The Bitter Season by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page A

room.
    The hospital staff had jumped to the conclusion that Lucien hadbeaten her, and had called the police. It still made him furious to remember how shabbily the police treated him, and how the neighbors reacted when Sondra’s eye blackened and her bruises ripened—the surreptitious stares and quickly averted eyes. As if they could believe he, a highly respected member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota, would ever have been so stupid and brutish as to punch a woman in the face.
    He had resented Sondra for putting him in the position to be judged and gossiped about. Her overly eager attempts to explain away the bruises had only made him seem all the more guilty. And the more irritated he became, the more obsequious she became, until he questioned the logic of ever having married her in the first place.
    No, she was not a beautiful woman, and at fifty-eight her plainness was giving way to a heavy, matronly look he didn’t like at all. He told her to diet and exercise. It didn’t help. He believed she secretly ate sweets and hid the evidence. He once went through her dresser drawers when she was away visiting her mother, but had found nothing incriminating, only a vast collection of foundation garments she never appeared to wear.
    He had married her for her family connections and, to a lesser degree, her money—better, more logical reasons than looks or lust. They had been together nearly thirty years.
    He watched her sleep now, envious. He had always been a light sleeper. His brain was always working. Now he would lie here, driven mad by the incessant
tic tac tic tac
while his mind worried at the day-to-day annoyances of academia, and the power struggle going on in the History Department.
    He fretted because he hadn’t published anything recently. And that thought automatically brought the rush of bitterness that he had never been able to sell his book on the comparative similarities and differences in the warrior cultures of medieval China and Japan, his masterwork.
    He should already have been named head of East Asia studies, not be fighting for the title. If he had a published book that was well received by his peers, the university would not have been able to deny him. He would have been the clear front-runner. Instead, he was in competition with Ken Sato and some Vietnamese woman from UCLA.
    Sato, who never failed to irritate with his unconventional lifestyle and his unconventional teaching methods. Lucien suspected Sato was being considered for the job largely because he was Japanese, and the chosen star of that pompous ass and committee member, Hiroshi Ito. Lucien had considered suing on the basis of racial discrimination if Sato—or the Vietnamese woman, for that matter—were to get the position. He was far more deserving. Then again, he worried what a lawsuit would do to his reputation. Reputation was everything in academia.
    If Sondra’s father had still been alive, his influence at the university would have negated all other issues. What terrible luck that he had died of a heart attack nearly a year past. Lucien was beginning to feel that the powers of the universe were against him. And now, to further complicate his life, was this ridiculous business with Diana and the Office for Conflict Resolution. The mere thought of it infuriated him. The conniving little bitch—jeopardizing his promotion, forcing him to take the actions he was about to put in motion . . .
    No wonder he couldn’t sleep.
    Tic tac tic tac
. The sound was relentless.
    Then came a sound out of time, out of place. A sound that seemed to come from another part of the house. Downstairs.
    He sat up in the bed and strained to listen. They lived in a lovely old established neighborhood. But there were plenty of criminals in the run-down parts of the city. Crime was no longer a rarity in Minneapolis. Lucien blamed Minnesota’s overly generous public assistance programs for ruining the work ethic of the poor minorities.
    He’d