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I’m sorry, Doctor, Eric said in his mind. What I said, what she said, the promise we made—this is the second moment I can’t let myself remember.
“No problem,” the doctor said.
What Cassidy and Eric had vowed to each other kept him wide-eyed awake, excitedly alive, until Cassidy’s last semester as a senior. Then something… A toothache had sent Cassidy into emergency oral surgery, and she was laid up. Eric had tried to help her keep up with her work, but stubborn Cassidy had pushed him away, wanted to do everything herself. He’d seen less and less of her, and when he had seen her, she was pale, thinner, with bags under her eyes as big as coin purses. That last time he’d seen her, two days before her graduation, she’d been in the library, scribbling madly into a notebook. When he’d tapped her on the shoulder, she’d jumped, stared at him with frightening, bloodshot eyes, and bolted from the library, mumbling an apology, or something that sounded like it.
Graduation day dawned. A horde of black-robed seniors hurtled themselves off the main building’s stone stairs, shrieking with joy. Eric waited in the spot they’d chosen. Waited with a locket in his sweating hand, the one he’d wanted to give Cassidy as they began their new future together. The quad emptied around him as he stood alone in that moment…
“I understand,” the doctor said.
Eric was glad. That third moment he couldn’t let himself remember, that one was the hardest. The one he’d had no explanation for—for ten years.
He clutched the empty plastic cup in his hand, crumpling it, and suddenly a smiling flight attendant was there. He dropped it in the trash bag she held out and leaned back again.
He never searched Cassidy out. He’d refused to. His pride wouldn’t let him. But now, Professor Gilbert needed help from his former students to save his job, and everyone knew reliable Cassidy Maxwell would do anything for a friend. One conversation with a fellow Saunders alum and suddenly Eric was over the Atlantic Ocean, traveling to another continent to bring the only woman in his heart back into his life.
The main lights in the cabin blinked out. People around Eric reached for headsets and neck pillows, reclining their seats back.
“I’ll let you get some sleep. Good luck on your trip,” the doctor said.
Eric knew the luck wasn’t for him, but decided to take a little anyway. He was about to need it.
All he’d ever wanted to do was to help people. That’s why he became a professor. He wanted to teach young people, guide them, assist them in any way he could in making decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.
Now, there was one person Gilbert Harrison was powerless to help. Himself.
Gilbert laid his head down on his cluttered desk. His forehead knocked several file folders to the floor and he heard papers scatter, but he didn’t bother to bend down to pick them up. He just closed his eyes and listened to silence. It was nearly midnight, but he couldn’t go home. These days, it was hard to leave his office, because each time he did, he was forced to wonder if it would be the last time.
He’d done so much in this office, for so many students, for so many years.
The Board of Directors’ investigation, led by the vindictive Alex Broadstreet, was a humiliating chapter in Gilbert’s professional life at Saunders University. So far, he’d had his name dragged through the mud and he’d been forced to ask former students to return to campus to appeal to the board on his behalf. It was ironic, considering they didn’t even know the half of what he’d done for each of them, but he had taken a chance that their successes as alumni could sway the board and save his job. The only job he ever wanted to do.
And just as a candle of hope had begun to flicker, it was blown out again when he got Eric Barnes’s phone call today. Eric had called from Logan International Airport, about to board a plane to London to bring Cassidy Maxwell back to Massachusetts.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Gilbert had asked after a stunned pause.
“Ella Gardner and I had lunch last week,” Eric had answered. “She told me about you, and your trouble there at Saunders. Are you all right?”
“I’m hanging in there,” Gilbert had answered honestly.
“Look, you know you’re everyone’s favorite professor. It’s our turn to help you. I’ve thought this over. I know—Cassidy—would want to help you if she could. And I’m going to London to ask her.”
He can barely say her name, Gilbert had thought. Eric was as afraid to face Cassidy Maxwell as Gilbert was, though for entirely different reasons. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gilbert said, measuring his words. “She’s now Ambassador Alan Cole’s chief go-to girl.”
Good for her, he thought silently, in spite of his growing fear. “She has a busy schedule. Don’t bother her with this, with my problems.”
