Scandalous (41 page)

He could picture St. Michael’s now, as if he’d never left. The ivy-clad, medieval courts, the formal gardens rolling down to the peaceful Cam, his rooms in First Court and all the exciting, intelligent, adoring young women he’d taken to bed there. He still had young lovers in LA of course, physically perfect specimens all. And Dita, to give her fair credit, was no slacker in either the looks or the lovemaking department. But it was a long time, a
long
time, since Theo had fucked a truly intelligent woman.

What would it be like to go back to Cambridge now? To return as the conquering hero? As a fantasy, it had a lot of appeal, though it was hard—impossible—to fit Dita and the children into that picture. Plus Perry had made it painfully clear that now would
not
be a good time for Theo to walk away from his lucrative endorsement deals, never mind abandon the TV show that had made him.

Drying and dressing in long shorts and a James Perse T-shirt, his LA uniform, Theo came down to breakfast in a thoughtful mood. Unusually, Dita was downstairs already, wrapped in a silk robe and picking at a waffle with Milo on her lap when he came in.

“Hi, Dad,” Milo said shyly. It irritated Theo, the way the boy was always so nervous around him, clinging to Dita like Bambi to his mother, but he tried not to show it.

“Morning, Milo. How’s that cough this morning?”

“Better.” He smiled wanly. “I think I can go to school today. I feel fine.”

“That’s great,” said Theo, but Dita shook her head.

“Not today, honey. Rosetta said he was wheezing a lot in the night,” she explained to Theo. “I want Dr. Marsden to see him before we make any decisions.” She sprinkled powdered sugar
into a square of waffle and fed it to her son, as if he were a helpless baby bird. Theo felt his anger building.

“He just said he feels fine.”

“Drop it, Theo, OK?” Dita snarled. “You know nothing about how to care for Milo. You never have.”

Unwilling to be drawn into yet another fight in front of the kids, Theo changed the subject.

“I heard something interesting yesterday,” he said, pouring himself a bowl of Kashi Go Lean cereal and ruffling his daughter’s hair. Throughout her parents’ tense exchange, four-year-old Fran had continued happily stuffing her face with Cheerios, washed down with chocolate milk. “St. Michael’s is looking for a new master.”

Dita frowned. “What is that, code? You wanna be a priest, now? Or a spy?”

Theo looked at her and thought,
You really are a deeply stupid person
.

“No,” he said patiently. “St. Michael’s is a college at Cambridge University. My old college, as it happens. The master is like the dean, the head of the college. It’s a very prestigious post.”

Dita shrugged, bored. “So?”

“I don’t know.” Theo tried to keep his voice casual. “I mean, it’s kind of a crazy idea. But, you know, I could apply.”

“
You?
” Dita laughed insultingly. “What the fuck do you know about running a school? You’re a TV presenter.”

“Actually, I’m a physicist who happens to have a television career,” said Theo stiffly.

“Right. And I’m a NASA astronaut who happens to make movies,” taunted Dita.

“Is that so?” Theo shot back. “When was your last movie role, darling? I forget. Perhaps it’s time to give your old buddies at the space center a call.”

“Fuck you,” said Dita. Milo started wheezing.

“Don’t shout,” he pleaded. “I don’t like shouting.”

“Sorry, my angel.” Dita smothered the boy in kisses, immediately switching into doting mother mode. “Daddy’s being silly, that’s all. Mommy’s not really mad. Daddy was joking, weren’t you, Daddy?”

Not trusting himself to say anything, Theo stalked out of the room, bumping into Rico, Dita’s stylist, in the hallway.
It’s like living in a fucking office
, he thought darkly.
I can’t get to my own front door without tripping over the hangers-on.
“Watch where you’re going,” he barked.

Rico raised an overplucked eyebrow. “Temper, temper. Looks like someone got out of her ladyship’s bed on the wrong side this morning.” Rico, like the rest of Dita’s entourage, who were all either female or gay, fancied Theo like mad. He couldn’t understand how anyone could be dissatisfied with a husband as ruggedly handsome, rich, and brilliant as Theo Dexter. As for that British accent, it was enough to give one a teeny orgasm on the spot.

“She’s out of control,” said Theo, tearing at his hair like a man distracted. It was rare for him to confide in Dita’s staff, especially the flamboyantly flaming Rico. But he needed to let off steam. “The spending is beyond all reason. I’m not the Aga fucking Khan, and she’s not the star she used to be. Someone needs to get that through her brainless, blonde skull before we’re all living under a bridge.”

“So you’d rather I didn’t give her these tickets for the preview of Marc Jacobs’s Spring Collection, then? He’s doing it in Rome this year. I thought we’d make a week of it, stay at the Hassler, you know, some shopping on the Via Veneto.” He held up a pair of stiff, gold-embossed tickets wickedly.

Theo snatched them out of his hands and pocketed them. “Not unless she’s planning to swim there.”

Rico watched as Theo picked up his car keys from the hall table and swept angrily out of the house. He loved it when Theo got all macho. Dita must be out of her mind to push him the way that she did.

Outside, the blazing LA sunshine lifted Theo’s spirits somewhat, as it always did. It was impossible to pull out of the gates of his fifteen-million-dollar mansion in his new red Bugatti Veyron with the thick black center stripe and not to think of how far he’d come from his childhood in Crawley. Crawley where it always rained, and the height of anyone’s ambitions was a souped-up Ford Escort and a paid-off mortgage.

Do I really want to go back to England? Leave all this behind?

