Her Man Friday(27)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

He eyed Mrs. Beecham with warning, deftly rearranging his bow tie until it was, once again, perfect. "No," he said with a conviction that in no way invited contradiction. "Not tonight. I’ve just finished dinner with my—" He hesitated, then forced himself to say it outright, concentrating very hard so that he didn’t trip over the word. "My family. And right now…"

He gave his tie one final rug for good measure, then spared as lascivious a look as he could manage for Valentina. The call girl still stood by his side, watching the by-play with as much interest as one might show for a pictorial about anthrax.

"Right now, I have other plans," he continued without removing his attention from his escort, who brightened considerably as a result. "You, Mrs. Beecham, may call my secretary tomorrow and make an appointment to see me at a time when I’m available. Until then…"

He tossed her a final—and very careless—scrap of attention as he strode by her. "Until then, I have some personal business to attend to."

He thought that would be the end of it, but he heard Janey cry, "Wait! Mrs. Beecham!" and he hesitated, fearing what would come next.

True to form, Janey asked her standard question of greeting when faced with a new acquaintance. "Mrs. Beecham," she said, "can you spell evapotranspiration?"

Schuyler closed his eyes and waited to hear what Mrs. Beecham’s response would be, though why he cared, he honestly couldn’t have said.

"Well, of course I can spell evapotranspiration," Mrs. Beecham replied. He had to hand it to the headmistress. She didn’t even sound surprised by the question. "E-v-a-p-o-t-r-a-n-s-p-i-r-a-t-i-o-n." Then, before Janey could get her licks in, she added, "Evapotranspiration. Noun. The transference of moisture from the earth to its atmosphere by water’s evaporation and plants’ transpiration. I minored in biology," she added by way of an explanation.

"What’s your IQ?" Janey asked further.

Schuyler waited, hoping, for some reason, that Mrs. Beecham would reply that her IQ was nothing out of the ordinary, that she only knew about evapotranspiration because she was an avid gardener. Unfortunately, what she said was, "One hundred and eighty-five, why?"

One hundred and eighty-five? he repeated to himself, shocked. Amazed. Intrigued. Oh, fine. She would have an IQ large enough to compete with her… other endowments. Dammit.

"Mother!" Janey exclaimed. "When are you going to talk to Schuyler about—"

"Janey?" Schuyler interjected without turning around, and with a surprisingly tepid tone.

For a moment, she didn’t respond. Then, in a very small voice, she asked, "Yes, Schuyler?"

"Go to your room."

"But—"

"Go to your room. And your library privileges are suspended until further notice."

"But—"

"You will write an essay entitled Why I Won’t Harass My Brother’s House Guests About Their IQs Anymore,’ and you will place it on my desk tomorrow morning."

"But—"

For the last time, he hoped, Schuyler turned to Vivian and conjured the most licentious smile in his arsenal. Strangely, though, he felt as if he were rousing the smile not for Viveca, but for Mrs. Beecham. Stranger still was his realization that he was no longer as interested in page seventy-two of How to Leave a Man Groaning with Satisfaction Every Time as he was in the hidden chapters of the headmistress.

Because as he dipped his head in farewell to the entire dinner party, his expression lingered only on her. And he hoped she knew what she was missing out on by being so damned intelligent and tightly bound. Unfortunately, somehow, Schuyler suspected that he was the one who was missing out on something. And that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t quite as smart as he thought.

Chapter Eight

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. When was it going to stop?

As she did every night, Caroline Beecham awoke from sleep at precisely 3:22 a.m., to find that she lay curled in a tiny ball, in her tiny bed, in her tiny bedroom, in her tiny apartment. 3:22 a.m. She rolled over in her bed and tried to think of something—anything—else.

Unfortunately, when she did that, the first thought that wandered into her head was of Schuyler Kimball.

Of course, that wasn’t surprising, seeing as how she’d been thinking about him a lot over the past week. Ever since she had barged into his home and grabbed him by the throat, only to discover that she was making a really big mistake—not to mention a really big fool out of herself—in the process. All things said and done, she supposed something like attempted homicide on a man would rather permanently etch the intended victim’s image into a woman’s brain.

Oh, God, had she actually done that? she asked herself for perhaps the hundredth time since it had happened. Had she truly snatched up Schuyler Kimball—Schuyler Kimball!—by the throat and threatened him?

She groaned and rolled over in her bed again. The glowing red letters on her clock read 3:24 now, and she felt her heart rate slow some in response to the realization that she had survived 3:22 a.m. for one more night.

Her slowing pulse accelerated again, however, when she recalled once more her escapade with Schuyler Kimball. She had called his secretary the first thing the following morning to set up an appointment to see him. After much hemming and hawing and alleged rearranging of his schedule, Miss Rigby had managed to pencil Caroline in for an impressive twenty minutes the following Saturday morning—which was only a few hours away from right now. Caroline swallowed hard as she rehearsed yet again what she intended—what she needed—to say to Mr. Kimball.

They were losing Chloe. And he had to help her bring the girl back. It was that simple.

Never had Caroline met a more remarkable child than Chloe Sandusky, but every day the teenager was slipping farther and farther away. Caroline was beginning to fear that, unless there were some vast and immediate changes made to the girl’s life, she would be lost to them forever. And the world—yes, the world—might potentially suffer as a result.

Simply put, Chloe Sandusky was the most gifted, most brilliant, most incredibly minded person Caroline had ever met. And having worked with gifted, brilliant, incredibly minded children for more than a decade now, that was saying something. Yet no one but her seemed to care about Chloe. Even the teachers at Van Meter—who’d been trained to deal with gifted, and often difficult to manage, children—had pretty much washed their hands of Chloe.

Because in addition to being the most brilliant child Caroline had ever met, Chloe was also the most self-destructive. There could be any number of reasons for that—and, having finally met Mr. Kimball, Caroline could easily conceive of one really big reason—but that didn’t mean she was ready to give up on Chloe. Not yet. Not now. Not ever, if she could help it.