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Morgan had been inside many times. While single men and women were never allowed to share living space in buildings on campus, the school had no control over off-campus housing. Typically, these three-story boardinghouses hosted men on the top story and women on the middle one, with the bottom floor reserved for common rooms. These places tended to be loud and run-down and catered to the poorest students living on the smallest of stipends. Just now, loud music poured from the building.
“We have a resident praise band,” she said wryly, explaining the music.
“No wonder you haven’t been getting much sleep.”
She shrugged. “They’re good people, and this is all I can afford on my wages.”
Morgan hated to think of quiet, physically fragile Simone here. However spunky she might be, he sensed shadows and sadness in her, trouble and need. It was his job to help her, if he could. That’s what faculty advisers at Buffalo Creek Bible College did. He’d had his share of troubled students. Christian colleges were not immune from the ills of society; perhaps the effects were mitigated somewhat, but the world was still the world, and Christians still had to cope with it. If she had been raised through the foster care system, as he suspected, he might be able to find resources for her of which she was unaware.
“Where do you work?”
“At the Campus Gate Coffee House.”
He knew it well. The proprietors were friends, and he ate breakfast there at least once a week. Located just across the street from the west gate to the campus, it was a very popular place.
She reached for the door handle, saying, “It doesn’t pay much, but when I’ve finished school, I won’t owe a dime to anyone.”
“Well, that’s a definite plus,” he told her, “but perhaps you should think about applying for a grant or a small loan.”
She shook her head. “That’s not for me.” With that she let herself out of the car, saying, “Thank you for the ride, Professor Chatam.”
Morgan frowned at the way she dismissed his suggestion so casually, but she was already moving away from the car. “Take care of yourself,” he called. “See you in class on Wednesday.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised, waving as she hurried up the walk to the house.
As he drove away, Morgan made a mental vow to keep track of her. He wasn’t yet convinced that she didn’t have an eating disorder. He’d seen bulimia more than once, not usually in young women from foster homes, though. He’d hate to see something like that derail Simone’s education—and it wouldn’t do to let an inappropriate attraction distract him from his duty. That wouldn’t do at all.
* * *
Simone closed the flimsy door of her shabby room and sagged against it. The beat of the bass guitar echoed up the stairwell from the floor below and throbbed inside her aching skull. The narrow bed against the far wall called to her, but she went to the laptop computer atop the rickety desk in the corner and turned it on. That, a pair of low, sparsely filled bookcases, a small lamp, a trash can, an oval rug, a pair of curtains and a desk chair comprised the furnishings of the room. It was little to show for nearly a decade, but such things had ceased to matter to her in a hospital bed in a cancer ward in Baton Rouge.
Without Morgan Chatam to distract her, she could no longer contain her need to know what had happened to her family. A simple internet search brought up her father’s obituary on the computer screen.
Marshall Doyal Worth, fifty-seven, had died on June 20 after a long illness. An old photo of him as a young man, one of her favorites, accompanied the text. Survivors included his mother, listed as Eileen L. Davenport Worth; his older brother, Chester; sister-in-law, Hilda; two daughters, Carissa, of the home, and Lyla—no residence mentioned—grandsons Nathan and Tucker; granddaughter Grace; a niece and a nephew; and several great-nieces and nephews. Marshall had died, it would seem, from cancer, as it was requested that memorials be made in the form of donations to fund research.
Obviously, cancer ran in the family.
At least Carissa and her children had been living with Marshall at the end, so he hadn’t been alone. Tears flowed from her eyes as Simone folded her arms across the edge of the desk and lowered her aching head to pray.
“Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. Please tell my daddy that I’m sorry. It’s too late. I left it too late. I thought I was doing the right thing by coming here now, but maybe I shouldn’t have done it. Show me what to do now, and forgive me. Please forgive me.”
She had more than nine years of “forgive me” stacked up, nearly a decade of penance to pay and mistakes to undo. And now it was too late. With her father gone, what was the point in coming here? Carissa wasn’t likely to want anything to do with her now.
Poor Carissa, to have lost Tom and then to have nursed their dad through cancer all on her own.... No, Carissa wasn’t likely to want anything to do with her wayward little sister now. And who could blame her? Tom had been Carissa’s high school sweetheart. She’d never showed any interest in any other guy. How tough it must have been for her to lose him!
Simone lifted her head and looked up Tom’s obituary. Four years. He had died in an accident of some sort more than four years ago.