He argued with himself all the way to his new offices on Cannon Drive in downtown Beverly Hills.
It’s not England. It’s Cambridge. It’s the mastership.
Hollywood had plenty to offer, but that was something that couldn’t be replicated. To be a living part of history, to perch triumphantly at the very top of academia’s tallest tree. Best of all, it was a golden ticket back into the academic fold, the world that had turned its back on him, but it was a ticket that did
not
involve him having to go back to research or, heaven forbid, come up with a new idea.
I’m too old for that
, he told himself.
I’ve already earned my laurels. What I want now is to be able to rest on them.

There were numerous hurdles, of course, and he ran through them mentally on the elevator ride to his twelfth-floor office.

The college might not want me. They might see me as too “flash.”

I’ve got work commitments here and around the world I can’t just walk away from.

Dita will divorce me. Although this morning that feels like more of a plus than a minus.

“Good morning, Mr. Dexter.” The new receptionist, Candy or Kiki or some sort of stripper name, gazed at him adoringly. “Your mail’s on the desk. Can I get you anything this morning? Coffee? Bagel?”
Blow job?
her eyes added, brazenly.

“No, thanks.” He went into his office and shut the door. Turning on his computer, he clicked open his e-mails and scrolled down to find the one from Ed Gilliam, about St. Michael’s.
There
must be a way. If I could fit the work around it somehow…shoot in the long summer vacation, come to some deal with the fellowship.

He thought about Dita and their fight this morning. The mockery in her voice. “
You?
What do you know about running a school?”

It was, Theo decided, high time he grew back a pair of balls.

Clicking on
REPLY
, he began to type.

T
HERESA SIPPED HER
piping-hot Starbucks cinnamon latte, warming her gloved fingers around the paper cup and humming joyously to herself as she crunched down Jesus Lane. “Crunched” was the operative word. A thick blanket of snow had fallen overnight, carpeting Cambridge in white, like a Victorian Christmas card. Snow always made everything beautiful, but somehow it felt especially magical here. The ancient spires and steeples jutted up from the winter wonderland below into a piercing, bright-blue sky. It was only a few days before Christmas, and all across the city bells were ringing, the same peals that had rung out in celebration for centuries. It was impossible not to feel happy, and excited, on a day like this, and Theresa O’Connor had no intention of trying.

Last week, she’d finally bitten the bullet and officially put her name forward for the mastership of St. Michael’s. Braced for ridicule, she’d been astonished by how seriously the college seemed to take her candidacy and by the overwhelming support she’d received from her students and colleagues in the English faculty. Horatio Hollander, who Theresa knew for a fact hadn’t two beans to rub together, bought her a beautiful, dark-green cashmere scarf as a congratulations present.

“Congratulations for what?” she laughed. “I’ve only applied, Horatio. I’ll not get the thing, you know. I haven’t a snowball’s chance in an oven.”

“We’ll see,” he said loyally, refusing to take back the scarf and insisting she not only accept it but wear it. “It’s the perfect color for you.”

Actually, it is the perfect color for me
, thought Theresa, pulling it up over her red curls to protect them from the newly falling flakes. She would miss Horatio over the Christmas break; she’d miss all her students, in fact, although the five-week holiday did provide some much-needed time to work on her own book (she’d started a new project on
Troilus and Cressida
), not to mention get started on the endless list of odd jobs that needed doing at Willow Tree Cottage. She’d turned the heating up full blast and lit the wood-burning stove daily, but still barely a week passed when something didn’t crack, buckle, or fall to pieces with cold. Pipes, windows, floorboards; in a house this old nothing was safe. As soon as Theresa dealt with one problem, another seemed to spring up, and of course there was never enough time, or money, to deal with them.

Today, however, she’d determined to spend the whole day in college, catching up on paperwork and, hopefully, writing. With snow like this it was impossible not to be inspired, and if she stayed home she knew she’d end up curled up in front of the fire with a romance novel. Either that or on her hands and knees, defrosting some vital piece of plumbing with a kettle.

With the undergraduates all home for Christmas, and the thick snow like a layer of padding on the ground, college was almost eerily silent. When one of Theresa’s colleagues tapped her on the shoulder, she almost jumped out of her skin.

“Jesus, Harry, you frightened the life out of me. I never heard you coming.”

“I know. Brilliant, isn’t it, the snow? Makes me want to skip about like a ten-year-old.” Harry Tremayne grinned. A sprightly
sixty-year-old classics scholar, he was a throwback to another, gentler era, before graffiti and football hooliganism and Internet porn, before ugly bendy buses belched their fumes onto King’s Parade and undergraduates stripped topless every May Week and had their photographs published in the
Sun
. On a day like today, though, Harry’s Cambridge felt within reach. Theresa could have hugged him. “You look cheerful,” said Harry.

“I am.” Theresa glowed. “I feel inspired. At least two thousand words today, I think.”

“Marvelous,” said Harry. “I’m so pleased you aren’t letting that vile ex-husband of yours dampen your spirits.” He started to walk away, but Theresa grabbed his arm.

“My ex-husband? You mean Theo Dexter?”

Harry looked puzzled. “Do you have more than one?”

“No.” Theresa blushed. “No. I just wondered what made you mention him, that’s all. I mean, why would Theo be dampening my spirits? We haven’t spoken in years.”

Harry’s face fell. He looked like a little boy whose brand-new model airplane had just crash-landed beyond repair. “Oh dear. You haven’t heard.”

“Apparently not.” Theresa felt her stomach lurch, like a plane suddenly losing altitude. She was both surprised and irritated that the mention of Theo’s name could still do that to her. “Come on, Harry, spit it out. It can’t be
that
bad, surely?”