Past Imperfect

“Yes. But lately your paper is.”

A muscle in his jaw constricted. So did his fingers as they wrapped around the beer bottle. He seemed to be fighting himself about something. Those shadows in his gaze told her as much.

But just as soon as the emotion had appeared, it evaporated. He dug his fork into his noodles again, carefree as ever. “I report the facts as I see them, that’s all.”

“And how do you see them in this case?”

He paused, set down his fork, grinned. Yet this was no ordinary Beck-smile. No, this was partially feral, a twist on his charming act.

Rachel’s breath caught in her chest, but she still held his stare. She’d spent a lifetime backing down, backing away. And she was done with it.

Even so, she had the nagging feeling that, as soon as she left Ian, she’d go right back to hiding, ducking confrontation. Odd how she was empowered to stand up for herself only when she was around this particular guy. Somehow, he seemed to nonchalantly encourage her, bringing out what little strength she had.

In fact, it seemed that he rather enjoyed getting a rise out of her.

“I see it this way,” he said. “The administration believes that your Gilbert is ‘old fashioned’ and behind the times. They say he’s too much of a friend to the students, and would love to replace him with someone new.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I don’t have the luxury of believing anything.” Ian rested his arms on the table, still dangerous. “As I said, I only report the facts.”

“You know those aren’t facts at all.”

“Who can be sure? That’s why there’s going to be a hearing tomorrow.”

“Hearing. Huh.” Even though things weren’t going smoothly with Gilbert right now, Rachel rose to the occasion, paying her mentor back for everything he’d done over the years, protecting him from the bottom of her heart. “It’s more like a witch hunt. Surely you’ve found that the administration has an agenda.”

For a spine-tingling moment, Ian’s gaze blasted into her. A hunter’s eyes.

Then he sat back again, apparently satisfied. “Smart man, that Gilbert, calling on the right people to defend him. All his favorite students from the past.”

“Not just ‘students,’ Ian. You’ve seen the list. Nate, our notorious defense lawyer. Kathryn, who was a model before that awful car accident. Jacob, an esteemed fertility specialist… Should I continue? Because I can.”

He took her bait, highly engaged by the fire he’d lit under her. “Please do.”

“An assistant to an ambassador— You know, it’s not going to be hard to show that Gilbert produced success in our own lives and for the world at large. The board is going to come off badly when we’re done with it….”

She stopped, suddenly aware that she wasn’t one of those successes she’d listed. She’d left Saunders during her junior year to marry Isaac, and it’d broken Gilbert’s heart. He’d bemoaned the education she was deserting, reminded her that she was just leaving before she could finish what she’d started. Truthfully, Rachel had suspected there’d been more to it than that. That her mentor had been grieving the loss of their relationship, knowing it would never be the same once she married and put Saunders behind.

Ian was watching her, a sympathetic light in his eyes. God, no wonder he was so damned good at getting his story. He really knew how to work his subject.

“It must’ve been hard,” he said, voice soft.

She stared at her tea. The creamy shade of brown reflected everything she’d hidden from all her life. The color of mixed skin that never quite belonged, a tint that had set her apart from family and community.

“What’s hard?” she asked.

“Coming back to find Gilbert, seeing he’s changed from the energetic, positive man you used to know.”

Gilbert. Because of his plea to return to Saunders for this hearing—and her great need to make up for all the disappointment she’d caused him—Rachel had seen him in person for the first time in months. Usually, they caught up with each other over the phone, but that hadn’t prepared her for the light that had gone out of his gaze, the wrinkles that had invaded his once-firm skin. But what hurt the most was seeing those proud shoulders slumped under the weight of all these heinous accusations. He’d been protecting so much, she thought, especially when it came to the biggest secret of all—his status as an anonymous benefactor who’d helped so many students during their worst days. Only one of the few who knew about this, Rachel was straining to stay silent, to make Gilbert believe that she and most of her other friends didn’t know about this bombshell.

Now, Rachel nodded to Ian, unable to deny the shock of Gilbert’s recently degraded appearance, the sadness of her friends who also loved the professor.

