A Kiss Remembered

by Sandra Brown

  “Whew,” he said, pushing open the heavy, brass-studded door and escorting her outside. “Fresh air.”

  “Hello, Mr. Chapman.”

  A coed paused to speak to him as she entered the restaurant with three other girls. Her eyelashes were heavy with mascara; her mouth, glossed with vermilion, was wide and full; her hair was layered and permed to give a tousled effect. Shelley wondered if the girl had been welded into her jeans, for surely no zipper would stand that much strain. Her generous breasts were un-confined by a bra beneath her crocheted sweater.

  “Hello, Miss …”

  “Zimmerman. Monday-Wednesday-Friday, two o’clock class. I certainly enjoyed your lecture yesterday,” she cooed. “I’ve checked out some of the books you recommended from the library.”

  “But have you read them?”

  The girl blinked dully for a moment, stunned by Grant’s derisive question. Then she smiled lazily, deciding to take his jibe with good humor. “I’ve started them.”

  “Good. When you’re done, I’d like to hear your impressions.”

  “Oh, you will. You will.” Her cunning glance slid over Shelley, who was treated to a chilly evaluation. “See ya,” she said as she followed her friends into Hal’s.

  They had walked half a block down the bookstore-lined sidewalk before Grant said lightly, “No comments?”

  “On what?” she asked breezily.

  “On the dedication of some students.”

  She looked up at him scoffingly. “I’m sure Miss Zimmerman is dedicated to many things, but I doubt that scholastics is one of them.”

  He laughed, taking her arm and leading her across the street. “Where are you parked?”

  “I’m not. I walked to campus today.”

  “Commendable. Which way?”

  The safest, wisest, easiest thing to do would be to part company here and now. Shelley Robins always did the safest, wisest, easiest thing. She paused on the sidewalk and faced him. “Thank you, but I can go the rest of the way alone.”

  “No doubt. But I want to come with you.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “It’s better if you don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a teacher and I’m your student,” she said, dangerously close to tears for reasons she couldn’t name.

  “As we were before. Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “I guess so. Yes.”

  “With one vital difference, Shelley. This time we’re both mature adults.”

  She hedged, gnawing her bottom lip.

  Taking advantage of her indecision, he pressed his point. “Believe me, the last thing I need in my life is a scandal. I wouldn’t do anything to compromise either of us.”

  “That’s why we shouldn’t be seen together off campus at all.” His position at the university was shaky at best. Why would he jeopardize it? Along with his problems, she had to analyze what his being in her life again would mean to her.

  No. She couldn’t become entrapped again. She’d have to bring things to a screeching halt now. Why she had ever let him talk about that kiss ten years ago, she couldn’t fathom, but …

  “I need a friend, Shelley.”

  Her head snapped up to see the lines engraved on either side of his mouth and the deep furrow between his brows. He had suffered. He had known untold trouble. Had he made a romantic appeal, she would have rebuffed it. Probably. Maybe.

  But that simple, pitiable request for friendship couldn’t be denied. He was something of a celebrity, yes. But he was also a victim of his own notoriety. Someone of his caliber didn’t inspire friendship in ordinary people who lived mundane lives. It was inverted snobbery. The fact of the matter was—he was lonely.

  She looked up into the alluring, knowing eyes and saw a hint of insecurity. “All right,” she agreed softly and began walking again.

  He matched his stride to hers. “What are you majoring in?”

  “Banking.”

  He stopped in his tracks. “Banking?”

  She stopped, too. “Yes, banking. What did you expect me to say? Home economics?” There was undisguised asperity in her voice. To her surprise, he burst out laughing.

  “No. I’m not a chauvinist. It’s just that I can’t see you as a stodgy banker in a gray pin-striped suit.”

  “Lord, I hope not,” she said, relaxing somewhat. They started walking again. “I want to specialize in banking from the woman’s point of view. Many banks now have departments that cater to women, particularly women who have their own businesses or divorcées or widows who for the first time are having to manage their money. Often they don’t know the first thing about balancing a checkbook, much less opening a savings account or securing a loan.”

  “You have my wholehearted approval,” he said, placing a hand over his heart. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Thank you.” She dropped a curtsy.

  The sidewalks were all but deserted now. The sun had set behind Gresham Hall and the sky was tinted a pale shade of indigo. Oaks and elms, their leaves burnished by the cool fall weather, overhung the sidewalk, lending it intimacy. Indeed one couple had found this romantic aura too difficult to resist.

  Grant’s and Shelley’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the cracked, lichen-covered sidewalk as they approached the couple. The young woman’s back was pressed against the trunk of a tree as the young man leaned into her. His feet straddled hers. Their heads were angled, mouths fused. Their arms were wound around each other.

  As Shelley guiltily watched them, the man’s hips rotated slowly and the woman’s hand slipped lower from his waist to apply encouraging pressure. All the blood in her body rushed to Shelley’s face and bathed it with a bright stain. She risked looking at Grant out of the corner of her eye and was further embarrassed to see that he was studying her reaction closely. He smiled crookedly and picked up their pace until the oblivious lovers were left far behind.

