the frames of the glasses worn by the famous pop star.
Today Elton was waiting when she came through the door. He promptly lay upside down on the rug in a golden ray of sunshine, his paws waving lazily.
“Okay Elly, I’ll scratch your tummy for a second,” she said. “But I have too much to do to stay here all day and play with you.”
She sighed and dropped an armful of books onto the table, feeling a deep anxiety on this first day of classes. Normally she enjoyed the prospect of a new term, a horde of fresh faces, another fall and winter.
But not this year. Not after seeing one face in particular at the back of her classroom…She sighed again as she bent to rub Elton’s tummy.
Madonna appeared in the kitchen entryway and arched her tail, rubbing herself sensuously against the door frame.
“I know it’s him,” Camilla stood up and addressed Madonna. “He’s sitting right there in my English class, and I haven’t got the slightest idea what to do about it.”
Madonna licked one of her paws and rubbed it across her whiskers, then advanced with exaggerated stealth toward Elton, who still lay in the sunshine with his eyes closed. The cat pounced stiff-legged onto her unsuspecting partner. Elton yowled and scurried for cover beneath the couch, where his black-framed eyes could be seen peeping out fearfully from the darkness.
“Oh, sweetie.” Camilla knelt on the carpet and peered under the couch. “Come out, Elly. Madonna didn’t mean to scare you, she was just playing. Come, let’s sit in the armchair and cuddle.”
Elton whimpered and edged forward a couple of inches.
“Come on,” she coaxed, reaching under the couch to stroke his furry paw. “Come out and sit with me. Madonna won’t hurt you.”
He crept toward her. Finally Camilla was able to grip his body gently and drag him out. She sat in an armchair and cuddled the shivering cat, resting her chin on the top of his head.
As she stroked the cat with rhythmic, soothing strokes, her mind kept going back to that shocking moment in class when she’d first seen Jon Campbell.
Even though he’d been seated, she could tell he was tall and well built. His square face was tanned and pleasantly masculine, his eyes clear and direct. He had thick brown hair dusted with gray, and his hands were hard and callused.
After that first horrifying moment of recognition, Camilla had kept hoping maybe he wasn’t the man she remembered. But when he’d turned away to glance over at Enrique and she saw the hard line of his cheek, the aquiline profile, she knew it was true.
She clutched Elton tightly in her arms, trying to battle rising surges of memory. But the images were too insistent.
A boy, a motorcycle on a deserted road, a hot weekend in summertime…
Once more she tried to tell herself it couldn’t possibly be the same person.
That all happened twenty years ago, and far away from here. This was a different world.
But Camilla knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jon Campbell was the man she remembered. Somehow he’d managed to find her again. And his presence here on this campus spelled terrible danger. It could mean an end to the whole careful life she’d struggled for twenty years to build.
CAMILLA FINALLY LEFT her cats and her apartment, feeling a little comforted but still worried and tense. She locked the door, hurried down the hall and entered the elevator. Three other people stood inside the little enclosure, a couple of graduate assistants and a young janitor with a mop and pail. Camilla greeted him with a smile.
The elevator doors opened as they reached the lobby. Camilla walked down a shady path to one of the buildings in the English department, then made her way through a maze of corridors to a suite of cramped, book-filled offices where she shared a secretary with three other professors.
“Hi, Camilla.” The secretary looked up from her computer keyboard with a bright smile. “Did you have a nice summer?”
“Very nice, Joyce.” Camilla took a bundle of files from one of the compartments. “How about you?”
Joyce shrugged. “I’m glad to be back at work. My kids were really driving me crazy.”
“Didn’t you manage to get away for that vacation in Banff? I remember how much you were all looking forward to it.”
“Oh, that was fun, all right, but it only lasted two weeks. The kids always get so bored by the end of August.”
“How old are they now?” Camilla paused, then shook her head. “My goodness, Jamie must be ten already. I can hardly believe it.”
“He sure is. And Susan’s eight. Little monsters,” Joyce said darkly, but her smile was fond.
Camilla tried to imagine what it would be like to spend a whole summer with children that age.
Most of her experience with younger children involved the primary-school study group at the university. This class was made up of about fifteen gifted children aged six to ten years. The children came from all the western provinces to receive an accelerated education. They were also tested and observed by some of the senior professors who were doing research into intelligence.
“So, did you go home for the summer?” Joyce was asking.
“No,” Camilla said after a brief hesitation. “I had a couple of papers to get ready for publication, so I stayed here and worked.”
“What a pity. It must be beautiful in New England at this time of year,” the secretary said wistfully.
“New England?” Camilla asked.
“Barry says your people have a summer home out there, near the Kennedy compound.”
Camilla shifted the stack of books to her other arm, putting the files on top. “Well, I haven’t been to New England in a long time,” she said.
“Okay.” Joyce gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Whatever you say.”
Camilla hesitated for a moment, wondering what to say, then nodded and let herself into her little office. She dumped the books and files onto her desk, troubled by the secretary’s words.
These rumors about Camilla’s family had started circulating around campus a few years ago, and grew more outlandish all the time. By now, her half-hearted denials only served to make people more convinced that she came from a lavishly privileged, aristocratic background and chose for some reason to keep her private life a secret.
Although Camilla was sometimes dismayed by the exaggerated stories, she was grateful that they served to keep her colleagues a little intimidated. People seldom invited her to functions like staff parties and backyard barbecues, assuming that she wouldn’t want to attend. As a result, she wasn’t forced to get close to people, or form any relationships that required an uncomfortable level of disclosure about her personal
