Caylor set the plastic action figures of Sir Galahad and Morgana behind her desk on the shelf displaying other figures from the legend of King Arthur. Where Flannery kept coming up with these, she’d never guess. With last night’s addition of these two as part of her birthday present, the collection of literary and legendary action figures was up to at least thirty.
Along with Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce, the collection included Henry V, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I; King Richard the Lionheart, one standing and one on horseback; William Wallace and Robert the Bruce from the Braveheart movie; Sherlock Holmes; fashion dolls dressed as the Brontë sisters; and several characters from the Robin Hood legend. They were scattered throughout her office, near the books pertinent to their presence in a British literature professor’s office.
She stuck two of the blank journals Flannery had also given her into the top drawer of her desk. Even though Flannery either got them as promotional marketing items from vendors or off the bargain table at bookstores, it didn’t matter. She always found the most interesting and unique patterns and styles.
Caylor’s gift from Zarah sat on her nightstand at home. An 1899 copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Not a first edition, but still a rare printing from one of Caylor’s favorite authors. And when Caylor had protested at the extravagance of such a gift, Zarah had quieted her by telling her she’d picked it up online for next to nothing and felt bad for not spending more than she had.
The small brass clock on the desk chimed seven times. Zarah closed the office door and double-checked her appearance in the mirror on the back of it. Why, oh, why had she chosen to wear a sleeveless dress? Could her arms look any pastier and flabbier? Maybe she could just keep her coat on. But no, even though the black-and-white houndstooth trench coat was very nice, it just didn’t give off the Christmas party vibe the way the slightly shimmering, dark-aqua fabric of the multitiered cocktail dress did.
Leaving her purse locked in her desk drawer, Caylor left her office, making sure the door was locked behind her. She turned toward the stairs—and her heart leaped into her throat, pounding as hard as it could.
Walking toward her, dressed in a charcoal suit that must have cost a fortune, with a purple-and-gold-patterned silk tie and a gray wool overcoat folded over his arm, was Dylan Bradley. Once again, the memory of where she knew him from was so close she could almost reach out and grab it.
“You cut your hair.” Great first line.
He blushed a little and self-consciously touched the buzzed hair at the back of his head, then ran his hand up to tousle the artfully messy, longer pieces on top. “Yeah. I decided it was time.”
“Oh good, Caylor. I hoped we might run into you on the way over.” Bridget joined them.
Dylan turned and helped Bridget on with her coat. Caylor shrugged into hers at the same time so he didn’t feel obligated to assist her as well. He put his on—and fought with the collar that caught on his suit coat’s lapel and turned under.
Bridget tried to help but couldn’t quite reach. Wearing low heels tonight, Caylor was still almost the same height as Dylan, so she fixed it for him. Just as Isabella would have done for Giovanni.
Her fingertips tingled as if near a live electric wire, and she snatched her hands back. Observe, but never interfere. Wasn’t that the anthropologists’ credo? She thought she remembered something like that from the cultural anthropology course she’d taken as an undergrad. If she were to have a creed as a writer, that would be it—at least when it came to the real world. When it came to her characters’ lives, however—
“Shall we go?” Bridget started down the stairs.
Dylan motioned for Caylor to go ahead of him. “Ladies first.”
“Ah, looks like I’m not the only one with this idea.” Dr. Fletcher joined Dylan at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Bradley, isn’t it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Please, call me Barbara. No need to be so formal; I’m not the chair of your department.” She graced him with a rare smile and took hold of his arm for support going down the stairs.
Caylor met Bridget at the bottom of the stairs, and they walked ahead to the doors together. “I thought you invited him so I could flirt with him, not Dr. Fletcher,” Caylor whispered.
Bridget rolled her eyes. “He’ll be lucky if he gets that arm back tonight.”
Dr. Fletcher rapped the floor with her brass-tipped cane, startling both of them. Caylor was pretty sure she didn’t actually need it to walk but carried it around for imperious gestures like that. “Come, girls, why are we dallying?”
