by CK Ralston
Bye-bye, asshole, she thought smugly to herself, leaning back in the Jag’s soft leather. She smiled over at Liam and he smiled back and she promised herself that she would do something creative, sexy, and exciting for him in bed later tonight to celebrate her freedom from her old life and their wonderful new life together…
Chapter Seven
“And who is this absolutely ravishing young creature, Liam?” Percy Norville's eyes were wide with astonishment as he beheld Miranda standing arm and arm with Liam.
“This is Miranda, Percy,” Liam said, smiling like the cat that’d eaten the canary. “Miranda, this is Percy, one of my colleagues in the English department. He teaches Chaucer, primarily.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Percy,” Miranda said, smiling shyly at the much older man. With his tweed coat with the leather elbow patches and short, gray, nicely-trimmed full beard and a pipe stem sticking up out of his jacket pocket Percy was exactly the image of what Miranda had always expected an English professor to look like.
“Dear God, she’s a vision, Liam!” Percy said, shaking Miranda’s hand warmly, beaming at the girl all the while. “What on earth is she doing with you?”
“It is a puzzle, isn’t it, old man?” Liam grinned at his friend. “Where’s the man of the hour?”
“Jerry? He’s around here somewhere,” Percy's eyes never left Miranda, who was dressed in an expensive, very becoming sundress with a scooped neckline that sedately showed off her round, firm young breasts to full advantage, and a hemline that fell just above her knees, showcasing her long, perfect legs in her new Christian Louboutin high heels.
“Someone mention my name?” Jerry Kardon walked up to the trio, drink in hand. His long, frizzy hair was almost a white man’s version of an Afro, and a loud purple tie clashed with his well-cut suit. “My Lord, who is this charming girl, Liam? Don’t tell me she’s with you?”
“Why does everyone keep asking that? Were you some sort of bachelor recluse before you met me, darling?”
“Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. This is another of my colleagues, by the way, Jerry Kardon, the birthday boy. You can tell by his extremely loud and ill-advised birthday tie…he wears it every year.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Kardon,” she said, shaking hands with him after he had rapidly shifted his cocktail from his right hand to his left so that he could do so.
“Jerry, please, my dear. How in the world did our Liam find a girl like you?”
“Are you a student, by any chance? You’re the right age. Has Liam been trolling his net through the student body?”
“No,” Miranda giggled. “I could never get into college! I barely managed to finish high school.”
“She’s attempting to remedy that situation, though,” Liam said proudly, and then proceeded to tell his friends about Miranda’s recent reading program. “She read the d'Artagnan Romances and the Count of Monte Cristo from Dumas, and then worked her way through seven or eight of the more representative Dickens novels. Right now, she’s attempting the Russians, a daunting challenge I’m sure you’ll agree…Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev.”
“My goodness, you are an ambitious young beauty, aren’t you?” Percy asked with a chuckle. “If you need any help with the more modern lads, like Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald, by all means come over to the department and see Jerry—that’s his bailiwick.”
“Yes, and if you ever want to tear that lovely hair out in sheer frustration by trying to plow through the language and spelling in Chaucer, old Percy is your man, Miranda,” Jerry offered with a teasing glance in Percy’s direction.
“Oh, I want to read all of them, eventually! Liam knows so much more about everything than I do that I feel like I’ve got to read everyone, just to have any chance at all of catching up!”
The three academics laughed and then Percy said, “Well, Liam has some degree of education, I’ll grant you. But the poor lad made the mistake of going to Harvard! Now, had he gone to Yale, like some of us…?”
“Stanford!” Jerry said. “Had he had the good sense to do at least his doctorate at Stanford, there might have been some hope for the man.”
“Can we get a shout out for Princeton, while we’re at it?” another male voice asked at that moment, and Thomas Scott leaned forward, thrusting himself into the conversation, smiling at Miranda.
“Good God! Who are you, darling? You can’t be with Liam, surely?” he said with a big grin.
* * * *
“Your friends are all so nice!” Miranda said as they drove home that night.
“They are all absolutely enchanted with you, darling. You completely bowled them over.”
His grin broadened. “And my stock with them just went up about a thousand percent! I don’t think any of them thought—in their wildest dreams--that I could ever hope to end up with a girl like you, Randa.”
He reached over and took her hand and squeezed it lightly, “And I didn’t either, come to think of it. How did I get so lucky?”
“I’m the one who’s lucky, darling. I love you, Liam, so very much!”
Reaching over and placing her left hand on his lap, she traced the outline of his long, limp cock with her fingertips, drawing something that sounded like a cross between and groan and a sigh of pure pleasure from its owner. She leaned in closer and kissed him just under his right ear as he drove, and then licked his neck lightly and next began flicking her tongue against his earlobe, teasing his rapidly firming prick with her deft fingers all the while.
“Oh, Jesus, Miranda!” he whispered, turning onto their street. “The things you do to me!”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, darling,” she whispered, releasing her seat belt, unzipping his trousers and leaning over his lap.
