Carry Me Home (9 page)

ANOTHER BORING COLLEGE FUNCTION

Five o’clock on Friday afternoon, and instead of getting a start on Tuesday’s lecture for her Groundwater Hydrology class, Zoe was about to use a precious couple of hours to go to a cocktail party.

Which she had no interest in attending, and which would take time she couldn’t afford. Teaching three classes, preparing lectures and labs for all of them was way too much work, especially on top of that consulting job, and was leaving her dangerously close to the edge of panic most of the time. The first year teaching a full course load, she knew, was a sink-or-swim proposition. And she had to swim.

“Just use the slides that go along with the textbook,” her next-door office neighbor, Roy Blake, had advised before the semester had begun. “Somebody’s got to teach Geology 101. Last few years, that lucky camper has been me, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that they finally filled that position. With anybody. Although having it be you, of course, is a bonus.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said. “Because I brighten the place up. With my femininity and all.”

“No,” he said, “because you occasionally laugh at my jokes. But you want my advice? Don’t spend too much energy on it, and don’t let the students suck all your time. You have to keep your office hours, or somebody will tattle to Daddy, but other than that . . .” He mimed slamming a door. “Keep it closed.”

“But that isn’t . . .”
The point. The idea
.

“You think? Just wait. I’ve been slogging in these trenches for a long, long time. You want to move up and out, that’s how you do it. Guard your time for the things that’ll help you do it.”

“Uh . . .” She wasn’t sure how to respond. Had she been that transparent?

“You’ve got it written all over you,” he said. “Ambition. I recognize it, vaguely. What, we thinking Colorado School of Mines here? Virginia Tech? Or the really big leagues? MIT? Stanford?”

“If . . . if I can,” she managed.

“Well, you know as well as I do what’s going to get you there. Consulting and research. Publish or perish, baby. You don’t have to publish much to stay here, which is, of course, why I’m here. Got tenure now, and that means they’ll be carrying my cold, stiff body out on a slab. But you sure do have to publish to leave here. I’m not telling you not to care about teaching. I’m just telling you not to care too much.”

He was right. But she still couldn’t keep her office door shut, not if there were students who needed to talk to her.

Like Amy. She frowned again, thinking about the girl. She hadn’t showed up for class today. Zoe hoped she’d make it on Monday, and that she would turn in those test corrections, too.

She sighed. Sometimes, students were nothing but baffling. But she couldn’t shortchange them, which meant that she couldn’t lecture from the slides that came with the Intro to Geology textbook. So she was stuck working eighty hours a week to keep on top of everything, and
not
researching, and
not
publishing. Not yet.

It was only her first semester. It would get easier. She got up reluctantly and put on her suit jacket and coat for the cold, if short, hike to the student union and the stupid cocktail hour that the new faculty had been elected to attend.

She got there on time, of course, and was one of the first ones. Too conscientious once again. She found her name tag on the table at the front of the banquet room, stuck it onto the front of her black jacket, spotted Rochelle across the room talking to the caterers, and felt a little bit better.

“Hey,” Rochelle said when Zoe approached. “I saw you were coming. Some Friday night fun, huh? Not quite the Cowboy Bar.” She looked Zoe over critically. “In fact, not the Cowboy Bar at all. Did you actually look in your closet to find the most boring, least attractive outfit possible? It’s hard to believe you’d have picked that by accident.”

“What?” Zoe looked down at her pantsuit. “This is my interview suit.”

“No, it’s not,” Rochelle said. “I saw your interview suit, remember? Same ugly black jacket, same totally sexless blue blouse, same black pumps your Aunt Constance wears to her Library Committee meeting. But at least a skirt.”

“It’s cold,” Zoe said weakly. “And I have to look like everybody else.”

Rochelle looked at her in astonishment. “I hate to break it to you, but you don’t look like everybody else. Wear all the ugly pantsuits you want, it’s never going to happen.”

“If I wanted to hear about my unfeminine clothes,” Zoe said, trying to summon a little spirit, “I could fly home and talk to my mother.”

“Well, you know,” Rochelle said, “even mothers are right occasionally.”

Zoe snagged a glass of wine from a tray carried by a passing waiter, took a sip, and grimaced.