“Yes,” she said, voice choked, “it was hard seeing him this way. But that’s why we’re back, to bring him around again. Just like he did for us.”

“And just like someone else did,” Ian added.

Rachel froze while he eased out his notepad.

She should’ve seen this coming, but she wasn’t as good as this pro. He’d definitely been doing his research.

“Rumor has it,” he said, “that there’s been an anonymous benefactor who’s helped select students on campus for many years at their moment of greatest need. And guess what?” Ian offered her yet another cocky grin.

She stared straight ahead, giving nothing away.

“Those students just happen to include most of your friends,” Ian added. “Any comment?”

Chapter Two

Even the next morning, as Ian strolled over one of the manicured lawns that covered the Saunders campus, he couldn’t believe he’d been so blunt with Rachel James.

Kid gloves, he reminded himself. This particular woman required a little more finesse than most.

When he’d busted right out with that benefactor query, he’d been going for the shock effect, the pure second of truth in an interviewee’s eyes as he or she absorbed the question. Rachel hadn’t been any different than the other countless subjects Ian had ambushed for a story—it was just that her unguarded reaction had gotten to him this time. She had bent his heart as if it were heated steel, reshaping it until his pulse had finally cooled hours later.

It bothered him to be treating Rachel James like another cog in the wheel of his career, and this shocked Ian, a man who wasn’t so used to regret.

In fact, her reaction had caused him to really look at himself in the mirror this morning…and he didn’t like what had peered back at him: a man with the flint of self-loathing in his gaze.

Maybe he just felt bad about the way she’d left the little Thai restaurant without another word to him, slipping on her knit cap and walking out of the place with a dignity Ian could only wish for. Or maybe he was getting soft in his skills, just as his new editor had muttered last week.

Remorse. Emotional second-guessing. Hell, his job didn’t allow him those sorts of perks. Nope. His profession—damn, that was sure a noble word for digging up crud and slinging it over a page just to make a buck—demanded that he chase Rachel down again.

Yet, frankly, he had the sneaking suspicion that she knew something about the “mysterious benefactor” of Saunders University, so he had every reason to pursue the matter, anyway.

A looming clock tower struck eight times, the bells ringing through the cool air. Ian fixed his gaze on Lumley Hall, the maple-shrouded red-brick building where Professor Gilbert Harrison’s hearing would be held. Students wearing scarves and nosy frowns were loitering outside, and Ian’s reporter sense prodded him to ask a few questions, just to establish the tone for today’s proceedings.

Were these kids here to support the professor? Or did they, like the administration, have an ax to grind?

Somehow Ian doubted they did, based on the information he’d gotten so far. Everyone seemed to love Gilbert Harrison—except for the old stodgies in charge.

While passing one of many bike racks that dotted the campus, Ian scanned the crowds again, locking in on a single person who stood outside of the hall.

Rachel James, the one-time queen of the campus.

Although she was clearly included in a cluster of friends, she was standing on the fringes, arms crossed over a long, camel-colored coat that had seen better days. Her black hair fell to her shoulders in a cloud of rough curls, and she had a wool scarf wrapped over the bottom half of her face, hiding the full lips Ian had entertained more than a few wicked thoughts about.

He took a couple of seconds to appreciate her, this serene woman who obviously had so much more going on beneath the surface than she would reveal. He could tell by the troubled depths of her almond-shaped brown eyes, by the way they often reflected a level of sadness that he wanted to understand.

Damn, he thought, ambling closer to her. It was all pretty interesting, this new side he was discovering about himself. He didn’t really stick around women long enough to develop anything beyond the superficial warmth of a morning-after glow, not that his job allowed him to do more than that, anyway. Still, he always seemed to find willing-enough partners who understood what they were both getting into.

Would a woman like Rachel James…?

What? Agree to eat local cuisine, drink some wine and come back to his hotel every night until he checked out and moved on to the next assignment, the next affair? Not likely. Not someone sweet and earthy like her.

It didn’t matter, though. She was only a misguided tickle to his sex drive, encouraged by any number of things: the slam-in-the-gut rush of the first time he’d identified his beautiful source on campus and talked with her, going beyond their all business phone conversations. The willingness she’d shown to talk to him further—albeit secretly—even though her friends weren’t nearly so accommodating. The way she watched him—as if she expected more of him than muckraking.

