by Mae Nunn
Sarah glanced behind her to see Cullen Temple smile and wave just as the door slid closed between them.
“That Temple boy has been a thorn in my side for more years than I care to count. If you’re a friend of his, then you’re either a double dose of trouble or a few fries short of a Happy Meal.”
Facing the interior of the office and the source of the comment, Sarah came eyeball to eyeball with a spiky-haired senior citizen in a scrubs top, camo pants and Chuck Taylor All Stars.
“You must be Miss Nancy Norment,” Sarah said in her most charming tone.
“And you must be somebody’s mama,” the University Torment snapped. “‘Cause you’re certainly no spring chicken.”
Knowing her fortieth birthday was just around the corner, Sarah couldn’t disagree. Maybe she should have gone back to bed, after all.
CHAPTER TWO
THE AUBURN-HAIRED beauty was sitting alone in the student center with her back to the wall and her face just a few inches above the paperwork spread across the table. Over the years Cullen had come to recognize that posture as the sign of someone who expected they wouldn’t fit in, who believed they didn’t belong.
He wondered why on earth the lovely woman he’d met earlier in the administration building might be insecure. But then sending a child off to college could be a very unsettling period of life. Though they’d only spoken for a few minutes, Cullen had learned that her name was Sarah and she had daughters.
She’d seemed too bright to fall into the helicopter-parent trap, always hovering overhead and ready to swoop down and save the day. Still, this wouldn’t be the first time a smart adult did all the paperwork to ensure their completely capable kid had no excuse for not showing up on the first day of class.
As Cullen passed through the beverage line he was jostled intentionally by several upper-classmen who smiled and greeted him. Those with unfamiliar faces ignored Cullen, leaving him to presume they were freshmen.
The kids who attended the summer semester were made up of two groups: those who were getting ahead and those who were catching up. As he moved toward the woman alone at her table he wondered whether her daughter would be at the top or the bottom of the freshman class.
“Forgive me for guessing instead of asking if you take your coffee black, but you seem more of a ‘decaf with cream and sugar’ lady to me,” Cullen explained as he placed two mugs of coffee on the table. The blue eyes that met his opened wide with surprise and then squinted in good-humored gratitude.
“Make that sugar substitute and you’re right on the money.” She swept an area clear of paperwork to give him room to share the table.
Cullen dumped the contents of the small sack he’d also been carrying into the empty spot. Servings of flavored creamer and packets of sweetener rolled and fluttered about.
“Take your pick. Yellow, pink or blue.”
“You’re not just a pretty face, no matter what Miss Norment says about you,” Sarah teased as she reached for a single serving container of French vanilla creamer.
“Miss Nancy calls me a number of things but I’d lay odds that pretty face isn’t on the list.”
“She did mutter something about you being the dullest knife in the butcher block.”
“That sounds about right.” He tore open three packets of brown sugar and dumped the crystals into his mug. “She’s never taken much of a shine to me, even though I’m in there several times a week to see the dean.”
“You get called in to see the dean that frequently, huh?”
“Occasionally he calls me, but just as often it’s the other way around. We play racquetball, then grab some lunch.”
“That’s a novel way to keep an eye on your child’s progress at school.” She bobbed her head as if she approved.
“My child?”
“Sorry, I meant your son or daughter. I forget that young people want to be considered adults, not children. My Carrie certainly does.”
“I don’t have any children.” He held up his hand to show her that there was no wedding ring on his finger, not that the age-old symbol of commitment meant much to some people these days. “Not even married.”
Cullen noted that her ring finger was bare but she fiddled with a gold band on her right thumb.
“So you hang around here because...” She waited for him to finish. Surely the lady didn’t believe he was trolling for dates among the students?
“I hang around here because I’m getting an education.” She continued to stare so he elaborated. “Actually, I’ve gotten several educations since I first enrolled right out of high school. I don’t have plans to leave anytime soon, even though Miss Nancy has tried to kick me out into the real world on more occasions than you can shake a stick at. My brothers call me a professional student, and at this point it’s useless for me to deny it.”
“So you’re a student and not a parent? That’s cool,” she said. Her smile and the tilt of her head said she was interested in his story.
“Finally!” He exaggerated the word. “Somebody who appreciates the idea that higher education isn’t just what kids do while they wait for the best job or the right mate to come along.”
“I’d enjoy hearing more, but I’ve got to finish completing these forms and get over to our apartment before the girls get home.”
“Do you need any help? I know my way around a class registration fairly well by now. What is your daughter interested in studying? The curriculum is a bit limited during the summer sessions.”
Sarah’s smile was back. She relaxed against the folding chair and dropped her pencil on the form.
“I suppose I had that coming.”
“What?” Cullen was confused.
“My oldest daughter is only thirteen and the primary subject that interests her is the ever threatening world of zombies and vampires.”
