Cassie wondered if it was possible to hide an affair, even temporarily. For a while. That was what he had said. Could she do it—take the little bit he offered, knowing she would have to let him go eventually? The touch of his hand made her ache for him. Perhaps the ferocity of their desire would burn itself out if she gave it the opportunity, and then parting would be easier. Or perhaps it was an excuse because she couldn't find the strength to send him away. Slipping her arms around his neck, she pulled his head to hers and kissed him fiercely.
Calder followed her urgings, using his lips to explore her face, her neck, and finally her mouth. He suspected she was avoiding his question, which meant she was going to say no. The only thing left for him was to take whatever she was willing to give and hope it would be enough. As his hand moved upwards to claim her breast, he stopped thinking altogether.
They ended up in front of the fireplace, in a nest of cushions and fleece throws. Cassie had turned out the lights, so the room was lit only by the flickering flames.
Now the fire was dying down. Calder woke himself from his half-hypnotized state to stir the logs and then found his place next to Cassie again.
He traced the line of her cheek with one finger. "How long can I stay?"
She caught his finger between her teeth and nibbled on it. "I don't have anything scheduled for this weekend."
"Will I be crowding you if I'm here?"
"No. I'd like that."
Relief flowed through him. It was only two days, but when they were together like this, he couldn't conceive of a life without her. He had the weekend to find a way to make it work.
Chapter 17
CALDER DRUMMED HIS FINGERS on the armrest of the chair as he spoke into the phone. "Dave, honestly, this is about a friend. I'm not in any trouble."
Cassie nervously straightened the journals on her desk. Poor Calder. It had taken him the better part of the morning to convince her to let him make this call, and now it sounded like he was getting a lecture from Dave.
"It's not about me. Really. I don't even know anyone wanted by the police." Calder glared at the telephone.
Cassie held out her hand for the receiver. Calder said, "Just a second, Dave." To Cassie, he added, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
She was far from sure, but she nodded anyway and took the handset. "Dave? This is Cassie Boulton. Tim Ryerson's friend. We've met at your Christmas parties."
"Of course. How are you?" Dave said.
"I'm fine. I'm the person Calder's talking about." She tried to cover her anxiety with a veneer of certainty.
"You are?"
"Yes, but you don't need to worry about it. It's not important. Calder… It's just bothering Calder. That was why he called."
"It's no imposition. But what's Calder's involvement here?"
"He's a friend." She waited through an interminable pause.
With an air of revelation, Dave said, "Ah. So you're Elizabeth, then."
"No, I'm Cassie." It took her a moment to realize what he meant. "Oh. That Elizabeth. Yes, I suppose I am."
"We've been wondering who that was. Well, now this makes more sense. So what is this situation he's worked up about? You harbored a fugitive, I take it?"
"Yes. But nobody knows."
"Cassie, are you talking to me as a friend or as your lawyer?"
She flushed. "As a friend."
"That's the wrong answer. The right answer is 'I'm talking to you as my lawyer, Dave, so you have to hold everything I say under lawyer-client privilege.' It doesn't mean you have to use me as a lawyer."
"Then I guess I'm talking to you as my lawyer."
"Good girl. Now you can tell me what happened."
"My brother was wanted for murder. He stayed with me for almost three months." Her hand gripped the receiver.
"When was this?" Dave didn't sound disturbed by her confession, but she supposed a lawyer wasn't supposed to sound disturbed.
"About a year and a half ago."
"Did you know he was wanted?"
It took her a moment to find her voice. "Yes."
"How did you know?"
"I called my mother. He wouldn't have appeared on my doorstep out of the blue without a reason. She told me the police were looking for him."
"Did she tell you why?"
"No. I knew better than to ask."
"When did you find out?"
"When the police finally called me, looking for him." She would never forget that moment. Ryan had been sitting across the room from her, and he knew immediately what the call was.
"What did you tell them?"
"That he had been there, but he'd left a few days before." She had told them Ryan was going to Baltimore. It was the first place that popped into her mind. They had asked who he knew in Baltimore, and she had said in her most authoritative voice, "I am a college professor. I have a reputation to uphold. Ryan is my brother, but we do not have friends in common."
After she had hung up, Ryan had hugged her and told her it was time for him to hit the road. She gave him all the cash she had and drove him to the train station.
"So he'd already left?"
"No. I lied." Watching Calder pace the room was making her even more nervous.
"Who knows you weren't telling the truth?" Dave asked.
"Only Ryan and me."
"Did anyone know your brother was staying with you?"