Rochelle laughed. “Yeah, I’d tell you what a bottle of that cost, but the truth is too painful.” Her gaze shifted to a spot beyond Zoe. “Gotta go check on the front table. See ya. Don’t have too much fun.”

“Ha,” Zoe said glumly as Rochelle took off. She looked around, feeling alone and conspicuous. She saw a few guys she’d met during her new faculty orientation, and contemplated going over to chat. She took another sip of wine to help get her there, then looked around for someplace to put her glass down, because really, even for courage . . . no.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” she heard at her elbow. “Beer’s always a safer bet at places like this.”

She whirled. Cal? What? Why? How?

“Why are you . . . here?” She looked at the front of the white cotton button-down that stretched over his distractingly broad chest. No name tag, of course. “How’d you get in?”

She could see the amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Whoa there, princess. Don’t you worry about me. It’ll take more than a couple professors to toss me out. I’m bigger than they are. Come on. I’ll buy you a beer. You look like you could use one.”

“It’s an open bar,” she pointed out. “Such as it is.”

“And see,” he said, “that means you don’t even have to compromise your principles. Long as you can live with me asking for it, that is. That going to work for you, or do you have to place the order, too? They only have one kind, so you don’t have to worry that I’m making your decisions.”

“How do you know? Are you here for the . . .”
For the beer
, she almost said, then realized how insulting that would sound. “I mean,” she stammered as he started to laugh, “it can’t be for the entertainment value. I know
I
sure wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t made me come.”

“Aw, see, I knew you were smart,” he said. “The truth is, I’m hoping to get wasted enough to make Dumpster diving look like a good idea afterwards, because I’m hungry, too.” He snagged a cracker with a piece of cheese on it from a passing tray. “And this isn’t going to do the trick.”

She was following him to the bar despite herself. She took the glass the bartender poured, sipped a little as Cal took his own glass with a nod of thanks, stuffing a five into the tip jar that had the young man smiling.

“Hey, Cal.” The voice came from behind them. Another big, good-looking guy. Nobody Zoe had met, because she would’ve remembered him. This one did have a name tag.
Lucas Jackson.

“Yeah, beer’s the beverage of choice today, I’d say,” the guy told Cal. “How about pouring me one of those?” he asked the bartender.

“Sure thing,” the bartender said, and Lucas took his own beer, moved away from the bar with the two of them.

“Another cousin, I take it. The mystery solves itself,” Zoe said. “Why you’re here, I mean,” she explained to Cal.

“Does it?” he asked. “Good to know, because I was wondering. And nope, this one’s a real live brother. The only one I’ve got. And since I know you read real good, Professor, I don’t even need to say his name. Luke, this is Dr. Zoe Santangelo. I
will
say her name, just because it’s so pretty.”

Zoe extended her hand, and she couldn’t help it, she had to smile at that. “Do you teach here?” she asked Luke.

There was a definite family resemblance. Luke was a little more handsome, a little leaner in build, with a shock of dark hair that fell across his forehead, and brown eyes instead of blue. A little younger, too, or maybe he just spent less time spent outdoors, because his face didn’t have the frown lines Cal’s did on the forehead, or the laugh lines beside the firm mouth.

“Nope,” Luke said. “Principal over at the high school, believe it or not.”

Cal shook his head. “Still getting over that one,” he told Zoe. “Let’s just say the principal’s office wasn’t unfamiliar territory to him.”

Luke laughed. “Man, you’re always messing me up with pretty girls.”

“Yeah, well,” Cal said, “I saw this particular pretty girl first, so back off, Bozo. Although I have to say,” he told Zoe, “I liked what you were wearing last time better. At least you could have worn the skirt and not the pants.”

She gasped in outrage as Luke burst out laughing again.

“Never mind,” Luke said, still grinning. “I’m not one bit worried about Cal cutting me out, I just decided. Yeah, man, insulting her appearance. That’s going to work.”

“Rochelle told you to say that, didn’t she?” Zoe demanded of Cal, ignoring his brother.

“No, what, you hear that already today? Let me guess. That yellow dress was Rochelle’s.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it,” he decided. “Rochelle’s all the way. Go shopping in her closet a little more, will you? I loved you in that dress.”