Embarrassment warmed Cullen’s neck. Assuming a woman was old enough to have a kid in college was up there with assuming a lady’s rounded figure meant she was pregnant.
“I’m sorry.” He struggled to apologize. “I didn’t mean to insinuate you were old. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being old, you’re just not that old.”
She held a palm outward to stop the flow of words.
“I’m not insulted. Really, I’m not. I made the same assumption about you. What do you say we call it even?”
“It’s a deal.” Cullen extended his hand and he was very grateful when she accepted his shake and his apology.
* * *
SARAH CAUGHT THE gleam in Cullen’s eye and the spark in his touch. For the first time in the three years since Joe’s death, physical contact with a man had made her insides quiver. She’d figured that magical sensation was gone forever.
“So, whose application are you filling out, if I may be bold enough to ask?” He tucked his chin to his chest in a gun-shy but teasing posture.
It’s for me,” Sarah answered softly, still afraid to admit it out loud.
“Beg pardon?”
“Me!” she insisted more boldly. “The application is for me.”
He stared at her with eyes the color of wet slate. The man was a ringer for that famous British soccer player who’d moved with his Spice Girl wife from London to Beverly Hills. Sarah’s seven-year-old could probably recite their names, but there was zero allowance for pop culture in a single mother’s life. Bearing the load alone was heavy, but not more than she could manage.
During the last moments of her husband’s battle with leukemia, she’d held Joe in her arms and encouraged him to let go of this life, promising him that their girls would be okay. And that was mostly true. Today Carrie, Meg and Hope had what they needed, they just didn’t have who they needed. And now Sarah was going to spend more hours away from them to finish the degree that had once meant so much to
her. Some people would say her plan was selfish, but her employer had offered to pay the tuition—how could a widow turn that down?
“I’m going to complete my undergraduate.”
“That’s wonderful,” Cullen said encouragingly.
“Really? You don’t think I’m a bit...mature?”
He held his arms out in a “look at me” posture.
“Sarah, now that we’ve taken turns accusing each other of being over the hill, my guess is we’re probably about the same age. Ninety percent of the people on this campus expect that I’m a teacher because I’ve been studying here for so long. But trust me when I say I’m not the only individual over thirty—or even forty—who’s sitting on the observation side of the lectern. We actually have a sophomore in her seventies named Ruthie George. After Ruthie’s husband passed away, she decided to get her master’s.”
“Good for her,” Sarah said, voicing her approval over the older woman’s decision to keep moving forward with her life.
But Ruthie had probably shared many decades with her husband, while Sarah had been cheated of so many precious years. Life had short-changed her young family and her heart would forever bear a tender bruise from the loss.
Somehow life went on, the girls outgrew their shoes and Sarah outgrew her fears. She’d put one foot in front of the other and pressed ahead for the sake of her daughters. And if she wanted to advance any further with the law firm and get her paralegal licensing, she had to complete her education.
“I think I’d enjoy meeting Ruthie. She sounds like a role model I could use in my circle of friends right now.”
Sarah was grateful for her mother’s unfailing help with the girls, but Margaret Callaghan had never had professional ambitions, and she’d never worked outside their family home.
“Ruthie says that it’s her time to fly,” Cullen explained. “For fifty years she put her family before her education and now that she’s alone again, she’s going to do whatever it takes to fulfill the dream she put on hold the moment her first child was born.”
“Your friend and I have a lot in common, in spite of our thirty-year-age difference.”
“You’ve been a stay-at-home mom, too?”
“Only when the girls were little. As soon as my youngest was out of diapers I went to work with a law firm. But now, if I want to advance any further I have to get my paralegal certification. I can’t do that without an undergraduate degree, and since they’re willing to pay for it, here I am.”
There was a ruckus a few tables away as young people who were playing cards broke into laughter. Sarah supposed there had been a day when she’d been so carefree but it had been so long ago it was nothing more than a distant memory. Their smiling faces reminded her of her daughters and she glanced at the wall clock above the exit door.
“Let me get out of here so you can finish.” Cullen gathered up the bits of trash from their coffee and swept the table clean with a napkin. “I’m sorry I interrupted your efforts,” he apologized.
“I don’t mean to run you off, but I have to get this to your Miss Nancy before the office closes.”
“By next week she’ll be your Miss Nancy, too.”
“Oh, gosh, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“There are probably a lot of things you haven’t thought of yet. When you want a class recommendation or even a cup of coffee with your new friend, Cullen Temple, just give me a holler.”
“Do I holler at any particular corner of the campus?”
“I can generally be found in the history department, Heath-Harwick Hall. But if you don’t spot me over there just leave a message with Miss Nancy.”
“And she’ll see that you get it?”
“Probably not, but it’s worth a try.”