“Darling, the neighbors!” He gasped, her lips closing over the head of his cock after she’d freed it from his open slacks and his baggy boxers.
“Pull into the garage and close the door, if you’re shy, dear,” she whispered up at him, a huge, playful smile on her lips.
She turned back toward his lap and kissed the head of his prick and then engulfed it in her mouth once more, her tongue coming alive. He groaned in ecstasy as he turned into their driveway and hit the remote to open the garage door.
* * * *
Over the next month, Miranda finished reading the Russians and started on the pantheon of great American writers of the twentieth century: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. In the process, she discovered the library and the English department at the nearby university.
She quickly became a fixture on campus, dressing casually but elegantly—the way a rich coed might—and trundling off almost every day with her latest book under her arm shortly after Liam had left for work. Sometimes she read at a table outside, on the quad, if the day was particularly fine. When the weather turned, she adjourned to the library. She often stopping by Jerry or Percy, or Tom Scott’s office at some time during the day to chat with her new friends about an author or an idea she had come across in her reading.
One day in the late spring, Percy saw her in the hallway, newest book under her arm, and hurried up to her. He hailed her and she waited for him to catch up in the crowded passageway.
“Who do we have this week?” he asked, smiling at her as he took the book from under her arm and looked at it. “Brave New World, by Huxley?”
“Uh, yeah,” she smiled back at him. “I read Animal Farm and 1984 by Orwell earlier in the week, so I’m on kind of a Sci-Fi, political-allegory kick right at the moment.”
“Do you have a little time right now, my dear?” he asked, casually taking her arm.
“Uh, yeah, I guess. What’s up, Percy?”
“Oh nothing, it’s just that Jerry and Tom Scott and several of the others and I have been discussing you a good deal of late, Randa. And we’ve decided that it’s time for you to get serious about this project of yours,” he answered her enigmatically, taking a left at the end of the hall a
nd steering them towards the unfamiliar—at least to Miranda—halls of the Psychology department.
“What are we doing here, Percy?” she asked when he stopped at the office door of a Dr. Robert Perry, whose office placard identified him as the head of the Psychology department.
“Bob’s an old friend,” Percy replied, escorting her into the large office. “He has agreed to administer a test. It won’t take long, an hour or so; do you have time right now?”
“Uh, well…I guess. What kind of test? Shouldn’t I study for it or something?”
“No, no studying,” he grinned at her. “It’s not that kind of a test.”
* * * *
“And so what happened next?” Liam asked that night at dinner, fascinated by Miranda’s tale of Percy and the Psychology department and the mysterious test.
“It turned out that it was an IQ test,” Miranda answered quietly, eating another bite of the delicious braised pork loin with an orange-brandy sauce that Liam had cooked them for dinner.
“And?”
She answered him hesitantly, in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it, even though she was just a few feet away at the table, “It turns out that I have an IQ of a hundred and forty seven.”
“Sweet Jesus! Is that on the one-thirty scale?”
She stared at him blankly, so he explained, “Many of the so-called IQ tests rate one as a genius if one’s score is in excess of one hundred and thirty.”
“That was what that nice man, Dr. Perry, said when he was telling me about the results.”
She shook her head. “That can’t be right, can it? I can’t really be a…you know…a genius, can I?”
Liam’s grin grew even broader and he nodded. “I suspect it is quite accurate, my dear. I’ve always known that you were quite bright, and Jerry and Tom and some of the others have said the same to me, after getting to know you.”
His smile morphed into a somewhat embarrassed look. She looked at him, waiting for an explanation of his reaction.
“My own score on the same test is only one forty one,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “It seems you’re a bit smarter than I am, darling.”
She giggled with delight and shook her head “no”. “You’re the smartest man I know, dear…so that can’t possibly be true!”
He reached over and took her hand. Staring raptly into her eyes, he whispered, “The single smartest thing I ever did was to take up with you, Randa. I love you beyond all reason.”
After a moment, he started and asked, “Just what was Percy’s purpose in seeing that you took this test, sweetheart?”
She shifted around in her chair somewhat uncomfortably and then looked up at him, her eyes bright with excitement. She said, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself, “The guys in the department, Percy and Jerry and Tom and some of the rest of them, want me to take the GED test. I finally admitted to them that I never finished high school like I always said I did; I moved around too much as a kid to ever graduate from anywhere. So they want me to get the GED certification…and then they want me to enroll next fall at the university!”
Liam looked shocked for a moment by that idea, and then seemed to warm to it. His handsome face broke into a huge smile. “What a wonderful idea, darling.”
“Jerry said it was time I quit ‘fucking around’, hanging out in his office all the time, asking him stuff about Hemingway or Faulkner, and actually took his class so that he could teach me properly.”
“And Jerry’s quite right, Randa. There’s no reason on earth that you shouldn’t enroll formally on campus and earn your degree.”
He frowned and then went on to add, “Unless the administration proves sticky about admitting you with only a GED, of course. Sometimes they want proof of good high school grades and a resume that includes a lot of extra-curricular activities, like participation in student government and honor societies, and some sort of community volunteer work—it can all get very political, I’m afraid.”
