He couldn’t help but laugh at her serious tone and the look on her face. Bless the girl, she really had helped raise his spirits. “My God, Jane, I feel as if I’ve just been eavesdropping on my own eulogy.”
“Bite your tongue,” she told him. Death was something she didn’t like to even joke about. “Not for many, many years to come.” Pushing the thought away, she summoned as serene an expression as she could and asked, “Now then, can I bring you back a roast beef sandwich from the Sandwich Bar?”
The Sandwich Bar was little more than an afterthought beside the campus bookstore, quite apart from the main cafeteria and the two food court areas that were on opposite ends of the campus. But it served the best sandwiches around and she had been going there for the last year. Since the prices were more than reasonable, it was her one indulgence for herself: not to have to brown bag it, with leftovers every day.
“French dipped,” she prodded. “Just the way you like it.”
Since Mary had died, his appetite had been less than stellar. There were times that he went from one end of the day to the other without eating. There was no rumbling stomach to remind him, no hunger at all. Apparently, Jane had taken keeping his strength up upon herself, too.
He shook his head. “You’re trying to take care of me.”
She saw no reason to deny it. She wanted him to know how much he mattered, not just to her but to so many of them. With his wife’s death and now this campaign to be rid of him, she was afraid his once-indomitable spirit would be killed entirely.
“Doing my damnedest, Professor.” She shifted so that her feet were firmly planted on the worn carpet. “I’m not leaving until you place your order.”
“All right, Janie, you win.” So saying, Gilbert put his hand first into one pocket, then another, until he located his wallet. He pulled it out and looked through the bills.
“No,” Jane protested, pushing his wallet back, “it’s on me.”
He gave her a steely look that was meant to penetrate down to her soul. “Young lady, I know for a fact that you can barely afford your own lunch, much less pay for mine.” Taking out a twenty, he pressed it into her palm. “Here, this should cover us both.” He saw the protest rising to her lips and headed it off. “Please, Jane, allow me a few pleasures.”
Reluctantly she closed her hand over the bill, then brushed a quick kiss against his cheek. How could they possibly be thinking of getting rid of him? It was Broadstreet who should be getting his walking papers, not the professor. And as quickly as possible.
“You really are a dear, dear man,” she told him affectionately.
Sinking into the leather chair that welcomed him like an old friend, Gilbert waved her away, his attention already directed toward the open file on his desk. The university had long since removed him from the English department and he no longer coached a baseball team the way he had in the old days. But they had allowed him to continue in the capacity of adviser and counselor and he took his work and the students that went with it very, very seriously.
It meant he could still help the deserving. The way he’d been doing, one way or another, for the last thirty years.
For a second longer, Jane stood watching him.
Damn them all to hell, she thought angrily. How dare they threaten to put that wonderful man out to pasture? Without his wife, all Professor Harrison had was his work here at the university. She knew in her heart that if he was forced into retirement, the man who had been like a father to her would, in a very short period of time, certainly whither away and die.
She wasn’t about to let that happen—even if it wouldn’t impact her own financial situation the way it would. Not while there was a single breath left in her body.
Angry, wishing she could get her hands around Broadstreet’s throat and squeeze it until the man promised to leave the professor alone, Jane turned on her heel and swung open the outer office door. She did it with the same amount of force she would have delivered to Broadstreet’s solar plexus if she were given to street brawling.
She heard the creaking noise at the same time she shut the door behind her.
The ladder hadn’t been there when she’d walked into the professor’s office.
If it had, it would have blocked her access. As it was now, the door had come in jolting contact with the side of the wide, ten-foot ladder. Jolting as well the man who was perched two rungs from the top.
Momentarily stunned, Jane reacted automatically. Being the mother of one very hyper five-year-old had trained her to be prepared for anything and to react to situations even when she was half asleep or caught completely off guard, the way she was now. That was why the saleswoman at the department store last month hadn’t been smacked over the head by a mannequin that would have fallen right on her head if Jane hadn’t caught it in time. And why the maintenance man changing the light bulb didn’t go flying off the tottering ladder now.
Her legs braced, Jane grabbed both sides of the ladder that were facing her, pulling back with all her might and steadying it so that the ladder didn’t go over on its side.
The next minute its rather well-built, muscled occupant was all but sliding down the steps, eager to do so on his own power rather than because of gravity. Inches apart, his hand on the rungs to ground the ladder, his temper flashed as he glared at the cause of his sudden earthquake.
“Damn it, why don’t you watch where you’re going?” he demanded.
She’d once been timid and shy. But life and the professor had taught her that she needed to stand up for herself or face being stepped on. She was in no mood to be stepped on.
Jane met the man’s glare with one of her own. “Why don’t you watch where you’re sticking your ladder? Don’t you know any better than to put it so close to a door?”
Chapter Two
Nothing irritated Smith Parker more than being in the wrong. The way he was now. He frowned deeply. Not at the woman in front of him, but at the situation. This was not where he expected to be at this point in his life.
At twenty-nine, Smith had expected to be doing something important. At the very least, something more significant than changing light bulbs in the hallway of one of the older buildings at the very same university he’d once attended, nurturing such wonderful dreams of his future.
A future that definitely did not include a maintenance uniform. But this was the same university that had abruptly turned his life upside down, stripped him of his scholarship, money awarded through a work-study program, and thus his ability to pay for the education that would have seen him rise above a life involving only menial jobs.
An education that would have allowed him to become something more than he was now destined to be.
In a way, Smith supposed that he should be grateful he was working, grateful that he was anywhere at all. There had been a stretch of time, right after he’d spiraled down emotionally and sleepwalked through his exams, causing his grades to drop and him to leave the university, that he had seriously considered giving up everything and meeting oblivion.
Ultimately it was his love for his parents who had loved him and stood by him with unwavering faith throughout it all, that had kept him from doing anything drastic. Anything permanent. He knew that ending his own life would in effect end theirs.
So he had pulled back from the very brink of self-destruction, reassessed his situation and tried to figure out what he could do with himself.
The answer was just to pass from one day to the next, drifting without a plan, he who had once entertained so many ideas.
To