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Eyes he cast at the dean in response to Cassie’s regretful greeting. “You made her leave in the middle of everything to come here on a Sunday night just to meet me?”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Cassie rushed to say. “I didn’t mind. I just didn’t have any idea I was coming to meet someone like you….” She was making it worse. “To meet anyone,” she amended as damage control. “Or to do anything in any kind of school capacity. If I’d known I was going to be coming into contact with a parent—or a guardian—I would have changed.”
“You look fine,” Alyssa chimed in. “Like one of us.”
There was some truth in that, Cassie realized just then. Alyssa was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her brother had on a heather-green Henley T beneath his leather jacket.
“You really do look just fine,” Cantrell confirmed, glancing at her again and giving a smile that Cassie had no doubt could wilt any woman’s will from a hundred paces.
“Well, anyway,” she said, wanting to get beyond all of her opening faux pas as quickly as she could, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Cantrell.”
“Pleased to meet you, too. But call me Joshua.”
“And I’m Cassie,” she said, thinking only after the fact—once again—that that probably had been unnecessary and possibly presumptuous.
“Cassie is the freshman adviser,” Alyssa supplied then. “She helped get me out of that awful chem class and into biology.”
The dean took over from there. “Cassie has also agreed to be your private guide through Parents’ Week. She’s good at not attracting attention.”
“Kind of like your average, run-of-the-mill, ordinary fence post,” Cassie said somewhat under her breath, not appreciating that particular accolade on top of unobtrusive, folksy, homegrown daisy, with no flash or flutter.
Cantrell had heard the fence post remark in spite of her soft utterance, but she was grateful that he didn’t comment on it. At least not verbally. The drawing together of his dark eyebrows seemed to refute it, but only in a way that somehow made her feel better.
“Keeping a low profile is the name of the game this week,” he said then. “If you can pull that off, Alyssa and I will both be eternally grateful.”
“Given the fact that your name and picture are splashed all over almost everything I pick up, I can’t promise anything except that I’ll give it a try,” she said.
“Good enough.”
“Now, if you’re ready, I’ll have Cassie show you to the house we thought was the best place for you to stay this week,” the dean said.
“All right,” Cantrell agreed.
The dean returned to the door with everyone else following behind, holding it open for them all. Then he joined Cantrell to descend the stairs, telling him how glad he and everyone else at the college and in town were to have a man of his stature there. Alyssa and Cassie walked slightly behind them.
When they were outside the administration building, the dean thanked Cantrell for coming, assured him Cassie would take good care of him, and then said good-night.
“I should go back to the dorm now, too,” Alyssa said when the dean had left. “I have a quiz in my literature class tomorrow morning and I still haven’t finished reading the book it’s on. Do you mind?” she asked her brother.
“Nah, go ahead,” Cantrell encouraged. “I’ve been on the road all day. I’m looking forward to a hot shower before I crash.”
Alyssa stood up on tiptoe and pressed a quick kiss to her brother’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks for coming this week, too. And for everything else you did to pull it off.”
“Sure,” Cantrell said as if whatever he’d done had been no big deal, even though Cassie had the impression that wasn’t how Alyssa saw it.
Still, it was obvious that his sister’s kiss and gratitude touched him, and it was nice to see that the ultra-cool titan had a soft spot.
Then Alyssa said good-night to Cassie, too, and trailed off in the same direction the dean had gone.
And just like that, Cassie was alone with Joshua Cantrell in the early autumn evening air, beneath the huge, ancient elm trees that stood watch over the campus.
“Dimples. You have dimples.”
“What?” Cassie said after the moment it took her to realize Cantrell’s attention had shifted from his sister to her.
“You’re actually cracking a smile for some reason and you have dimples,” he explained.
She hadn’t been aware that his reaction to his sister’s gratitude had made her smile.
But rather than showing any more of her self-consciousness, this time she pretended the existence of her dimples was news to her. “No kidding? Dimples? Huh. I wonder where they came from?”
Without missing a beat, Cantrell played along, bending over to take a closer look. “Yep, one in each cheek. Not like any fence post I’ve ever seen.”
Cassie grimaced at that and tried not to notice the magnetic energy the man exuded when he came close. Or the fact that she was not immune to it. She decided against responding to the fence post reference. Instead she nodded in the direction they needed to go—opposite from where both the dean and Alyssa had just headed.
“The dean has you in the old chancellor’s cottage. It’s this way.”
