When this unsolicited offer had arrived out of the blue, asking him to come down to the university to apply for the position that began at something higher than minimum wage, he’d taken it only because of the money. There had been no joy in it, no secret setting down of goals for himself to achieve anything beyond what he was offered.
He was seriously convinced that, for him, there was no joy left in anything. Being accused of something he had not done and verbally convicted without being allowed to defend himself had killed his spirit.
So he did his work, making sure that he was never remiss, never in a position to be found lacking by anyone ever again.
But today, his mind had wandered. Just before beginning his round of small, tedious chores, he’d seen a landscaping truck go by. The truck’s logo proclaimed it to belong to a local family company that had been in business for the past fifteen years. Seeing it had momentarily catapulted him into the past.
That had been his goal once. To have a business of his own. Something where he was his own master, making his own hours, responsible for his own success. Evaluated and held to high standards by his own measure, not whimsically made to live up to someone else’s, someone who might, for whatever reason, find him lacking through no fault of his own but because of something they themselves were dealing with.
The truck had driven around the corner and disappeared. Just as his dreams had.
He’d returned to his chores in a dark frame of mind. Even so, he went through the paces, giving a hundred percent, no more, no less.
He’d spent most of the morning dealing with a clogged drain incapacitating the university’s indoor pool. The smell of stagnant water was still in his head if not physically with him and admittedly he wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind, even though he was tackling a far lesser problem.
So he hadn’t been paying attention when he set up the ladder and worked the defunct bulb out of the socket in the ceiling. He’d only used the ladder instead of the extension pole he normally employed because someone had apparently made off with the pole.
Even the hallowed halls of Saunders saw theft, he’d thought.
It seemed ironic, given that was the offense he’d been accused of all those many years ago. Theft. When he discovered that the pole, an inexpensive thirty-dollar item, was missing, he couldn’t help wondering if this would somehow come back to haunt him. Would the head of the maintenance department think he’d taken it for some obscure reason?
Once a thief…
Except that he hadn’t been. Not even that one time he’d been accused by that pompous, self-centered jerk, Jacob Weber.
Smith looked down now at Jane Jackson’s face, biting back a stinging retort that was born of defensiveness and the less-than-stellar mood he was in. She was right, he’d been careless, which made his mood even darker.
Still, he couldn’t just bite her head off, not if she didn’t deserve it. That wouldn’t be right and he’d made a point of always abiding by what was right, by walking the straight and narrow path even when others veered away from it.
He always had.
Which made that accusation that had ruined his life that much more bitterly ironic.
So he blew out a breath, and with it the words that had sprung to his tongue, if not his lips. Instead, after a beat, Smith grudgingly nodded his head. “You’re right. My fault.”
Since he’d just admitted it was his mistake and not hers, the anger Jane had felt heat up so quickly within her died back. Leaving her feeling awkward.
She looked up at Smith—he had to be almost a foot taller than she was—a little ruefully, the way she did each time their paths crossed. She remembered him. With his dirty-blond hair, magnetic brown eyes and chiseled good looks, he would have been a hard man to forget.
Smith Parker had been in one of her English classes when she’d attended the university. The one taught by Professor Harrison. Back then, she’d had a bit of a crush on Smith. Maybe more than just a bit. She’d been trying to work up the courage to say something to him, when suddenly, just like that, he was gone.
The rumor was he’d been caught stealing things from one of the girls’ dorms, forcing the university to take away his scholarship. She’d heard that his grades dropped right after that. And then he was gone.
Shortly thereafter, she went on to meet and then to marry Drew.
She hadn’t thought about Smith in years until one day, not that long ago, she’d seen him hunkered down against a wall in one of the classrooms, working on what appeared to be a faulty outlet.
Standing there that day, looking at him, she couldn’t help wondering if he remembered her. But the brown eyes that she recalled as being so vivid had appeared almost dead as they’d turned to look at her. Like two blinds pulled down, barring access to a view she’d once believed was there. There was no recognition to be found when he looked at her.
Or through her, which was how it had felt.
Still, because of the incident in his past, because of the shame that was attached to it, she was never comfortable around Smith. Because she knew about it, it was as if she’d been privy to some dirty, little, dark secret of his. She found pretending not to know him the easier way to go.
She cleared her throat as he stood beside the ladder, looking at her. “Are you all right?”
He half shrugged at the question. “Yeah, thanks to your quick hands.”
Something shivered through her as he said that, although she had no idea why. A smattering of those old feelings she’d once secretly harbored about him struggled to the surface.
Jane pushed them back. She wasn’t that girl anymore. Wasn’t a girl at all, really. A great deal of time had gone by since then and she’d discovered that the world was really a hard, cold, disagreeable place. If it wasn’t, then people like the professor could go on about their chosen professions, professions they loved, until they ceased to draw breath.
And if the world wasn’t such a disagreeable place, she wouldn’t have made such an awful mistake, wouldn’t have allowed herself to fall so hard for a student two years ahead of her. Wouldn’t have impulsively married him instead of thinking things through.
She shrugged, that same awkward feeling she always felt around Smith returning to claim her. “I’ve got a five-year-old.”
Smith looked at her blankly as he moved the ladder a good foot away from the path of the door. He hadn’t really been around any kids since he’d been one himself. The explanation she’d given him created no impression in its wake.
“I don’t follow.”
She smiled. No, she didn’t suppose he did. She’d nosed around a little and discovered that Smith was very much alone these days. No children, no wife, no attachments whatsoever. The world she lived in, even without the constant demand of bills that needed paying, was probably foreign to him.
“Danny is a little hyper.” She considered her words, then amended them. “Actually, he’s a lot hyper.”
Smith moved his head from side to side slowly. “I still don’t—”
He really didn’t know anything about kids, did he? “Okay, let me put it to you this way. Danny never really took his first step. He took his first leap—off a coffee table.”
She remembered how her heart had stopped in the middle of her throat. One minute her son had been crawling on