Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

with you. A lot of time with you. I think you understand what I’m saying.”

Initially, she said she’d need to think about it. Asked if she could let him know the next time she came to his class. Afterward.

An inner quiver began in him then. What if she took his offer over his head? Reported him? Well, it would be her word against his … and he had tenure and she was a girl who’d managed to get herself pregnant before she’d even graduated from high school. Who would they likely believe? “Of course,” he said.

Two days later she returned to class. Smiled at him each time his eyes happened her way. A subtle answer without words. Without acknowledgement of an offer accepted.

Yes, indeed. Piece of cake.

Chapter Thirty

May 1982

She lay on her stomach, her hair fanned to one side, her face turned toward the other. Toward him. She’d scooted down in her sleep so that her head now lay on the mattress near his chest. Patterson turned slightly, enough that his fingers could rake through her blond mane. Enough to wake her without disturbing her slumber. Or startle her.

Long lashes batted against upper cheekbones until her eyes were wide and staring at him. She stretched, catlike, as a slow smile broke across her face. “Hey,” she said, the old drawl not nearly as noticeable as it had been when he’d first met her.

Patterson reached over and kissed the top of her forehead, inhaling the scent of floral shampoo. “Hey, yourself.”

Cindie raised up to prop on her elbows. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A couple of hours.”

She laid a hand on his bare chest, allowed her fingers to play with the small tuft of hair at the top of the breastbone. “I can’t believe it. I must have been tireder than I thought.”

“More tired,” he corrected. Her language skills had improved greatly over their two years together. Still, sometimes—

But then she grinned at him again and he knew he’d been had. “I know … I just like to see if you know.”

He pulled her to him then, laughing as his arms wrapped around her, pressing the warmth of her to the warmth of him. “I’m going to miss you,” he said with a kiss to the tip of her upturned nose. “Do you have to go?”

Cindie laid her cheek against the hollow of his chest. “My brother’s wife just had a baby, Professor. Of course, I have to go.”

“A baby,” he said. “They’re too young to have a baby.”

“I think you forget …”

“That’s different. They had a baby on purpose.”

Her fingers drummed against his upper arm. “Things are different in the country. They marry young, have their babies young, and grow old together.” She looked up, kissed him as though she intended to start something, but then scurried off the bed, dragging the sheet with her, wrapping it around herself as she stepped toward the bathroom.

“Promise you won’t be gone any longer than you said.”

She turned back, rested her shoulder against the doorframe where the light from a side window shot in and spilled over her like the goddess he wished her to one day be. “Sunday night. I promise. I’ll see you—when? Monday afternoon?”

He sat up with a shake of his head. Pulled the spread, which had become bunched at the foot of the bed, up to his waist. “No can do. Patricia has a piano recital. We’re going out to dinner afterward.” Her face darkened and he added, “Hey. Don’t do that. You know how I feel.”

“I know.”

They needed a change of subject. “Will you get to spend much time with Michelle?”

“I pick her up tomorrow morning,” she said, her whole face bright again. Flushed, which gave him cause for worry.

“Will you see him, too?”

“Only for as long as I have to.” She returned to the bed, walking the length of it on her knees until she was directly in front of him. “Hey,” she said, now mimicking him. “Don’t do that. You know how I feel.”

He reached for her, tickling. She laughed, the melody of it filling the room with its song until he had her flat on her back, him over her. “Do we have time for another moondance?” he asked, referencing the lyrics from a Van Morrison tune he’d introduced her to, the one she called “their song.”

She shook her head and whispered. “I have to go. But I’ll miss you every second of every minute of every day until we moondance again.” She smiled, offering radiance to her words of “no.”

“You have made me so, so happy. Do you know that?”

Cindie nodded beneath him, her eyes searching his, her hands pressed on the sides of his face. “Say it,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“No,” he teased. “And you can’t make me.”

She squeezed until his lips puckered. “Say it.”

“Can’t with my lips like this,” he managed.

She softened her hold on him. “Say it.”

“I love you,” he answered. Not necessarily because it was true—not entirely—but because it made her happy. And she made him happy. A little something in his life that made his soul smile. Something that filled the gaps left by Mary Helen.

She kissed him again—his jaw, his brow, his eyes, and finally his mouth—until, once more, she darted out from under him. “I’ve really gotta go,” she said. “Traffic is a bear and if I don’t leave soon …” She made it to the bathroom this time.

“Tuesday afternoon,” he called after her, already counting the days and every maddening minute that filled them. Only the antics of his daughters kept him from going stark raving mad.

“With bells on,” she sent back.

Patterson fell back against the pillow. If only Mary Helen’s voice sang to him the way Cindie’s did … well, then. There would be no need for a mistress, would there? His brow tensed under the pressure of the conflict that often sparred within him. His relationship with Cindie was wrong—on a number of levels. He knew that. But