He studied her curiously. "I see. Well, no hard feelings about the engagement. I'll phone you tonight about the research notes for that next chapter."
"Yes. Fine."
Before the last syllable died on the air, he was down the hall, whistling happily.
Tabby gathered her papers and walked listlessly down the hall. On the way out, the dean stopped her.
"I'm sorry to tell you this, but the story is all over the papers and the board of trustees feels that a leave of absence is in order, just temporarily," he said stiffly. "There are reporters all over the place. I was going to suggest that you go home after your last class, but I gather that you're doing it already." He cleared his throat, averting his eyes from Tabby's stricken face. "Under the circumstances, I think it would be best to have one of the other anthropologists take your classes for a few days. Until this matter is resolved."
"You don't think I did it?" she asked miserably.
"No," he said. "Try not to worry. It will all work out, you know."
His smile was as limp as her heart. She nodded. "I'll not come in until you notify me, then. I'll avoid the press as well. But I'm not guilty," she added solemnly. "If I meant to steal something, it would be one of the gold pieces from the Troy exhibit or a jeweled brooch from the Spanish galleon collection. A piece of ancient pottery... well, it's hardly dear, is it, except to historians and anthropologists?"
He looked thoughtful. "My dear, I have considered that aspect. Of course, you're right. It would take a collector to appreciate it. But we're under the gun, you see."
"Yes. I see," she said sadly. "I only wish I'd thought to make that point to the reporter."
"I'll make sure that I do," he assured her.
She went on out to her car, hoping that she could reach it before any of the press found her. She'd never felt quite so bad in all her life. Nick had seduced her, she might be pregnant, and now she was in danger of losing her job. It was enough to make a saint cry.
Tabby was no saint, and cry she did, all the long way home. She was still bawling when she drove up at her own door. For a long time, she let the healing tears roll down her face. When she was finally drained of emotion, she wiped her red eyes and blew her equally red nose and got out of the car.
Nick, meanwhile, was still uncovering leads. Though he had a theory as to the identity of the culprit, he had to keep an open mind. He'd had Helen do some checking on Dr. Day and she discovered that his wife had inherited a small fortune from a deceased relative. That would explain the Lamborghini. Dr. Flannery, on the other hand, was in financial difficulties because of his wife. She'd just left him for another man, and the skip tracers said that the gossips were having a field day speculating about his relief. His wife had been much younger and not terribly faithful, either. Flannery was hardly heartbroken.
That left Daniel. His falsification of past records still put him at the top of the list of suspects. But why would he take an ancient artifact? It wasn't even from the period he and Tabby were working on. And no background check of his past came up with a record of theft. Only that radical stage.
While he was ruling out suspects, the telephone rang. It was one of the local police officers whom Nick had contacted, and he set up a time and place for a stakeout at the college. He made one other telephone call and talked to another potential witness. So much for witnesses. Now he had to bait and set the trap.
Hopefully Tabby would soon be out from under suspicion. He could go away and let her get her life back together. He put his head in his hands and groaned. God, if only he'd never touched her! Guilt was eating him alive. Sweet, gentle Tabby had never hurt a soul in her life. Her only weakness was him, had always been him. He'd taken what she'd offered, but it gave him no pleasure to remember that most of the enjoyment had been his. She'd barely had anything, even at the last. He hadn't given her even a sweet memory of his lovemaking to carry down the years. He should have waited. It should have been a different place, with all the time in the world to teach her what lovemaking was. He should have been kinder to her. Cursing, he got up and went back to his notes.
His theory was right on the money, especially now that he had the missing evidence. He needed to make a move, but he had to tell Tabby what he was going to do. That wasn't going to be easy. He was asking her to trust him with her academic future. Perhaps she wouldn't want to.
He went to his window to see if Tabby was home. Sure enough, her car was in the driveway tonight.
