Teacher's Pet

Teacher’s Pet

Judy Bagshaw

Books by Judy Bagshaw

At Long Last, Love

Big Fat Lies

Lady Blue

Love by the Pound

Kiss Me, Nate!

On Foot on a Banana Peel

Opposite Attraction

Second Chances: Jack & Gillian

Teacher’s Pet

Through All Eternity

....and more. See judybagshaw.com for other works.

Teacher’s Pet

Copyright © 2001 by Judy Bagshaw

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Cover Art © 2019 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

Third Edition April 2019

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or her representative.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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Dedication

To my family, who always believed I would succeed.

A note from Judy’s literary heir...

Along with Love by the Pound, Lady Blue, and the collection At Long Last, Love, Teacher’s Pet was one of Judy’s first works, first published in 2001 by small epublisher, Wordbeams. Those early days of epublishing, a lot of businesses opened then closed, leaving books orphaned in their wake.

Judy’s early books went in and out of print a few times. Eventually, she decided to stop pursing a home for the works and left them out of print.

Upon her death in 2015, I inherited the copyright to all of her work and had to decide what to do with the out of print works—as well as what her wishes would be now. I know she debated a lot with whether she would rewrite and try to rerelease the books herself, or leave them out of print. Should I try to update and revise them the best I could while keeping her voice intact?

Ultimately, I know she had readers who always loved her books. And Judy’s legacy was one of positivity and happily-ever-afters for full-figured women. The world is better with her stories available.

At this point I don’t feel confident enough that I could revise or update and retain her voice in the works, so I am leaving the text of her earlier books as-is at this point. Nearly twenty years have passed since Teacher’s Pet was first released. Please keep the changes in technology and such in mind while reading.

Thank you for reading.

~Skyla Dawn Cameron

Chapter One

An exhausted Susan Shaw sat in the comfort of the speeding launch, thinking about everything that had recently happened to her. Her shoulder length hair gleamed like burnished copper in the hot tropical sun, the thick curling tendrils whipping about her face with abandon. Idly, she thought she should have worn a scarf. Her hair would be agony to brush out later. Such thoughts seemed so mundane after the intensity of her recent experience.

Being stalked had been a nightmarish experience and she’d lost considerable sleep the last couple of months. But what she was doing now made her feel like a coward. Go for a holiday, her friend Gwen had said. Take some time away and let the justice system do its job. She could rationalize she was suffering tremendous stress from the horrific episode, and she needed to get away. She could almost convince herself the distance would help her heal and find a balance in her life again. To her, it seemed like running, and Susan had never run away from anything in her life, except maybe from being emotionally hurt. But the thought of facing any more media coverage, the inquisitive calls from acquaintances and relatives, or the whispers of her students and colleagues was more than she could bear.

Susan stretched her long legs. The seats on the plane had cramped her large frame and height. It felt good to be out of the claustrophobic aircraft and in the open air. She felt amazed to be here. She’d never had the opportunity to travel before, as it had always been financially prohibitive. Not like her twin sister, Justine, the model. Models got to travel all the time. Justine, in an unusual show of concern, found Susan a job for the summer, tutoring the nine-year-old daughter of her new rich boyfriend. She promised he would know nothing of Susan’s recent stalking ordeal. She promised that it would be a holiday more than anything else. Right. A junior high school teacher giving make-up lessons to a pre-teen so she could get into some private school--probably the same school for the spoiled offspring of the rich and privileged Susan had just left for the summer--certainly wasn’t her idea of a holiday.

Susan let out a deep sigh. Maybe the stress and lack of sleep of the last few months was making her feel a bit jaded. After all, Highgate Private School for Girls wasn’t a bad place to work. The kids weren’t terrible. And it did pay better than normal high schools, which was the real reason she worked there. She wondered what had really prompted Justine’s gesture, so out of character for the self-absorbed beauty.

Thirty-two year old Susan had always been the more responsible of the two sisters. Even though they’d lived with their now deceased grandparents, it was Susan who looked after Justine when their parents died in the automobile accident. It was Susan who took on the task of getting the two of them educated and it was Susan who supported her flighty sister when she went into the uncertain field of modeling.