“Percy said the same thing,” Miranda said, the excitement returning to her voice. “But then he went on to say that Jerry is the most political animal he knows and that he has a lot of pull with the president of the university.”
She turned slightly red again as she admitted, “Plus, Percy said that almost everyone in the department is willing to write letters of recommendation on my behalf and to sign a special petition asking the president to admit me. He said with my IQ test score and my GED and that petition, I’m sure to get in!”
* * * *
And so it was that Miranda Jane Calvin, ex-con artist, ex-bimbo, ex-accomplice to breaking and entering and the petty theft of property, high school drop out, was enrolled that fall in the freshman class at the university, majoring in English Literature. Liam had bought her a complete new wardrobe in honor of her admission, suitable for wear by a young student-fashionista, and told her to take whatever interested her the most by way of classes.
When she had arrived at his office on campus after registering for classes, he had stared in awe at her enrollment card and then looked up at her from his desk. He said with a sigh, “Twenty-one units, darling? A full course load is considered twelve and above, the average is usually fifteen, and someone in a hurry to graduate might risk eighteen units per quarter—but twenty one?”
She shrugged. “You did say to take whatever interested me. All of this stuff sounded utterly fascinating, so I took it. Besides, darling, I am in a hurry. I want to be able to hold up my end of the conversation at dinner, and I don’t want to embarrass you when we go to faculty get-togethers.”
“Well, you can try it, I suppose. You don’t have to work to put yourself through school, so that will give you more time to read the assignments and do the work. Let’s just see how it goes, all right?”
* * * *
It went better than either of them would have ever dreamed possible. By the end of the first semester, Miranda was on the Dean’s List with straight “A’s. She had settled beautifully into her new life as full-time college student/homemaker/lover/best friend and confidante to Professor Liam Donnelly, and Teachers’ Pet of the English department.
The changes she noticed in herself were so sweeping and so unexpected that they sometimes left Miranda feeling like a bemused, amazed observer at her own new life’s marvelous revelations. She had told herself in the beginning that going to college was a con, in a way. She had known that Liam would love the idea of her wanting to get an education, to be more like him. And she had also calculated that, by pursuing a degree so enthusiastically, she could cement her relationship to him and thereby ensure the continuation of the cushy new lifestyle she had come to love so much.
What she couldn’t have foreseen was how much she would fall in love with university life, and how wonderfully it would fit in with her already terrific life with Liam. She found—to her absolute shock—that she adored going to class, reading, studying, discovering ideas, and concepts that were brand new to her. The heady thrill of being immersed in the ivory tower world of academia every day, of discussing abstract theories and debating their finer points with her classmates and with Liam and Jerry and Percy and the rest of her new intellectual friends gave Miranda a joy and a confidence in herself that she had never dreamed she could achieve before now. The soul-stirring realization that she could not only keep up with what was being said, but could meaningfully contribute to the discussion put a new twinkle in her eye as well.
On a more crass, nuts and bolts level, she had never even imagined a life for herself like the one she was now living. She had all the new clothes she wanted to buy, plus diamond earrings and a stunning diamond pendant to match her tennis bracelet, and a shower of other expensive jewelry besides—all courtesy of her darling, doting Liam.
Her bank account almost always contained five thousand dollars, no matter how many hundred dollar bills were nestled in her wallet. She didn’t actually spend that much cash; most of her extravagant purchases went on one of the four credit cards L
iam had given her, in her name, of course, and which he dutifully paid at the end of each month without so much as a “why did you spend so much money on this, darling?”.
After a few weekends of harrowing, nail-biting nervousness on both their parts, Liam had successfully taught her to drive the XKE. That was what she drove most of the time now. When the weather was bad, she took the Rover.
It is so odd, she had found herself thinking on more than one occasion of late, my whole life used to revolve around thinking about money—how to get more of it and what I wanted to buy if I was lucky enough to get it—and now I rarely think about money at all. If I see something I want, I just buy it without a second thought.
Now, as she stood before her make-up mirror, giving her face a last look before dashing off to meet Julia, Percy’ wife, for lunch at Danny’s On The River, she experienced a variation of the same thought. The foundation she had just used cost a hundred dollars for a small case that fit neatly in her purse—a far cry from the eight dollar stuff from the corner drug store that she’d been forced to use before she met Liam.
God, but that was a miserable way to live, she thought, giving her gorgeous, perfectly made up, perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed image in the mirror a last approving look before snapping off the light and hurrying off in her XKE to meet Julia.
Chapter Eight
“So, when are you and Liam going to at least get engaged?” Julia Norville, Percy’s wife, asked toward the end of lunch, her slightly horsey face taking on a canny look.
“Oh, Jules…you’re always asking that and I’m always forced to give you the same answer: as soon as he gets around to asking me, if he ever does!” Miranda smiled at her friend, feigning exasperation at Liam’s procrastination for Julia’s benefit.