Her tears became sobs of grief and shame and regret. Once started, she couldn’t seem to stop them, not even when she impulsively looked up the wedding announcements in the local newspaper and saw a photo of Carissa and her beautiful children posed with a tall, ruggedly handsome, dark-haired man with the Chatam cleft chin. Carissa looked a little older, more capable, healthy and quite stunning.
“Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Chatam,” the caption read, “and family.”
The article beneath detailed that the couple had been “united in holy wedlock” on Friday, August 8, at Chatam House, the home of the groom’s aunts, by the groom’s uncle, Hubner Chatam Jr. Maid of honor was Dallas Chatam, sister of the groom.
Simone felt a pang at that. She had been the maid of honor at Carissa’s marriage to Tom, but she hadn’t been here when Carissa had buried Tom or their father or when she’d married Phillip Chatam. Simone hadn’t even known that she had a niece and nephews. Carissa had been pregnant when Simone had left, but she hadn’t given that much thought at the time. All things considered, that was probably best. Simone tore her gaze away from the photo of the children and continued reading.
Asher Chatam, brother of the groom, had served as best man. The bride was given in marriage by her uncle, Chester Worth. The happy couple’s parents were listed as the late Marshall Worth and Alexandra Hedgespeth and the doctors Murdock Chatam and Maryanne Burdett Chatam.
“Hedgespeth,” Simone murmured, swiping ineffectually at her tears. That was a new one. She couldn’t help wondering how many other last names and husbands her mother had claimed in the past nine years.
Simone hadn’t expected life to stand still in Buffalo Creek while she was gone. It certainly hadn’t stood still for her. But she hadn’t expected this.
Her dad had been only fifty-seven, and Tom had been in his thirties. So young.
Fresh tears gushed from her eyes. She cried for her father, for her late brother-in-law, for Carissa and her children, but she refused to cry for herself. She knew only too well what her dad must have suffered and could only hope that Tom had not suffered anything similar. What Carissa had endured Simone could only imagine. At the same time, Simone prayed, hoped, that Alexandra had not spent the intervening years flitting from man to man, demanding that everyone stop and think of her, put her needs and desires first. Yet that new last name, Hedgespeth, suggested that her mother had not mended her self-indulgent ways. That meant that Carissa had, indeed, dealt with it all alone.
Could Carissa ever forgive her only sister for abandoning her to deal with such tragedies and their demanding mother alone? The very question so smacked of their self-absorbed mother that Simone vowed never to ask it. She had no right to ask it, no right to dump her problems and failures on the sister who had stayed to do what a good daughter should.
Carissa had happily remarried. She didn’t need a prodigal sister turning up to complicate her life just when things were going well for a change. No, it was too late for that.
It would have been better if she hadn’t come to BCBC and Buffalo Creek, but what was done was done. Aaron, her former husband—if he could be called that—had paid her tuition in full, just as she’d requested. It was all Simone had asked for in the settlement, a college education, and his cagey parents had seen to it that the funds they’d dispensed to be rid of her could not be used for any other reason. She had specified Buffalo Creek Bible College, and that’s where they had sent the money, so this was where she would have to attend school. That meant she would just have to keep to herself.
If her own aunt and uncle hadn’t recognized her, then it wasn’t likely that anyone except those closest to her would, at least not in her present condition. She saw no reason, then, for anyone to equate Simone Guilland with Lyla Worth—no one, that was, except her sister and mother. Those two alone might recognize her, so she would just have to keep her distance from everyone connected to either of them. That included the kind, charming and debonair Professor Morgan Chatam, even if he was her faculty adviser and she had to take his class.
It was a pity that she couldn’t take Professor Chatam’s course online again, but school policy made that difficult because she’d dropped it before without explanation. That hadn’t seemed important at the time, given the severity of the circumstances. Once she’d understood that she was moving to Buffalo Creek and would have access to the BCBC campus, she’d simply accepted that she would take the course in person. She hadn’t known then, of course, what she knew now. Still, all she could do was keep her distance and let Carissa live her life without worrying about her foolish baby sister.
Her decision to remain incognito made, Simone sat in the back of the class on Wednesday and tried to blend in with the eager young students around her.
She needn’t have bothered. Professor Chatam’s warm, cinnamon-brown gaze nailed her the moment he strode into the room. He wore that tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches about which he’d teased her, but he immediately shrugged out of it and slung it over the back of his desk chair, rolling up the sleeves of the tan pinpoint shirt that he wore with a brown tie and brown slacks. His hair seemed lighter than she’d remembered, a medium golden-brown with glints of silver, brushed straight back from the slight widow’s peak in the center of his high forehead. He took a pair of gold, half-frame reading glasses from a pocket and slid them onto his nose. Suddenly, the cleft in his chin seemed more pronounced, more compelling.
