side door opened and shut, and he met her in the doorway between hall and living room. “What the devil are you doing driving around in this snow?” he demanded.
“The streets are perfectly clear now, dear. We’re used to snow in Minneapolis, and the road crews are very good at their job.”
“It’s freezing out there, Gran. The wind chill must be—”
“A man who climbs mountains for fun is worried about wind chill?”
“Not for myself,” he growled. “For you. You could get stranded. You could have a fender-bender. Just last night you were telling me how much you appreciated having a good, reliable driver.”
“Very true. It’s quite a fine idea, in fact. Would you hang up my coat, dear? And ask Janet to brew a pot of tea.” She dropped her mink carelessly on the floor and walked into the living room.
Kurt bit his tongue and started for the kitchen. Just as he pushed open the swinging shutters to call to Janet the side door opened again, and he had to jerk back to prevent his toes from being caught under the edge. Cold wind swirled in, and a feminine voice called, “Mrs. Wilder?”
“I’m just across the hall,” his grandmother answered from the living room. “Come on in.”
A face appeared around the edge of the door. A heart-shaped face with very short auburn hair ruffled around the ears and cheeks reddened by the wind. The young woman from the cloakroom.
Kurt stared at her in disbelief. “Where did you come from?”
She didn’t answer directly. “I didn’t expect you to be here. I mean—right here. I didn’t bang the door into your nose, did I?”
Finally things clicked. What was wrong with him that it had taken so long to make the connection? “I should have known Marian’s ‘little friend’ would turn out to be you,” he grumbled. No wonder she’d looked at him that way last night. She’d been speculating, all right—wondering what his reaction would be when he finally figured out who she was. “Is that why you pulled all that nonsense with the phone number last night? So I’d be surprised when you turned up here?”
She flushed suddenly, violently red. “Look, I’m sorry about the phone number. It was a stupid trick, and if someone took it as a prank call—”
“I didn’t have to dial it to figure out the joke.”
“You didn’t? Then I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. All I did was drive your grandmother home from the student union.”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Why?”
His grandmother crossed the hall to the stairs. “Kurt, you said yourself just now that I shouldn’t be driving in weather like this, so Lissa drove me home.” Her voice faded as she reached the top of the staircase.
Kurt stared at the young woman again. “You’re not the friend of Marian’s that Gran invited to tea?”
She shook her head. “Sorry to disappoint you. Are you talking about Marian Meadows? I know who she is, but that’s all.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll just listen. Actually, I’m glad to find that you haven’t gone back to Seattle yet.”
“You’ve done your homework, I see. Not that it’s hard to find out where I live.”
Her gaze flickered, and he felt a flash of satisfaction at disconcerting her. But she didn’t explain, or defend herself. “Maybe you can convince your grandmother to see a doctor,” she went on. “I didn’t get anywhere when I tried.”
His attention snapped back to her like a slingshot. “Doctor?”
“She had a dizzy spell. She’d had lunch at the restaurant in the student union. Mrs. Meadows left, and Hannah—”
“You’re on a first-name basis?”
“Your grandmother stayed to finish her coffee. When she stood up, she almost passed out. I tried to get her to go to the emergency room, but she insisted she was fine to come home.”
“So you grabbed the opportunity to drive her out here.”
“She was going to drive herself,” the young woman protested.
“Why not just put her in a cab?”
“She didn’t want to leave her car there to be towed by the snowplow crews. Will you quit yelling at me and think about it? I’m betting that’s just like her.”
She was right, Kurt admitted. His grandmother was perfectly capable of refusing to see a doctor, and of insisting on not leaving her car unattended, of driving when she shouldn’t. And she was behaving oddly—she didn’t normally fling her coat onto the floor.
“Thank you for bringing her home,” he said quietly. “I’ll take it from here.”
But the woman didn’t budge. She looked almost uncomfortable.
Kurt wondered why she didn’t just go. Was she waiting for some sort of payment? Or did she have something else on her mind?
He frowned as he remembered the flash of familiarity he’d felt last night. He’d dismissed that as the look of a woman on the prowl. But had it been more than that? He tipped his head to one side and looked closely. Tall, slim and straight, red hair and big brown eyes, and a smile full of magic…What had his grandmother called her?
A few random words swirled in his brain and settled into a pattern. Magic smile. Lissa. You’ve done your homework….
“Calculus class,” he said softly. “You’re Lissa Morgan.”
It was no wonder, really, that he hadn’t recognized her last night. There was nothing about this slender, vivid woman with the huge brown eyes which even resembled the lanky, awkward girl who was stored in his memory—the one with frizzy carrot-colored hair straggling to the middle of her back. The freshman frump, some of his fellow students had called her—dressed in oversized shapeless sweaters and with her face always buried in a math book.
And yet there was one thing which hadn’t changed. He’d seen it last night when she’d smiled, and that was why she’d looked familiar, despite all the surface changes. Because the only other time that she’d ever smiled at him….
That was long ago, he told himself. Another lifetime, in fact.
Still, no wonder he’d been itchy around her last night. No wonder he’d picked at her, egged her on, found fault with everything she did. His subconscious mind must have recognized her, despite all the changes in her looks.
“So you’re still hanging around the university?” he said. “I figured by now you’d be head actuary for some big pension fund or insurance company or national bank. Or an engineer somewhere in the space program. Or—no, I have it. You must be working undercover at the student union, checking for fraud. Because I’m sure a woman with the brainpower you’ve got would never be satisfied with just running a cloakroom.”
