Page 60 of Not Quite Perfect

“Alex says she’s enjoying her new job at Theo’s company,” Roni said, sipping her sherry.

“She is,” I confirmed. “It’s not the newspaper, but she seems to enjoy it.”

“That’s good,” she murmured, moving across the room to perch on the edge of the sofa. “And your job? How are things going at Thackeray?”

“Things are busy, but you know that’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

She winced and blew out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. Say what you’ve come to say, and let’s be done with it.”

I took a few steps closer and lowered my voice. “You’re breaking her heart, Roni.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She lifted her chin haughtily.

“No, you wouldn’t. Because you haven’t spoken to your daughter inweeks.”

“That was Victoria’s decision,” she answered, spearing me with an angry glare. “She knows what she has to do to repair the damage she’s caused this family.”

“Break up with me.” While Victoria may not have told me about the ridiculous ultimatum her mother had issued, Alex had had no problem filling me in on all of the ugly, sordid details.

I didn’t know what I’d expected—evasion, maybe?—but I was shocked when Veronica didn’t even deny it. Instead, she nodded regally. “Yes, that’s right. Break up with you.”

I pulled a long, slow breath into my lungs to tamp down my rising anger. Yelling at Victoria’s mom wouldn’t do either of us any good. I needed this woman to see that I wasn’t a threat to her child. That being with me wasn’t the nightmare she seemed to think it was. “Why?”

Veronica laughed, an ugly, grating sound I was coming to loathe. She might have been a beautiful woman, but I couldn’t imagine what my father saw in her. Not when she was so willing to put her daughter through agony just to get her own selfish way. “Why do you think?”

Honestly, I had no fucking clue. I had all my teeth, and a stable career that I was proud of. I might not be the most exciting man on the planet, but I treated her daughter with respect and dignity. I loved Victoria, and she loved me. What else was there? “Why don’t you fill me in so we’re on the same page.”

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just leave Victoria alone,” she spat, rising from her perch and refilling her glass. Or rather,replacingher glass. The last one had been tiny, practically no bigger than a thimble. Now she commenced filling a full-sized goblet to the brim. “You could have had any woman you wanted, but you had to go after my daughter.”

Wait, what?

“Come again?”

She turned on me, anger flashing in her eyes. She set her glass down and marched toward me with purposeful strides. Stabbing her finger into my chest, she bit out, “I know all about you,Professor Cockstairs.”

My eyes widened in surprise, and Veronica stepped back with a satisfied nod. “Veronica may not know about your reputation, but I do. I Googled you.”

All at once, understanding dawned. I blew out a breath and ran my hand through my hair with frustration. That fucking blog.

“You do know I have no control over what they write?”

So little control, in fact, that there was nothing I could do to getThe Wild Tales of Professor Cockstairstaken down. Whoever was writing it hadn’t hosted it on Thackeray’s servers, so the school’s hands were tied. When it had first popped up two years ago, the IT department had performed a cursory investigation, but once they’d realized they weren’t on the hook for its contents, my employer had dropped it like a hot potato. Seemed they were more worried about me suing them than they were about their students posting zoomed in pictures of my crotchal region. Their advice during that last meeting? Wear looser pants.

Unfortunately, the blog had only grown in popularity since then. Now, in addition to the pictures, some students had taken to writing what Hank laughingly referred to as dirty fan fiction. When I’d pointed out that my penis wasn’t a celebrity, he’d smacked my back and said, “It is now, man. It is now.”

Early on in our relationship, I’d debated whether or not to show it to Victoria, but the woman was an investigative journalist. It was only a matter of time until she’d found it on her own. And since I’d already hidden my divorce from her, I’d decided to come clean about the blog, too. When I’d pulled it up on her tablet one night, she’d laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks and confessed that when she’d first told Drew about me, he’d mentioned the nickname. That night, we’d stayed up late into the night reading the stupid tales of horny students getting their hands on my junk, ending with Victoria acting out one of the more salacious stories. That had been the last time I’d thought about the stupid thing.

“Maybe if you weren’t fucking your students, they wouldn’t write anything at all!” she seethed, her hands fisted righteously on her narrow hips.

Oh shit.Suddenly I got it. Roni thought the blog was real.

“I’ve never laid a hand onanyof my students. That site is one hundred percent fake.”

She speared me with a skeptical glare. “It sounded real enough.”

I dropped my head back, my eyes finding the ceiling. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I counted to twenty in my head. Enough time, hopefully, for me to regain some measure of cool. When I thought I could speak without yelling, I tipped my face forward. “It’s fake. A silly site that started a couple of years ago. The college tried to get it shut down, but there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“Why should I believe you?” She still sounded suspicious, but decidedly less so than mere moments before.

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