Page 22 of Love, Academically

He could not imagine anything worse. The two of them gossiping about the only thing that they had in common – him.

“Elin, please.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“The top floor of Selfridges has personal shoppers. Ask for Miquita, she’s the absolute best. Tell her you’re my brother and she’ll sort you out. Put it on my account, you can pay me later,” she said quickly.

“Okay, diolch yn fawr Elin. That’s a big help.” Thanks very much.

“Anything for you, brawd.” Brother. “I have to go, I’ve got a meeting.”

“Bye, Elin.”

That was another reason why he no longer wanted to work at Dallimores; Saturday meetings.

Rhys hadn’t wanted to be there on the weekdays, let alone the weekends.

But of course, that’s what was expected from the family.

Dedicated to the family, dedicated to the business was another favourite saying of his father’s and Rhys had not missed that little nugget.

“Elin? Your sister,” Lila clarified.

“Yes,” Rhys nodded. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lila said, slurping up the dregs of her ridiculous milkshake. “Did she give you some ideas, because I’m at a bit of a loss now, I’m afraid.”

With her shoulders slumped and chocolate cake smudged on her chin, Lila Cartwright looked like a sad child. This was his responsibility now and he would sort this out.

Before his brain caught up with his body, he was leaning across the table and reaching for her.

His fingers curled underneath her chin and his thumb swiped at the cake on the corner of her mouth gently, his eyes laser-focused on the softness of her skin.

There was a bob of her throat as she swallowed, and her lips parted with a puff of breath.

He found himself looking at those lips, thinking how easily he could press his thumb to the bottom one, see if it was as velvety smooth as it looked.

Rhys darted his eyes up to hers, which were wide and surprised by his touch. A noise came from her throat, a small, wispy, breathy hum that he was almost positive she didn’t know she’d made. Heat flushed up his neck and he pulled away. What was he even thinking? She could wipe her own face.

“Come on,” he said, pushing his chair back. “Let’s go.”

Rhys guided her to Selfridges, but she stopped before going in.

“Rhys, weren’t you listening?” Her voice was almost pleading. “I can’t afford Selfridges.”

“Lila, you’re helping me out. I do not expect you to spend your money on a favour to me.” He should have made that clear before they even went on this stupid, mind-numbing, stick-pins-in-his-eyes shopping trip.

“Rhys, I can’t expect you to—”

“You’re not expecting anything. You’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said, softening his face so his words weren’t as abrasive as they sounded.

“Abundantly clear?”

Apparently, his ‘face softening’ didn’t work.

“Look, Rhys—” she started, but he held his hand up to stop her.

“If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t for you. This is for me.” He pulled a hand through his hair. This was a transaction. “You’re right. If I want this to work, my ‘girlfriend’ can’t be dressed in something that looks just ‘fine’.”

Lila’s soft smile faltered a little and her clear eyes clouded. Had he said the wrong thing? It was essentially what she had been saying for the entire time they’d been in those horrible shops with their tiny changing areas and nowhere for him to sit.

“Okay,” she said, giving him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “But we can take it back afterwards.”

Take it back? Would they even accept it back once it had been worn? He’d think about that another time.

Rhys led her through the packed bottom floor and up two escalators to a much more sedate, much quieter top floor. She kept lagging behind him, and eventually, he stopped.

“What’s wrong? Why are you all slumped?” That was the right word. Her shoulders were drooped, she was dragging her feet and clutching her back like it was a life jacket.

“Rhys, I…” she started, eyes darting around the store. “I don’t belong here,” she whispered.

For fuck’s sake.

“Lila Cartwright,” he said, snippily. “I don’t belong here either.

I have an online shop who have my measurements and they send me clothes.

They’ll send me a tux.” Lila went to say something, but he wasn’t finished yet.

“I don’t belong teaching students. I don’t belong in corporate business. I don’t belong in my family.”

Lila’s head tilted and her eyes softened in sympathy, which was precisely not what he was going for. Regardless, he carried on.

“But that doesn’t matter, because I do what I want.

” Well, mostly, and at the utter detriment to pretty much everything in his life.

Family relationships were stretched thin and his teaching was so awful he had to have supervised sessions in Lila’s office.

In his darker moments, he wondered how he would survive working with his family again, with his father, when he failed. Not if, but when.

