Tainted Love (Sweetest Taboo #2) (20 page)

“Well, there’s no safe sitting in the corner,” Susie noted. “No sinister filing cabinet. Guess that means we start with the drawers, right?” Without waiting for an answer, she moved toward the desk, glancing around to make sure she hadn’t missed an important piece of furniture or a lever that if pulled would give way to a secret room that was hidden from plain view. I realized then that I had watched far too many thrillers in my lifetime and that the films were tainting my understanding of reality. Get a grip, Isabel, I said to myself.

I nodded, moving after her. The desk was definitely the most obvious place to start and the easiest. I kept all of my important documents and personal belongings in my desk, and I suspected that most people did the same. There was no reason to think that Marcus would be any different.

We had just thrown open two of the drawers, and started going through the stacked papers and envelopes, when the sophisticated phone on the desk rang suddenly, startling us to the high heavens.

Chapter Sixteen - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

I
stared at the telephone, horrified. Maybe Marcus did have a silent alarm in his office that alerted a security company? Maybe the security company called his cell phone if his office door was opened when he was not home? Was Marcus calling to find out what was going on? I didn’t know if any of the phones in the rest of the house were ringing. What if this line only came into the office? Had we been discovered? My heart was racing and I tasted that all-too-familiar metallic taste of adrenaline in my mouth.

“Answer it, Izzy!” Susie hissed. “What if he’s calling just to get a hold of you? If you don’t answer, he’ll wonder why!”

I shook my head, silently. I couldn’t answer the phone in his house – I had never answered the phone in his house when it rang. Why should I start now? The phone rang again insistently, and Susie reached for it.

“Izzy, if you’re not going to answer it, I will!” she threatened.

Convinced, I reached for the phone. “Hello?” I asked hesitantly, praying that no one was on the other end of the line.

There was a long pause, and then someone responding, sounding equally hesitant, and even a bit annoyed. “Hello,” the female voice said. “Is…is Marcus home?”

“He’s not, I’m afraid, but I can take a message if you’d like?” I asked politely, wondering how I was going to explain this to him.

“Who is this?” the voice asked suddenly. Definitely annoyed and even angry, now.

I gulped. “This is Isabel. Hmm…who’s this?”

“Isabel? Isabel who? And may I ask exactly what you’re doing in my husband’s house?” she snapped.

I slammed the phone down in the cradle, horrified. Susie jumped and then glared at me.

“What the hell was that?” she hissed. “First you don’t want to answer the phone and then you hang up on the person on the line? Who was it? What did they say?”

I shook my head, unable to speak for a moment. His wife? He had a wife? “She said she was his…his wife,” I answered finally, my voice trembling. “She asked me what I was doing in her husband’s house.”

“Oh my God!” Susie muttered, sinking down into the chair behind the desk. “Oh God, Iz, I’m so sorry. I should have told you sooner, but – ”

“What?” I interrupted, shocked. “Told me what? Do you know something about this? Did you know he was married, Susie? Did you?” I could hear my voice rising with each question, and I knew I needed to get a grip and refrain from shouting, but this was beyond anything I ever imagined. The professor I’d been dating was married, and my best friend had known about it all along and not told me?

Susie held her hands up in a calming motion, opening her eyes wide in that universal expression asking for patience. “Iz, calm down, okay? Shouting at me isn’t going to help the situation. Yes, I knew he was married.
Was
married. He got a divorce over the summer. It was big news here, really scandalous because his wife is some heiress or something. It happened while you were back home. I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you, but…”

“
Was
married,” I muttered. “But what, Suz? Why didn’t you just tell me when I got back?”

“Well you weren’t actually doing anything with him at the time, and then when you were, I did tell you to keep it casual, that it was probably just a fling. I mean I don’t think it matters, since he’s divorced and everything, but…”

“But what?” I asked suspiciously. Susie didn’t know Marcus well, but she knew hundreds of other people on campus, and if anyone had her ear to the ground, it was Susie.

