Just Around The Corner

“So, back to Sheffield,” Cassie said. “What are your expectations?”

Shaking her head, Phyllis set her cup farther from the edge of the end table. “I’m expecting nothing from him,” she said. “Our being together—it just…happened. Wasn’t planned. Other than when we put on the psychology seminar last week, we haven’t spoken.”

Cassie studied her friend. “And you were happy about that.”

“Absolutely.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m just trying to deal with the ramifications of this pregnancy in my own life. Matt Sheffield doesn’t matter to me at all.”

Sighing, seeming oddly relieved, Cassie sat back. “Can I tell you something then?”

“Of course.”

“If Matt reacts coldly to the news, don’t take it personally. I don’t think the man’s capable of softer feelings.”

Phyllis frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Last year I had a litter of pups that’d been left at the clinic,” Cassie said. “I took them down to campus one afternoon, offering them to anyone who might want a dog. While I was busy giving care instructions for one of them, another puppy got tangled up in one of the leashes I’d brought along with the stuff I was giving away to the new owners. Sheffield walked by and didn’t even stop. He just left that puppy there, squirming and frightened.”

“Maybe he didn’t see it.”

“He saw it,” Cassie assured her. “He looked right at us. Besides, when he walked by, the puppy started to squeal, which is what alerted me to the whole thing.”

Shrugging, Phyllis looked tired as she laid her head back against the chair. “So maybe he doesn’t like dogs. Probably got bitten by one as a kid.”

“Spoken like a true psychologist. Always looking for the hidden motivations.”

“Everybody has them.”

“Maybe he’s just incapable of caring for anything or anyone,” Cassie said softly.

“Maybe.”

Phyllis didn’t care one way or the other.

“You know,” Cassie said, leaning forward to lay a hand on Phyllis’s arm. “Between Tory and me and Becca and everyone else in Shelter Valley who’s fallen in love with you, we’ll get you through this pregnancy. And we’ll give you whatever help you need for the next eighteen years or more of single motherhood. No sweat. You can count on that.”

Phyllis’s eyes filled. “Thank you.”

“What we can’t do,” Cassie said, her voice taking on a note of warning, “is prevent—or cure—a broken heart.”

Nodding, Phyllis believed her friend. Cassie should know. She’d lived with one for more than ten years. And from the sound of things, there’d been days when the pain had been almost enough to kill her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “this heart is firmly intact.” And going to remain that way.

AS DAYS WENT, it wasn’t a good one. Matt Sheffield wondered what he’d done to piss off the fates this time. The new gels had come in for the dance show that weekend and they were the wrong colors. The light board—the computer that controlled the lighting—had crashed, so the lights weren’t working. He had a student working for him who could only be described as technically challenged, the kids in his lighting design class had all acted as though they’d rather be someplace else, and his star student, Sophie Curtis, had been missing cues all morning.

And it was a dance show. His least-favorite kind of production to entrust to students. Plays were usually easy to light—a wash, some specials—unless they were going for extravagant effects. Concerts were even easier, symposiums downright boring. But dance—now there, the lighting was part of the art. He could lose himself in creativity and forget about life for a while.

Unless he had butts to wipe every step of the way.

And Sophie…she’d been preoccupied all semester. In the two years he’d known her, Sophie had done nothing but amaze him, with her diligence, her reliability, but mostly her vision. She could make magic out of an empty stage with almost nothing. Whether she was working as lighting designer, stage manager or sound engineer, she was always the glue that held the rest of the students together.

Until this semester. She’d been late, absentminded, short-tempered. She’d lost weight.

Something was wrong.

Not that Matt had any intention of finding out what.

“You busy?”

He glanced up from his desk in the office at the back of the performing-arts center to see who actually had the nerve to interrupt his lunch hour—the one time he could let down his guard and allow free rein to whatever thoughts he felt like having.

Dr. Phyllis Langford was standing there. The psych professor. Matt’s stomach dropped at about the same rate his heart sped up.

The day just kept getting better and better. Not.

“Finishing my lunch,” he said, indicating the empty sandwich wrapper on the desk in front of him. He wadded up the debris, put it and the empty chip bag in the little brown sack he’d brought from home and lobbed the whole package into the trash can beside his desk.

“I knew you had class this afternoon and I wanted to catch you before you went in.”

She hadn’t come any farther into the room. Just stood there, not quite meeting his eyes, but not looking around at anything else, either. An odd mixture of confidence and disinterest. Funny, the month before, he’d only noticed the confidence.

Confidence and passion and… No. They’d forgotten that insane lapse in the production room. They were both going to ignore it, both going to act as though it had never happened.

He studied her through narrowed eyes, hoping they had indeed forgotten. He’d sweated for a couple of days after their tumble that afternoon, afraid she’d come calling with expectations he’d never meet.

And had been honestly, greatly relieved—despite a slightly damaged ego—that she hadn’t. Apparently he’d lost his touch with women; under the circumstances, that was nothing but a blessing.

“You can come in,” he said when she continued to hover. He didn’t want her anywhere near him or his office, but she was making him edgy, just standing there silently full of something to say.

That same sexy scent—the one that had lured him to insanity last month—drifted in with her as she took a seat on the other side of his desk. Phyllis Langford didn’t perch on the edge of her chair as many women did—at least in his office. There was nothing tentative or uncertain in the way she sat, somehow commanding the space around her with her model-slim body. She’d had on black lycra bell-bottom pants the day he’d spent with her. Today she was wearing a circumspect, honey-colored business suit.

He wasn’t sure which he found sexier.

“I’m pregnant.”

Matt blinked. Froze inside. “Pardon?”

“I’m pregnant.”

He waited.

“I just thought you should know.” Dr. Langford, as he preferred to think of her, looked far too calm sitting there, her honey-colored purse, which matched her honey-colored shoes, still slung over her shoulder.

Her hair, a red version of Meg Ryan’s stylishly messy do, distracted him.