“You know her, Professor. If she finds out about this later, she’ll be angry no one told her.”
“True,” Gilbert had been forced to admit. “Why not just give her a call or e-mail her?”
“I think she’ll be more likely to come back if she’s summoned in person. Besides…” His voice had trailed off and Gilbert had waited a moment before Eric added, “Phone calls and e-mails are too easy to ignore. And she’s done an admirable job of ignoring me for the past ten years. For your sake, I need to talk to her in person.”
“For my sake, huh?”
Gilbert could tell by the silence that perhaps a decade wasn’t long enough to heal a broken heart. “Are you sure you are ready for this?”
“It’s time,” Eric had said shakily, then more forcefully, repeated, “It’s time.”
“What if she doesn’t…”
“I don’t plan on dragging her back by her hair. I’ll tell her what’s going on and leave it up to her.”
Gilbert had sighed then. Eric knew what dire straits his old professor was in. If Gilbert protested any more, Eric would grow suspicious, and he couldn’t afford that. He’d wished his former student luck and hung up.
Then he’d sat here in his office chair, without moving, for hours. His anxiety, already high from his job crisis, had expanded until he felt he’d be eaten from the inside out.
He lifted his head and looked out the tiny window next to his desk, but saw nothing but his own reflection. That was the last thing he wanted to see: Gilbert Harrison staring into himself. He snapped off the small desk lamp and sat in darkness. He could see the outline of leaves against the sky. When a breeze blew through, the leaves fluttered slackly, beginning to lose their hold on the branches. In harsh New England winter afternoons, Gilbert could see the Liberal Arts building across the street. In late spring, the lush greenery again obstructed his view. He had noticed this every year—for thirty years.
In the last few weeks, he’d seen his past come back to him: Saunders sweethearts David and Sandra Westport, crack attorney Nate Williams, the still-beautiful Kathryn Price, sharp-as-a-tack Jane Jackson, a transformed Dr. Jacob Weber. He’d been glad to see each of them. His heart had puffed with pride as he’d examined their older, different faces and heard their stories.
But Cassidy Maxwell might come back, as well.
Her former classmates had gotten wind of her possible return and were excited at the prospect of seeing her again. She had been the good girl on campus, a brilliant scholar, a willing tutor, everyone’s friend. The alumni were convinced she could play a major role in keeping Gilbert on the Saunders faculty.
“Won’t it be great to see her again?” they asked Gilbert, one by one. “It’s been so long! Isn’t it terrific she might come back?”
What no one would have ever guessed was that if Gilbert had his way, he’d keep good-girl Cassidy as far away from Saunders University as possible. The other side of an ocean wasn’t even far enough.
If Cassidy came back, she’d also bring back Gilbert’s deepest, darkest secret. A secret she’d discovered a long time ago, accidentally. A secret no one else knew.
That secret could not only destroy Gilbert’s career, but his entire life as he knew it—his and the lives of others.
Gilbert put his head in his hands again. I’m so sorry, Eric, he thought with shame. I’ve never before wanted one of my students to fail.
But I hope you do.
Chapter Two
“What do you mean, we can’t get the Château Clinet?” Cassidy asked.
She held the phone slightly away from her ear as the wine supplier offered a rambling explanation for not being able to meet Cassidy’s wine order for the ambassador’s reception tonight. Unfortunately, Cassidy didn’t have much time for explanations. She was more a solutions person.
“Right,” Cassidy interrupted. “Well, since it won’t do to be without wine tonight, we need a Plan B. Can you replace the Château Clinet with Château Clos Fourtet? If I can’t get the Pomerol, the Saint-Emilion should be just as good.” The wine supplier put her on hold to check and, lifting her chin to her open office door, Cassidy called, “Sophie?”
The eager junior staffer appeared almost immediately. Cassidy waved her in and handed her a stack of paper samples. “If you’d please call the paper shop, the number’s on top, tell them the stock they recommended for the official stationery is excellent, but the color was a little dark. Tell them the light cream is what we want.”
