can’t imagine how much time you must spend on homework if you do for all your classes what you do for mine.”
Ben leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I have the time.” He was looking at her again, and the genuine niceness in his eyes, the ease, relaxed her a tiny bit.
“You’re not working?”
Shaking his head, he smiled, almost apologetically. “I got a loan, at least for this first semester, so I could concentrate fully on my studies.”
“You’re older than most of the students in the freshman class,” Tory said, though she knew she shouldn’t have.
This conversation was traveling places it mustn’t go. There was no place in her life for personal conversation between her and a man. Whoever he was.
But for some reason, he was on her mind often….
And there was a big solid desk between them.
“I worked for a number of years after high school,” he said.
“Doing what?” It shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t have interested her.
He shrugged and Tory noticed the breadth of his shoulders. In her fantasy world, they would have been shoulders to cry on, to offer protection. To make her feel safe. In the here and now, the real world, his strength and maleness made her uncomfortable.
“Whatever would pay the rent,” he said. “I worked for a moving company in Flagstaff during the day for most of those years, and usually had another job at night. Working on cars, on loading docks, in a grocery store. Even did some construction work on weekends.”
The heroes in her mind were always hard workers. Not always rich, but hard workers. Money didn’t impress Tory. It couldn’t buy anything that mattered.
“I’m surprised, then, that you didn’t have enough money saved to pay for college.”
She had no idea where her impertinence was coming from. Or her nosiness, but as he sat there looking at her, he seemed to invite the questions.
“I had a wife who liked to spend the money before I managed to earn it.”
Her breath caught as she glanced at his left hand. “You’re married?”
He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“Oh.”
Sitting up, he frowned. “Before you go getting any ideas, she left me, not the other way around.”
“I wasn’t getting ideas.” Okay, maybe she had been. Men deserted women all the time. Why should he be any different?
“Guess I’d better go and let you get back to whatever you were doing,” he said, standing. He slid his backpack onto one shoulder.
Tory stood, too, feeling at too much of a disadvantage remaining seated. “Thanks for coming by,” she said. When she realized how much she meant the simple words, she added, “To let me know about the submission. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”
“Thanks.”
He turned and left, but not before he’d sent her another of those odd smiles that confused her. Scared her.
He’d smiled the same way that first day of class. Almost as though he was reassuring her, offering her a kindness she hardly dared to recognize.
It had to stop.
“I’M SURE DR. PARSONS and his wife don’t want to be bothered with me,” Tory said later that evening as Phyllis drove them up the mountain toward the president’s beautiful home. “The invitation to dinner was for you.”
Phyllis, already sweating in her sleeveless yellow cotton shirt, threw her a sideways glance. “It was for both of us.”
“Why would they want to spend one of their few free evenings with me?”
“Why wouldn’t they, Tory?” Phyllis asked, her voice serious. “You’re a delightful woman with compassion and insight. You have a sense of humor—when you let yourself relax—and intelligent things to say.”
Tory smiled, in spite of herself. “You’ve sure managed to project a lot of things onto me that were never there before.” Fantasies were nice, but in the long run they hurt.
“I don’t think so,” Phyllis said. She slowed as she rounded a curb. Tory studied the saguaro cacti standing erect and proud just a few feet from the drive. “The old man of the desert,” Phyllis had told her that type of cactus was called. Tory preferred to think of it as an old woman. A grandmother, stalwart and stoic, who’d survive until the end.
“Okay, for expediency’s sake, we’ll pretend that the way you describe me has some truth in it. But Dr. Parsons and his wife are expecting someone else—Christine. A confident, accomplished woman. Not me.” she shuddered. “It makes me nervous that they’d want me here.” She watched as the house grew closer and closer. It was beautiful with its mostly glass walls, reminding Tory of a place Bruce owned in the Poconos.
She’d almost killed herself there once. Or at least planned to do it. Until she’d thought of Christine. Then, as always, she’d found the strength to endure.
“You don’t think they suspect anything, do you?” she finally asked, heart pounding.
“No!” Phyllis said, taking her hand off the wheel long enough to squeeze Tory’s.
Tory wasn’t used to the contact. Christine had never been much of a toucher.
“Will was really taken with Christine,” Phyllis told her. “Though he only met her once, spoke with her maybe a handful of times, something about her seemed to reach him. I’m sure he just has an interest in getting to know her—you—better.”
“Thank you,” Tory said, swallowing with difficulty.
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” Tory answered honestly. “Keeping Christine alive, I guess.”
“You do that all by yourself, honey,” Phyllis said. “She’s so much a part of you, so much inside you, that just having you around is a comfort to me.”
They were approaching the house, and Tory wondered if she’d underdressed in spite of Phyllis’s assurances to the contrary. Had she been with Bruce, the simple twill shorts and cotton blouse would have been an embarrassment. How would Will and Becca Parsons react to her appearance? She shook her head. She had to think about something besides the intimidating people she was about to see.
“I’ve been thinking about looking for an apartment,” she admitted suddenly. She’d been meaning to broach the subject all week, but until now, the time had never been right.
“Why?”
The genuine distress in Phyllis’s voice brought warm tears to Tory’s eyes.
“Because it’s your home and I’m afraid I’m out-staying my welcome.”