How could one assessing look from her make him reevaluate the growing compromises of his job, the sleazy need to uncover scandal, the negativity that his editor emphasized more every week?

Wiping away a twinge of guilt that was recurring far too much lately, Ian boldly approached Rachel, donning his give-me-some-info facade once again: the persuasive smile, the relaxed frame of his body.

“Morning,” he said, nodding at her, then at all her friends.

They gave him an assessing glance, said hello, then discreetly—and not rudely—huddled into themselves, closing their circle against him.

But Rachel didn’t step into it. Instead, she tugged the scarf off her face and subtly gestured to a spot beneath a lone oak tree, indicating with an angry gaze that he should meet her there.

Well, he thought. Looks like she’s still a bit put out by yesterday’s impromptu interview.

A thrust of desire heated Ian’s belly as he followed in the wake of her jasmine perfume. She had his libido’s number, with that smooth, light brown complexion, those long eyebrows winging over dark, liquid eyes, those high cheekbones and lush mouth. Even though she had the delicate features of an exotic pixie, he could sense a woman’s blood—hot and alive—pulsing under her skin.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He glanced around, as if flummoxed. “I heard there’s a trial going on.”

“A closed trial.”

Ian’s journalistic ambition kicked awake. “Not according to the president of the college board of directors. Alex Broadstreet invited the press.”

She merely stared at him for a moment. Her eyes resembled open wounds that bled dark frustration.

His first instinct was to touch her, to let her know that she’d get through this all right. But Ian checked his guts, reminding himself that he’d only be asking for trouble.

“Broadstreet can’t do that,” she finally said. “He can’t bring a private hearing to the public.”

Ian made a mental note to get hold of the campus’s conduct-hearing guidelines. But since Broadstreet was the Grand Poo-Bah in charge, Ian suspected he could mold the rules to his own advantage pretty easily.

When Ian glanced at her again, the pain hadn’t gone away. It was too much to stand.

“Rachel.” He battled with himself, then reached out to casually tug on the lapel of her coat, thinking it wasn’t much of a come-on and, therefore, nothing to worry about. “Broadstreet is doing it, whether you like it or not.”

“Damn him.” She huffed out an exasperated breath, then absently caressed the patch of worn wool he’d touched. “He’s bound and determined to do anything to disgrace Gilbert. This isn’t right.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. She was still holding the tips of her fingers against the material, her head tilted, eyes wide with so many questions he couldn’t answer. It was as if, among other things, he’d bewildered her with his halfway playful gesture.

Strangely embarrassed for some reason, Ian took a step back.

Out of self-preservation, he once again assumed the role of unbiased reporter, even though there was a niggling poke of ethics in his gut that was agreeing with Rachel.

In an effort to fully distance himself, he said, “Can I quote you on your disgust regarding the hearing’s parameters?”

He couldn’t have chosen a colder thing to say.

She shot him a look—the kind every man feels sorry about receiving—then started walking back to her friends. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t grown used to this sort of reaction. In his line of work, he didn’t exactly endear himself to people.

So why did this particular brush-off sting?

He watched as she situated herself in back of Jane Jackson, Gilbert’s secretary. Next to Jane stood her fiancé, Smith Parker, a campus maintenance worker. Ian suspected that the two, along with Rachel and Sandra Westport, had investigated Gilbert’s situation themselves on the quiet.

As Rachel whispered into the redheaded Jane’s ear, Ian was interrupted by the arrival of Joe his photographer.

“Ready to do some damage?” asked the short, squat shutterbug.

Ian tried not to flinch, especially with Rachel standing only yards away. Somehow, she made him too conscious of what his editor had instructed him to do: sell more papers with salacious details.

“If damage involves the truth,” he said through a clenched jaw, “then I want it.”

Joe chuffed and shifted his cargo. “You’re talking like we’re back in the golden days of journalism, Beck. Remember, the Sun don’t report actual news much now. We’re in to…what does the boss call it? Titillation. Red ink. Dirt.”