Caylor held the door open for them then fell in step beside Dr. Fletcher—with Bridget walking beside Dylan. The wind had died down, but the air still froze their breath into icy fog.
“I saw on the news that it snowed in Philadelphia this week.” Dr. Fletcher tapped her cane on the sidewalk as if setting a cadence. “I imagine you miss that, Dylan.”
“The first snow of the season is nice. But it gets old after a few months.” He seemed perfectly content escorting the older lady across campus toward the dining hall, as if this was exactly how he’d pictured the evening going.
Caylor longed for a pen and paper. Being near Dylan, observing how he treated the aristocratic Dr. Fletcher with aplomb and deference, sparked so many ideas for her story she feared they’d start leaking out her ears, and she’d lose most of them by the time she got back to her office in a couple of hours.
Inside the campus’s main hub, they bypassed the large, central staircase for the elevator beyond.
Dr. Fletcher didn’t let go of Dylan’s arm, even in the safety of the elevator. “I hear from Leonard Holtz that you’ll be joining his department as an adjunct next semester.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll be teaching two classes.”
“Did he tell you he has a professor going on sabbatical next year? He’ll have a visiting professorship open. If you’re as good as what I’ve heard, that position should be yours.”
Caylor almost warned Dylan not to listen to any staffing predictions Dr. Fletcher made. With the exception of the positions she directly controlled, her prognostications were usually wrong. But she couldn’t figure out how to tell Dylan that without insulting Dr. Fletcher.
“What have you heard about me?” Dylan’s voice sounded choked—but it could have been a by-product of the noise of the opening elevator doors.
“Oh, I have my sources.” She touched his arm with the head of her cane. “Nothing bad, mind you. All good. All very good.”
After divesting themselves of their coats at the makeshift coat-check station outside the dining hall, they entered. The dulcet sounds of the school’s madrigal choir from what sounded like this year’s Christmas concert provided a soft backdrop to the sparse crowd huddled near the middle of the cavernous space.
“Will you excuse me? I see someone I need to speak to.” Bridget bustled off.
“And I must go speak to the academic dean about a memo she sent out late this afternoon. Dylan, lovely to see you again. Thank you for the escort.”
“My pleasure, Dr. Fletcher.”
There they went, leaving Caylor standing here feeling like a sixth grader at her first school dance.
“You…um…you look really nice tonight, Caylor.” Instead of the laid-back, confident man who’d escorted Dr. Fletcher over here, Dylan now seemed to have morphed into a twitchy adolescent.
Good. At least she wasn’t alone in feeling uncomfortable. “Thanks. You look pretty nice yourself. Let me guess—just something you had hanging around in your closet?”
He ran his palms down the front of the jacket. “Yeah, actually. It’s something I bought in Philadelphia.”
She nodded. “I’ll bet you had to go to a lot of gala events and show openings where you had to dress up like this.” She took a glass of iced tea off the tray a server from the school’s catering company brought around.
He shrugged and took a glass of tea as well. “Not really. As the artist, I wasn’t expected to show up in a suit.”
A flash of light took them both by surprise. Caylor blinked and then came to focus on a small, wiry guy with a huge camera anchored by a strap around his neck. “Hey, Dr. Evans. Picture for the faculty intranet newsletter. Get together and…and hold your glasses out like you’re toasting.”
“Yes, we love having candid pictures in the newsletter,” Caylor whispered to Dylan as they stepped closer until their shoulders touched. The smooth texture of the suiting material over the warm, solid arm underneath sent goose bumps rushing all over Caylor’s body.
A couple of blinding flashes later, the camera went down. “Dr. Putnam, I’d like to introduce Dylan Bradley, who’s going to be joining the art department as an adjunct in the spring.” She looked at Dylan. “Dr. Putnam teaches photography for both art and journalism.”