She shrugged. “Well the rumor around campus is that he’s hoping to get back with his wife. She was his main source of income it appears. She probably paid for all of this.” She gestured at the well-furnished surroundings, at the roof over our heads then scrunched her face up in apology, her freckles forming round orange blotches on her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Iz, but everyone’s saying that he’s just using you to make her jealous so that she comes back to him. I don’t…I don’t really think you should keep seeing him.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” I asked, shocked. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?” I demanded, my hands thrown up in the air.

“Well I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it, and I wasn’t sure you’d believe me,” she answered defensively. “I was actually glad you were finally coming here to snoop around. I hoped you’d find something and realize what was going on, and leave him. He’s a total jerk, you know. You deserve so much better.”

I sighed. This was an awful lot of information to take in at once, and though she was making sense, it didn’t take away the sting of her secrecy. She should have told me what was going on sooner, to save me from this embarrassment. If she were my friend, she would have told me sooner! Susie isn’t the bad guy here, a voice in my head reminded me. Don’t blame Susie, blame Marcus, the voice said, blame yourself for being so caught up with your sexy professor that you were unwilling to see the red flags waving all around you!

I groaned. The voice was right, what I felt was anger at Marcus, not anger at Susie. He was the one freshly divorced from his wife, and evidently using me to make her come back to him. He was the one who’d been dishonest, and then used me for the entire semester! My eyes narrowed. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. Who was he to use me like that?

I had only been toying with the idea of a relationship with Marcus, I remembered. I’d been so excited to be back with Tom, and looking forward to a potential future together. Marcus had just been a fantasy that played itself out in real life, but there were no romantic feelings between us, no love. I had tried to hard to make him see that I meant something, that our relationship meant something, but actually, Marcus didn’t really mean anything to me. The relationship didn’t mean anything to me, except for passionate and steamy sex.

“Guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t taking him too seriously,” I said wryly, doing my best to grin at Susie. “Though I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this mess gracefully!”

Susie, who’d been grinning back at me, frowned now with concern. “Just be careful, Iz. You don’t want to just break things off with him without explaining your position. I mean, he’s your academic advisor, so just remember that he still holds some clout and can make things hard for you if he feels jaded…” she glanced at the phone, smirking, “we all know how sensitive men’s egos can be!”

I nodded, taking her advice to heart. I had to be extremely careful and strategic about this. Yes. I knew Marcus well enough to know that he had a temper, and that he wasn’t afraid to lose it when things didn’t go his way. Marcus didn’t hesitate to pull rank, either – I’d heard him make off-hand statements to me more than once about how he could make my academic career at Lincoln University complicated and unpleasant if he chose to do so. He’d always said it as a joke, but it was clear to me now that his words were anything but funny.

“You’re right, Susie,” I muttered, as I organized the shuffled papers back into the drawer. “First things first, though. Now that we know what he’s hiding, we don’t have to go through this desk anymore. Let’s get you out of here before Marcus gets home. I’m going to have to cook dinner for him tonight and act as though nothing’s wrong. I’ll figure out how to end things with him tomorrow. I’ll need some time to think it through.”

Susie nodded and we began to organize and tidy up the items we had removed from the drawers. I didn’t know when Marcus was going to be home, and I wanted everything back in place before he walked through the front door.

***

Tom stared at the newspaper in front of him, horrified. It had been several days since his house was egged, and nothing further had happened. Tom assumed that the rumors had died down, for a while at least, and that he was safe from allegations and threats.

The paper sitting on his front porch alleged otherwise.

He sank to his knees, staring at it, and let out a choked sob. It was his worst nightmare, come to life. There on the front page was a picture of him, posing with two of his former swimmers a couple years earlier. Above the picture, the title marched across the page in bold block letters: TEACHER ACCUSED OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT WITH STUDENT. AGAIN.