“I can’t force you to do this, Lila. I don’t want to force you. It would help me, yes, but not at the cost of you not wanting to do it at all.”

“Oh, Rhys.”

Lila started forward as if she was going to wrap her arms around him and smother him in a hug, but he took a quick shuffle backwards and she stopped. Nope, no hugging, thank you very much.

“Come on,” she said, hoisting her purple stegosaurus handbag onto her shoulder and squaring her shoulders. “Let’s go and buy a stupid dress.”

Thank fuck that little pep talk had worked because it would be infinitely worse if he didn’t have a girlfriend to present when he had already told his family he did.

Rhys wielded his name like a rapier and soon they were in a private room, with a cup of herbal tea (for her), sparkling water (for him) and a plethora of finger sandwiches.

Miquita had practically asked ‘how high shall I jump’ when he’d said he was Elin’s brother, and he wondered how much his sister actually spent in this shop.

How many handbags and dresses could one woman need that made Miquita’s eyes flash with pound signs when she heard his name?

Thinking of money, he’d have to work out how he was going to pay Elin back. Perhaps it was so expensive that he’d have to wait for his dividend payments from the shares he had in Dallimores. His savings were small; ‘Lecturer’ did not pay excellently.

The dresses here were so much better than those fluorescent-lighted shops that Lila had dragged him into, and he had a comfortable chair.

“That one is great, Lila,” he called as the door shut behind her and Miquita after the second dress was demonstrated.

No answer. Rhys rolled his head back. How much longer was this going to take? Waiting, again. Always waiting for Lila.

“Yes, your boyfriend will love you in this one,” Miquita said loudly from behind the closed door. He snapped his head up. If this was the ‘one’, then he would gush and swoon and say whatever he needed to say so they could leave.

The door opened and Miquita came out first, giving him an extremely pointed look. Right, he could get on board with this.

Lila followed and he stood, the serviette on his thigh falling to the ground.

Miquita was telling him about the dress, fluttering around Lila and making sure that the skirt fell properly, but he couldn’t focus on her words.

He raked his eyes from Lila’s hair, where she’d pulled it into a low knot at the back of her head, across the one shouldered dress that flowed out from her hips and pooled gently on the floor.

It was perfect.

“Yes,” he interrupted Miquita, clearing his throat because his voice didn’t work well.

“May I suggest shoes?” Miquita asked, giving him yet another pointed look.

“I have shoes,” Lila said, lifting the skirt with both hands and poking her toe out.

“It would be better if you wore something else with that gown.” Miquita was full of tact.

“Shoes,” Rhys said roughly. “Yes.”

Miquita strode out of the dressing area and Lila looked down at the dress.

“Rhys, I feel like a princess,” she said with a giggle.

Gently walking to the mirrored wall, she twisted and turned so she could see all angles. There was something in the way the dress shimmered softly when she moved, the line of her neck and curve of her bare shoulder and Rhys could not tear his eyes away.

Henry II could be reincarnated and ask him to go on Crusade with William Marshal, and Rhys would still be here, his chest expanding, staring at Lila Cartwright.

“What do you think?” she asked, catching his eyes in the mirror.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. His eyes wandered across her collarbone. “You look...”

There were no words that would do justice to how she looked.

She ducked her head with a shy smile and a flush crossed her cheeks. He hadn’t seen that smile before and he filed it away for future reference.

It was difficult to sit down when Miquita came back into the room and bent down to change Lila’s shoes, because surely he could do that. It was even more difficult when Lila stepped back into the dressing room and he couldn’t see her anymore.

His mouth was dry and his hands were not.

His heart stuttered.

Lila

Rhys was indecipherable as they drove home. Something had changed in him when she’d walked out of the dressing room in that dress. A softening around the eyes. A slight slackening of his jaw. The intensity with which he didn’t take his eyes off her for one second.

He had said she was beautiful.

Yeah, she looked nice, but who wouldn’t in a dress that practically came with its own entourage? Would it be too much to think that Rhys Aubrey, on some level, had stopped seeing her as an annoyance or an opportunity to prove something to his family and possibly as a woman?

Yes. It would.

She wasn’t the type of girl that men wanted. She was the fun girl next door, the buddy, the pal. There were no dramatic grand declarations of love for her. Lila was not Jasmeet, and she was okay with that. And she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Not at all.