“Right away.” As Sophie scurried out, the wine supplier came back to the phone to report they could indeed deliver the needed quantity of Château Clos Fourtet to the ambassador’s residence that afternoon. Cassidy was relieved. Ambassador Alan Cole was hosting a Winfield House reception that night for his good friend, the artistic director for a prominent Chicago ballet company, who was in London to collaborate on a project with the Royal Ballet. The ambassador was pleased to have his friend in town, and Cassidy didn’t want any problems, no matter how minor.
Of course, as Ambassador Cole’s office management specialist, Cassidy’s job was to ensure all U.S. Embassy problems were kept to a very bare minimum.
Cassidy thanked the wine supplier and hung up, and the moment she lifted her finger from the End button, her cell phone jingled again. “Maxwell,” she answered. She looked at her index finger, where a permanent dent seemed to have formed. The front desk secretary informed her that the plumber had arrived.
“I’m on my way,” Cassidy said. She breezed through the front office, where many people were typing, faxing, taking calls. Charles, another junior staffer, stood and sprinted over to her. People in the embassy were always running to catch up to Cassidy.
“MP Violet Ashton wants to meet with the ambassador as soon as possible,” he said. Cassidy was appreciative that Charles knew to waste no time on pleasantries. “And Sir Neville Pritchard of the House of Lords wants to see the ambassador, also.”
“Can I assume MP Ashton wants to meet regarding the ambassador’s Northern Ireland peace initiative?”
“Correct.”
“Right, tell her tomorrow is fine. Anytime. I’ll fit the agenda around her. And Sir Pritchard, tell him Wednesday or Thursday of next week, midafternoon is best.”
“All right.”
Cassidy left the large room, rounded several corners, walked down several long hallways. The sharp heels of her black leather ankle boots clicked authoritatively, a sound she secretly liked.
She greeted the plumber at the main entrance and escorted him up three floors. Standing together in the otherwise empty elevator, he gave her a friendly, appraising glance. She winced as the elevator dinged and wordlessly led him to a small room on the left.
Cassidy maneuvered many locks with keys and codes and eventually let them both into a small nondescript room. She perched on a table and waited as the plumber investigated the leak Cassidy had reported last week. She would have to wait until he was done, as only a small handful of people had the top-secret clearance to even enter this room, which was filled with classified files.
She glanced at her watch. She wanted to call the public affairs department before two o’clock, and there was that meeting at three…
Cassidy crossed her legs at the knee and noticed splotchy raindrop marks on her shoes. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped at them. At dawn, she’d been out on a Heathrow Airport tarmac with bodyguards to greet an assistant U.S. secretary of state, and although she’d been standing under an umbrella, London’s legendary dreary rain had soaked her feet and dampened the cuffs of her trousers. She’d had to grin and bear the splooshing between her toes as she’d escorted the official in a limo to his breakfast meeting with the ambassador.
At least the sun was out again, but Cassidy was annoyed to be even thinking about the weather. She was so accustomed to constant motion and decision-making that it was maddening to have more than five minutes of downtime.
Downtime led to quiet contemplation, to thinking. Cassidy had trained herself long ago not to sit and think. Keep moving, she told herself, from the minute she woke up every morning to the last moment before she dropped her head on the pillow. Keep moving.
Don’t stop.
She whipped out a small pad of paper and pen from an inside pocket of her fitted black pin-striped jacket and began to scribble a list of things to do in the next hour. Call Winfield House and ask the head housekeeper to fax her tonight’s menu to make sure nothing was forgotten, update the ambassador’s schedule for tomorrow to fit in the meeting with the MP—Cassidy’s stomach rumbled. Oh, yes, get lunch. If time permits.
After the plumber indicated he was finished but would need to get into a rest room one floor above, Cassidy let them both out, secured the room and called Charles to take the worker to the rest room. Then she returned to the front office and resumed running around for several more hours.
At promptly three, Cassidy escorted five men and one woman to a public meeting room. They were representatives from an American lingerie company called Underneath It All. They wanted to open a London branch, and they were set to make a pitch for support from the ambassador.
But Ambassador Cole had not yet returned from his appointments. Cassidy sighed, and as she chatted informally with the businesspeople, her cell phone rang. “Maxwell.”