But he hesitated about going over there. What he'd found out would offer her some consolation, but his headlong rush into intimacy and the aftermath still had him upset. It had devastated Tabby. He hated the memory of how she'd looked afterward. Her puritan ideals were in hell. He knew what a little saint Tabby was. He'd done something unforgivable to her, really messed up her life. Even if she didn't become pregnant, the way they'd made love would haunt her forever.
He knew he'd treated her shabbily, making love to her in the park that way, but he hadn't meant to insult her. He'd wanted her so desperately that he simply lost control. Years of denied hunger had overwhelmed him—and certainly her as well. But he was experienced enough to call a halt, and he hadn't. He hadn't even managed to protect her.
He wasn't certain if it would be kinder to go and talk to her or stay away.
Finally he decided that staying away, giving her more time to get over her rawness at what had happened, might be the best course of action. But this night, like the previous ones, wasn't pleasant. His conscience and fear that he might have accidentally made her pregnant gave him such fits that he wound up watching all-night movies just to keep his mind off it.
Tabby, meanwhile, had too much time on her hands and she hated the sight of herself in a mirror. The fact that she couldn't go to work and stay busy made it worse. She spent the day cleaning house and letting her answering machine take care of the incoming calls. Most of them were from the press, and she was glad that she hadn't seen a morning paper. Probably it bore a headline that included her.
One call late in the day attracted her attention, because it was from Helen Reed.
She picked up the receiver with shaking hands. "Helen! Am I glad to hear your voice! The phone's gone off the hook all day, and the dean won't let me work...!"
"What is going on out there?" Helen interrupted. "You're in the papers, did you know? It's all here, about the missing artifact and an accusation against you, that you've been temporarily suspended. So that was what that call was all about the other day, wasn't it? Tabby, I know you don't steal things!"
"Well, no," Tabby said. She sank onto the couch, her heart beating wildly. "It's in all the papers, I suppose? Wire services, too?" She groaned. "Oh, Helen, what am I going to do?"
"Nick's there, isn't he? He's supposed to be solving the case."
"Yes, Nick's around," Tabby said stiffly. Her eyes closed on a wave of sick shame. "He doesn't even have any suspects."
"But he does. Well, only one, really. Dr. Flannery and Dr. Day checked out okay, but your friend Daniel Myers didn't."
"Daniel?"
"I'm afraid so. There's him and some new theory that Nick won't trust me with yet."
"What did you find out about Daniel?"
"Sorry, pet, but that's confidential. Don't you worry, I know Nick's got enough to clear you right now."
"Daniel wouldn't steal an artifact, I don't care what's in his past," Tabby said. "You know him like I do. He's Mr. Straight— the kind of man who lives and breathes law and order. He won't even keep a nickel he finds on the street unless he can't find the person who lost it! Does that sound like a thief?"
Helen hesitated. Nick had said that Tabby didn't care about Daniel, but she didn't sound very uncaring. "No, of course it doesn't," she agreed. "But he was the last suspect left..."
"No. There's another one. There's me." Tabby's lips stiffened. "Maybe I walk in my sleep and steal things. Maybe I'm really the culprit only I don't remember. Maybe I have multiple personalities
...!"
"Tabby, do stop it," Helen said gently. "I know you're upset. But you have to keep your head. It will blow over. Nick will prove your innocence. Honest, he will."
"Pigs will fly," Tabby said wearily. "I have to go. I think a reporter is taking photographs through my window."
"Throw a pot at him."
Tabby laughed hysterically. "Then I'd accidentally kill him and go to prison for murder. That's the way my luck's running."
"You're just hopeless."
"You don't know the half of it."
"Try to get a good night's sleep, won't you? If you see Nick, have him call me. I may have something else in a couple of hours."
"If I see him." / hope I don't, she added silently. "Thanks for calling."
"Call me if you need me, will you?" Helen asked impatiently. "And don't worry. I promise you, everything will be all right."
"The truth will out, in other words?" She laughed cynically. "Yes, but sometimes that takes twenty years. I'll be forty-five."
