CHAPTER FIVE

      “Natasha! Hey, ah, Natasha!”

      Broken out of thoughts that weren’t particularly productive, Natasha glanced over and spied Terry. He was wearing a long yellow-and white-striped scarf in defense against a sudden plunge in temperature that had sprinkled frost on the ground. As he raced after her, it flapped awkwardly behind him. By the time he reached her, his glasses had slipped crookedly down to the tip of his reddening nose.

      “Hi, Terry.”

      The hundred-yard dash had winded him. He dearly hoped it wouldn’t aggravate his asthma. “Hi. I was—I saw you heading in.” He’d been waiting hopefully for her for twenty minutes.

      Feeling a bit like a mother with a clumsy child, she straightened his glasses, then wrapped the scarf more securely around his skinny neck. His rapid breathing fogged his lenses. “You should be wearing gloves,” she told him, then patting his chilled hand, led him up the steps.

      Overwhelmed, he tried to speak and only made a strangled sound in his throat.

      “Are you catching a cold?” Searching through her purse, she found a tissue and offered it.

      He cleared his throat loudly. “No.” But he took the tissue and vowed to keep it until the day he died. “I was just wondering if tonight—after class—you know, if you don’t have anything to do… You’ve probably got plans, but if you don’t, then maybe…we could have a cup of coffee. Two cups,” he amended desperately. “I mean you could have your own cup, and I’d have one.” So saying, he turned a thin shade of green.

      The poor boy was lonely, Natasha thought, giving him an absent smile. “Sure.” It wouldn’t hurt to keep him company for an hour or so, she decided as she walked into class. And it would help her keep her mind off…

      Off the man standing in front of the class, Natasha reflected with a scowl; the man who had kissed the breath out of her two weeks before and who was currently laughing with a sassy little blonde who couldn’t have been a day over twenty.

      Her mood grim, she plopped down at her desk and poked her nose into a textbook.

      Spence knew the moment she walked into the room. He was more than a little gratified to have seen the huffy jealousy on her face before she stuck a book in front of it. Apparently fate hadn’t been dealing him such a bad hand when it kept him up to his ears in professional and personal problems for the last couple of weeks. Between leaky plumbing, PTA and Brownie meetings and a faculty conference, he hadn’t had an hour free. But now things were running smoothly again. He studied the top of Natasha’s head. He intended to make up for lost time.

      Sitting on the edge of his desk, he opened a discussion of the distinctions between sacred and secular music during the baroque period.

      She didn’t want to be interested. Natasha was sure he knew it. Why else would he deliberately call on her for an opinion—twice?

      Oh, he was clever, she thought. Not by a flicker, not by the slightest intonation did he reveal a more personal relationship with her. No one in class would possibly suspect that this smooth, even brilliant lecturer had kissed her senseless, not once, not twice, but three times. Now he calmly talked of early seventeenth-century operatic developments.

      In his black turtleneck and gray tweed jacket he looked casually elegant and totally in charge. And of course, as always, he had the class in the palms of those beautiful hands he eloquently used to make a point. When he smiled over a student’s comment, Natasha heard the little blonde two seats behind her sigh. Because she’d nearly done so herself, Natasha stiffened her spine.

      He probably had a whole string of eager women. A man who looked like him, talked like him, kissed like him was bound to. He was the type that made promises to one woman at midnight and snuggled up to another over breakfast in bed.

      Wasn’t it fortunate she no longer believed in promises?

      Something was going on inside that fabulous head of hers, Spence mused. One moment she was listening to him as if he had the answers to the mysteries of the universe on the tip of his tongue. The next, she was sitting rigidly and staring off into space, as though she wished herself somewhere else. He would swear that she was angry, and that the anger was directed squarely at him. Why was an entirely different matter.

      Whenever he’d tried to have a word with her after class over the last couple of weeks, she’d been out of the building like a bullet. Tonight he would have to outmaneuver her.

      She stood the moment class was over. Spence watched her smile at the man sitting across from her. Then she bent down to pick up the books and pencils the man scattered as he rose.

      What was his name? Spence wondered. Maynard. That was it. Mr. Maynard was in several of his classes, and managed to fade into the background in each one. Yet at the moment the unobtrusive Mr. Maynard was crouched knee to knee with Natasha.

      “I think we’ve got them all.” Natasha gave Terry’s glasses a friendly shove back up his nose.

      “Thanks.”

      “Don’t forget your scarf—” she began, then looked up. A hand closed over her arm and helped her to her feet. “Thank you, Dr. Kimball.”

      “I’d like to talk to you, Natasha.”

      “Would you?” She gave the hand on her arm a brief look, then snatched up her coat and books. Feeling as though she were on a chessboard again, she decided to aggressively counter his move. “I’m sorry, it’ll have to wait. I have a date.”

      “A date?” he managed, getting an immediate picture of someone dark, dashing and muscle-bound.

      “Yes. Excuse me.” She shook off his hand and stuck an arm into the sleeve of her coat. Since the men on either side of her seemed equally paralyzed, she shifted the books to her other arm and struggled to find the second sleeve. “Are you ready, Terry?”

      “Well, yeah, sure. Yeah.” He was staring at Spence with a mixture of awe and trepidation. “But I can wait if you want to talk to Dr. Kimball first.”

      “There’s no need.” She scooped up his arm and pulled him to the door.

      Women, Spence thought as he sat down at a desk. He’d already accepted the fact that he had never understood them. Apparently he never would.

      “Jeez, Tash, don’t you think you should have seen what Dr. Kimball wanted?”

      “I know what he wanted,” she said between her teeth as she pushed open the main doors. The rush of autumn air cooled her cheeks. “I wasn’t in the mood to discuss it tonight.” When Terry tripped over the uneven sidewalk, she realized she was still dragging him and slowed her pace. “Besides, I thought we were going to have some coffee.”

      “Right.” When she smiled at him, he tugged on his scarf as if to keep from strangling.

      They walked into a small lounge where half the little square tables were empty. At the antique bar two men were muttering over their beers. A couple in the corner were all but sitting on each other’s laps and ignoring their drinks.

      She’d always liked this room with its dim lighting and old black-and-white posters of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. It smelled of cigarettes and jug wine. There was a big portable stereo on a shelf above the bar that played an old Chuck Berry number loudly enough to make up for the lack