“Cassidy, it’s me,” Ambassador Cole said, but his voice sounded very far away, and strained through static.
“I can’t hear you well, Ambassador.”
“Bad connection. Listen, I’m running late. We’re sitting here in traffic the likes of which I’ve never seen.”
“Since yesterday?” Cassidy couldn’t help herself.
“I did say that yesterday, didn’t I?” The ambassador chuckled. “Cassidy, you’ll hold down the fort.” It wasn’t a question. It was a confident statement.
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t be longer than a half hour. Shouldn’t, but who knows for sure. There’s a double-decker bus in front of the car, and we can’t see a bloody thing.”
Cassidy smiled. Like herself, Ambassador Cole hadn’t picked up a British accent, but had managed to adopt several choice phrases. “Don’t worry. We’re good to go here. We’ll get things done.”
“I know you will.”
“I’m fitting MP Ashton in tomorrow.” She decided not to tell him about the averted wine crisis. It would just sound like showing off. “And there are a few documents on your desk that need approval before I send them out.”
“Thank you, Cassidy.”
He clicked off and Cassidy faced the small group. “That was the ambassador. He’s running a bit behind. If you spend more than two days in London, you’ll know that isn’t an unusual scenario.”
The guests chuckled.
“Right,” Cassidy said. “I’ll arrange for tea service, and while we wait for the ambassador, you can ask me anything you like about London. I’ve been working here at the embassy for just about ten years, so I should be able to answer just about any question you might have while we wait.”
One phone call and ten minutes later, Cassidy’s fellow Americans were pouring tea and looking delighted about it. Cassidy remembered when she first arrived in London and how she thought tea was so refined and classy and relaxed. Now she was lucky to gulp down two sips from a takeaway thermos on the way to a meeting.
The businesspeople asked Cassidy many questions about many topics, from London’s shopping areas to the weather to the hot-button political issues. They seemed pleased with Cassidy’s straightforward, knowledgeable answers, and the more information she supplied, the more questions they asked.
Cassidy loved her job, but often felt tired at the end of the day, and not from running around. She often grew weary from all her talking. She’d never talked much, as a child, as a teenager. She’d chosen not to. She supposed she’d always liked to watch life, and listen.
At the embassy, she had to be an effective communicator, and she believed she was, but sometimes she secretly longed for the time when she could say nothing and have her feelings be understood anyway. The person who never failed at that understanding was—
Not in her life now.
Cassidy shook her head with a tiny motion and kept talking so she didn’t have to think about him, about anything. When it came to suppressing unthinkable thoughts, she was a professional with a decade of experience.
“Ms. Maxwell,” said one of the men. She looked at him. He was easily the youngest one in the room, perhaps the most eager to show his bosses that he meant business. He reached into a large portfolio at his feet and pulled out a posterboard featuring a black-and-white photo of a scantily clad couple in a heated embrace. “You’ve been so helpful, that I think we can use your personal opinion. Tell us, how do you think Brits would feel about this poster on a Piccadilly Circus billboard?”
Cassidy looked at the poster, but a flash of movement caught her gaze and coaxed it over the man’s shoulder. She could see through the glass wall of the meeting room, straight to the embassy lobby.
Straight into a pair of eyes.
Cassidy sucked in a breath so hard she almost choked.
Bottomless black eyes.
From here, a stranger might think the distance made those eyes look black. But Cassidy was no stranger, and she knew if she walked out of the meeting room, walked closer and closer until she was an inch away, they would still be an almost-impossible ink-black.
Those eyes—Cassidy remembered how as a smitten child, as a teenager with a crush, as a young woman in love, she would do anything to make those eyes look her way. Then, after her mistakes, she feared she could never look into those eyes again. So she’d run away.
There was nowhere to run now.
Every memory she’d banished to the far corners of her mind now leaped out like monsters in a haunted house. Every single thought she’d outrun now clawed at her back.
The only man she ever loved was standing right in front of her again, and there was no escape.
Eric didn’t smile. He didn’t wave or nod. He just held her gaze, and Cassidy was forced to face the hurt she’d inflicted.
“Ms. Maxwell?” she heard, and snapped her attention back to the poster. “Ms. Maxwell? How do you think people in London will feel about this ad?”