With her parents’ insurance money gone, living expenses to be maintained, and university loans to pay off, Susan took the highest paying job available in her field. For the past three years she was an English teacher during the school year, and a theatre arts instructor at an exclusive private camp during the summer months. With the two jobs, she could just barely afford to pay for everything. Without the extra income of her summer job, Susan didn’t know how she would manage. And here she was going to tutor an obnoxious pre-teen for the price of her room and board and airfare, for a man who could more than likely afford to pay for a whole school full of teachers!

Well, now that Justine’s career was taking off and she was earning more, Susan would just have to approach her sister again about chipping in more money for the loans. As Justine Lafontaine, her picture appeared often on the covers of glamour magazines around the world. And she was getting lots of runway work in Europe. This time Susan wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Gazing at the beautiful blue water, and feeling the power of the launch under her feet, Susan was struck by how bright everything seemed in the tropics. The greens seemed greener, and the blues, bluer. She had to admit that maybe having a rich employer for the summer might not be too bad after all.

The Quintero Islands were a series of relatively unknown islands near Nevis and St. Kitts in the southern part of the Caribbean Islands. Susan remembered seeing a spot about it on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ Most of the islands were nothing more than small knuckles of rock, covered with a smattering of ragged flora and unable to sustain even the smallest of animal life. A few of the islands were large enough to have been purchased privately, and here you could find some of the world’s most exquisite homes. Traditionally the playground of the wealthy and privileged, it boasted being the second home to some of the world’s more reclusive people.

Quintero Primo, the largest of the islands, had the only thriving town in the entire chain. Dunlee had a bustling daily farmers’ market providing that touch of local flavor so important to island visitors. People walked to the local dock each day to purchase freshly caught fish allowing the wealthy island residents to feel a sense of roughing it or getting back to basics. Of course, the fish they purchased would be cooked by household cooks in elaborately stocked kitchens in incredibly expensive homes.

A private airstrip, an exclusive yacht club, and the world famous five star Four Winds Resort completed the island complement of facilities.

Getting off the plane, Susan had felt a little like Dorothy stepping into the Land of Oz for the first time--almost as if she had always been living in black and white, and all of a sudden she’d discovered color. The quality of the light was almost painful. It was an incredible sensory experience. It touched Susan’s sensual core and she felt something begin to awaken in her.

Justine told her the island she was going to had everything one could want for an idyllic, paradise vacation. There were, of course, miles of sandy beaches, all the water sports one could imagine, a fantastic local market and, the most important element according to Justine, a hotel providing a lively nightlife where one could gamble or dance the night away. This was where Justine’s jet-set cronies hung out most of the time.

Settling herself back into the comfortable leather seat, Susan felt herself giving in to the overwhelming urge to sleep. Perhaps it was the heat and the calming drone of the engine. She released a heavy sigh.

She let her eyes close and her mind wander. Dancing the night away was something that she had never done. Fat girls didn’t dance the night away. And at three hundred pounds, she was fat. Firm, but fat. Full-figured to the politically correct. At home Susan enjoyed walking for hours alone with her thoughts or meditating as she did her daily modified yoga routine. Dancing was something that her sister did. Her younger by three minutes, prettier, sexier, more outgoing, thin twin sister, her frustrating, immature, irresponsible, headstrong, desirable sister.

Susan closed her eyes and smiled. There was that cynical attitude again. Well, maybe that would stop now that she would be getting a decent night’s sleep and didn’t have to worry about strange threatening notes showing up at her apartment or at the school.

A swell of resentment rose up inside her. She was being chased away from her life, from doing the things she wanted to do because of some maniac who had been stalking her for the last year.

Chapter Two

It started off as something that she was rather flattered by, a note from a secret admirer saying that he watched her from afar, which was one of the most rare and beautiful moments in his life. She spent days speculating about who her secret admirer could be. She surreptitiously inspected each man she came in contact with trying to see if he gave himself away. He wrote again, telling her that her copper colored hair was only outshone by the lights that sparkled in her emerald green eyes when she smiled. If it had been left there, Susan might have treasured this as something