Once again, the term tabloid stabbed at Ian, even though his newspaper had ridden the coattails of a more prestigious reputation for the last few years. But that’s all it was—a reputation that was slowly crumbling with the addition of what the new editor called “selling points.”

Ian gestured toward the growing throng of students who were waiting outside the hall. “Joe, let’s start off by taking the temperature over there, then we’ll set up inside.”

“Will do.”

And, as Ian Beck went about his work, he tried to avoid Rachel’s gaze, which had settled on him like an invisible hand that was guiding him away from the demands of his job and toward something that resembled ethics.

A hand that a fly-by-night reporter like him had been spending way too much energy trying to dodge lately.

“Earth to Rachel?”

She whipped her attention away from the retreating Ian Beck and focused on Jane Jackson, whose pale green eyes were narrowed in speculation.

With an innocent smile, Rachel controlled the thrum of her heartbeat, then focused on a man who was speaking decisively into a cell phone. Nate Williams, her boss and fellow Saunders alumni.

An attorney who was on fire with the news Rachel had just given him.

“I need access to the Saunders board’s hearing guidelines,” he was saying. “I’ll be back in the office after Katie’s testimony, so have everything ready for me to tear Broadstreet a new… Yeah, you’ve got it. Thank you.”

Rachel knew that he was having one of the paralegals do the grunt work. Normally, Nate depended on her to be his right hand, but since they were both involved in the hearing and she had rearranged her days off to be here, that was impossible.

As he ended the call, he grumbled, “It’s not bad enough that Broadstreet scheduled this on a Friday, knowing the hearing would go for more than one day and Gilbert would have to stew over the weekend. Now he has to invite the world. Bastard.”

His girlfriend, Kathryn Price, a former model whose incandescence wasn’t at all marred by scarring from an awful accident, laid a comforting hand on Nate’s arm. The powerful lawyer, so revered in the courtroom, practically melted under her gentle touch.

Rachel had to glance away, deeply affected by the sight. Once upon a time, she’d had love, too, and she knew how easily it could disappear, stranding you.

“Rachel?” Jane repeated her name. “Kind of distracted today, huh? But…what am I saying? You’ve been a walking zombie lately.”

Pulling her coat tighter around her body, Rachel anticipated Jane’s next question, which would no doubt contain the words what and is and wrong.

“I just wish Gilbert would get here,” she said, finding a decent explanation for her spaciness. “I want this hearing to be done and over with.”

“Don’t we all.” Jane paused, then jerked her chin toward Ian Beck, who was mingling with the students over by the hall’s entrance, chatting them up. “You and the reporter were having some kind of exchange back there.”

Rachel shrugged, trying to play it cool, to deny her association with Ian. “He was getting my reaction the news about Alex Broadstreet and how he’s found yet another way to mess with Gilbert. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Jane paused. “I thought maybe it was something else. You know, like hormones.”

“Jane.” Rachel didn’t mean to sound like a first-grade teacher talking to a kid who was about to dump a bottle of finger paint onto the table, but she had to dispel that notion before it got out of hand. “He’s just doing his job. That’s it.”

“Ri-ight.”

“Don’t give me that grin. I’m serious.”

“Of course you are. When he touched your coat and gave you that hot look, it was all business.”

Hunger waved down Rachel’s body, even as she searched for a comeback. But, thankfully, the conversation was cut short by the arrival of Sandra and David Westport.

The ex-athlete and his blond, blue-eyed wife, a local reporter in her north end neighborhood, hugged Rachel in greeting, as if she were a prodigal child they hadn’t seen for years. Silly, really, because she’d just run into them on campus the other day. Granted, she’d made an excuse to leave right away, but it wasn’t like she was…

Okay, yeah. She was avoiding them. Those adoption papers from Gilbert’s safe had thrown Rachel into a tail-spin, jetting her back into the confusion of her youth—a time when her adoptive parents had made her feel so isolated, so confused. A time when she’d been taught that retreat was the safest option.

And now with Ian Beck asking questions about the benefactor…

Sandra kept her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. Was her friend restraining her in case she ran away again?