Before, at the party, he’d appeared engaging, urbane, a tad dangerous and undeniably attractive. Now he had a commanding air about him. At once authoritative and yet affable, he looked devastatingly handsome. Every girl on campus probably had a crush on him. Simone ducked her head.
Thankfully, he wasted no time in getting down to business. She’d admired his easy, informative style on his recorded lectures, but that paled in comparison to his classroom persona. Morgan Chatam, professor, held a class of seventy students rapt, imparting knowledge with such facility and precision that it became obvious he had been born for this. He didn’t just lecture, he engaged, using banter as well as media to get his points, facts and ideas across. At times, everyone seemed to be talking at once, yet he never lost control of the lecture hall, not for an instant, and he seemed aware of what everyone was doing all the time.
His memory proved phenomenal—that or he’d done some research on her since he’d seen her last. It would be flattering to think that it was the latter, so she didn’t dare, not that he gave her time.
“Ms. Guilland had an interesting observation on that point,” he said when the subject turned to a particular discussion item. Then he accurately quoted what she had written in an online chat. At the same time, he invited her to elucidate with a gesture of his hand. She cleared her throat and voiced her thoughts. Nodding, he moved on. She tried not to feel pleased when the students around her glanced her way with something akin to admiration, scribbling furiously as if her thoughts were important.
He hailed her as she followed the throng to the door at the end of class. Unlike other professors, he’d arranged his lecture hall so that the students filed past his lectern. “Simone, how are you feeling?”
“Great. Just great.”
“No more fainting?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Stay that way.”
“I plan to.”
Parked on the corner of his desk, he flashed that suave smile at her and nodded. She turned away, wishing that her heart wasn’t beating just a little faster than it ought to and that so many others weren’t following the brief conversation with such avid curiosity. The last thing she needed was speculation about her and a man, any man, but especially a Chatam. She’d had enough trouble with men in her lifetime. What she needed now was to forget that the male of the species existed. Moreover, she had to keep her distance from the Chatams and anyone else with a connection to her sister and family. All she wanted, all that was left to her, was to finish her education and make a difference in this world.
The chaplain at the hospital in Baton Rouge had told her that she had a destiny to fulfill in Christ, and she believed it with all her heart. Why else would He spare her life when all hope had seemed lost? Perhaps when He was done punishing her for past mistakes, He would make His purpose known to her. Until then, she would just have to bear up under the pain of her father’s death and the losses she had dealt herself with her own foolish, selfish behavior.
* * *
Anyone who knew Morgan Chatam well would list observation and a keen intelligence among his key virtues, so when Friday showed the opposite of marked improvement in Simone Guilland’s condition, he noticed. Her carefully applied cosmetics no longer fooled him in the least, and the neat tailoring of her cotton slacks and matching print blouse failed to disguise the fragility of the slight form that he had so effortlessly carried in his arms only days earlier. As before, she chose a seat in the rear of the room, and as before, he let her know that she was on his radar. This obviously irritated her, and that wore his much-vaunted patience surprisingly thin, so he decided to take a direct approach, asking her to stay after class.
She didn’t like it one bit. Those gray eyes stormed as she stood quietly before his desk. He let her stew a moment before dropping his glasses onto the desk blotter and leaning back in his chair to peg her with a level gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t ask me. You’re the one who seems to have a problem.”
She was a cheeky miss, not at all impressed by his consequence. He heaved a silent sigh, toying idly with the glasses.
“Are we going to play games, or are we going to be adults about this?”
That pointed little chin ratcheted up a notch. He might have smiled if the impulse to do so hadn’t alarmed him so. As it was, the beauty of those plump lips and that stubby little nose and those enormous gray eyes troubled him at the strangest times. He couldn’t afford to be enamored of her chin as well, not to mention her streak of stubborn independence.
“Adults mind their own business, Professor Chatam.”
“Which, as your adviser, is exactly what I’m doing, Ms. Guilland. There is something wrong with you, and I mean to find out what it is.”
He wanted Simone Guilland’s problems, whatever they were, solved; otherwise, he feared she would give him no peace.
She stared him straight in the eye, as immutable as the Sphinx, neither confirming nor denying, simply giving away nothing. He tried a different tack.
“Simone, I’m not your enemy. You have no reason to fear me.”
Yes, I do.