  “Are you working now?” Grant asked, to relieve the tension between them.

  “No. I’m a professional student. I decided to devote all my time and effort to my education. I managed to finance it so I wouldn’t have to work.”

  “Cash settlement?”

  She never discussed her divorce, but strangely she wasn’t offended by Grant’s question. The bitterness that had stayed with her for months after the final papers had been signed had gradually abated. Regrets remained, but then she had expected that. “Yes. I didn’t want to rely on Daryl for my livelihood, but I felt he owed me an education. We finally came to an agreement that satisfied both of us.”

  “Would you mind if I asked what happened?”

  “We got married mistakenly and got divorced five years later.”

  They crossed another deserted street before he said, “No details?”

  She looked up at him. “Please.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that I think the man’s a damned fool, and if I ever meet him face-to-face, I’m likely to tell him so.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He has what he wants. He’s a doctor in Oklahoma City, outstanding in his field. When last I heard, he was squiring the chief of staff’s daughter. Daryl would consider that a real feather in his cap.”

  Grant breathed an expletive through firmly set lips. “I guess you sacrificed your education to work and put him through medical school.”

  “Something like that, yes.” She was alarmed at the fierceness of his expression. “Here’s my house,” she said nervously.

  He followed her up the narrow, somewhat uneven sidewalk to the alcove that sheltered the arched front door. The house was made of dark reddish-brown brick and trimmed with white woodwork. The grass and shrub-bery were well clipped, but the yard was littered with fallen leaves from the twin pecan trees on either side of the center sidewalk.

  “I love it, Shelley,” Grant said enthusiastically.

  “Do you? I did, too, from the moment I sa
w it. I’ll hate to part with it when I graduate and leave.”

  “And where will you go? Do you have any prospects for a job?”

  “Not just now, but this spring I’ll start sending out letters of inquiry. I suppose I’ll have to gravitate toward the metropolitan areas in order to find a bank large enough to support a separate women’s department.”

  By the end of her speech, her voice was no more than a slender thread of sound. It unnerved her for him to be watching her mouth with that devouring look.

  “Thank you for—” she began.

  “Shelley, aren’t you the least bit curious? You haven’t asked why a beautiful, rich senator’s daughter would kill herself over me.”

  She was dumbfounded. Never had she expected him to bring up the subject of his expulsion from Washington so openly. Of course she had been curious. The entire country had been. When the headlines came off the press proclaiming the suicide of one of Washington’s darlings, the public had been outraged.

  For months prior to her death Missy Lancaster had been keeping close company with Grant Chapman. Senator Lancaster of Oklahoma had seemed to endorse what everyone believed to be a budding romance. When the young woman was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in her Georgetown apartment, the bubble of enchantment surrounding them had burst. Grant Chapman was circumstantially implicated; it was believed that he had broken her heart and he was fired from the senator’s staff.

  Chapman had then had the bad grace to file a breach-of-contract suit against Senator Lancaster. The news services had had a field day. What could be better than a nude girl, found lying dead in her bed with a note written in her own hand? It had read, “My dearest darling, forgive me for loving you too well. If I can’t have you, then I want to die.” To make matters worse, the autopsy had revealed that Missy Lancaster was pregnant. The public fed on each sordid detail voraciously.

  Grant had won his suit, but had resigned his post immediately after the judge handed down his ruling. Grant Chapman might have been dubbed insensitive, but no one had ever accused him of being stupid. He was smart enough to know that in Washington he would forever be ostracized.

  “I … I felt sorry for you, having to go through something like that,” she said at last.

  He laughed harshly. “You must have been the only one in the country who sympathized with me, the dastardly villain of the piece. Didn’t you for one minute think that all the things they said about me might be true? Didn’t you ever believe I was a despoiler of virgins? Or wonder if it was my baby that died in the womb of his suicidal mother?” Under the anger of his demanding questions, she took a step backward and he knew instant remorse. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. For a moment he stared down at the brick porch beneath his boots. “I’m sorry, Shelley.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’ve every right to be bitter. Whatever happened between you and Missy Lancaster, you ended up the one being victimized.”

  He attempted a wry smile. “Where were you when I needed you? I could have used you in my corner cheering me on.”

  “Things will work out. People will forget.”

  “Will you?” He set her books on the ledge bordering the porch and took a step closer to her.

  “Will … will I what?”

  “Will you forget that I was involved in a scandal concerning a young girl when you know that ten years ago I kissed one much younger?”

  If only there were some motion, some sound to alleviate the ponderous stillness around them. Without distractions, all her senses were concentrated on him. He filled her field of vision with his height and breadth of shoulder. She could smell the woodsy fragrance of his cologne, hear the sound of his heartbeat.

  “What happened in Poshman Valley was an accident,” she rasped.

  “Was it?” he asked softly. “For a long time afterward I told myself it was, but seeing you the other day, I had to face up to the fact that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t as detached as I knew I should be. Maybe I saw in you then the promise of the woman you are now. Shelley—”

  “No.” When he took one step nearer, she backed away. “No, Grant.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because the circumstances are still the same.”