She had another surprise in store for her when Cantrell inclined his chiseled chin toward the school’s parking lot. “Will my bike be all right there overnight or is there a place for it at this cottage?”
“Bike?” she repeated, wondering why he’d brought a bicycle with him.
“I came by motorcycle. It’s there. In the lot.”
Oh.
Cassie focused on the parking lot and there it was. A big, black Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Despite his jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket, Cassie had still assumed he’d come by car. Limousine or town car, maybe, but by car. Not by motorcycle.
And once more she repeated what he’d said out of shock. “Motorcycle? You came all the way here on a motorcycle? Alone?”
“I was going to come by presidential motorcade but it didn’t fit with the low-profile thing,” he joked.
“It’s just that it’s a long way from Billings to here on a motorcycle.”
“Yes, it is. Which is why I’m looking forward to that shower.”
Cassie didn’t know what was wrong with her tonight. She was being so dense. And she told herself to stop it. Immediately.
In an attempt to do that, she searched her memory banks for why they’d started talking about his mode of transportation in the first place.
Parking. And the safety of his motorcycle…
“The chancellor’s cottage is at the other end of the campus, so you could park it on the street back there if you wanted, but no matter where it is, it won’t be bothered. The most recent car theft in Northbridge was ten years ago and that was more a mistake than an actual theft. Ephram McCain was seventy-nine at the time and got confused because his truck was powder blue and so was Skipper Thompson’s. Ephram got into Skipper’s and drove off in it—”
“Without keys?”
“Most everyone kept their keys in the ignition until this happened. Anyway, Ephram drove home in Skipper’s truck and Skipper reported it stolen. But, like I said, it was really just a mistake and there were never any charges pressed or anything. But if you want to move your motorcycle—”
“No, that’s okay,” Cantrell said with a slight chuckle. “I don’t suppose seventy-nine-year-old Ephram is still on the prowl fifteen years later.”
“Actually, he’s still going pretty strong at ninety-four, but he did give up driving.”
Cantrell laughed more openly at that, shook his head and said, “Just lead me to the chancellor’s cottage.”
Cassie did that, taking a brick-paved path through the still lush, green lawns of the campus.
At a loss for anything else to talk about, she launched into a campus tour.
“That building behind the administration building—the same flat front, redbrick, only bigger? That’s where most of the classrooms are,” she began without inquiring if this was information he already had or even wanted. “This whole property was owned by the Nicholas family originally. By the time the parents died, the kids had all moved out of Northbridge and were established in other places, so the Nicholases left the property and all the structures on it to the town to build a college that could mainly serve kids out here in the sticks. The Nicholases’ main house is what we use as the dormitory—”
“That old stone mansion,” Cantrell interjected to let her know he was familiar with that. “Boys in the east wing, girls in the west, with the cafeteria, living and recreation rooms common to them both but keeping the sleeping quarters separated.”
“I see you read the brochure,” Cassie confirmed. Next, she pointed to the burnished brick building they were nearing. “One of the Nicholas daughters was widowed when she was young and left with three small kids. The parents had that built for her and the kids so they could live nearby. Which they did until the daughter remarried and moved away. It’s now our library. The Chancellor’s cottage was actually a house for the man and wife who were the Nicholases’ domestic staff. It was turned into the chancellor’s cottage when this became a college. But only one chancellor has ever lived in it. The first one. He was devoted to the school and never married, so even after he retired the college allowed him to stay in the cottage until his death.”
“Did he die in the cottage?” Cantrell asked, for some reason sounding as if he were smiling again, although Cassie couldn’t bring herself to glance over at him walking beside her.
“No. He actually died sitting on a brick garden wall in front of one of the older homes around here. Apparently he’d gone for a walk the way he did every day, had gotten tired and stopped to take a rest—”
“And that was all she wrote for him?”
“He had a heart attack sitting there. No one realized it for a couple of hours. Everybody who saw him thought he was snoozing. He sometimes did that, he’d walk, find somewhere to sit and nap in the sunshine for a while, then get up and finish his walk—”
“How old was this one?”
“Ninety-seven.”
“People live forever here.”
“Not forever, but we do have some who get up in years. Anyway,” Cassie concluded as they rounded the section of the grounds where students often sat on the benches to read or talk, “by the time the chancellor died, the cottage was too small for the current chancellor and his family, plus they were already living in their own home, so the cottage was just left vacant. But the dean says it’s been fixed up for your visit.”