The two men shook hands and exchanged pleasantries; then Dr. Putnam picked up the camera from its resting place on his chest. “Well, I’d better get back to taking photos now that more folks are arriving. I have to say, you two make a stunning couple.”
Atomic heat suffused Dylan’s face at the photographer’s statement.
Beside him, Caylor laughed. “Everyone’s a matchmaker.”
“What’s that?” Dylan’s hand shook when he raised his glass to take a sip, so he lowered it again. Too many times in his life, females had gotten the wrong idea about him and his intentions toward them simply because of an offhanded comment like Dr. Putnam’s.
“Oh, I…It just seems like everyone in my life right now is trying to—” Caylor turned bright red. “Never mind.”
He had a feeling he knew exactly what she’d been about to say. Before his relationship with Rhonda became common knowledge, everyone in Philadelphia had tried to set him up at every available opportunity. How long would it be before people here started doing it, too?
“Caylor, I see you’ve met the art department’s new acquisition.” Dr. Holtz and his wife joined them. After extolling Dylan’s qualifications to his wife, Holtz introduced them. Caylor excused herself and crossed the room to join Dr. Fletcher and the other English professor who’d come to the dinner party last week. They were quickly surrounded by several other couples. Caylor, however, could never get lost in a crowd—not standing taller than every woman and most of the men in the growing group. That, and no matter what angle Dylan viewed her from or how she positioned her body, he could clearly imagine painting her just so.
He returned his attention to Dr. Holtz’s introductions of the rest of the art faculty. The other six professors seemed truly interested in everything Dylan was willing to tell them about teaching at WattsMaxwell and the art community in Philadelphia. He had a hard time talking, though; years of Rhonda’s interrupting and taking over the conversation had turned him into more of a listener than a talker at these kinds of events.
But being with other artists, other people who understood the overwhelming urge to create, the slight madness that took over at such times, made him feel happy—truly happy—for the first time since he’d returned to Nashville. No, it had been longer than that. He couldn’t remember being truly happy since before Rhonda had started taking over his life—telling him what to say, what to think, what to paint; separating him from his family; making him into what she wanted him to be.
Why had it taken him so long, taken him becoming unrecognizable to himself, to realize he didn’t want to be the person Rhonda wanted him to be? He just wanted to be himself. Dylan Bradley. No airs. No pretense. No pseudonyms.
He glanced back toward the center of the room—and caught Caylor looking his direction. She smiled, gave a little wave, and returned to her group’s conversation.
The talk around him moved from the just-ended semester to an upcoming exhibition at the Frist of impressionist masterworks, including some big-name artists such as Monet, Manet, Degas, and Renoir. The familiar topics started relaxing him, made him start feeling like he might fit in here.
The newly shorn hairs on the back of his neck prickled with the sensation someone was watching him—an all-too-familiar tingle. He scanned the room, half expecting to see Rhonda. Instead, over near one of the food tables, his gaze caught Caylor’s again. She smiled—a bit guiltily, he thought—and turned to talk to someone on her other side.
Was she checking up on him? Worried about whether he was behaving himself? Speaking only to the right people?
He mentally shook himself out of the flashback. Caylor was not Rhonda. She wasn’t here to control or discipline him.
No, but she did know Perty. She could have been tasked with keeping an eye on him just to make sure he was doing okay.
“What brought you to Nashville, Dylan?” Dr. Putnam held his plate of hors d’oeuvres over his camera, which was protected from crumbs by a paper napkin draped over it.
“My family is here.” When he’d practiced that answer at home, it seemed like the most logical—and least question-raising—response possible. But from the look of expectation on the photography professor’s face, he realized it wasn’t quite enough. “I’ve been away with little chance to visit with them since I graduated from high school. It was time to come home.”
That seemed to be enough for Dr. Putnam, who finished off his chicken satay crostini and wiped at his goatee with another napkin. “Being near family cannot be overvalued. Good for you.” He lifted the camera and snapped a photo of Dylan.