Cassidy parted her lips, intending to give a professional response, but her mind tricked her into honesty. “Stunned,” she mumbled. She looked over the man’s shoulder. Eric hadn’t moved. “Shocked,” she whispered.
The uncomfortable rustling in the room brought her back once again. “Excuse me?” the one woman asked. “I rather thought Europeans were less reserved than Americans.”
“We intended a sexy, suggestive effect, not something offensive,” another man in the business delegation added.
“Oh…” Cassidy said, willing herself to focus on her job. Pretend he’s not there, she told herself. He’s probably not there. You forgot lunch, after all. It’s probably a hallucination brought on by hunger.
“What I meant to, ah, say, was…” Cassidy began.
It’s not him. It can’t be him. It must be someone who looks like him. The world has no shortage of tall, dark and handsome. Just a look-alike, that’s all.
“What I meant to say,” Cassidy repeated firmly, “was that Europeans will be shocked and stunned—that it’s not even more racy.” She pushed out a laugh.
Luckily, the company reps laughed, also, letting Cassidy off the hook.
Off the hook in here, at least, Cassidy thought. But I have to leave this room eventually. And even though she warned herself not to, she peered out the glass one more time.
Eric Barnes still stood, with a patience she knew full well he had.
Cassidy looked away from him again. She would not allow this.
Her cell jingled. “Maxwell,” she answered, willing her voice not to shake. She turned to face the wall behind her.
The voice on the other end sounded very close, because it was—the front desk was only steps from the room. “There’s a man here to see you. Eric Barnes. He says he doesn’t have an appointment but insists he see you. He says he knows you personally. I told him you were very busy, and I’d see what I could do.”
Run, was her first instinct. Run out the back door. Keep running…
Cassidy sighed and rubbed her left temple. She had a roomful of people behind her and one of the most respected politicians in all of Europe counting on her. Running was not an option right now.
“I don’t know when I’ll be finished here,” she said into the phone. “I’m waiting on the ambassador. But tell Mr.—Mr. Barnes that he can wait if he wants.”
She clicked off and suddenly felt like Dead Woman Walking.
She turned to the group and talked some more, laughed a bit, and checked her watch often because every time she did, she forgot. She rolled her chair back a couple of inches, putting a blond man directly between her and her view of the lobby. By the time the ambassador strode in and the group rose in greeting, there were hot, damp patches under her arms and a thin rivulet of perspiration was snaking its way along her hairline.
“I apologize for my delay,” the ambassador said. “But I am sure Cassidy kept you all as busy as she keeps me.”
As the people in the room happily chimed in about Cassidy’s helpfulness, the ambassador smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but felt an ugly grimace distort her cheek muscles instead. Before her boss could catch on, she stepped with great reluctance from the room, took a deep breath and took several heel-clacking strides to the lobby.
Eric had taken a seat, but he glanced up when she walked in and rose to his feet. Cassidy nodded at the reception desk, then walked right up to him and angled her head toward the door. He followed her outside and when she stopped and turned, he was suddenly so close that she had to tilt her head up a few inches to look at him.
A deep crease bisected the space between his thick, dark eyebrows—something that wasn’t there before. His hair was different, and she realized with a start that it was shot through with gray. When had that begun? Gray hair seemed like something reserved for older men, much older men, who’d seen—but then, how could she presume to know what Eric had or hadn’t seen?
He just kept standing there, silent, obligating her to speak first.
Questions began to throb across Cassidy’s mind. Why are you here? Why, after all this time? Why couldn’t you just let go? Why are you making me face you now?
But she finally chose to say only one word, and it came out of her throat in a ragged whisper. “Why?”
Eric recoiled. Not physically, but something in his expression pulled back for a moment. Cassidy was unsettled by it; she’d never surprised him before.
“‘Why?’” he repeated in a voice that was a bit lower, a bit harsher, than she’d ever heard it. “Did you just ask me, ‘Why’? Why in hell are you asking me why? It should be me asking you. Why, Cassidy?”
Hearing her name in his voice again almost made her break down in sobs, but she fought hard against herself.