Terri Reed - Double Jeopardy

And she hadn’t come here without doing a little research. The current campus site on Chestnut Hill had been built in the early 1900s and featured examples of English Gothic architecture that Anne found fascinating. She’d spent countless hours wandering the walking paths that meandered through lush lawns and tall maples and evergreens to stare at the buildings.

There was something so…moving about the majestic structures with their cathedral-like shapes made of stone and mortar. Where she’d grown up houses were made of wood or tin. When she’d moved to the city, she’d found only a concrete jungle that both intimidated and awed her.

In this New England setting, she was content with her life. No matter how short her time here would be. She smothered the anger that sprouted. What was done was done, she had to learn to live with it.

A movement at the far end of the long, empty hallway made her push away from the wall. A man stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t make out his features. He didn’t look tall enough or broad enough to be the professor. She squinted. “Professor McClain?”

“Yes?” a deep voice came from right beside her shoulder.

She jumped with a squeak and whirled around to face the professor. Tall, overbearing—and for some reason comforting. “What…?” Her gaze swung back to the shadows. No one was there. “Did you see that guy?”

“Who?” His gazed moved past her toward the stairwell.

Foreboding chased down her spine. She hadn’t imagined the man in the shadows, she was sure of it. She tightened her hold on her purse, feeling the outline of her cell phone. Her lifeline. “No one, I guess.”

Behind his glasses, Patrick’s dark blue eyes regarded her with puzzlement. “Are you okay?”

She liked his eyes, liked how a darker shade of brown rimmed the irises, like layers of rich chocolate cake. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Do you always sneak up on people?”

One side of his mouth twitched. “You sound like my sister-in-law, Kate. She’s always accusing me of sneaking up on her. I can’t help it if I’m light on my feet.”

Anne gave his long, lean frame a once-over. “Dance classes?” she joked.

He shrugged and she thought his cheeks turned pink but in the waning light coming from the high window above the classroom doors she wasn’t sure. “My mother thought her boys should be graceful.”

“Cool mom,” she commented as she bent to pick up the computer box. “Where I come from, boys would rather be hog-tied than sent to dance class.”

“Here, allow me,” Patrick said and bent as well, his hands covering hers on the box. Warm, big and strong.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

Slowly she withdrew her hands and straightened, aware of a funny little hitch in her breathing. Must still be the adrenaline from the man in the shadows making her forget herself.

“Al—L.A.” She’d almost slipped up. That wouldn’t be good.

“You’re a long away from home.”

He had no idea.

“Uh—” Patrick muttered as he stood with the box in his arms. “The door keys are in my pocket.”

“No way am I going fishing,” she stated and backed up a step. Three months ago, she would have expected that sort of line from practically every man she dealt with but not here, not now. Not the professor!

Patrick pinned her with a droll stare that made her think perhaps she’d overreacted. He balanced the box on one knee while he dug the keys from his coat pocket and held them out to her. “Here.”

Taking the keys as embarrassed heat crept into her cheeks, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Following Patrick inside, she looked around the office, not surprised to see a clean, clutter-free desk, faced by two perfectly aligned chairs and a filing cabinet with neatly written labels on each drawer. All button-down and tidy, just like the professor.

Patrick set the box on the corner of the desk. “I’ve backed up all my files. Twice.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Really? On what?”

He went around the desk and opened a drawer to produce two floppy disks.

“Unfortunately your new computer doesn’t take floppies.”

His complexion paled. “It doesn’t?”

He really was technologically challenged, which she found endearing. “CDs and thumb drives. Tomorrow I’ll bring in a portable USB floppy drive.”

He took his glasses off and began rubbing the lenses with a cloth. “That will solve the problem?”

“I’ll have to save the files onto a thumb drive.” She plucked a silver letter opener from the pen holder on the desk and went to work opening the box. “Until then, we can fire her up and see how she runs.”

“You’ve given my computer a female gender?”

“We can call your computer a boy if you’d rather.” She tugged on the white foam protector and slid the black notebook computer out of the box.

“The female pronoun is fine, like a ship. Just as potentially deadly and much too unpredictable.”

“The same way guys view women,” she stated and reached in the box for the cables.

“Excuse me?”

His affronted expression made her hold up her hand and amend her statement. She supposed it wasn’t a fair statement, nor was it completely true. “Not all, just some.”

He set his glasses back on his nose. “You’re not old enough to have such a bleak outlook on the male gender.”

She blinked. “Not old enough?”

“You’re what, all of twenty?”

Her mouth twitched. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Though I’m not sure you meant it as such. And I’m actually thirty.” She ignored the fact that her current driver’s license stated otherwise. What would it matter if he knew the truth?

He cocked his head. “Really? Indeed.”

“Yes, indeed.” She plugged the cable and cords into the right spots. “Here we go.” She opened the lid of the laptop and began acquainting him with all the bells and whistles.

“So I can actually write on here with this little stick? And the computer types it in?”

She nodded, finding his amazement and wonder quite charming. “The stick is called a stylus and yes, the computer converts your writing to text. And,” she said with a dramatic flare, “the lid folds all the way back so it looks more like a clipboard than a laptop, which makes writing on the pad that much easier.”

“I think I’m going to like this.”

Though there was a smile in his voice, his stoic expression didn’t change. Odd. And odder still, she so wanted to see his smile.

She picked up her purse. “I’ll leave you to play with your new toy. I’ll come back tomorrow and download your files off that dinosaur.” She gestured to the archaic computer taking up most of his desk.

He walked her to the door. “Thank you. I appreciate your up-to-date knowledge.”

She hid a smile. He’d have a coronary if he knew that the basics of her knowledge came from a year of living with Rob, the computer geek, and the rest from the stack of manuals she’d been devouring over the last few weeks.

She was nothing if not a quick study. Would have been nice if the skill had helped with her acting career.

Moving to the Big Apple at seventeen to follow her dream of the Broadway stage hadn’t worked out so well. She’d been just another pretty girl among a thousand other pretty girls, some with talent, others not so much. She’d been somewhere in the middle, but playing bit walk-on roles hadn’t paid the bills.

Her dream of the theater had faded and reality had set in. Clearly she’d had to adjust her plans and had found a way, besides acting, to survive.

But then again, the professor clearly didn’t suspect she was anything other than what she presently appeared to be. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad actress after all. That had to count for something.