Page 2 of Love, Academically

Lila tucked the tin of cookies under her arm, because cookies made everyone happy, right? Rhys could definitely use some chocolatey goodness to perk him up. Perhaps it would make him less of a dick.

Rhys

Rhys slammed his office door behind him.

How dare Lila Cartwright insert herself into his affairs? Meeting with his students without his knowledge. Discussing him and his teaching methods. It was wholly inappropriate. That kind of behaviour would definitely not have been tolerated in his family’s business.

But this wasn’t Dallimore International, and he wasn’t a senior manager anymore.

Rhys refocused on his Word document. He’d allocated an hour before his lunch break to proofread his application to the Royal Historical Society Fellowship, again.

It had taken a lot of persuading for Professor Painter to recommend him because whilst his academic contribution to Angevin history was insightful, his body of work could be larger.

He sighed in his frustration and re-read that sentence again.

The five years spent trying to force himself into his father’s mould after his undergraduate degree had really put him behind, academically.

He was now the wrong side of thirty, his PhD amendments still waiting to be ratified, no book in progress, and only a handful of articles and two standalone chapters.

He needed a strong personal statement for the Royal Historical Society, otherwise…

Well, he wasn’t going to think about the ‘otherwise’.

It was no use, he couldn’t concentrate. The words were fizzing together on the screen. He sat back and looked at the ceiling. Damn Lila Cartwright and her smells-like-baked-goods office. Now he was hungry, and he had at least another hour before his scheduled lunch break.

“Rhys!” Lila didn’t even knock as she flounced into his office in her puffy-sleeved orange top and yellow skirt, tin under one arm, floppy tome of paper in hand.

He struggled to keep his eyebrows down.

“Miss Cartwright.”

“Rhys, please, call me Lila.” She smiled, probably hoping to make him more amenable to her. Nope.

Lila Cartwright was up to something that involved him, and he wanted to know what it was.

He tried to remember a time that she’d actually been in his office but couldn’t. Lila looked around, peering at the photograph of the Aubrey-Dallimore family propped on the top of the filing cabinet.

Rhys crossed his arms across his chest at her obvious lack of urgency. Couldn’t she see he was busy?

“Miss Cartwright, what could you possibly have to discuss with my students?”

The quicker he got his answers in, the quicker she could get out of his office and he could carry on with his day.

Lila looked at him like she’d forgotten why she was there. How she had ever gotten the job of Departmental Coordinator, he did not know. She was scatty, a bit dotty, and, yes, he would go as far as to say it, featherbrained.

“Here,” she said, flinging the wad of paper on one of his seats and wrestling the lid off the tin under her arm. “Have a cookie.” She slid the tin across his desk with a smile.

Rhys held her gaze, because what the hell? Why was she giving him a cookie?

Lila Cartwright was taller than most women of his acquaintance, but they were Welsh and generally shorter, but he doubted she would come much past his shoulder.

With her clear, blue eyes and light blonde hair, she was like the dolls his sister used to have sat on a shelf in her room.

But dressed worse. She was still standing there with a stupidly beautiful smile on her face, waiting until he did what he was told.

Fine. He rolled his eyes, huffed and grabbed a cookie, taking a large bite out of it.

He raised his eyebrows. Happy now?

“Is that your family?” she asked, pointing at the photograph.

Was she kidding? Since when had this been a social call with cookies and a get-to-know-you chat? She’d be bringing out her needles and wool soon, and they could swap knitting patterns. He must get her advice on ‘knit one, purl one’, because he just could not get that cable knit to sit straight.

Rhys knew his glare had lost some of its potent effect because his mouth was stuffed with cookie. Which was, by the way, absolutely fucking delicious.

“Oh right, okay.” She smiled and sat on a chair opposite him. “So, your students…” She trailed off.

“Yes, that’s why you’re here,” Rhys said pointedly.

“Yeah.” Lila scrunched up her little nose. “They’re not enamoured about the way you deal with them in seminars.” Her smile thinned apologetically.

Rhys took a steady breath in through his nose. “Meaning?”

“Well, kind of meaning that you can’t make them cry over fonts.

Or at all, really.” Lila gave a little awkward chuckle.

