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spread out the mound of books she had to read. Graham was right. The material was boring at best. A half hour later, the words were blurring before her eyes and running together meaninglessly.
    To occupy her wandering mind, she tracked the approaching footsteps that tapped lightly on the tile floor. Walk, walk, stop. Turn. Go back. Forward. Stop. Walk, walk …
    Suddenly he was standing in front of her at the end of a long canyon formed by towering bookshelves. A smile of gratification tugged at the corners of his mouth. Had he been looking for her?
    Quickly she lowered her eyes to the text in front of her. In her peripheral vision, she saw his trousered legs coming closer until he stood directly in front of her across the narrow table. When he set down a folder stuffed with papers, she raised her eyes to his, then glanced pointedly at an unoccupied table a few feet away.
    “Is this seat taken?” he asked with exaggerated politeness, bowing slightly at the waist.
    “No. And neither is that one.” She indicated the other table with a nod of her head.
    He gave it only a cursory look over his shoulder. “The lighting is better over here.” He tried to pull the chair out, but met resistance. Bending down to see what was keeping it from sliding out from under the table, he chuckled softly. “This chair
is
taken.” Her stockinged feet were propped on it.
    She lowered them to the floor and he sat down. Why had she pretended to be annoyed by his intrusion? Actually, her heart was jumping with glee that he had sought her out. If the depth of feeling she saw in his eyes was any indication, he was just as glad to be alone with her. For long, silent moments, they stared at each other. Then, fighting the need to reach out and touch him, she lowered her head back to her book and feigned interest.
    “Here,” he said, patting his thigh under the table.
    “What?” she asked breathlessly, bringing her head back up. She ought to act as though she were engrossed in her studies, as though he had interrupted her. Why didn’t she gather up her things and leave?
    “Put your feet in my lap.”
    Her heart pounded wildly. “No,” she said in a whisper, glancing over her shoulder.
    “There’s no one around,” he said, and she was drawn under the bewitching spell of his low voice. “Please. Aren’t they cold?”
    She wouldn’t admit they were. “You shouldn’t have left your meeting,” she said, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.
    “It was over.”
    “I’m sure you have something else to do.”
    “I do,” he said, opening the folder and smiling benignly. “I have some reading to catch up on. Now come on, lift your feet up.”
    “Grant … Mr. Chapman … I can’t sit here with my feet in your lap. What if someone saw us?”
    His grin faded a trifle and he weighed her words. “Does it matter to you that much? What people think of you?”
    It wasn’t a casual question and she didn’t treat it as such. She faltered, lowering her eyes from the penetrating power of his. “Yes. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does. Doesn’t it matter to you what people think?” She looked up at him again.
    He considered her question. “No,” he answered softly, but with conviction. “Maybe I should pay more attention to the opinions of other people. It might be safer, more judicious. But I could waste a lot of valuable time guessing at what someone thought of me, and then I’d probably be wrong. In the long run, it’s better to do what you feel is right for you than to do what you think others feel is right for you. Within the limits of decency and the law, of course.” He smiled, but she wasn’t ready to dismiss his philosophy without more discussion. She wanted so badly to understand him.
    “Is that how you were able to bounce back after the Washington scandal? If something like that had happened to me, I’d want to sequester myself and never come out. Whether I was guilty or innocent, if everyone thought I was