Good Luck - Softcover

Gaskell, Whitney

 
9780553384345: Good Luck
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553384341 ISBN 13: 9780553384345
Verlag: Bantam Discovery, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Lucy Parker wins the lottery on the worst day of her life. But can all the money in the world make up for a cheating boyfriend, a derailed career, and ending up in the middle of a media circus? Everyone wants a piece of Lucy…and all she wants is to escape from it all.

After life as she knows it falls apart, Lucy heads off to Palm Beach to hide out at the home of an old college friend. There, living in a tropical paradise of millionaires, Lucy acquires a new hair color, a new social set, and enough anonymity to put her notoriety behind her. Soon she's courted by two men who don’t know her history. But just as Lucy begins to envision a new life for herself, the past catches up with her. Lucy would give up every penny to have her old life back—but just as she’s ready to cash it all in, fate has one last surprise in store for her…one that will show her exactly what she’s worth.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Whitney Gaskell grew up in Syracuse, New York. A graduate of Tulane Law School, she worked for several years as a reluctant lawyer before writing her first novel, Pushing 30, followed by True Love (and Other Lies); She, Myself & I; Testing Kate, and Mommy Tracked. She lives in Stuart, Florida, with her husband and son.

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Chapter One


"You're firing me?"

The morning light filtering into Dr. Johnson's no-nonsense office through the tinted windows suddenly seemed glaringly bright. The typical sounds surrounding the students' arrival at school—chatter, laughter, the occasional shout, the squeak of sneakers on industrial tile—were too loud. Even the office's blandness seemed unusually depressing—the standard-issue faux-cherry executive desk, the fussy gold lamp, the blotter trimmed with leather, framed prints of soulless pastel sailboats hanging on the wall.

Dr. Johnson sighed heavily and set her pen on the desk. Up until a moment ago, when she'd informed me I was losing my job, I'd always liked the principal of Andrews Prep. I'd found her capable, smart, tough, and fair-minded. I was now quickly changing my mind.

"I don't see that I have any choice," she said.

Dr. Johnson was fifty years old—the staff had thrown her a surprise birthday party the previous spring—although she had the sort of gorgeous, slow-to-age black skin that made her look ten years younger. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with closely cropped hair and dark, serious eyes. She wore one of the brightly colored suits she favored, this one a mustard yellow with big black buttons down the front.

"Of course you have a choice!" I said, my temper rising up out of the muffled fog of shock.
Dr. Johnson pursed her lips and looked levelly at me. "We take accusations of sexual misconduct most seriously here at Andrews Prep."

"Sexual misconduct?" I could feel the heat in my face, suddenly flaming with anger and outrage. "You know I didn't do anything of the kind! Matt must have made up this ridiculous story in retaliation for the failing grade I gave him last week!"

I had taught English literature at Andrews Prep for the past ten years. Matt Forrester—who was lazy, jaded, smugly self-entitled—was my least favorite sort of student. It wasn't that he couldn't do the work; he chose not to, preferring to spend the time when he wasn't in school or at soccer practice getting stoned with his friends. He hadn't read any of the books I'd assigned for class this year and the previous week had failed a test on William Thackeray's Vanity Fair, bringing his current grade down to a solid D.

Andrew Prep's policy of not allowing a student to participate in extracurricular activities unless they maintained at least a 2.5 grade point average meant that Matt had been automatically suspended from the soccer team. Two days earlier, he'd stopped by my classroom after school to argue about his grade and, when that didn't work, begged for a chance to retake the test or do extra-credit work. I'd refused.

Matt had stared at me with indolent blue eyes that drooped slightly at the outer corners. I knew many of the girls at school thought he was good-looking, with his long dirty-blond hair and fine-boned features that were pretty rather than handsome. I didn't see the attraction. I thought Matt's sneering bad-boy act was a bore.

"You'll be sorry," Matt had said. He'd practically spit the words at me, sounding too much like a toddler on the verge of a temper tantrum to be genuinely intimidating.

"Good-bye, Matt," I'd said, dismissing him. I hadn't taken his threat seriously. Most of the students at Andrews Prep were good kids, but it wasn't unheard of for one of the more spoiled ones to fall back on the old favorite from time to time: Wait until my father hears about this!

This time, the threat apparently had teeth.

Dr. Johnson cleared her throat and looked down at a yellow lined tablet on which she'd jotted notes. I knew she didn't really need to refer to them to remember the details and was doing so only to avoid eye contact with me.

"Matthew Forrester states that when he petitioned you to change his grade, you told him you would think about it and asked him to come to your classroom after school on Monday. He complied with your request. He claims that you then made a sexually inappropriate comment about the pants he was wearing, saying that you liked the way his"—Dr. Johnson paused and cleared her throat again—"buttocks looked in them."

"What?" I exclaimed. "That's insane! I didn't say that!"

"He states that you told him you'd fantasized about having an affair with a student. He claims you then offered to change his grade to an A if he would have sexual intercourse with you," Dr. Johnson said. She folded her hands together, resting them on her desk, and looked at me again. "We only have his uncorroborated accusation that this happened. I'm assuming you deny these charges."

"Of course I deny them!"

I was practically shouting, but I didn't care. If ever there was a time to shout, this was it.

Dr. Johnson sighed again, and for the first time since I'd arrived for our meeting—I'd been summoned first thing, mere moments after I'd arrived at school that morning—I saw a crack in her stony, professional-at-all-costs facade. She looked tired and, I thought, regretful.

"As I know you're well aware, Andrews Prep has a strict no-tolerance sexual harassment policy," she began.

"But I didn't sexually harass Matt! Or anyone else, for that matter!"

The truth of this was so obvious. I would never hit on one of my students. They're children. Even those who'd managed to shed their gawky adolescent bodies for the wider shoulders and hairy jaws of manhood still had the hearts and minds of children. The very idea that I'd be attracted to one of them, much less act on such an attraction, was laughable.

"Do you really think I would do something like that?" I demanded.

"This isn't about what I think. It's about what's best for this institution. And we simply cannot take the risk of having someone who's been accused of this sort of behavior around our students," Dr. Johnson said.

I stared at her, feeling sullied by the accusation. Panic began to rise up inside me, closing my throat and constricting my chest.

I drew in a deep breath and tried to keep my voice as calm as possible. "I've taught at this school for ten years. In that time I've had an exemplary record. Two years ago I was named Teacher of the Year. I have a plaque, for God's sake. And now because one troubled and angry boy, who told me I'd regret it if I didn't change his lousy grade, has made up a ridiculous and, frankly, slanderous accusation against me, just like that, I'm fired?"

Dr. Johnson was quiet for a few minutes. I felt an irrational spike of hope that my words had made an impact on her—a hope that was quashed a moment later when she finally spoke.

"Mr. and Mrs. Forrester came to see me yesterday. They're very disturbed by their son's claims. But they've agreed not to take any further legal action against you or against Andrews Prep if we agreed to terminate your employment."

Realization dawned, and suddenly it was all brutally clear. The Forresters were wealthy, even by Andrews Prep standards. Owen Forrester owned several car dealerships. His wife, Cassie, sat on every high-profile charity board in town.

"So that's it, is it?" I asked. "The Forresters have been the biggest contributors to the school for—what is it now?—three years running? I guess money counts more than the truth."

Dr. Johnson didn't reply. But her silence was as good as an admission. The horror of what was happening fully hit me. I was losing my job—no, it was more than that. I was losing my career. What school would ever hire a teacher with this sort of blemish on her...

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Verlag
Bantam Discovery
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553384341
ISBN 13 
9780553384345
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
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Verantwortliche Person
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