Page 2 of Love, Academically
The students looked warily at each other.
“What would ‘informally’ mean?” Kerry sniffed.
Lila hesitated, keeping her smile in place. This was the thing. She was full of spontaneous ideas without much to back them up. Like the time she signed up for a charity bike ride, forgetting that she did not actually know how to ride a bike. But it had seemed such a worthy cause! Or the time that she made her friends traipse to Hay-on-Wye for the book festival without booking any accommodation and they had ended up staying in a horrendously expensive suite in a very romantic country hotel just outside of Builth Wells.
“We could move your seminars to here?”
That would be less than ideal, but it would give the students the support they needed, and possibly give Rhys the kick up the arse to sort out his behaviour.
“There’s not that many of you and I could fit you all in. I’d be here, but not taking part. It would be part-supervised, I suppose.”
She dredged her memory of the university HR handbook. “There are some internal courses I could recommend to Rhys. Iobviously can’t force him to go on one, but I can do my best to persuade him.”
The sharp knock on her open door made her jump. Kerry, the tissue clutcher, flinched as she looked over Lila’s shoulder.
“Miss Cartwright, am I interrupting something?” Rhys Aubrey’s soft southern Welsh accent didn’t quite hide the terse accusation underneath. What was with the ‘Miss Cartwright’? She wasn’t a primary school teacher. But it did slide off his tongue very nicely indeed.
“Rhys,” Lila said, standing and taking a couple of steps towards him. Her smile widened. It was harder for people to be mean when faced with kindness. That was her philosophy anyway. “How can I help you?”
“What’s going on in here?” He took a pointed look at each of the three students in turn.
Lila kicked herself for not shutting the door – rookie mistake. Her old office in the Politics Department had been at the dead end of a corridor, but this new one was smack in the middle of the department thoroughfare.
“Just a friendly chat, Rhys,” she said, taking another step towards him, trying to both herd him out of the door and block the students from his view. Rhys just stood there, arms tense and folded over his stupidly broad chest. He must have played rugby or something in Wales. It was their national sport, right?
“A friendly chat? With DeVon and,” he gestured vaguely to Kerry and Ada. Christ, he clearly couldn’t even remember their names, “two others from my seminar group?”
“Yes,” she confirmed brightly. “Are you heading back to your office now? I’ll pop in and see you when I’m done here.”
It was an obvious dismissal, and Rhys shifted his attention from the students to her, his brown eyes narrowing in assessment. Rhys’s dark brown, neatly kept hair was cropped close at the sides, and waved gently over his forehead, the line ofhis jaw strong and tense as he held her gaze. Lila didn’t let her gaze falter, even if her neck was starting to hurt from looking up at him. He was justbiggerthan her in all respects; broad shoulders, thick thighs and big wide hands that could probably crush walnuts.
Rhys Aubrey was obviously used to having the upper hand, used to people backing down if he waited long enough. But he was in her office and she had the high ground, Anakin.
On her fifth count, Lila’s cheeks started to hurt.
“Fine. I’ll await your visit to my office, Miss Cartwright.”
With a dismissive glance at the students, Rhys stalked from the room, moving really rather lithely despite his size.
Lila bristled. What an absolute prick. Yeah, she’d dealt with him before, but it had always been perfunctory and objective. This time, he’d let loose that disparaging conceitedness that simmered under the surface. Was he so blinded by his own sense of self-importance that he lacked all human empathy?
Perhaps he wasn’t human. Perhaps he was from a race of slimy frog men that only had the powers of empathy bestowed upon them when they hit forty. Who knew?
Some telepathic conversation seemed to happen between the students.
“We don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Ada said, “but something needs to change.”
“Don’t think of it as getting someone into trouble, and I want to assure you that there would be no blowback on you,” Lila said gently, taking her seat again.
If the students wanted to bring a formal complaint against Rhys then there was no way she was going to stop them. Although perhaps Rhys just needed a bit more coffee or sugar before his late morning seminar. Lack of sugar made people grouchy.
“We’d like to have supervised seminars. I don’t think I want tobe in a seminar with him again without someone there.” Kerry’s chin wobbled slightly.
“That’s something I will strongly suggest Rhys agrees to,” Lila said, offering the tin of cookies around.
“Thanks,” DeVon exhaled. “You said there’s a course?”
A ‘How Not to be an Absolute Dick’ course would be good for Rhys.
