Hiring Mr. Darcy (Austen Hunks Book 1) by Valerie Bowman

Author:Valerie Bowman [Bowman, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780989375894
Publisher: June Third Enterprises
Published: 2020-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Monday

I was grading papers in my tiny, fifth-floor office that had no heat in the winter and no AC in the summer. It was the type of office that non-tenured professors had to suffer. But the space was cozy and clean, and I’d made it mine by putting a nice big puffy reading chair in the corner where I usually stored an extra pair of glasses and a coffee mug. I’d splurged on a second Keurig machine for the place. I’d been trying to concentrate on reading the papers my students had just turned in about early-nineteenth-century English etiquette, but my mind kept drifting back to my dinner with Jeremy on Saturday night.

It had so totally felt like a date. We’d talked, we’d laughed, he’d paid. Though I had to admit the part where he’d encouraged me to write a romance novel had been my favorite. He hadn’t laughed or made fun of it, or been derisive like Harrison had been. I mean, Ellie had to support it. She was my best friend and also a romance reader. Jeremy, on the other hand, was supportive because he believed in things like people following their wildest dreams and being happy instead of traditionally successful. He’d acted as if it was perfectly normal to want to write a historical romance novel. As if people did it every day. I wanted to. I really did, and I had to admit I’d spent most of Sunday contemplating the plot idea I had for my first book. Could it really be that easy? To just start typing and see where it led me? Could I do it and worry about the repercussions later? Could I be the next Lisa Kleypas? Wellesley hadn’t kicked her out of the alumnae association, had they?

The romance novel discussion part had been fun. The other part of the evening, however, seeing Harrison and Lacey, had been as much fun as a root canal. Even if I didn’t have the right to be mad about seeing them there together, I could bloody well be pissed about Harrison’s refusal to defend me when Lacey had insulted me. “A working dinner,” Harrison had called it, but I could tell he wasn’t happy to see me there with Jeremy. Well, I’d been on a working dinner, too.

I stood and turned around to open my office window. It was far too hot in the room, but the office window was about as easy to deal with as a recalcitrant mule. I’d just finished prying the thing open when a sharp rap on the door made me jump. I spun around to discover that the knock had heralded the arrival of Dr. Edwin Holmes, the English Department head and my boss. Damn. Damn. Damn. If he was coming up here to find me, it wasn’t good. He usually summoned his staff to his spacious, first-floor, air-conditioned/heated office when he wanted to speak with us.

Dr. Holmes wore a Deerstalker hat at times, just like his namesake, Sherlock, and Harrison and I spent hours laughing about it and discussing it.

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