Guilty Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance Book 1) (28 page)

It was then I knew I’d find a way to pay for college even if it killed me.

With that I knew I had nothing more to say to him. I turned on my heels and click clacked across the concrete floor out of his life with a sense of enormous relief. But also with a burning sense of trepidation in the pit of my stomach.

How the Hell was I going to pay for college now?

SORORITY SECRETS CHAPTER 2

With the crumpled up letter from the Associate Dean of Administration and Finance reminding me I was overdue with with the full payment, I stood in the Dean’s office at Kimberley University.

Dean Wesley looked over her horn rim glasses. She came around her desk and sat on the corner with a sympathetic air.

“Alice, I don’t understand. We have on file your student loan approval. The money should have been wired to your account weeks ago.”

I fought back a tear. “I had it and then… I didn’t.”

“Wesley pursed her thin lips. “Ah… Let me guess. A man?”

I thought of Nathan getting welded into an oil drum. I nodded.

“Men!” Wesley thumped a fist into her desk. “I wouldn’t polish my sensible leather shoes with their useless flaccid cocks if they got on their knees and begged me.”

I entertained the thought, but couldn’t imagine Nathan’s cock remaining flaccid for long enough.

“Dean Wesley, I’m desperate. I’ll do anything you can suggest.”

Wesley’s narrow eyes widened. A light seemed to flicker on in there somewhere. Her lips slithered into a half smile.

“I might, just might,” she said, “be able to consider an extension.”

My heart skipped. “That’s why I’m here in person, Dean Wesley. To show you my willingness to sort out something.”

“It all depends on whether we can come to a special, personal arrangement, Alice…”

“What kind of arrangement? I was hoping to pay on a monthly basis. I could get a part time job. I know it’s fifty thousand for the first year, but…”

I heard my own voice trail off at the prospect of struggling to keep up monthly payments while studying full time.

Wesley’s oily voice oozed and dripped across the table. “What sort of part time work?”

“Waiting tables, I guess. I also saw the Kimberley Times is looking to hire a junior reporter.”

“Alice, with the salary of your proposed part time job, you’ll be long graduated before you’ve paid off your tuition. Not exactly what I had in mind.”

Dean Wesley was in her late forties. A slim, blond of severe cheek bones, thin lips and thinning patience under minimal makeup and sporting a tight fitted grey pant suit. She ran a finger across her own thigh slowly and over to my long thick brunette hair.

“What exactly do you have in mind, Dean Wesley?”

She stoked my shoulder and let her hand slither down my arm and across the hem of my dress on my thigh.

I stifled a shiver.

“Alice, it’s an over subscribed course. The popularity means in all fairness I have to give your place to another deserving student. Unless, you can prove to me that you are willing and able to pay in kind. By that I mean with a uniquely compelling,” her hand gently caressed my garter belt, “and personal service.”

In kind?

Wesley’s fingers pushed up the hem of my dress, slid under the suspender of my garter belt and then dug deep into the flesh of my thigh.

She means I fuck her? Oh, shit!

I forced myself not to leap out of my seat and propel myself through the ceiling.

“I’m not sure I can accommodate your idea of payment, Dean Wesley.”

The exploring fingers stiffened. Wesley sniffed and returned to her chair.

“Seven day extension, Ms. Angelo. After that, you lose all claim to a place on your course and must vacate your Sorority residence and the entire Kimberley campus. Payment in full, Ms. Angelo. Do I make myself clear?”

I stood and forced a smile. “Perfectly.”

I left the office under a cloud of desperation.

SORORITY SECRETS CHAPTER 3

“You need money? Follow me.”

I looked up from my cold, untouched coffee to a pretty young blond woman wearing a pair of pink rabbit ears as she deftly squeezed into the outside cafe chair opposite.

The athletic and perfectly made-up blond winked at me. Apart from her furry ear mufflers she wore no concession to the cold autumn bite in the air. Dressed in a bright pink mini skirt, her mile high legs seemed to end at a bare midriff and crochet silk top.

I blinked as if I was dreaming.

“And you are?” I asked.

“I’m the President of your new Sorority, sister.”

I shrugged. “I might not be around long enough to complete the recruitment process. And I certainly can’t afford your dues. I’m not even sure I can afford this coffee.”

She took my hand. “Let me worry about that. Charity Wilson.”

“Hi Charity, I’m Alice. So what made you think I need money?”

She placed the latest high-end cell phone on the table before me. She flipped the screen to the photo gallery. “I may have accidentally taken an up-skirt picture of your thong. Shall we say for the sake of propriety that your thong collection is entirely white, or do you want to admit to wearing the same pair two days in a row?”

I felt my skin burn hot in the Autumn chill. “You’re right.”

“About which?”

“All my thongs and briefs are white.”

She smiled like a tiger cornering her prey. “All white? Alice with the virgin complex, how intriguing.”

“I’d appreciate if you deleted those photos.”

“On a safer note, I also observed you’re wearing the same shoes as you wore yesterday.”

I flushed hot. “Are you stalking me?”

“Actually, I checked out your enviable figure and thought to myself: Charity by name, charity by nature. Time to do your good deed of the year.”

“I don’t need anymore shoes.”

“Clearly a girl with standards and means endeavors never to be caught wearing the same shoes twice in a month.”

I drew a sharp breath. “Thanks for the fashion tips, but no thanks.”

“You haven’t heard my proposition yet.

“I’ve already been propositioned once today,” I said, “and that was more than enough.”

Charity howled with laughter. “Let me guess. Wesley of Finance and Admin got her claws into you, did she?”

I raised an eyebrow and nodded.

“Alice, that old dike Wesley tries it on with everyone. But back to business. What I’m proposing pays extremely well and requires no sex.”

My interest was piqued. “Pays how well exactly?”

