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.
