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Since Kathryn had no excuse or even an explanation for her behavior, she thought it best to make no comment. "Now please remember your manners. I want both of us to make a good impression on Mr. Jordan." She took his chin in her hand and looked hard into his eyes. "Remember: We need this job!"
"Yes, Mother," he said dutifully. "I will do my best, but I hope you give me no further cause to—" The look his mother gave him made him decide not to finish that sentence. One could push Kathryn de Longe only so far, and well he knew her limits.
Raising her hand, Kathryn knocked, and moments later an elderly man ushered her into a nicely furnished parlor where they were told to wait. Minutes later the man returned and asked Kathryn to follow him to Mr. Jordan's office.
Once she was alone outside the room, Kathryn hesitated before knocking as she smoothed her hair and straightened her travel-stained garments. She would have liked to change, but what she had on was the best she had. There had never been money for more than one suit of clothing at a time.
"Come in," said a pleasant-sounding male voice and, smiling, she tucked her little leather portfolio under her arm and opened the door.
"You!" Two voices spoke in unison, both d
isbelieving. She was staring into the startled blue eyes of the man she'd… Well, that she'd kissed just an hour or so ago. So many thoughts went through Kathryn's mind that she couldn't speak. Would he fire her? Would he, as Jeremy said, "impugn her honor"? He couldn't, she thought—and prayed. He couldn't take this job away from her. She and Jeremy had to have it. And she had to make him understand that she was a respectable woman—all evidence to the contrary.
The man recovered first. "Look, I can't see you now. I have to interview a teacher for Zach, so you're going to have to come back later. Better yet, give me the name of the house you're working and I'll meet you there later. Right now you have to get out of here." While he was making this extraordinary speech he came around the massive desk, grabbed her arm, and started to usher her out a side door in the room.
"Unhand me!" Kathryn said in her sternest schoolteacher voice, but it had no effect on the man, so, with a twist, she freed herself and ran back to the middle of the room. In an instant he was beside her, about to grab her again.
Without thinking what she was doing, she dropped her case, made a leap, and grabbed what looked to be an army sword from where it hung on the wall. "Mr. Jordan, if you touch me again I'll use this on you. I assume you are Cole Jordan, that is."
For a moment Cole stood staring at her in stunned silence, then his handsome face lit up in amusement. Leaning back against the desk, he folded his arms across his broad chest. "Maybe you should remove the scabbard first," he said, eyes twinkling.
"All right," she said with disgust, then with what dignity she could muster, she replaced the sword on the hooks in the wall and picked up her case from where it had fallen to the floor. "So I don't know anything about weapons of any sort, I admit it, but then I'm a teacher not a fighter. Nor am I whatever else you think I am." Turning back, she smiled at him. "I think, Mr. Jordan, that you and I got off on a wrong foot. Perhaps we should start again." With her hand outstretched, she took the few steps toward him.
But Cole did not take her offered hand, and his face went from smiling to a frown. "Where did you hear of this? Who told you I needed a teacher? And who the hell are you?"
"I'm Kathryn de Longe, and you hired me."
At that Cole's smile returned. "Oh, I see. So who put you up to this? Henry Brown? Or was it someone else? No, no, don't tell me, it was Lester and that bunch."
"I really have no idea what you're talking about. You put an ad in the Philadelphia paper, and I answered it. After the exchange of two letters, you hired me."
"Sure I did," Cole said with a voice dripping sarcasm, then he straightened and walked back around the desk, opened a drawer, and took out a large leather book—a book filled with bank drafts. "How much do you want?"
"I want what we agreed upon," she said, puzzled. "Mr. Jordan, I really do apologize for this morning, but—"
"You must be one of the players from Denver. Out-of-work actress, are you? Or just a prostitute with ambition?" He said the last with a slow look up and down her form.
Kathryn started to count to ten to control her temper, but instead she opened her case, pulled out papers, and began to put them before him on the desk. "Here are your two letters to me, and here are copies of my letters to you stating my qualifications. Here is the contract you sent me, and I believe that is, yes, I do believe that is your signature just above mine." She could not resist some sarcasm of her own, then, suddenly, doubt filled her mind. "Is that your signature? Did you write those letters?"
For a moment he looked at her in bewilderment, and she could tell by his expression that he had indeed signed the contracts. But then that knowing little smile of his came back. "How did you get these papers?"
"Through the United States mail service," she said in exasperation. "What is the problem? If you'd tell me what is wrong perhaps I could find a solution."
At that he opened a desk drawer and withdrew a piece of folded cardboard and tossed it toward her. "Open it," he said. "Go on. I think you should see it since you sent it to me."
Picking up the folder, she opened it to see a photograph of a stern-looking woman in her fifties, steel gray hair pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her neck. She had narrow eyes, a lipless mouth, and from her expression she had never smiled in her life.
"Seen that before?" Cole asked.
"No, should I have seen it?" she asked, putting the folder back onto his desk.
"That, Mrs. de Longe, or whatever your real name is, is you. Or who you wanted me to believe is you."
"I can assure you that I sent you a photograph of myself, not of anyone else, and I also sent you a full list of vital statistics, just as you asked for. I lied to you about nothing, not my age, my looks, or the fact that I am a widow with a nine-year-old son who will be living with me."
"Is this the list you sent?" he asked as he slammed a paper onto the desk.
As soon as Kathryn saw it she knew it wasn't her writing, for the letters were formed with a sharp angularity that her writing did not have. But when she saw her name at the top of the page, she picked it up and looked at it. According to the paper, Kathryn de Longe was fifty-one years old, five foot nine inches tall, and weighed a hundred and eighty-five pounds. She had never been married, had no dependents, and had taught school for nearly thirty years. Kathryn's mouth dropped open when she saw that all the schools "she" had taught at had been correctional institutions, mostly for "incorrigible" boys, but she'd also worked at a place for women who were "criminally insane."
