Lover (Court University 4)

“Bri.”

“It’s Professor Whitman-Quintero.”

Like a chill immediately into the goddamn room. Polar ice, a wintry glaze.

And just like that, I pocketed my hands, my shoulders shrugging. “Professor then.”

Her expression fell instantaneously, but she’d drawn the line here. She pressed a hand to her head. “You won’t drop the class because this won’t work. I’m your professor. You’re my student. I’m thirty-five. You’re twenty-two and even outside of that,” she paused, adjusting the bag on her shoulder. “We both used each other that night—clearly, and I’m pretty sure you know that.”

I stayed silent but not for long. It took me a second, but I think I got what she’d been getting at before, and she was a wrong, completely wrong. My jaw shifted. “That may all be true, but what you may or may not be insinuating about me and as you said, my friend is not. That is all December and I are. Good friends, and it is not like that with her. She’s married, and I’m not unavailable.”

At least, when it ca

me to the situation with my friend, again, not like that. I maybe would have argued against that in the past when what happened between us was fresh, but not now. Now, I was just prone to getting into stupid shit.

And Brielle didn’t believe me.

I saw that all over her face too. She chewed her lip. “I wish that we both could have come at each other differently that night. That there weren’t so many variables. That maybe if I hadn’t been so sad and you yourself weren’t…” A shallow breath, an eye pinch before she thought better about what she’d been about to say.

Instead, she chose to leave, block herself and whatever she was going through from me. It felt very familiar, chillingly so.

“I need to go,” she said, backing toward the door. She touched it. “And don’t drop the class. It’s not necessary. I’ll deal if you can.”

“Bri—”

She didn’t correct me because she let the door slam in my face again. I pinched the bridge of my nose but, this time, didn’t go after her.

I wasn’t confident she’d actually let me this time.

Chapter Nine

Ramses

“Ramses?”

My sight lifted to find more than one board member’s eyes on me, but the only one who appeared to be in right form today was Duncan Salsbury, the one who’d spoken.

His lips pinched tight and his back ramrod straight, he lifted his chin. “Are we boring you, son?”

I wasn’t this man’s son, but it was cute he’d decided to put that out there. I did have to call him mister, uncle, or other various forms of male superiority when it came to myself growing up, so it really must chap his lily-white ass how things were now. How he had to answer to me. Call me boss.

My lips tipped slow, actually doing very important research on my end surrounding a certain professor. I’d decided to stalk Brielle’s social media profiles, a dead end since the one she had was locked and her pictures the same. I’d just wanted to find out more about her, figure her out and give me some indicator into why she was so closed off. The venture had turned up empty for the most part, and after a flick of my fingers to minimize her page, I swiveled the laptop around to show Duncan and the rest of the board.

“I’d like your opinion on something actually.” Nosy bastard. I directed a finger to what I now had on the screen, a catering menu. “Yellow or brown.”

“Yellow or... brown?” His eyebrow lifted slow, and he angled a look in the direction of my Mac. Pretty much everyone did, which was fucking funny as hell. About a dozen suited professionals, men and women completely disrupted since this man decided to call me out on the carpet. Duncan shook his head. “I don’t under—”

“Yellow or brown, Duncan. Mustard?” Chuckling, I lounged back in my executive chair. “It’s getting close to lunch, and I find myself simply plagued by this decision. Yellow or brown mustard on my pastrami on rye. I’d really love your opinion since you appear to be so concerned about me, what I do?”

There was more than one chuckle in my direction and a rose-colored tint to Duncan’s aged cheeks. He’d attempted to put me out there, but only ended up embarrassing himself for causing a completely unnecessary disruption to today’s meeting. I may have been bored as hell, but I hadn’t needed him to call me out on that.

He pressed a hand down a chunky tie his grandkids probably got him for Christmas. It was boring and humdrum just as himself, but his grandchildren couldn’t be faulted for that. They were probably just giving the old coot what he wanted. His throat cleared. “I’d advise brown myself. Typically, can’t go wrong there.”

I had to fight my smile now as he managed to make that actually sound serious, like it really fucking mattered and was a huge decision. I placed out a hand, and he took that as direction to continue, good man.

I fell back into the discussions of figures and projections, nothing over my head but dull, nonetheless. The board typically met once a month to discuss all this shit, and since I was the new guy around here, the new boss, I unfortunately had to be here for all of it. I tried to be since they had gone out of their way to reschedule things for me. They gave me their respect with that, knowing my frantic schedule with school and its combination with work, so I did give them the rest of my attention before the clock summoned its end, and I got to finally leave and go through things in the privacy of my own office. I really didn’t need these guys telling me every little thing, the hand-holding like I couldn’t read an email or open a file folder. I was a class or two away from getting my BBA, and even without my education, I already knew how my father’s company worked. I’d been born and bred for this shit since I came out the womb, always known this was what I’d be doing and where I was going to be. There were pictures of me in this very downtown office in diapers, sitting on my dad’s desk while he made phone calls and made powerful decisions.

I made that office my own now, on the top floor of a glass-enclosed fortress known as Mallick Enterprises. This was the man hub of my father’s real estate and development company, its location in downtown Maywood Heights, and I hoped, now that I was here and running things, to bleed some of the negativity and arrogance out of it. My father had been a piss-poor human being, which just so happened to make for an excellent businessman. He’d brought quite a few people lots of money through the years, but I was a firm believer that money could still be made without being a dick and making people feel inferior. That may be foreign to this office and the company he used to keep, but that’s what I was bringing around here. All I needed to do now was get familiar with things since I had been gone for the last few years. I’d had my father’s people keep me abreast of things, sending me those same figures and projections in the form of spreadsheets while I’d been in business school at Brown. They thought it funny I actually wanted it all since I was in school, but I didn’t want these people to forget about me, who I was. I was coming back, and they shouldn’t get too comfortable.