Page 4 of Love, Academically
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. Shewas 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 hesupposed 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, “issuesmean?”
“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.