Was this really the kind of discussion where a chuckle would be appropriate?

Rhys added unprofessional to the list of reasons why Lila Cartwright should never have gotten the job of Departmental Coordinator.

“Yeah, not making the students cry in seminars is a really good start.”

“Look, I’m preparing them for academia or the world of work, whichever they choose.” Rhys narrowed his eyes at her. He hadn’t done anything that required a rebuttal, so why was he defending himself to her?

Lila cringed.

“Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure that the ‘world of work’,” she actually used air quotes, “is really keen for their staff to be reduced to tears.”

Rhys just looked. Her blonde hair was messily pulled back into a haphazard bun at the nape of her neck, her glasses were smudged and a little wonky, and was that a toothpaste stain on her top?

What did she expect him to say? It certainly wasn’t his experience to hold everyone’s hands and sing Kumbaya. How could he get her out of his office so he could continue working on his personal statement? Perhaps if he ate all her cookies she’d leave.

“The thing is,” Lila pressed on, “they were thinking of pursuing a formal complaint.”

That got his attention.

“What?”

If he had a formal complaint against him, then he would have to disclose it on his Fellowship application and his sturdy, but rather thin, application couldn’t bear that strain.

Even if not upheld, a formal complaint would haunt him and it would provide all the proof his father needed that Rhys was a failure who not only couldn’t cut it in the family business, but couldn’t cut it in his ridiculous little academic job.

“Yeah, but I asked them to let me deal with their issues informally to see if we couldn’t resolve things.” She grinned. “And here we are.”

“Here we are, indeed,” Rhys said.

Dealing with it informally was better. Then there wouldn’t be a speck on his record.

Not that there was anything that needed dealing with.

It wasn’t his fault that his students didn’t know one end of an academic argument from the other.

He’d given them all the information, told them how to do it – what was he supposed to do?

Write their essays for them in the font specified by the student handbook?

“What would dealing informally with their,” he cast around for the right word, “issues mean?”

“I’m glad you asked, because informally would be so much better.

I mean, there’s a lot of paperwork and procedure with a formal complaint.

” She snatched up what he could now see was the staff handbook from the seat next to her and flipped through it, crumpling the pages as she went.

He watched her disorganisation with rising ire.

“Where is it? Ah, here it is.”

Lila Cartwright shoved the tin of cookies out of the way, sending a spray of crumbs across his desk and flopped the staff handbook in front of him.

“I’ve circled the ones I think that would be most beneficial,” she said, tapping at the page with a pastel-pink fingernail.

Rhys flicked his eyes to the staff handbook with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Effective Communication’? ‘Coaching and Leadership’? Did she really want him to go through this?

Rhys prided himself on being able to convey a multitude of emotions with the mere narrowing of his eyes and twist of his mouth, and disdain was one of his best.

But Lila just smiled at him. “The students are keen that you do some professional development regarding this issue.”

“Fine,” he ground out. Anything to not have a blemish on his record that his father could use against him. There was no hiding from it. His father would find out, he always did. Rhys wondered idly whether his father had planted a camera in his office; he wouldn’t put it past him.

If possible, Lila Cartwright’s smile grew wider.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” she said, reaching for a cookie. “Mm, these are good, aren’t they?”

They were, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of agreeing. Rhys’s eye twitched.

“The other thing, Miss Cartwright?” he asked.

She took another bite of the cookie, brushing crumbs onto his carpet.

“Yeah, so the students feel it would be best if they have their seminars with you in my office.”

Her throat bobbed in a swallow and a pink blush stained her cheeks as Rhys looked at her. His seminars? In her office? Supervised?

“I require supervision?” he asked quietly, dangerously.

“No, no, it wouldn’t be supervision,” she said lightly. “It would just be having them in a different space, a different environment. You won’t even notice me.”

“Am I to expect constructive feedback at the end of each session?”

Lila shrugged. “Well, only if you want it, but I didn’t think you would.”

Rhys raised an eyebrow. Was she so naive that she didn’t understand sarcasm?

“I would actually be working, but I’m sure I can rearrange my days to make sure I can attend properly, if you want me to?” Her voice raised slightly at the end of her sentence, and Rhys could actually see the cogs in her mind working.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Miss Cartwright.”