Though unspoken, he saw it clearly in her eyes and on her face just before she turned and headed swiftly to the door.
There she paused and glanced back, softly saying, “Thank you, but I’m as fine as I can be.”
As fine as I can be.
Morgan gnashed his teeth. Well, that was just not good enough.
Chapter Three
Rising, Morgan gathered his things and walked through the building to his department suite. His administrative assistant, Vicki Marble, sat at her desk downloading online syllabi to see who had completed the week’s reading and first assignment, due by midnight. They did everything electronically these days, which cut paperwork in half and quadrupled computer time.
“Hey, Morg.”
“Vic. What are the girls doing this weekend?”
“Shopping for prom dresses.”
“All three of them?”
“All three of them.”
“Give my condolences to Dwight. He’s a better man than me. Three teenaged daughters.” He gave a shudder just to see Vicki laugh. Redheaded, freckle-faced and as plain as a mud fence, she seemed to have been born good-natured and laughing, as well as efficient and organized. Her husband and astonishingly beautiful daughters adored her. “Speaking of Dwight,” he said, “I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
Dwight Marble worked in the provost’s office, handling admissions. Morgan explained what he needed then went into his office, closed the door and sat down at his desktop computer. Quickly, he brought up Simone’s complete file.
She was older than he’d assumed—twenty-six as of the twentieth of this past August. She had completed her undergraduate work—all but his class—in Colorado and via remote study in Baton Rouge. Her next of kin was listed as Laverne Davenport Worth, whose address was in Fort Worth. The name Worth struck a chord with him, given that Hilda and Chester Worth comprised two-thirds of the staff at Chatam House. The name was fairly common in the area, however, and he’d never heard any mention of a Laverne, so he discounted any connection, especially when he read that the Guilland family, of Baton Rouge, had paid Simone’s tuition in full, for the entire course of her graduate degree, via an unusual trust account.
Morgan sat back in his chair with a thump. He had seen scholarships and endowments of every variety, but he’d never seen anything like this. What on earth was going on here? He decided that he’d be eating breakfast at the Campus Gate Coffee House, where Simone worked, bright and early the next morning, and at some point he was going to have a frank discussion with Simone Guilland.
How much he looked forward to that breakfast at the Campus Gate Coffee House troubled Morgan all that evening. He told himself that he was just doing his duty by pigeonholing Simone Guilland, but he couldn’t quite convince himself. He’d gone to greater lengths for other students. Why, he’d driven one young man all the way to California and enjoyed a delightful summer respite with his aunt Dorinda Latimer and her family while he was at it. Still, he’d never lain awake in the night picturing another student’s face or remembering how his heart had quivered with the flutter of her eyelashes as she’d regained consciousness after he’d carried her limp body in his arms.
He was quite put out with himself by the time he tucked his newspaper under his arm and slid into the Beemer around nine the next morning. He’d meant to be up and about earlier, but his restlessness had made for a late night. Besides, by his estimation, the coffee shop shouldn’t be too busy on a Saturday morning.
Wrong. The place was popping when he arrived, so much so that he had to park around the corner and walk nearly a block. All of the al fresco tables were taken, he noted as he pushed his way inside and caught the eye of the owner and manager, Frank Upton. He’d hoped to have a quiet word with the fellow. Instead, he got a nod and a point in the direction of a tiny table at the end of the bakery counter where Frank usually did his paperwork.
“Be glad to visit if you have a minute.”
“Sure. If I have a minute.”
Shaking his head, Morgan walked over to the table. A cup of steaming-hot black coffee and a small cruet of cold cream laced with cinnamon appeared almost as soon as he sat down. He smiled at the waitress, Frank’s wife, Loretta.
“Simone will be over to take your order in a moment.”
“She’s here, then?”
“Simone? Yes. You know her?”
“She’s one of my students. Tell me, is she all right?”
Loretta shrugged her ample shoulders. “I assume so. She’s a quiet one, never complains. Gets right to work. Stays busy. She’s awfully tired at the end of her shift, but that’s not surprising, a little thing like her.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” Morgan muttered, opening his newspaper.
Loretta went off to manage the coffee counter, and presently Simone showed up, clad in blue jeans, a bright orange T-shirt and a yellow apron.
“Professor Chatam.” She produced an order pad from an apron pocket. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll have one of those crusty cinnamon muffins and a couple hard-boiled eggs.”
“Coming right up.”
She swept off, returning moments later with a gargantuan muffin and two peeled eggs in a bowl.
“Loretta says the coffee is on the house,” she said, slapping down the ticket.
