountant probably wasn’t wise.

She shrugged her beautifully slim shoulders. “I finished earlier than I thought.”

And what he thought was that she hadn’t had anything to do that night to begin with. That she’d been making excuses. Which made him all the more curious. And determined.

“Here’s my office, such as it is.” He directed her to the little room off the entryway. His desk was there because he’d purchased a new one. And a sturdy box he was using as a chair. The filing cabinets hadn’t made it yet.

“What on earth is in all those folders?” she asked, staring at the piles surrounding the room.

“Stuff.” Kyle shrugged. He still hadn’t found his folder of photos from Walden Pond. Maybe they were in the sock and skivvies box, too.

“So, you have the receipts?” she asked, standing just inside the door of his office.