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