Tom had no idea who had gone to the local paper, or what type of information the reporter garnered from that person, but it didn’t really matter at this point. If the press had any information at all, which it clearly did, then the police either already had it or soon would. Even if there were no evidence at all, this headline spelled the end of his teaching career, at least in this school district. Many of the parents and teachers in the district knew and liked Tom, but with the rumors about Isabel a few years ago, the police investigation (which led to no arrest or conviction, he reminded himself) and this story on the front page, only a few of them would stand behind him. Just as they had done a few years ago when Sarah wrote that tell-all letter to Mrs. Drake, Tom would be dragged in to the local police department for questioning, and would likely be asked to go on unpaid leave until the case was resolved. Tom was sure he wouldn’t be arrested, for what he just wasn’t sure of yet. After all, how could he be arrested without a shred of evidence? However, he knew from the experience of other colleagues who had been in similar situations that life would become a living hell until the allegations were put to bed and his name was cleared. Thoughts raced through Tom’s mind and he reminded himself, in an effort to calm his nerves, that nothing had ever materialized in the last investigation, thanks to Isabel’s refusal to admit to any wrong-doing on Tom’s part. But Tom knew that those former allegations, detailed in Sarah’s letter, would be resurrected as evidence that he may have acted inappropriately, again.

Without Isabel here to clear up those old allegations, the police department and school district would bulldoze ahead, ruining his career, and possibly his life.

Even worse, he realized, was the fact that this story was plastered on a national newspaper. Tom’s face appeared on the front page, and the headline shouted out at the reader – guilty, guilty, guilty. Isabel always read the paper in the morning, and she surfed headlines on the Internet throughout the day. Tom knew she was bound to see the story, if she hadn’t already.

Chapter Seventeen - Creep

W
hen I saw Susie again, I was sobbing, unable to control myself, and barely able to stand. I wasn’t sure how I’d reached the apartment, but I was glad to finally be there. To be home, in a place where I was safe, and with someone who loved and supported me.  

Susie, who had obviously been waiting up for me, a newspaper in her hand, jumped from the couch and stuffed the newspaper under the couch cushion, as I stumbled through the door, moving to catch me in her arms before I crumpled to the floor. “Oh my God, Iz,” she mumbled, guiding me toward the couch. “What did he do to you? Did he hit you? Are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “Not hurt,” I choked out. “Upset. Not hurt.” When I got to the couch in the living room, my body just dropped on the cushions. I carefully leaned my head on Susie’s shoulder and she began to rub my arm in a maternal and comforting fashion – just what I needed.

“Okay, well that’s a start,” she murmured. “What do you need? Tea? Water? Alcohol?”

I shook my head, sniffling. “No, no alcohol, that will just make me feel worse. Tea would be good, though.”

She nodded, made a quick movement to snatch the stuffed newspaper from underneath the couch and hurried to the kitchen, where she stuffed the newspaper in the garbage bin as she reached for the kettle on the stove top and set out a selection of herbal teas on the tray I kept specifically for that purpose. “Tell me what happened, Izzy,” she said quietly, her sleek long body moving back and forth in the kitchen.

I closed my eyes, listened to the comforting sounds of water boiling and dishes clinking in the kitchen, and recounted the events that unfolded. “Marcus got home not long after you left,” I began. “He said that he had a tough day, some issue with the Dean and his classes next semester, so he was in a real mood. He told me he was glad I was there, because he knew I would make him feel better and lift his spirits.” My voice drifted off after the last statement, as I was reminded of how nice it had been for Marcus to actually admit that I would make him feel better. In spite of how angry I was about what I had learned about Marcus, his ex-wife, and his motives for being with me. I’d thought then, when he said those words to me, that at least I provided him comfort and maybe the night wouldn’t be so uncomfortable for me after all.

Susie, having boiled water faster than anyone else in the history of man, returned to the couch with the tea tray, and set about preparing cups for both of us. She nodded at me to continue, her blue eyes big and concerned.

“I was cooking dinner,” I continued. “Making one of his favorite chicken dishes, coq au vin. That was what I’d planned to make, you know, and I told him he’d feel better right away because his favorite dish was soon to be pulled out of the oven and served. He started going on and on about his day and how upsetting his conversation was with the Dean, though he wouldn’t tell me what exactly the Dean did to upset him. He was talking and talking but not really saying much, and it seemed to me that maybe he was upset about something else, something he didn’t want to share with me. The whole Dean thing sounded like a cover up story and I wasn’t buying it, but I was listening anyway. The whole time I just wanted to scream at him for being married, for using me for sex, for getting back at his ex-wife, for wanting her back and not wanting me instead. I wanted to cry and rail, to beat him with my fists for embarrassing me and for making me doubt my self worth and chipping away at my self-esteem.”