“In a weekend, between five and possibly twenty thousand dollars. Sometimes higher.”

“You’re kidding. What do I have to do, rob a bank?”

Charity smiled like a cat licking cream from her lips. She stroked her rabbit ears and held out her hand once again.

“Alice, to learn the answer you must choose to follow me down the rabbit hole. Are you game?”

SORORITY SECRETS CHAPTER 4

“So is this too good to be true offer a secret?”

I sat in a small office on the first floor of a three story Victorian sorority house on campus. The room was mostly pink with a large wall mirror in which Charity frequently checked out my form.

Through double French doors, and out across a pink wood porch, the view of Kimberley lake was beautiful. The low Autumn sunshine turned the lake into reflected gold, making me squint whenever I glanced at Charity.

Charity plonked herself in a chair opposite. From the other side of a pink desk she giggled.

“What’s so funny, Charity?”

“Secrets… I run a business called Sorority Secrets. Heard of us?”

“No. What kind of business?”

“We provide wealthy clients with a personal service.”

“How personal?”

“Whatever they wish.”

The penny was beginning to drop. “An escort service?”

Charity nodded.

“But you did say there’s no sex involved?”

Charity removed her fluffy pink ears. “Perhaps it’s more accurate to say there’s no sex offered in the contract between us and the clients and we certainly don’t charge the clients for it. That would be prostitution. Which is illegal. But that’s not to say sex doesn’t occur between the escort and the client. And whatever arrangement takes place outside of the contract is strictly between client and escort.”

“Let me get this straight. However you dress this up it sounds like a prostitution racket. So one last time of asking: Sex is or is not expected?”

Charity once again turned towards the giant wall mirror and this time said, “I told you she’s got a stubborn streak and an eye for detail. So what do you think so far?”

I realized Charity wasn’t actually talking to me. I looked around even though no one else was in the room.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

Charity shrugged.

A shadow moved across the porch and the French doors opened. The silhouette of a young woman with long hair entered the room. She shut the French doors behind her and turned to me.

“Alice Angelo, age twenty one, height five feet nine inches, weight one forty, eyes cobalt blue, hair chestnut, all natural beauty, no records of plastic surgery?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Born in San José, California,” she continued, “to mother Francesca Angelo, deceased. Father unknown. One sibling, a sister, Emily Angelo, age nineteen. Raised by grandparents on their ranch until their deaths five years ago.

“Graduated San José Angels of Mercy High, top of class. IQ one seventy. Runs a four minute mile. Swims a mile in twenty minutes, fully clothed. Part time school lifeguard. Expert in the martial art Krav Magra. Considered an expert sharpshooter by age fifteen. Promising… but from there it begins to go downhill, doesn’t it, Alice?”

I concluded that this stranger had somehow access to my resume. No biggie, but a little disconcerting.

The woman continued. “Grandparents died, ranch taken by the bank, forced to raise your sister on your own. But you managed. Resourceful.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “Next you’ll be quoting my love life at me,” I said.

“Love life, not so impressive: Three serious boyfriends. First, a high school senior sweetheart named Mathew Barking, who you proceeded to dump on Prom Night when you discovered him making out with your best friend. Second, Clive Pearson, a car salesman from Milwaukee you met online. It lasted three weeks before Police turned up at his apartment while the two of you were in bed and promptly you realized that Clive was really Peter Henrikson. A convicted felon with ten counts of identity theft and grand larceny. Not forgetting bail jumper. This forced you to reassess your priorities in life.”

Curious to know what else they’d discovered about my private life, but equally appalled, I hesitantly got up off my seat to leave.

“Leaving so soon? You’ll miss the best bits.”

“How in the Hell do you know all this?”

The woman ignored my question and continued.

“Applications for local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation denied by background checks revealing a citation for possession of marijuana during High School. Curiously, given the opportunity to have the citation removed you refused to explain that you were holding the joint for your first boyfriend while he was busy doing your best friend.”

I felt my skin burn.

“Leaving High school, you then proceeded to save as much money as possible for university and devoted the last three years working multiple dead end jobs. Cold Call centers selling payment protection insurance by day and waiting tables by night at a casino in Las Vegas where you met your last boyfriend, Nathan Rankin. Nathan, faithless thief, safe cracker, gambler and three time loser who for eighteen months taught you every illegal skill and dirty trick he knew until inevitably he led you to your current predicament.

“Namely, your bank balance of exactly two dollars and seventeen cents. You owe Kimberley University the grand sum of fifty thousand US dollars for your Business Management Masters degree course. For which you have seven days to make good the entire sum. Have I left out anything of note?”

Alice made an impression of a drowning goldfish gulping for air. “In fifth grade I got second prize in an art competition.”

“Actually, technically you won first prize, as you allowed your best friend to put her name to one of your other paintings which won.”

Shit! Who are these people?

The young woman chuckled.

I took a deep breath. “Who the Hell are you and what’s so damn funny?”

She shook her head. “That look of yours takes me back.”

“What look?”

“Desperation. A fish out of water. The gulping goldfish impression. Cute. But maybe not what our clients are looking for.”

It was my time to shake my head with a feeling I’d just been caught up in an avalanche and was only now realizing I still had my faculties.

“This is not a job interview for an escort agency, is it?”

The young woman and Charity gave each other a look. A decision seemed to have been arrived at.

The young woman stepped forward out of the sun. She was a pretty brunette and offered her hand to me.

“My name is Robyn Loxley. And I’m delighted to offer you a position with the Sorority Eyes Private Detective Agency.”

Charity snorted. “On a provisional basis, naturally.”

“So what do you say, Alice?” Robyn asked.

Click here to continue reading
Sorority Secrets
(Campus Love and Murder - Sorority Eyes Romance #2)

Available at
Amazon