Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,69

would miss such an important day for you. But who knows? Maybe he wasn’t as in to you as he appeared to be at the dinner. Or maybe he just couldn’t get time off from his other job.”

“His other job?” The odd phrasing caught Leanne’s attention and her eyes narrowed.

“Come on, you know all about his other job. That’s how you met him, after all, at the Foxe’s Den.” She shook a finger in Leanne’s direction, admonishing her in a playful tone. “I should be angry at you for stealing my thunder. And let me tell you, it took me most of Saturday night to figure out where I’d seen that beautiful body of his before.”

The implications of Gillian’s revelation burst through Leanne’s brain like a mortar shell.

“You were the one.”

“Who revealed his moonlighting to the university? You betcha. The dean was very receptive to my concerns about the threat to the university’s reputation, should news of Brandon’s less than salubrious career choice leak out.”

“You bitch.”

“Sticks and stones, Lee, sticks and stones.” But suddenly the saccharine smile disappeared from her face and the true ugliness revealed itself, no less dark for all it was delivered from someone with perfectly white teeth and flawless skin. “You were so sure you could get away with ruining my chances with the sorority, weren’t you? Bet you thought I’d let it slide, especially after all this time?”

“This is about your sorority? But that was years ago.”

“I don’t care how long ago it was. You ruined all of my plans when you ratted me out. I was blackballed. Marginalized. And it was all your fault.”

“Let me spell this out for you. You cheated. You plagiarized. You terrorized those poor pledges into writing those essays for you and it was wrong. The consequences were always on your shoulders,” Leanne said unflinchingly. “All I did was try to stop you.”

If she’d hoped her speech would have any effect on Gillian, she was sadly mistaken.

“Spare me another lecture,” Gillian spat. “You turned me in because you were jealous. You wanted to ruin my chances because you never had a chance yourself.”

Gillian’s words were a perverse echo of Brandon’s charge and they rocked Leanne to the core. Adrenaline coursed through her. Her knuckles were white against the smooth leather handle of her attaché. She had never wanted to hit another human being as intensely as she wanted to right now.

Consciously slowing her breathing, she exhaled. “I try to live my life with integrity and self-respect. Concepts you know nothing about.”

Gillian laughed long and hard at Leanne’s self-defense. “Where did the dignity and self-respect come in when you were screwing the stripper?”

“Brandon has more worth in one finger than you’ve got in your entire body. He’s decent and kind and hardworking and—” She struggled to keep her voice from echoing through the hall.

“And he’s completely screwed,” Gillian crowed. “Well, you keep thinking all those nice things about him and about yourself if it gives you comfort.”

The auditorium doors opened and Dean Kessler gestured for Leanne to come in. Gillian stood aside and Leanne could feel her pale eyes marking her back as she walked, step by step, toward the waiting podium. At the dais, she stopped and looked back into the hall. Gillian was still there, but she’d put on her elegant wool coat and was buttoning it.

“Good luck,” she mouthed, hers eyes alight with a vicious glee, leaving Leanne standing in front of a room full of spectators, wondering just what havoc her rival had planned. Because if Lee had learned anything in more than twenty years of their forced acquaintance, Gillian never did anything nice. There was always an ulterior motive.

But there was no time to consider their altercation further, because the judges were preparing to give their opening remarks.

“We want to thank everyone here today for coming out and showing their interest for higher learning. The Walters Prize has been awarded annually since 1926 and counts among its recipients two Supreme Court justices, five Nobel Prize winners and more. Ms. Galloway represents the finest that this university and our academic system can offer and we recognize her accomplishments in becoming one the final five graduate candidates in the running for this year’s award.”

A polite smattering of applause followed this platitude and Leanne took a moment to peer round the lecture hall. It was surprisingly crowded. Near the front, a group of graduate students from the English department, Julia and Cassandra among them, were there to cheer her