  “That’s no reason, Shelley. How old are you? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? I’m thirty-five. If I were anyone else and we met at a cocktail party, you’d never give our ages a thought.”

  She wrung her hands in an effort to still their trembling. Or was it to keep from touching him? To keep from brushing that lock of silvered hair off his brow? To keep from laying her hand flat on his lapel? “It’s not age; it’s status. I’m still your student.”

  “At Poshman Valley High School that mattered. Not here. Not in this day and age. I think we owe it to ourselves and to each other to see if that kiss of ten years ago was just a fluke. Or the harbinger of something more.” He came to her and laid his strong hands on her shoulders.

  “Don’t, please. Don’t say any more.”

  “Listen to me,” he said urgently, backing her against the wall. “You were like a breath of fresh air when you walked through that classroom door the other day. After the quagmire my life has been, you were a reminder of happier days. I’d never forgotten that December night, but the impact of it had dimmed. Seeing you again was a very forcible reminder and it brought back all the ambivalence I felt ten years ago.

  “I want to kiss you again, Shelley. My career is blown to hell. I’ve seen how fleeting success and happiness are. So what if someone disapproves of us? I’m tired of trying to please other people. The payoff’s not so good. I’m going to kiss you, Shelley. I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose.”

  He trapped her jaw between his thumb and fingers, cradling the underside of it in his palm. Her hands came up to fend him off, but ended up clutching his shoulders. For a long moment, he stared down into her wide, apprehensive eyes, then he lowered his head.

  His lips were warm, firm, confident, but soft. They slanted over her mouth, moving in such a way that she never knew the precise instant her lips opened to the light pressure of his tongue. She heard a whimper of satisfaction as he took complete possession, but didn’t realize that she had made the sound.

  His tongue rubbed along hers, mating with it, exploring her with meticulous care. He tickled the roof of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, dragged it along her teeth, penetrated as far as he could to leave nothing undiscovered.

  The manacles of ten years of depression dropped from her limbs. Her hands went to the back of his neck to touch the dark strands that brushed his collar. Ten years of longing, of fantasies, went into the kiss. Her heart expanded to the bursting point with a rush of pent-up emotion.

  He sipped at the moisture shining on her lower lip. “Shelley, Shelley, my God,” he whispered against her mouth. His tongue delved into the sweet vault again, greedier this time. It was met with equal fervor.

  He released her jaw, lowered his arm and encircled her waist. The other hand slid down her spine to the small of her back, pressing, urging her closer. With such an intimate positioning of their bodies, she knew at once the hard evidence of his maleness and was shocked.

  The feel of it startled her back into consciousness. The stark reality of their situation broke through the passion that had robbed her of rational thought. She pushed against his chest and jerked her head backward.

  “Let me go, please,” she said in panic.

  He released her immediately and took a step backward to give her the space she obviously needed. Her fingers were shaking as she massaged her forehead with them. The tortured expression on her face and the agitated way she shook her head plainly indicated her distress.

  “Thank you for walking me home. I have to go in now.” She turned, but was caught by his hand clasping her upper arm.

  “Shelley, please don’t run from me again.”

  “I’m not running.” She avoided his eyes. “I have a lot to—”

  “You’r
e running,” he interrupted. “I couldn’t pursue you before, but I won’t let you go this time without an explanation. Did I come on too strong, too fast? Are you still in love with your husband?”

  She laughed then, but it was an ugly sound. Unhealthy mirth. “No. I assure you that is not the case.”

  “Then what?”

  She looked at him, defeated and dispirited, her shoulders slumping. “Grant,” she whispered half angrily, “you know why we can’t … why this must never happen again. I started thinking of you as my teacher the first time I walked into your classroom ten years ago. In the course of a few hours I can’t change the image I formed of you then. In my mind you’re still off limits to me. And whether you want to admit it or not, I am to you.”

  His eyes fell away from hers to her mouth, then to her shoulder. His reluctance to hold her gaze told her he knew she was right. He relinquished her arm and shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “You have a chance now to make a new career for yourself. This,” she said, sawing her hand back and forth between them to indicate the entire situation, “isn’t worth risking your reputation.”

  His eyes swung back to hers. “I’ll decide that.”

  “I’ve already decided. We can’t let this go any further. It would spell disaster for both of us. It just isn’t right. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.”

  Before he could say another word, she had unlocked her door and whirled inside, slamming it shut behind her. She leaned against the door for a long time, until she heard his slow, dejected footsteps fade down the sidewalk.

  The tears that had threatened for so long were finally permitted to fall.

  CHAPTER 3

  You look wonderful, Shelley,” she muttered to the tear-swollen face in the mirror over her bathroom sink. She dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes with a tissue and leaned over to rinse her face again with cold water. When she dried it, she pressed the velour towel against her eyes, hoping to block out the ever-present image of Grant Chapman.

  If you haven’t been able to do that in ten years, what makes you think you can do it now? she asked herself. He was more charismatic, more handsome, and to her discerning woman’s eye, more virile than he had ever been before. As the object of an adolescent infatuation, he had posed a threat to her well-being, but not half the threat he posed now.