Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,46

giggle, should be illegal. Heck, it probably was in a couple of states, but given her explosive orgasm, she wouldn’t be turning him in to authorities anytime soon.

By all rights, she should be exhausted. But she wasn’t.

She felt…happy. Energized and enthusiastic, ready to take on the world.

She wanted to do a little dance where she sat. Happy was a strange sensation for her. Challenged or content, sure. But grins-and-cartwheels happy? Since dancing was out of the question, she settled for another sip of her fragrant dark roast instead.

“Everything all right, Leanne?” The startled expression on her advisor’s face brought her back to her surroundings with an abrupt jolt. He handed back her corrected chapter. “You seem a little…distracted this morning.”

She blushed. What was wrong with her? Sure, a blistering night of sex was great. She and Brandon complemented each other in many unexpected ways, but she needed to keep her feet firmly on the ground and not let their fling thrust her off course. Not when she was so close.

Armstrong pushed back his chair. “I’m sure it’s nerves, eh? Never fear, Tuesday will come and I have every confidence that you’ll acquit yourself admirably in front of the Walters committee.”

The committee. Her stomach rolled and the feeling of euphoria dissipated.

Unlike many other lucrative postgraduate prizes, the Walters conducted the final interviews publicly. The first rounds had been based solely on the applicants’ written responses and academic accomplishments: articles published, awards earned, letters of reference from distinguished faculty. But the finals were different. The selection committee visited each of the five short-listed candidates’ universities personally. They would quiz Leanne on her research plans, judging her breadth of knowledge and her skills as a speaker and a thinker. She would be required to answer questions from the gallery too. Unscripted questions about her work and her thesis, designed to draw out her position and articulate her ideas. It was going to be the most public of trials but Leanne felt confident in her abilities.

She knew the other candidates, by reputation if not in person—they would mount a formidable challenge. They wouldn’t have made the list otherwise. But she’d been preparing for this moment almost as long as she knew what a doctorate was. She was ready.

She couldn’t sing to save her life.

She couldn’t dance without causing bodily harm.

But when it came to her research, Leanne wouldn’t step aside for anyone. She was the best. All she had to do was prove it in five days’ time.

“I’m ready,” she said with confidence. “I’ve been practicing my responses. My thesis is strong and it breaks new ground in the field of eighteenth century literary studies. I’m ready.”

He nodded, his craggy face breaking into a lopsided smile. “Excellent. And given what I’ve learned about you, I also know there’s no risk of academic skeletons either. It’s one of the reasons I was so happy to support your application when you brought it to me last spring. You’re just the type of person the university wants to put forward for a prize like this.”

“Skeletons?” she joked. “I’m an English major, Dr. Armstrong, not a biology student.”

She felt a surge of nervousness when Armstrong didn’t laugh in response. “Plagiarism. Academic dishonesty, unfinished degrees or personality conflicts,” he hinted, his voice dropping seriously. “Personal challenges like drugs or alcohol. That’s what the committee is most afraid of. Scandals.”

“Well, there’s nothing like that in my past, I can assure you.”

Then a thought occurred to her. What about Brandon?

Surely, in this day and age, sleeping with someone wouldn’t be grounds for being looked over by the committee. But their unorthodox hookup…Would that count against her if it ever came to light? She doubted the Walters people would look kindly on someone who frequented a club like the Foxe’s Den, first-time visitor or not.

She shook herself. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Talk about borrowing trouble. There was nothing to be afraid of. There was no scandal, not in her past and definitely not in her present. She was single. Brandon was single. He wasn’t her student—they didn’t even work in the same department. There was nothing about their relationship that the committee could object to.

Right?

No. And besides, the interview committee would never know if she indulged in a fling. They were interested in her mind, not her sex life. She breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated once more on deciphering Armstrong’s revisions.

The gravel crunched beneath Leanne’s tires as she pulled to a stop in the parking lot. The club wasn’t due