Love Can Be Murder

and Angora had both applied to Notre Dame. She'd been praying for a scholarship; Angora had confided she was dreading the entrance exam. After that, Angora dropped by the dress shop often to chat—she'd been a prim little thing, and Roxann had felt sorry for her, caught under Donkey Dung Dee's thumb.
    They'd both made it into Notre Dame, and signed up to room together, against Dee's wishes. It was the first and last time that Angora had defied her mother, but with good results. The girls had become fast friends—Angora was a neophyte in all things wicked, and Roxann had been happy to tutor. But when Angora had been busted for low grades, her parents had pinned the blame on Roxann (even though she herself was a straight-A student), and whisked their little princess into a chaperoned sorority house.
    Subsequently, the girls' paths had crossed only when necessary, although she sensed that Angora missed their late-night pajama powwows consulting the Magic 8 Ball as much as she. After graduating with a liberal arts degree, Angora had returned to Baton Rouge to work for a stuffy art museum. Roxann hadn't seen her in seven—no, nine years.
    Oh, well, she was sure her cousin would be happy with Dr. Trenton. If not, Dee would be happy enough for both of them to have a titled man in the family.
    She turned her attention to more pleasurable reading—the university newsletters. Occasionally, Dr. Nell Oney, the ethics professor who'd mentored her and suggested she become involved with Rescue, wrote a feature column. And sometimes Carl Seger's name was mentioned within the pages since he was active in coordinating alumni activities. Roxann rolled down Goldie's windows and scoured the newsletters while loitering in the United States Postal Service parking lot.
    Homecoming week was just around the corner, with lots of activities planned to raise money for a new student counseling center—a brick sale, a bike-a-thon, and a bachelor auction. Her heart skipped a beat when she spotted a black-and-white candid of the man who hadn't been far from her thoughts today.
    Dr. Carl Seger, theology professor and coach of the varsity soccer team, will be the guest bachelor auctioned off as part of the Homecoming fund-raising events.
    The man still had all of his glorious salt-and-pepper hair. She rubbed her finger over his handsome face, his winning smile, and nostalgia warmed her limbs. Assuming the picture was current, he'd barely aged a day in the decade since she'd seen him. The fact that he was still single surprised her, since the man wasn't exactly short of admirers. If his classes were still eighty-percent female, he'd probably fetch a hefty sum at the auction.
    She'd counted herself among the smitten. Dr. Carl had held her spellbound from the first moment she'd walked into his freshman theology class. Handsome, thoughtful, articulate. In comparison, most of the college boys were hopelessly immature. She and Angora had attended his class together as freshmen and whiled away many pajama powwows spinning fantasies about the man.
    But because Angora had moved out of the dorm, she wasn't privy to the relationship that developed between Roxann and Dr. Carl during their senior year.
    "After you graduate," he'd murmured once in the library stacks, "we won't have to hide our feelings." The unrealized sexual energy between them had been palpable, and had left her damp and sleepless more nights in the dorm than she cared to recall.
    But mere days before graduation, Nell Oney had paid her a visit. Carl was being brought before the Board of Regents to defend allegations of impropriety with a student. He was, after all, a professor of theology, and a deacon of the university church. Knowing she herself was the student in question, Roxann agreed to leave until things settled down.
    At Nell's urging, she'd joined the Rescue program, and moved to Memphis, where a facilitator was needed, but remained poised to leave as soon as Carl called. Except when he'd called, it was to beg her understanding for choosing his job over her. If he were ruined, he'd told her in a tortured voice, he'd have nothing to offer her, and honor dictated that he stay. Of course she understood. She'd cried for a month, then thrown herself into her volunteer work, determined to prove something to Carl, even if he never knew.
    Seeing his picture brought all that pent-up longing flooding back to her. Everybody had one person in their past, one person who evoked questions of what