Page 35 of It'll Always Be Her

The short article stated that Dr. Adam Powers had “resigned from his faculty position at MIT after an investigation found he committed research misconduct by including plagiarized material in published research.”

She looked at him in shock. “This is why you…”

“When you’re discredited in an entire field, you take whatever you can get.” With a shrug, he took the phone back from her. “Scientists aren’t forgiving when it comes to allegations of cheating. The fact that the Explorer Channel job entailed a move to Los Angeles was a bonus. My family didn’t handle my disgrace well. Not that they should have, I guess.”

“But…it wasn’t true.” The words came out as a statement rather than a question, which surprised him as much as it did her.

He looked at her, his eyes darker in the shadows. After a moment, he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t true.”

“So what happened?”

“I’d co-written several papers with another professor, Martin Thornwall.” Adam started toward another room, his shoulders tensing visibly. “He was a longtime tenured professor, highly regarded and well-established. I’d considered him a mentor. But when the plagiarism accusation came up, he pointed his finger at me and said I’d done it. The university investigators were all too willing to believe that I’d been the one to violate the code of conduct. I’d been an assistant professor for less than two years, and Thornwall was one of their most esteemed faculty members. So I took the hit. The research institute fired me after that.”

Bee frowned. “Couldn’t you have fought the charge?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“The chances I’d win against Thornwall were all but nonexistent. And there was a family thing.”

Bee recalled what she’d read about his eminent, high-profile parents. No, the Powers clan would not have wanted their son to fight a public battle over a plagiarism charge, even if the outcome had ended up in his favor. That kind of stigma wouldn’t go away.

And Bee knew something about stigmas, even when they came about through no fault of your own.

“So you resigned,” she finally said. “Even though you wanted to fight.”

His lack of response was enough. The area around her heart clenched. He’d taken the hit for his parents’ sake, not his own. And by moving across the country to work for the Explorer Channel, he’d also gotten out of both the lines of fire and sight. If he left Washington, DC, there was a better chance the whole mess would die down and leave his family unscathed.

Though its injustice was an outrage, Bee felt her tenderness toward him deepen a little more. She didn’t know anything about his relationship with his parents or if he had any siblings or aunts and uncles, but she couldn’t help admiring a man who made such a drastic sacrifice for his family.

“Do you often tell people what happened?” she asked.

“No.” He shrugged and zipped up the bag. “But very few people ask.”

He grazed his eyes swiftly over hers before he turned to go back downstairs. Bee followed, catching Puffalump’s watchful stare.

“It was a noble thing to do,” she told the cat a bit crossly, pretty certain that Puffalump sensed her softening feelings about Adam Powers. The cat, too, had a stake in saving the library—he’d also lose his home again if it were closed down.

Of course, Bee would never give Puffalump up, but he’d been reigning over the library for a while now, and moving to another location, especially back to her tiny apartment with Edgar, would be a challenge for the old cat. Not to mention for the vulnerable Edgar too.

Like Bee, her animals needed everything to stay exactly as it was.

She rubbed the middle of her chest and quickened her pace to catch up with Adam. She’d had to rely on herself for most of her life, which also meant learning how to trust her deepest instincts.

And despite her reasons for needing to keep a distance from Adam, not to mention Destiny’s warnings, Bee couldn’t help justlikingthe man.

He had integrity. He didn’t apologize for who he was or what he believed in. All his coworkers respected and trusted him. He was a good leader.

Yes, he lacked imagination and open-mindedness, but he looked at things from all angles before drawing a conclusion. He valued proof and evidence, which wasn’t a bad thing. In fact,evidenceof the ghost was what Bee desperately wanted to give him.

But she hadn’t anticipated her heart would get involved.

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