Tangled in Tinsel by Ellen Mint

Author:Ellen Mint
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, christmas, holiday, romcom
Publisher: Ellen Mint

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DEAN LOOKED ABOUT to blow. The longer he paced while half-shouting, half-pleading at the phone, the more he’d spike up his hair with his fingers. Levi feared what would happen when his dark locks reached their peak.

“I don’t understand. Who’s this Doctor Jackson?”

His assistant—dressed for a New York business meeting instead of a small-town street fair—was hunkered over her tablet. She looked up a moment at Dean, who’d managed to do the impossible and form an island in the middle of the street during the Festival. “He’s the only person on the planet Mr. Hancock despises with the furor of a thousand suns and would give a kidney to impress—his old doctorate advisor.”

“Listen to me, you pompous fossil. I have…” Dean half-shouted before falling back to a gentle murmur. It was strange to watch and set Levi’s teeth on edge.

“I didn’t realize he had a doctorate,” Levi whispered, uncertain if that was a major faux pas or not. They didn’t get many academic doctors in Tinsel.

“He doesn’t,” his assistant said, “and Doctor Jackson is why.”

“The carving is genuine. Why would I fake it in Photoshop? Oh, you need a video. I’ll give you a video!”

Levi expected him to march to the church, but Dean turned the phone around and began to extend his middle finger.

“Sir, we’re in public,” Anita called, freezing Dean in his tracks.

“Right. Of course. I wasn’t gonna, I’d never, um…” He shook his head as if his assistant sobered him up. A more mature voice said, “Doctor Jackson, look…”

“What makes this Doctor Jackson so important?” Levi tried to focus on the pacing man, but Dean’s voice and antics were starting to draw the attention of the town leaders.

“If you Google Gustav Gilt, Jackson’s books are the first to come up. He’s not only the leading expert in both industry and academia but considers himself to be the only one. And he’s vehemently against Mr. Hancock’s theory on the TB mark.”

The back of Levi’s neck burned as he pieced it all together. Dean had tried to build his future on the certainty that this American genius and artist preferred the company of men. And the one person he’d counted on, he’d probably trusted and looked up to, betrayed him. “He’d keep him from getting his doctorate over that?” Levi whispered before realizing he had no idea how that worked. He pictured a man in a black robe standing in front of a college building, refusing to let Dean enter until he admitted Gilt was as straight as a dollar bill.

“Worse. He let Dean get all the way to his defense, then utterly destroyed him. They’ve been at a simmering cold war ever since.”

“It’s real and I will prove it’s real, then you’ll have to see my face on every single Gilt book until the end of time. Ha! Ha ha!” Dean shouted at the phone as he pulled it from his ear. He added two more laughs while holding it before his mouth.

“Bastard hung up,” he muttered, handing it back to his assistant.

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