“We were thinking,” Sandra said, “that, after the hearing, some of us would go down to Brewster’s for a recap.”

“Or a nightcap,” David, her husband, added.

Jane smiled. “Or, in our case, it’ll be an afternoon cap.”

The attempted joke made them laugh softly, but the sound was stilted, colored by the anxiety they were all feeling for Gilbert. Rachel had already told Jane about Ian’s benefactor queries, and she knew that this tavern meeting would just be another group discussion about what to do with their secret information regarding Gilbert. As usual, the meeting would go nowhere, because no one wanted to pile more stress on their mentor by revealing what they knew. In fact, the gang would probably spend more time asking Rachel what was wrong than anything else.

So why should she go?

Instinctively, Rachel patted Sandra’s arm and started to remove herself. “I can’t. I’m…”

Before she could say “Busy,” she saw the looks on everyone’s faces. The traded I-told-you-she’d-refuse glances.

She didn’t bother to finish the excuse.

Instead, she changed the subject. “Where’s the rest of the crowd?”

David glanced at his watch. “Jacob and Ella are running late because of the little bun in the oven, but they’ll be here. Eric and Cassidy are bringing Gilbert. They went over to his place early, just to steady him.”

Biting her lip, Rachel held back a rush of sorrow. She should have been the one who volunteered to drive him, to perk him up.

And from the way everyone was watching her, Rachel knew that they knew it, too. Knew that they were all dying to ask her what had happened to make her so standoffish.

Only you and I know, Rosemary, she thought, addressing the woman whose name had been burned into Rachel’s memory. The name of a woman Gilbert, the benefactor, had no doubt helped along the way, too.

Rosemary Johnson, her birth mother, a woman Rachel had never known. Was she dead? Alive? All Rachel wanted was to find out more about the mysterious lady, even if she might not like what she discovered. But she didn’t have the courage. How could she when Rosemary had deserted her in the first place? And what about the empty spot on those papers, the glaring space where her birth father’s name should have been?

Rachel could imagine the worst—Rosemary, single and pregnant, relieved to give up the unwanted baby that had been forced upon her. It wasn’t as if finding Rosemary and learning the truth was going to bring happiness to Rachel’s life.

Right?

For the next few minutes, everyone made small talk, giving Rachel peace. Then Eric Barnes and Cassidy Maxwell arrived, holding hands as they followed Gilbert.

Professor Harrison, neatly dressed in a long tweed coat and scarf, was accepting a lot of love from the young students who flanked him, students who adored him as much as Rachel did.

Students who were still fresh-faced and eager to listen to all his advice.

For a second, Rachel saw him as the man he used to be: filled with enthusiasm and pep, his brown eyes sparkling with wit and affection. But then he glanced over at her, and she saw the reality: the bent shoulders, the gray in his hair, the fading energy.

Still, Rachel’s emotions overwhelmed her, bringing a brilliant smile to her face as she chanced a wave at her beloved mentor.

He brightened at this, and she realized how much she affected him, how happy she made him when she was around.

Yet she’d always known that, ever since the day she’d quit college and he’d practically begged her to come back.

Just as she was about to take her first hesitant step toward Gilbert, the press surrounded him. In their ranks she saw Ian Beck, his pen poised above his notebook as he observed Rachel.

She could tell he knew that she was hanging back, too riddled with doubts to go to Gilbert.

Turning aside from the journalist’s measuring gaze, she entered Lumley Hall with her friends, feeling as if they were about to step into a fighting ring.

The spacious lecture hall was filled with observers and echoing with Alex Broadstreet’s voice as he spoke into the standing microphone. He was reading the board’s charges against Professor Gilbert Harrison, his tone as rich and full of crap as a senator on the campaign trail.

Ian was tuning the man out because he was more than familiar with Broadstreet’s complaints. Instead, he inspected the faces.

That’s where the real story was—in the people, not the unproved speculations.

Next to him, Joe took another picture of Broadstreet’s grandstanding. The flash caught a real headline moment, the spit-polished president pointing his finger in the air, his brows raised in righteous indignation.