Follow the Dotted Line by Nancy Hersage Read Free Book Online Page B

it was time her nephew skipped his classes at Our Savior’s Tabernacle University for the afternoon and got a glimpse of what the rest of the kids his age were up to.
    “Why is Samantha coming all the way from Scotland to give a talk in California?” Harley wanted to know.
    “It’s not a talk,” Andy explained. “It’s a lecture. And that’s what history professors do—give lectures.”
    Harley rolled his eyes.
    “Relax,” Andy said. “You’ll love it.”
    “What’s it about?”
    “Spies during World War II.”
    The truth was Samantha Bravos was more than a lecturer; she’d become the academic storyteller-in-chief for the Scottish university system. Both the head of the history department and the administration at Edinburgh Uni loved to send her on globe-hopping tours to create interest in and attract students to their school. The university had discovered that this growing market of international students not only brought diversity to a campus full of pale-skinned gingers, but it brought a huge influx of tuition, as well. The fact that the university’s biggest recruiter was an American, born and raised in Hollywood, was not lost on the Scots. They were a practical people; if Tinseltown could make stars of Bravehearted William Wallace and Sean-007-Connery, then why not let a California beach-blonde make the pitch for their college degrees?
    The lecture hall was packed, as Andy knew it would be. Sam had flown into LAX that morning and was giving her lecture in the afternoon, so she came to campus directly from the airport. Andy had not yet seen her daughter, but they were scheduled to meet up after the lecture. Andy stole a look at Harley as they settled into their reserved seats, and the expectant energy in the room began to mushroom into palpable excitement. His blue eyes hung open, as did his mouth.
    Sam sat in the well of the lecture hall, while the chair of the UCLA history department introduced her. She was dressed in grey, pinstriped pants and a matching jacket that exposed a dramatic chartreuse cowl-neck sweater. Her long hair was pulled up in a twist, and she smiled when she saw her mother in the audience. Samantha had always been Andy’s most conventionally ambitious child, meaning she managed to make it out of adolescence and into a family and career without Ian’s dope smoking, Mitch’s rebellions, and Lilly’s indecision. Sam had known what she wanted and how to get it from the time she was in high school.
    As a child, Sam had been the family rule-follower. Her siblings had dubbed her ‘The Strawberry’, derived from the insipidly sweet Strawberry Shortcake character that everyone in the family loved to hate. Sam’s good behavior, she often reminded her mother, had earned her the derogatory nickname and not much else. That’s because parental attention in the Kornacky family always went to the worst behaved person in the room, she said, making Mitch the chronically-lamented prodigal son to her faithful-but-forgotten daughter.
    Still, Sam’s impeccable conduct and ability to function within a system, as well as deftly manipulate it, had earned her a PhD by the time she was twenty-six and a position at Edinburgh shortly thereafter. Her work since her faculty appointment had never been characterized as brilliant, which she liked to observe was not a system requirement. Rather, reviewers called her academic papers ‘intensely interesting’ and ‘almost irresistible,’ attracting a readership far beyond the university. And that, Sam once confided to Andy, was just the sort of thing that would make any system proud.
    Sam stood at the podium and winked at Harley. He could barely contain himself.
    “What we do for love,” the young Professor Bravos began, “can be remarkable. It can also be the stuff of history. Desire. Heartache. Courage. And betrayal. That’s a lot for one life. But during wartime, as you may know, there are people who seem to live life more than others. I discovered