“Attention, please.” At the announcement over the sound system, the crowd noise died down and everyone turned toward the stage at the other end of the dining hall.
“Oh, here we go.” Dr. Putnam moved off through the crowd toward the front of the room.
Dr. Holtz took his place beside Dylan. “This is the best part of the evening.”
Mrs. Holtz looked around her husband. “Do you sing, Dylan?”
“Sing?”
Dr. Holtz chuckled. “This is a liberal and fine arts school in Nashville, Tennessee. Aside from having one of the largest vocal performance and choral programs in the city—after Vanderbilt and Belmont, of course—we have a lot of talented people on this faculty.”
“Happy holidays, everyone!”
Dylan joined the crowd in murmuring “Happy holidays” back to the man in the tuxedo at the microphone, the college’s president, he supposed, not having seen anyone else in a tux. He glanced around, not looking for a tall redhead—and to his surprise, he didn’t see the person he most definitely wasn’t looking for.
“Thanks for joining us again this year for our faculty holiday celebration. I hope you all had a wonderful fall semester and are looking forward to your time off for the next few weeks. I know I am.”
Mild tittering and chuckles from the crowd.
“But you didn’t come here to hear me talk. So I’ll turn the evening’s festivities over to Dr. Edgerton in just a moment. I do want to take this opportunity to say thank you to each of you for the wonderful work you do in leading, mentoring, guiding, and teaching our students. James Robertson University wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have the stellar reputation we have, without a stellar faculty. So thank you, and happy holidays!”
Applause and a few whistles emerged from the crowd that must have been over two hundred people.
A distinguished woman who looked to be in her fifties took the stage. Dressed in a red sequined dress, she commanded Dylan’s attention simply by the fact he couldn’t look away from the sparkly garment.
“You’ve been waiting and wondering for a year, while others have been plotting and planning. We had so many good submissions this year, it was hard to narrow it down to a manageable number, but somehow we did it. So let’s get started. And remember, if you feel like dancing, please do so!”
The music professor introduced the musicians on the stage—a jazz quartet made up of other music department faculty, and they got things rolling with a swing version of “O Christmas Tree.”
Once the music started, everyone went back to mingling and chatting. Dylan looked around again, not looking for anyone in particular. Where had she disappeared to?
He excused himself from Dr. Holtz and his wife and made his way around the outside edges of the assemblage. A few people he’d already met stopped him to introduce him to others, all of whom were quite welcoming when they learned he’d be teaching next semester. This reaction was a bit disarming to him—he couldn’t remember speaking more than once or twice with any of the part-time instructors or adjuncts at Watts-Maxwell.
After several familiar holiday songs performed by vocalists and musicians from the music department, a quartet from the science department—someone told him it pretty much represented the entire full-time science faculty—got up and sang a pretty good rendition of “Silent Night,” which was followed by one of the music professors who got up and sang “Eight Days of Happiness,” a Hanukkah song with a Latin beat, transitioning into a more holiday-specific portion of the program.
When Dylan reached the front of the room, he looked back the way he’d come. Still no sign of the person he wasn’t really looking for.
He tried to convince himself he wasn’t bothered by Caylor’s disappearance. He told himself that he was looking for her because he imagined Bridget Wetzler would be somewhere nearby, and since he’d come as Bridget’s date, he should at least check in with her. He hoped, watching the couple of dozen couples dancing near the stage, that Bridget wouldn’t expect him to ask her to dance.
Dr. Edgerton’s speaking voice came as a jolt after so much uninterrupted music. “After last year’s party, we had so many requests for this next group, we decided to give them the last few spots on the program. Put your hands together for the Three Redheads.”