“You’re just full of stories, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I know, they’re dull,” she responded out of reflex because it was what Brandon had always said….
“I didn’t say dull,” Cantrell corrected.
But he also didn’t say she wasn’t boring him, Cassie noted, still convinced that she was.
The chancellor’s cottage came into view then, behind more trees and a lavish hedge that was trimmed to just below the paned and shuttered windows.
“It really is a cottage,” Cantrell marveled as if that hadn’t been what he’d expected in spite of the title. “It looks like something out of Grimms’ fairy tales. Not that it looks grim…”
She knew what he meant. The cottage was a small Tudor-style house, with a sharply pointed roof over gables and a front door that was arched on top rather than squared off. The door was also larger than it should have been, dwarfing the house to some degree.
“Are cookie-baking elves going to rush out?” Cantrell asked as Cassie took the key from under the welcome mat and used it to open the oversized door.
Of course it would seem comically quaint to someone like him, she thought as she did. He might be the epitome of the all-American success story but he definitely seemed more like James Dean than Jimmy Stewart.
But she only said, “I don’t think cookie-baking elves were part of the spruce-up, no.”
She stepped aside so he could go in, but he motioned for her to enter first, earning points for manners even if he had just put down her town. Or at least, that was how Cassie viewed it.
She did go in ahead of him, though, wanting nothing so much as to have this over with so she could get home and not see this guy again until she was more presentable.
He followed behind her as she set the key on the small table just inside the door.
“It’s all pretty much here, where you can see it,” she said then. “One room. Kitchen, bedroom, living room—”
She did a display-model sort of wave to present it to him and gave him a moment to glance around at the few cupboards, sink, miniature refrigerator and two-burner stove that lined the wall to the left of the door; the sofa, armchair, coffee table, single reading lamp and television beyond that and the double bed, nightstand and chest of drawers that made up the bedroom in an alcove toward the rear of the space.
It had all been cleaned and painted, Cassie noted. Plus there were new slipcovers on the furniture and a fresh quilt over the bed she was betting had just-bought linens on it.
“The bathroom is through that door,” Cassie added after a moment, aiming an index finger at the walnut panel facing into the bedroom alcove. “There’s a claw-footed tub with a shower over the center of it, along with the rest of the requisite accommodations—nothing luxurious but it’s all in working order.”
She was just about to ask if he had luggage somewhere when she saw two leather suitcases on the bench at the foot of the bed.
“I guess someone already brought your bags,” she said unnecessarily.
“I had them sent ahead. Glad to see they got here.”
Cassie ventured to the refrigerator then and opened that door to peer inside, discovering what she’d suspected even though no one had filled her in beforehand.
“The fridge is stocked,” she informed him, moving to look in the cupboard above the brand-spanking-new coffeemaker. “There’s coffee and filters. And breakfast cereal. Fruit in that bowl on the counter. But I don’t see any cookies, baked by elves or not.”
He chuckled despite the fact that there had been an edge of sarcasm to her voice.
“Too bad. I like cookies.”
Cassie glanced at him then, discovering him smiling amiably enough, clearly unaware that he’d ticked her off. Which probably meant she was being overly sensitive when it came to her hometown—another throwback to other days. To a different man. So she consciously discarded her own minor pique and amended her tone.
“Is there anything you need that isn’t here?”
He shook his head. “Seems comfortable enough. I have my cell so it doesn’t matter that there isn’t a telephone. And I can probably get cookies somewhere else.”
He could probably snap his fingers and the dean or the mayor would come running with freshly baked ones, Cassie thought. But she didn’t say that. Instead she allowed Joshua Cantrell a small smile.
“Great dimples,” he observed with a tilt of that handsome head.
“Mmm,” Cassie said, beginning to wonder if the guy was working her for some reason. Maybe he was the kind of man who had to win over and try to seduce every woman he came into contact with. Because surely that could be the only explanation if he was actually flirting with her the way it seemed.
“Tomorrow—” she began.
But that was as far as she got. “Alyssa has only one class tomorrow so she and I are going to spend the day together. You’re off the hook as potential-donor baby-sitter in place of what was his name? Curt or Kirby or…Kirk—that’s it. The guy I was supposed to hook up with tonight who already let it slip that he’s the head of fund-raising.”
So he knew.
Cassie didn’t deny it. “Kirk Samson. He hurt his back late today and will be out of commission the whole week.”
