"Slightly," he said in that same deceptively soft voice.

"Study hall?"

"Seven to nine, Sunday through Thursday."

"Something new?"

"Very."

"Ahhhh." She bowed her head, thinking. When she looked back up, he hadn't budged. Quietly she said, "The girls are upset over Dr.

O'Neill's death. So am I. I had hoped we could talk it out." "The girls have free times, but this isn't one. They were supposed to be in study hall ten minutes ago."

"Study hall can wait a few more minutes, can't it?"

He shook his head slowly.

She lowered her voice even more. "That's a rigid stance, given the circumstances."

He didn't blink.

In little more than a whisper, but one tinged with anger, she said, "Mara O'Neill meant a lot to these girls. They need time to grieve."

"What they need," he said in nearly as low and angry a voice, "is the assurance that there is some sort of order in their lives.

They need routine. That's one of the things the evening study hall is about. The other is about incredibly poor grades."

Paige was getting nowhere. The man might be gorgeous, but he was as sensitive as a stone.

She could imagine him a math professor or a dorm parent from hell.

Mara would be incensed to find such a creature on the Mount Court payroll.

"What these girls need," she said with a steeliness of her own, "is understanding.

Clearly you aren't in a position to give it. Hopefully the new Head "I am the new Head."

He was Noah Perrine? Paige had trouble believing that. She had known two Heads in the five years that she had been affiliated with Mount Court. The first had retired after twenty-three years, which was twenty-two years more than the second had survived Both had been stuffy, white-haired, and preoccupied in the way ivory-tower minds could be.

This one was nothing like that. He was too focused to be the new Head.

He was too young.

He was too attractive.

But the girls weren't denying it, and then Paige remembered what they had said during practice earIler that week about the new Head being a stickler for rules. And it fit. Which meant that continuing the argument would be futile, even harmful if it was done in front of the girls. The last thing Paige wanted was to make a bad situation worse.

She returned to the girls, putting a hand on Deirdre's shoulder.

"We've been preempted. But this talk is important. Why don't I come back tomorrow afternoon"she would have preferred the morning but it was her turn to do the Saturday shift"let's say one o'clock, same place?"

Their voices were low and resentful "This is absurd." bLike we'll really be able to study."

"It'll be a total waste of time."

Paige said, "Try. For me. Better still, if you don't want to do assigned work, write me a letter about what Dr. O'Neill meant to you.

That would help me a lot. I'm having trouble with her death, too."

Just when she thought she was in control, her eyes filled with tears.

She wrapped her arms around Sami.

Tia wrapped her arms around them both.

Several of the others came close and joined in. Paige was touched by their warmth, and grateful.

But the new Head was standing there, watching and waiting. One by one, with more than a few bitter looks shot his way, the girls left.

Paige recomposed herself. She was tired exhausted, if the truth were toldand feeling hollow inside. She was also beginning to ache.

It had been a tense day, a few tense days.

Though Sami weighed next to nothing, Paige could feel the straps of the baby carrier pressing her T-shirt into her shoulders. She curled an arm under the child's bottom to ease the weight.

Assuming that the new Head had left with the girls, she herself turned to leave, only to find that she hadn't escaped after all. He stood there studying her, making her feel suddenly ugly and pale.

"Are you sure you don't want to escort them?" she asked tartly. "They may walk right past the study hall."

He allowed his mouth a tiny twist. "That's the most perceptive thing you've said yet. The kids at this school will do just about anything to test the limits we set, and they've been able to get away with it, until now. I may not be the most popular guy on campus" "To put it mildly."

"but I'll be damned if I'll be run ramshod over."

Paige marveled at the man's coldness. "My partner died. If ever there's a time to be flexible, this is it, don't you think?"

"What I think," he said, "is that you're very much affected by your partner's death, and that while some of these girls may be saddened, they're using the situation to their own ends."

"If you'd known Mara, you wouldn't say that.

She was a dynamic person. The girls adored her."

"At least one of those girls never even met the woman. This is her first year here, and the term is barely five days old."

Paige gave a quick shake of her head. "The discussion may have started with Mara, but it had broadened. We were talking about loneliness and the remedies for it, which is something girls this age obsess about.

From the questions Sara asked, I'd say she has genuine concerns about the people around her.

If she's new here, she's probably feeling alone and frightened, and she will, until she settles in with a group of friends. If, on top of that, she has parents who could care less" "Her parents care."

"Well, she sure doesn't know who to trust, or who to talk to if something's bothering her, and that scares the living daylights out of me. If I had a daughter" "What's that?" he interrupted with the jut of his chin.