Dylan turned. There, on stage, were Caylor, Bridget, and another woman of about the same age. And though they did all have red hair, they couldn’t have looked more unalike. Bridget was of average height and plump. Her dyed-red hair was pulled up into a crown of curls atop her head. The woman Dylan didn’t know was even shorter than Bridget and tiny—almost frail-looking. Her red hair was long and straight and pulled around so it hung over her left shoulder in the front.
And then there was Caylor. The turquoise of her dress—almost the same color as her eyes—made her hair, in its saucy, flipped-out shortness, and her ivory skin glow with vibrancy. The dress showed off her perfect hourglass figure and long legs to perfection.
He’d already started reaching for his phone to snap a photo of her so he could reference it for the drawing of her already forming in his mind—but stopped himself. He might be tasked with teaching the students to paint portraits, but he’d stick to more mundane, less compulsion-driven subjects. After all, it had been his obsession with the artwork on the covers of the romance novels his mother kept hidden all over the house years ago that had led to his compulsion with replicating them and then to his moving on to original work in the same vein.
The keyboardist started playing something that sounded like the tinkling of a music box. Bridget sang the verses solo; then the other two came in with the harmony on the chorus, singing about “the Christmas tree angel.” He’d never heard the song before but found himself swaying to the gentle swing of the rhythm. They sounded just like those sister groups from the 1940s.
Unlike during everyone else’s performances, everyone paid attention when Caylor’s group sang. And Dylan could see why. Though Bridget’s voice alone wasn’t spectacular—nowhere near as good as the music professors who’d sang—when the three of them blended together, it was dazzling. And apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so, judging by the applause and cheers they received when the song ended.
In their next song, sung by all three in perfect harmony, they extolled all of the good things about Christmas from each letter of the word—another piece he’d never heard, and another one that received the high praise of applause and cheers.
The three women shifted places—Caylor moving to the front of the stage, and the other two standing off to one side behind her. The music started, and Dylan couldn’t help smiling at the Irish jig sound of the intro.
With what sounded like a perfect Irish accent and a strong alto voice he could have listened to for hours, Caylor sang “Christmas in Killarney,” one of Gramps’s favorite Christmas songs from Bing Crosby.
Caylor scanned the crowd as she sang, but when her eyes met Dylan’s, her smile broadened and she winked at him before looking away again.
Winked at him. Though he’d jolted internally at the gesture—a good jolt—he couldn’t stop the questions it raised. Why wink at him and no one else in the room? Was she flirting with him? Had she taken Dr. Putnam’s comment earlier about their making a cute couple too seriously?
After she sang through the song a full time, the jazz quartet transitioned into a bridge. Caylor, Bridget, and the other woman all kicked off their shoes and began dancing an Irish jig together, laughing at their own missteps and encouraging everyone in the audience to do the same. Picking out the dance professors was pretty easy.
Worried about both his reaction to Caylor and whatever might be going through her mind about him, Dylan slipped up the side of the room and out the door. He’d send Bridget an e-mail, telling her something had come up, to try to excuse his rude behavior. Recovering his coat from the coat check, he fled the building into the cold night outside.
He’d just come out of a horrible relationship. He couldn’t fall for someone else. He needed time to figure out who he was and who he wanted to become. But he liked Caylor; he couldn’t deny it. Never before had the mere sight of a woman ignited the fire of inspiration in him like her presence did. And she was the kind of woman that a man would be stupid to hesitate with—because someone else would come along, see her wonderful qualities, and snatch her up.
He stopped in the middle of the quadrangle and looked up. Pinpricks of light glittered against the indigo sky. “If You’re still there, God, and if I haven’t burned all my bridges with You yet, You’re going to have to help me out with this. Show me who I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing. And don’t let Caylor…”
He felt stupid saying it aloud, because he couldn’t imagine that she’d want to have anything to do with him, at least not romantically, if she ever learned about his relationship with Rhonda. He wouldn’t blame her one bit. But his heart still cried out, Don’t let Caylor fall in love with someone else while I’m still trying to get my head on straight.