She did her best to ignore the glow that gave her. “And pleasing you would matter to me because . . . ?”

“Now, then, Professor,” he said, that drawl back in full force, “I’m sure you can think up the answer to that one if you put that fine mind of yours to it.”

“Uh-
huh
,” Luke said, his eyes dancing. “I knew I needed to come to this thing. I hear the speeches are going to be lousy, but the entertainment’s not too bad all the same.”

“Welcome.”

The sound boomed out almost directly behind her, and Zoe jumped, nearly spilling her beer, and turned to look. The trim middle-aged woman at the podium stepped back and laughed a little, and a young man leaped onto the elevated platform in a corner of the room, did some adjusting to the microphone.

“Off to a rousing start,” Cal muttered.

“Now that I have your attention . . .” the woman said. She acknowledged the answering scatter of laughter with another smile. “I’d like to welcome all of you here today. As many of you know, I’m Dena Calvert, and I have the privilege of administering the university’s development office. We’re here today to acknowledge a very generous gift, and to announce a program we couldn’t be more excited about. In fact, it’s
so
momentous, it’s too big to come from me. So here to do it instead is the president of the university, Dr. Franklin Oppenheimer.”

“With a name like that,” Cal said, “no other job he could possibly have.”

“Shh,” Zoe hissed. They were standing too close to the podium for her to get the giggles. It didn’t matter that Dr. Oppenheimer didn’t have a clue who she was. He’d find out soon enough if she started laughing at the sound of his
name
. But her unfortunate sense of humor wasn’t cooperating, and she was having a hard time controlling her face.

“Thank you for that wonderful introduction, Dena,” the gray-haired man at the microphone said graciously.

“What? That she got his name right?” Cal asked, and Zoe snorted again, slapped a hand over her mouth, and shot him a glare that he answered with a cock of his head.

Dr. Oppenheimer was still talking, but Zoe was too focused on not giggling to listen.
Generosity of one of our community’s most notable citizens, blah blah.
Although sadly not an alumnus . . .
She drifted off a little.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cal muttered beside her, still not quietly enough. “Wrap it up, cowboy. Your eight seconds are up.”

She had to pretend to cough into her napkin at that one, and she didn’t even dare look at Cal.

“Although no longer making us proud on the playing field,” Dr. Oppenheimer said, “today’s honoree is still very much contributing to his hometown and its university. And it is my very great pleasure to announce tonight that he has donated the astonishingly generous sum of $800,000 to the university for the purposes of expanding its efforts in the physical sciences, engineering, and technology, and in particular to foster the inclusion of women and students of color in those fields. I couldn’t be happier to ask you to join me today in being the first, although surely not the last, to thank Mr. Calvin Jackson for his generosity.” He was smiling now, beckoning. “Cal?”

Cal handed a stunned Zoe his beer. “Don’t drink it all, now, darlin’,” he told her. “I’m going to need that later.”

He strode to the platform in his cowboy boots and black jeans, jumped up onto it exactly the same way he’d jumped up onto the stage at the Cowboy Bar, and the room echoed with applause and even a few whistles. He shook hands with Dr. Oppenheimer, adjusted the microphone upward with a practiced hand, and waited for the crowd to quiet.

“Well, thanks for all that,” he said when silence had fallen. “You know, when I was first talking to Dr. Oppenheimer about this idea, and he asked me what had led me to it, I said something noble about improving the quality of education for Idaho students, not losing our best and brightest to the other states, making the playing field a little more level, some sh—shinola like that.”

He grinned at the ripple of laughter. “When, really,” he confided, “the truth is, I was just hoping for a parade. So I hope that’s in the cards,” he told a chuckling Dr. Oppenheimer. “I’m kinda countin’ on riding on the float.”

His speech didn’t go on much longer than that, or get much more serious. Another couple minutes, and he was saying, “Thanks, everyone. The wine and cheese and crackers are on the house. Go wild, because I’m not taking all that home.”

He jumped down again as the room erupted in laughter and applause, came over, took the beer that Zoe had forgotten she was holding, and drained it.

“Do we get to leave now?” he asked. “Because I’d love to get out of here with you. If I talk real nice, I figure I might just get you to go dancing with me. Seeing as how I’m a donor and all.”