Angel's Peak (Virgin River #10)(87)

Jack was just standing still, looking at Cheryl with a smile on his face. “It’s nice you’re here,” he said. “I don’t know what possessed you to hook up with that lunatic,” Jack said, smiling at Dan.” But it’s real nice you’re here. Thanks.”

She threaded her fingers in Dan’s, staking her claim, but she smiled at Jack. “No thanks necessary.”

“Did you put that house of yours on the market?” Jack asked.

“I did. The Realtor seems to think it’ll sell pretty easy. Dan made it beautiful.”

“Will you come around sometimes after it’s sold?” Jack asked. “Maybe let me buy you dinner?”

She laughed. During her drinking days, Jack wouldn’t let her in the door. “You serve food in this place?” She slipped her arm around Dan’s waist and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll pop in once in a while, just to say hello.”

“We’d like that, Cheryl,” Preacher said. “Come Thursday if you don’t have other plans.”

“I work at the community college during the week.”

Dan laughed and gave her a squeeze. “Not this week, honey. It’s Thanksgiving.”

She looked momentarily startled. “And you’re open on Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“A few of us like to get together,” Preacher said. “And I put on a real culinary show. You shouldn’t miss it. Four o’clock.”

Franci had been so busy over the past few weeks that she didn’t give a second thought to T. J. Brookner. Sometimes when she was at the college, she thought about their brief period of dating and the harsh words from him at their parting, and thought, What a close call! She wondered how long she might’ve hung in there with T.J. ordering her dinner, telling her what to like and not like, if Sean hadn’t turned up. She was just grateful it hadn’t gone on any longer, especially having faced his incredible anger. That had been spooky.

And then, suddenly and accidentally, she stumbled upon a whole new dimension to the man.

After a brief workout in the college weight room and a shower before going home, a couple of female voices carried across the lockers, just as she was drying off.

“Gone, I hear,” one said. “Suspended and likely to be fired. God bless the Internet, huh?”

“Was it like I heard?” asked another female voice. “Caught red-handed? By a nanny cam?”

“Literally with his pants down,” said the first. “It must have been fantastic. How about that? All these years he’s been claiming that just because he’s marginally handsome and the girls flirt with him, he’s been victimized by gossip. Poor, poor Professor Hottie, caught on tape with two na**d eighteen-year-old blondes.”

Both women giggled. Franci gasped and dropped her towel to the floor.

“The story is that this particular ménage à trois started in Cabo on his last diving trip. I suppose he thought he was in control of the girls and it turned out they were in the driver’s seat! One of them had a hidden camera and put the movie on the Internet. From the comments on the site, they were hardly the first. This has been going on forever.”

Franci wandered closer to the voices to hear better. Cabo? she thought. What about his “buddy system”? Sounded as if he had a couple of buddies, all right. He was supposed to have been Franci’s boyfriend on that trip to Cabo. So much for that.

“I think he’s scum, but what’s the actual big deal? Is it against the law or something?”

“I dunno what’s against the law—the word is they were all consenting, but the dean didn’t appreciate him boinking the students on a field trip. There’s policy about that sort of thing—no diddling the students. And the gossip has been pretty damning—he’s been manipulating female students into sexually compromising situations for years. Old-timers around here say his wife left him because he couldn’t keep his hands off the freshmen girls.”

“He’s not the first guy who likes younger women…”

The voices drifted off as the door to the locker room opened and the two women exited. And Franci thought dispiritedly, I believed every word he said.

Franci pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt. She was in such a hurry to get out of there, she stuffed her bra in her purse and pulled on her boots without socks. She left the gym without drying her hair and went out in the cold with a wet head. Her stomach flipped and churned as images she just couldn’t block came into her mind. Fresh young women, vulnerable students, taken advantage of by a man of forty, an instructor. Did he trade sex for grades?

You give me credibility, he had said to her. No one gossiped about him when he had a woman with looks and brains as his girlfriend.

So, there was a lot more about the whole relationship than just his controlling nature. She was nothing more than a decoy. She felt violated.

She drove home in a daze.

She drove too fast; she couldn’t wait to get to Sean. It never even occurred to her not to tell him! When she walked in her house, Sean was sitting at the dining room table with the newspaper spread out in front of him. “Where’s Rosie?” she asked, before she even said hello.

“My mom is picking her up and they’re stopping at the store. Maureen’s cooking to—Hey, you’re white as a sheet.” He stood. “What’s the matter? Were you in an accident or something?”