“I won’t! I barely passed biology! We’ve still got fossil forms of man and kinship systems and subsistence patterns to go…!”
“Piece of cake.” Nan dismissed it. “Besides, you got Dr. Tabitha Harvey, and she’s the best. Oops, I mean Dr. Tabitha Reed. Can you imagine her getting married? And to such a dish!” She shook her head. “But to get back to the subject, don’t you realize that anthropology is part of sociology? How can you understand the way we are as a culture today without understanding how we came to be a culture in the first place?”
“Here you go again.”
“I love it. You would, too, if you’d let yourself. I’ve taken every anthropology course Thorn College offers. I loved them all!”
“This stuff is hard.”
“Life,” Nan reminded her, “is hard. You can’t appreciate a good grade in anthropology until you’ve had to dig for it.” She looked surprised. “I made a funny!”
“On that note, we’re leaving,” Shelly murmured, dragging her friend out the door.
* * *
THEY HAD SUPPER IN THE SAME restaurant each night. It was their one extravagance, and mainly because Nan had a crush on one of the other diners, a student from Kenya whom she’d met on the beach.
Shelly looked forward to the evening ritual because of another patron who frequented the restaurant. She ran into him everywhere, accidentally. He nodded politely and never stopped to talk, but she watched him with open fascination, to the amusement of her friends. In fact, her fascination was a ruse to keep her friends from trying to pair her off with Pete. She liked Pete, but her attitudes weren’t casual enough to suit him. By pretending infatuation for a stranger, she elicited not only sympathy for her unrequited love, but also avoided well-meaning matchmakers among the group she’d accompanied on spring break.
Her unwilling object of affection was beginning to notice, and be irritated by her, though. It had become a challenge to see how far she could push him before he exploded. The thought was oddly exciting for a woman who almost never took chances. In fact, in all her twenty-four years, he was the first man she’d ever pursued, even in fun. It was unlike her, but he wouldn’t know that. Her flirting seemed to disturb and irritate him.
To complicate matters, he had a son, about twelve or so, and the son spent considerable time staring at Shelly. She was afraid he was developing a crush on her and she worried about trying to head it off while keeping up her facade of being infatuated with his father. Showing up here for dinner every night wasn’t helping her situation, even if it did seem to be doing wonders for Nan’s social life and give Shelly the opportunity to stare longingly at the man she’d singled out for public adoration.
As if she’d conjured him up in her thoughts, a movement caught Shelly’s eye, and she saw him. He was tall and elegant, a striking man somewhere in his middle or late thirties with thick dark hair and pale silvery eyes. He had his son with him. The boy was a younger and much more amiable version of him. Shelly found herself wondering what the man did for a living. He was very handsome, but he didn’t look the male-model type. He was probably someone who carried a gun, she thought. Maybe a secret agent, or a hired assassin. That thought amused her and she smiled mischievously. Before she could erase the smile, the man turned his head and saw it, and his glare was thunderous.
How could someone that handsome look so vicious and unfriendly? she wondered vaguely. And those silver eyes looked like cold steel in his unsmiling face. An ugly man might have an excuse for that black scowl, but this man looked like every hero she’d ever dreamed of. She put her chin in her hands and stared at him with a wistful smile. She was always so friendly that it was hard to accept that anyone could hate her on sight for no reason.
He looked taken aback by her refusal to be intimidated. But even if the scowl fell away, he didn’t smile back. He turned his attention to a movement of white silk beside the table and abruptly stood up to seat a thin brunette. The boy with him glowered and made some reluctant remark, which prompted an angry look from his father. Undercurrents, Shelly thought, and began to analyze them. She felt a wave of sadness. She’d overheard a tidbit of gossip about him in the restaurant the night before—that he was a widower. She’d known that a man so handsome would have women hanging from both arms, but she had hoped he was unattached. It was her fate to be forever getting interested in the wrong man. She sighed wistfully.
“Stop staring at him,” Nan chided, hitting her forearm with her napkin as she put it into her lap. “He’ll get conceited.”
“Sorry. He fascinates me. Isn’t he dreamy?”
“He’s years too old for you,” Nan said firmly. “And that’s probably his fiancée. They suit each other. He has a half-grown son, and you are a lowly college student, age notwithstanding. In point of fact, you are barely higher on the food chain than a bottom feeder, since you aren’t even a sophomoreyet.”
“I’ll be a sophomore after summer semester.”
“Picky, picky. Eat your salad.”
“Yes, Mama,” she muttered, glaring at the younger woman, who only grinned.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY IT SEEMED to Shelly that providence was determined to throw her into the path of trouble. She always got up early in the mornings, before Nan stirred, and went down to the beach to enjoy the brief solitude at the ocean before the tourists obliterated the beach completely. She threw on her one-piece yellow bathing suit with a patterned chiffon shirt over it and laced up her sandals. For once she left her blond hair loose down her back. She liked the feel of the breeze in it.
This morning, she didn’t find the beach empty. A lone figure stood looking seaward. He was tall, and had thick black hair. He was wearing white shorts that left his powerful, darkly tanned legs bare and a blue-and-white checked shirt, open over a broad, hair-roughened chest. He was watching the ocean with eyes that didn’t seem to see it, a deep scowl carved into his handsome face.
Shelly gave him a wistful glance and took off down the beach in the opposite direction. She didn’t want to infringe on his privacy. Since he was obviously attached, it would do her no good to go on mooning over him, for appearances or not. She was giving him up, she thought nobly, for his own good. That being settled, she strolled aimlessly down the beach, drinking in the sea air.
The stillness was seductive. The only sounds to be heard were the cries of the sea gulls and the watery growl of the ocean. Surf curled in foamy patterns up onto the damp beach, and tiny white sand crabs went scurrying for cover. They amused her and she laughed, a soft, breathy sound that seemed to carry.
“What can you find to laugh about at this hour of the morning?” came a rough, half-irritated deep voice from over her shoulder. “The damned coffee shop isn’t even open yet. How do they expect people to survive daybreak without a dose of caffeine?”
With the vestiges of her amusement at the crabs still on her face, Shelly turned. And there he was, as handsome as a dark angel, his hands deep in the pockets of his white shorts.
He was devastating enough at long range. Close, like this, he was dynamite. She could hardly get her breath at all. Some sensual aroma exuded from him, like spice. He smelled and looked clean and fastidious, and she had to force herself not to stare at the physical perfection of his body. Hollywood would have loved him.
“I like coffee, too,”