Cullen tilted his handsome head in a gesture of respect, took his coffee mug and made his way toward the exit, stopping every few tables to speak to someone he knew. Sarah wouldn’t be hanging out in the student center often enough to have acquaintances on campus like Cullen did. But she had made one new friend—though if she didn’t finish the enrollment form soon she wouldn’t even get another chance to speak to him.
“My new friend, Cullen Temple,” she said only loud enough so that she could hear the words. “I like the way that sounds.”
CHAPTER THREE
CULLEN FIGURED A week of preparation for his first class was enough.
He’d figured wrong.
Standing before the small group in Blair’s lecture hall on Monday afternoon, he felt like a poor substitute for the professor the students had expected to hear. After he began to rush through the talking points, only one person bothered to make eye contact, and having that person’s blue eyes fixed on Cullen’s every move only made things more nerve-racking.
Twenty minutes short of the ninety-minute class he closed Blair’s carefully prepared notes and dismissed the group. He turned about-face as they hurried toward the exit as if their stand-in instructor might call them back for another hour of boredom on European civilization.
“The sign on the lecture hall door claims you’re Dr. Cullen Temple but you didn’t sound anything like the smooth talker I had coffee with last week.”
Cullen looked around to find Sarah Eason standing in front of him. She’d tried to be helpful by signaling him a couple of times during his lecture to slow his delivery down, without success.
“Was that awful, or what?” he asked, already well aware of the answer.
“I wouldn’t say awful. Awful is a dried-up, day-old hot dog. That was more of a cold, greasy onion ring. If you just warm it up there may still be potential.”
“I’m sorry you witnessed that debacle.” He slumped against the white board on the wall behind him. “I shouldn’t have agreed to take over this class. It’s one thing to be a guest lecturer on a subject of my own choosing and quite another to pick up where a tenured professor has left off.”
“So Dr. Mastal really was supposed to be teaching this class, as it says on the syllabus? I thought maybe I’d wandered into the wrong lecture hall, but when I saw it was you I decided to hang around. I’m only auditing this semester so it’s not as if anybody was expecting me.”
“I hope my performance tonight doesn’t stop you from sitting in on the class again. I’m really gonna have to cram so I can redeem myself on Wednesday. Otherwise, your husband’s going to complain that your time away from the family is being wasted.”
She took a seat in the front row, settled her notebook and purse on the adjacent chair and crossed one bare leg over the other beneath the full skirt of her faded yellow sundress.
“Come, sit,” she encouraged, probably in the same patient voice she used with her children.
He did as instructed, sitting two seats away with her things in between them.
“I’m a widow.” Her voice was soft but matter-of-fact.
Before he could stammer out condolences she reached across the vacant seat and placed a hand on his arm.
“Don’t say anything. It’s been three years and the girls and I are adjusting to our new normal.”
“How...” Cullen wanted to ask, not at all sure he should.
“Joe was diagnosed with leukemia right after we learned I was pregnant with our third daughter, Hope. He’d suspected something was terribly wrong for months but kept it to himself because he didn’t want to worry me. We were told from the start it was terminal but we’d have a few years. I don’t pretend it wasn’t devastating to our lives or that everybody’s fine now. We get through it one day at a time and treasure every blessing.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “I can’t imagine losing a spouse. When I was in high school, both of my parents were killed in a private plane crash, so I understand a little of what your daughters are going through.”
“It’s to
ugh for my girls. I try to meet all their emotional needs but nothing can take the place of a daddy, as you well know. And I’m sorry you had a tragic loss at such a young age.”
“Thank you.” Cullen released a sigh. He was a bonehead, making too much of one failed lecture when the woman beside him was struggling with problems that might eventually get better but would never completely go away. Something else he was well acquainted with.
After his parents’ deaths, he’d suffered terrifying anxiety attacks, and while they’d subsided years ago, the dread of their return never left him. He’d only ever told Blair and Alma, the woman who’d stepped in to care for the Temple brothers, of his fears.
Hoping to get them past these sad subjects, he said, “Do you have to rush home, or can I buy you a bite to eat? I’m suddenly starving and the grill in the student center makes great cheeseburgers. I’ll even spring for some onion rings so the evening won’t be a total loss.” He smiled to lift the mood.
“Could I get a rain check? Tonight I’m meeting my mother and the girls for pizza. It’s one of those family places where kids can stay busy with arcade games for hours. Mom gives them each a roll of quarters and then she’s free to sit and read her romance novel. That should keep everyone occupied for a while, but I should head over soon.”
“You say it’s a family place?”
“Yeah, it’s the one out on the loop, near the mall.”
“Oh, I know the one you’re taking about. They have a nice buffet. What could be better than all the pepperoni pizza you can eat?”
“Would you care to join us?”
He shook his head. He hadn’t meant to fish for an invitation. But Blair’s words about giving less attention to the people in books and more to the living had stuck in Cullen’s mind like bubble gum on hot pavement.