"Lots of people knew, but not why." Ryan had sat in on classes at the college, drinking in every word, reading the textbooks at night. Some of the professors, knowing he was Cassie's brother, had taken time to talk to him and tried to encourage him to enroll at Haverford. No one had any idea he had dropped out of high school years earlier.
"Anybody who knows he was still with you at that point?"
"He was at the college with me that day, but I don't think anyone would remember one day as opposed to another."
"So as far as anyone knows, you cooperated with the police when they called you."
"I suppose so."
"What happened to him?"
"He left then and was arrested a few days later on a disorderly conduct charge. They found out about the warrant in Chicago and shipped him back. He's in prison now. " He had gone straight to Baltimore and made a general nuisance of himself until he was picked up. It was his way of making sure the police never questioned her story.
"Is there anyone who can testify that you knew he was wanted?"
"Just Ryan and my mother."
"Would Ryan testify against you?"
"No." She and Ryan had always shared a special bond.
"Your mother?"
"Not if she knew she shouldn't."
"Cassie, let me talk it over with one of my partners in criminal law, but this sounds manageable. If they can't prove you knew about the warrant, it isn't harboring. Also, they don't usually bother charging people with harboring unless it's an ongoing thing. The police have plenty of work as it is. If your brother's in prison, it's probably not worth their while to go after you."
Calder tapped her arm. "Can I ask him something?"
"Sure. Dave, I'm going to switch over to speakerphone. Calder has something to say."
"Just be aware that lawyer-client privilege can't apply if he can hear it."
It was a bit late for that. "That's all right." She pressed the button.
Calder said, "Dave, we're worried about what could happen if the tabloids found out about this."
"The tabloids? You mean because of her connection with you? Anything's possible, but it's not a very good story from their point of view. An otherwise lawabiding citizen trying to protect her brother isn't very scandalous. If he were a pedophile or something, they'd have a story."
"Isn't murder scandalous enough?" Cassie asked.
"Depends on the circumstances. Who did he allegedly kill?"
"Someone from a rival gang. It was in a gang fight."
"Now that's the story that would interest them— your brother being in a gang
. Not the harboring. That's boring."
"Are you sure?" Calder asked.
"I'm never sure of anything, but I've known your mother all my life. I have a nodding acquaintance with the kind of thing that interests the scandal sheets."
Cassie left the bedroom soon after, giving Calder the chance to talk to Dave alone. She needed a few minutes to calm herself. It had been easier telling Dave about Ryan than it had been with Calder, but her nerves were still on edge. Eventually she went to look for him. He was still on the phone, but he held out his free arm to her. She went to him, linking her hands behind his waist and resting her head on his chest.
"All right. Thanks for the advice, Dave," he said. "I'll be in touch." He returned the receiver to its cradle and turned his attention to Cassie. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not sure. I need to think about it."
He kissed his way down her head to her ear, her neck, and then her face. She could tell he was pleased with the outcome. "I'll try to be patient. But I feel a lot better about risking scandal than prison."
She let him distract her with kisses. His happiness was infectious, as was his desire.
Without pausing between kisses, he picked her up and took her to the bed. As he lowered his body over hers, she teased, "Didn't we just do this?"
"That was hours ago." His hands busily worked their way inside her shirt, finding the places that tempted her most.
"Two hours, to be precise." She nibbled on his lip.
"That qualifies as hours ago."
She laughed. "I'm not sure why I bothered to get dressed."
"Good question. You don't ever need to get dressed on my account. I'm perfectly satisfied by you with your clothes off." He began wrestling with her pants.
"Satisfied already?" She insinuated her hand between their hips and stroked him through his jeans, an effective demonstration of his lack of satisfaction. To her surprise, he paused and put his hands beside her face.
"I've wanted to hear you laugh with me again so much. Since that night in Woods Hole, there hasn't been much opportunity for laughter. I love it when you laugh and tease me."
Looking into his eyes so close to her own was dangerous to her peace of mind. "You'll just have to keep giving me things to laugh at, then."
He lowered himself between her legs. With a significant look, he said, "Let's see how long you can keep laughing."
Cassie spread her syllabus on the wooden table in preparation for class. Three weeks until Calder came back. Three long, lonely weeks. This plan of seeing each other occasionally to reduce the odds of discovery worked better in theory than practice. Next semester, when he'd be teaching there, they could see each other often without anyone being the wiser. It seemed like a long time away. If only her past didn't have to be such a secret, but wishing that was pointless. It was the price of keeping the respect of her colleagues and students.