"Go to bed."
"Okay. Good night."
"Yes. You, too."
She put the receiver down. No sooner was it in the cradle than it started ringing again. More reporters. More questions. If she'd been more lucid, she might have given them a statement. But she felt too miserable to even try. There apparently had been a man with a camera at the window, because her flower bed had footprints in it. Great, she thought. Now they had a picture to print. She closed the curtains, as she should have done much earlier, and turned on the television to drown out her worries.
Her conscience tormented her for the next two days. She didn't look toward Nick's house. She talked to Daniel on the telephone, having discouraged him from coming over. A reporter was camped on her front porch, making coffee on a hot plate using stolen current from her outside electrical outlet. She wondered if she could call a rival paper and make news out of that? It was really amazing that a small stolen artifact could make this much press. It must be a slow week for news....
There was a knock on the door at the end of the third day. She peered out at Nick and reluctantly opened the door.
"I ran off your happy camper," he remarked, nodding to where the reporter had been sitting. "Unplugged his hot plate. He's afraid of starvation without his coffeepot, so he's gone to a local waffle house to get a cup."
“Thank you."
"Are you going to let me in?" he asked, lounging carelessly against the door frame. He looked nonchalant, which was the last thing he actually was. He felt nervous and vaguely ashamed, emotions he'd been gloriously unfamiliar with before.
"I suppose so." She opened the door and he came inside. She was wearing a lightweight blue denim shirtwaist dress, with her hair in a long braid down her back. No makeup, no fussy hairdo. She looked a little plain and Nick felt worse than ever when he saw the dark circles under her eyes and the drawn, pale look about her.
"I gather you've been avoiding me?" he asked.
"You gather right," she replied tersely. "Why did you need to see me, Nick?"
He had to gather his wits again. Her straightforward attack had thrown him. "I've found something," he said quietly. "The thief left a little evidence this time. A tuft of hair and a speck of blood."
"Is the thief a wounded bald man?" she asked.
"Not quite. I took a sample of it over to the FBI lab, had a friend of mine run an analysis of it and I got the results. I haven't even told Helen yet, but I've phoned the police, and I've talked with that reporter who's had you staked out. I've asked them both to come to the college tonight. I want you along as well. We're going to lock ourselves in your office and wait for the thief to strike again. We're even providing some very tempting bait."
Tabby found it difficult to talk to him. She folded her arms across her breasts defensively. "Helen said Daniel is at the top of your list of suspects."
'The last she knew, he was the only one left," Nick replied. His dark eyes narrowed. "That bothers you?"
"Even though we aren't engaged anymore, Daniel is still a colleague and a friend. Yes, it bothers me."
His eyebrows collided. "What do you mean, you're not engaged anymore?"
"I couldn't go through with it. Not after...what happened."
He let out an angry breath and rammed his hands deep into his slacks pockets. "It was just an interlude! Women have them all the time!"
"I don't," she said levelly, meeting his eyes. "And feeling the way I do about it, I can't go to one man when I've been intimately involved with another. Especially now, before I know..."
His eyes fell blankly to her stomach and his teeth clenched. "It doesn't always happen the first time," he said. "There may not be anything to worry about."
"When do you want to go to the college?" she asked, changing the subject.
He couldn't fathom her. His temper was getting out of bounds. He didn't like the way he felt. His eyes slid over her with new knowledge. He knew what she felt like under that concealing dress. He knew the sounds she made in passion and the silky softness of her body as it grew feverish under his... Thoughts and memories like that would never do, he told himself.
"You can ride in with me tonight," he said.
"No, thank you. I'll go with Daniel."
His eyes flashed. "He wasn't invited."
"Nevertheless, he'll be there. You've made him a suspect. I won't tell him that, but I think he's entitled to share in the solving of the mystery."
"We might as well invite the neighbors, too," he grumbled.
“Fine by me. The more people who think I'm innocent, the better. God knows, I'm probably as notorious as Mata Hari by now." She frowned. "Do you suppose anyone thinks I'm really a secret agent stealing ancient microfilm?"
"Hidden inside five-thousand-year-old artifacts," Nick said, shaking his head. "Only one of those grocery store tabloids would buy that."
"Great idea. Where did you say that reporter went?"
"I'll leave you to it," he murmured, refusing to be drawn in. "We'll meet in your office at six."
"Daniel would never take anything that wasn't his," she said as he paused in the open doorway.
He turned and looked at her. "Any more than you would," he agreed. "Don't worry. It isn't Daniel." He studied her wan face for a long time. "It should have been him, in the park, shouldn't it?" he asked bitterly.
Her composed face showed no emotion. "What difference does it make now?"
He let out a long breath. "None, I suppose. For what it's worth, I'd give anything to take it back."
"So would I," she replied miserably.
He made an oddly jerky gesture and went out without looking at her again.
Tabby took a bath and dressed in a becoming purple silk pantsuit to sit and wait for the thief to show up. It was going to be a time fraught with tension with a policeman and a reporter, and with Daniel and Nick in the same room. Probably there would be a free-for-all before the night was over. Good copy for the press, she thought hysterically, and had to choke back laughter.
Her good name would hopefully be cleared. Nick would go back to Houston. She could go back to work and wait out the days until she knew whether or not there would be consequences from the fiery encounter in the park. And afterward, none of it would matter. Except that she could never marry Daniel or anyone else. Despite it all, she loved Nick more than her own life.
It must have been a curse, she thought, placed on her at birth that she'd fall in love with a hopeless bachelor and never get over him.
She phoned Daniel to tell him what was going on, without mentioning that he'd been even briefly a suspect.
“Reed's caught the culprit?" he asked.
"It seems so," Tabby replied. "I really don't think he'd have the police and the press along unless he was reasonably sure that he could prove his allegations, do you?"
“It wouldn't be intelligent. Not," he added, "that I think police work requires intelligence. It seems to me that very few people in detective circles are high
ly educated."
"You might be surprised."
"Not by your childhood friend," Daniel said. "How are you coming with the new notes I gave you? Have you incorporated them into the book?"
"Yes. I have had little else to do for the past few days, so I've concentrated on it."
"Good girl! Uh, would you mind bringing it with you when you come tonight?"
So much for her thought that he'd pick her up and drive in with her.
"Yes," she told him. "I'll bring it."
"Thanks. See you there at six, then."
He hung up, leaving her holding the receiver with a dial tone on the other end of the line. She seemed fated to get herself involved with men who found her useful but not lovable. She was never going to marry.
But there might be a baby. The thought cheered her, softened her mood. She touched her stomach and allowed herself to dream about what it would be like to hold a tiny human being in her arms.
She'd protect and love it, raise it all by herself. Nick didn't need to offer her support or act as if it were a burden on him. She might not even tell him.
Sure. Great idea, she thought silently. I won't tell him and then I'll spend years hiding the child from Helen every time she comes to visit.
She wasn't being sensible. She picked up her lightweight silk jacket and went out the door.
Minutes later, she unlocked her office. She was early, as she'd needed to be so that she could let the others in. The campus was growing dark, and it was a good thing that no night school classes were held on this floor, or there would have been no use in trying to stake it out.
She put her purse on the desk and sat down. Looking around her, she wondered at the speed of events. Only a short time ago, she'd been engaged to Daniel, working on a book, teaching her classes and going from day to day. She hadn't given Nick a great deal of thought, because after the New Year's Eve party she was certain she'd lost him for good. She'd resigned herself to being Daniel's wife, to teaching classes until she was old enough to retire.
What a joke fate had played on her.
Daniel might take her back, but she couldn't let him without telling him everything that had happened with Nick. That would be unbearable, to have anyone know, much less Daniel, that she'd behaved like some kept woman.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 120