This seminar, Topics in Marine Biology, was usually her favorite to teach, but today the subject matter only made her miss Calder even more. Good thing today's topic wasn't salt marshes.
It was a small class of a dozen or so biology majors. A couple of students trickled in a few minutes early. Chris was one of them, and he came directly over to Cassie, holding a stack of envelopes.
He looked nervous. "Dr. Boulton, I was wondering if you'd be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me."
"I'd be happy to." She'd been waiting for him to ask. Cassie took the pile of envelopes and flipped through them quickly, glancing at the addresses. All med schools. She turned to him in disbelief. "What happened to grad school in biology?"
Chris shuffled his feet. "There are so many unemployed PhDs out there, and I have debts to pay off. This way I know I'll have a job when I'm done."
"But is it what you really want? No, scratch that, I know it isn't what you want."
"It'll be okay." He glanced around at the rapidly filling room with an embarrassed look. Everyone in the seminar knew he'd spent the summer working with Cassie, and it gave him a certain cachet among the serious biology students.
Cassie set the envelopes on the table. "Let's talk after class. I think you may be overestimating the difficulty of getting a job in biology."
"Rob told me he'd been looking for two years," Chris said.
Rob. Just what she didn't want to talk about. "Rob's looking for a very particular type of job. And you didn't hear him having any regrets about his choices, did you? If he knew you were thinking about this, he'd string you up by your thumbs."
"It's easy for you to say. You've got a job. You never had to worry about ending up broke and working at some dead-end job. But you were at the top of your class in grad school. Rob told me."
Never had to worry. That was a laugh. What else had Rob told Chris? But the other students were looking at the two of them with avid curiosity, and some were nodding. She sighed and pushed the syllabus to one side, turning to face the class. "How many of you are thinking like Chris is?"
There was dead silence, then one hand went up and another and another. All students she'd known for years. The seniors had started at Haverford with her—she as a new professor when they were freshmen. She had a sudden vision of talking to Calder in her lab, telling him she taught students how to think.
"Look, I'm not going to tell you that faculty positions are a dime a dozen. They're not. But it's like anything else in life. If it's what you really want, you'll find a way. If you settle for less, you're always going to wonder what you've missed." She wasn't reaching them. Their blank faces loomed before her. How could she make them listen? What kind of role model was she if they thought it had all come easily to her?
This was what hiding her past meant. She could teach her students how to think like scientists, but she couldn't teach them about life, because everything she said was a lie. They might not respect her if they knew the truth, but could she respect herself if she wasn't willing to take the risk of telling them? Chris was giving up his career aspirations because she was afraid of what they'd think of her.
She laid her palms on the table in front of her. Her mouth was dry. "Okay, let's talk about being broke. I'm an expert on it. I grew up in a slum like you can barely imagine. I'm the only one in my family who finished high school. Half the kids in my high school couldn't read. My brother's in prison, and my sister's never held a job." Not one she could mention in front of students, anyway. "But I knew what I wanted, and I never settled for anything less. If I was at the top of my class, it's because I worked harder than anybody else. So if you want to apply to med school, go ahead, but don't tell me it's because you don't have a choice."
The look on Chris's face was almost comical, a combination of surprise and shame. She shouldn't have spoken so harshly. It wasn't him she was upset with. It was herself, for telling a lie all these years. With an effort, she made her voice gentler. "You have talent and brains, Chris, and you'll do well at whatever you do, whether you're a biologist or a doctor. I'll give you an excellent recommendation for med school, and later on, if you decide to apply to some grad schools as well, I'll be happy to help with that, too."
"But we have work to do today." She straightened the pile of papers in front of her. "Sherry, is your presentation ready?"
At the end of class, the students filed out. Cassie opened her briefcase on the chair beside her and looked up to see Tony, a quiet boy who always turned in his work on time. "Dr. Boulton?" he said.
"Yes?"
"What you said about how we couldn't imagine where you grew up." Tony stuck his thumb in his belt loop and tilted his head to one side. "I can."
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she recognized his street stance. "Well. Congratulations, then."
"I am going to med school. I got a job waitin' for me, back home." He straightened his shoulders. "You go, girl," he said quietly and then sauntered out of the room.
Would her life have been different if she had been able to tell someone about her past when she was Tony's age? Anoth
er unanswered question to add to her endless list. But she hadn't been ready then. Too much adolescent shame and desire for acceptance. Wanting to pretend Chicago didn't exist. But after telling Calder the truth, pretending it didn't exist wasn't working anymore.
Calder. If only Calder were there with her, to talk to her and to hold her in the way only he could.