To my readers because I still can’t believe you not only exist, but you tell other people to read my books. Thank you.
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About the Author
Sionna Fox is an author of sweet/hot HEAs, die-hard romance fan, and lover of things nerdy and twee. She drinks too much coffee, has a minor problem with washi tape and planner stickers, and tagging her in anything involving foxes, llamas, or women in suits is a surefire way to her heart.
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Schooling Her
Robin Lovett
Headmistress Regina Masterson has a problem bigger than the pay gap among her faculty. The new school dean, Phillip Young, is too good at both his job and turning her on. Working together to change a conservative school culture may be easier than resisting the man she hired. If they’re not careful, Phillip may end up headmastering Regina all over her desk on their way to equal pay for equal work.
1
He slid the envelope onto her desk, not like it was an everyday kind of note or even a foreboding notice. His long fingers lingered on it, almost caressing the white paper as though it were something of significant value, something they had worked toward for months, or years.
“Is that what I think it is?” Regina couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice or stop her heart from leaping. If what was inside was what she thought was inside…
“Open it,” Phillip murmured, his voice rich with anticipation.
She stared at the spot where his fingers lay, still touching the corner of the envelope. It was better than looking at his devastating face. Once she met his eyes, she’d be in danger of missing the joy of this achievement. She’d be too distracted by the man—this brilliantly creative, shamelessly persistent, unfailingly loyal, not to mention compassionate man, and unfortunately, for her, all-too-handsome specimen of the opposite sex.
No, she needed to keep her focus on that envelope, not on him, or she’d be in danger of doing something they’d both regret in the thrill of this long-awaited moment.
Regina picked it up and, carefully, so that her fingers didn’t shake with adrenaline, did what he said and opened it.
The letter on the top, she didn’t need to read. She knew what the basic statement: We, the teachers and staff of The Huntington Academy do hereby call for an inquiry into the institution’s compensation standards and practices.
In other words, a demand for equal pay for equal work at a private school where unions were not an option, where unity among the faculty and staff toward their rights as employees was rare. In fact, it had never happened in the school’s one-hundred-and-fifty-six-year history.
But those contents she knew. It was the second page that mattered.
She scanned the lines of hand-written signatures to the number at the bottom. “Fifty?”
“It’s enough, Regina.”
“I thought we agreed on one hundred.” She finally raised her gaze to him, gathering on her professional assertions so that she wouldn’t dwell on his deep-set eyes, his too-full lips, and those silver-rimmed glasses—what was so fucking hot about glasses?
He made it harder for her. He braced both hands on the edge of her desk and leaned toward her. “But this fifty is all we need.” The corners of his mouth perked up, emphasizing the sharpness of his cheekbones and the sheen of his rich brown complexion. There wasn’t anything this man did that wasn’t sexy, damn him.
She lost herself for a moment, watching the tip of his tongue lick across his bottom lip. Really, she needed to focus on the paper, the signatures, the…
“Look at the names, Regina,” he ordered.
She sucked in a breath. That was the other thing. The way he tried to order her around, not in an asshole-ish alpha kind of way, but more in a teasing her because he knew how much it irked her way—almost as though he knew how much she secretly liked it. There was no one else at this school who dared try to give her orders.
Her upper lip curled in challenge, not wanting to give in to him. “We need more signatures.” She thrust the paper at him.
He cupped her hand, his palm warm over her fingers. She had to pull her hand back to keep from showing how much she liked it when he touched her.
He sighed and hung his head, surrendering his stubbornness. “Please, just read the signatures. Every single department head signed it.”
She scoffed. He had to be lying. “There’s no way David Yates would—”
“Number forty-two.” He pointed to the bottom of the second column.
There it was. “Holy shit,” she whispered and had to sit back in her chair, disbelieving what she saw.
The leader of the faculty “old boys” club, or former leader, since Regina had fired three of its key members for harassment of students and teachers alike the year before. She’d demoted Dean David Yates to Head of the Social Sciences department and hired Phillip Young, the invaluable man standing in front of her, to replace Yates as Dean of Faculty, last year.
Yates had been their equal pay project’s most vocal adversary. But somehow, the illustrious new Dean Young had convinced the die-hard old boy to sign the missive.
This time when she looked at Phillip, she couldn’t hide her admiration. In this moment, he was her hero. “How?”
He grinned and basked in her rare bestowal of approval. “I can be very persuasive.”
God help her, he crossed his arms over his chest, stretching those biceps beneath his well-fitted navy jacket. Then there was his trade-mark bow tie, hand knotted at his neck. She couldn’t get through a day without fantasizing about slipping her fingers between the silk folds of the bow and pulling it loose, or imagining what he looked like in the morning, fresh from the shower, cleanly shaven, tying it deftly with his fingers in front of the mirror.
Those fingers…
She was a fool for hiring this man, for torturing herself to work with him every day. He may as well have had a DO NOT TOUCH sign taped to his back for as appropriate as it would be for her to sleep with her employee. The number one hazard of being a school headmistress had not turned out to be the job stress. It was the no-no rules about sleeping with her favorite bedtime fantasy colleague.
At the faculty holiday party, they’d had a one-too-many-drinks incident, and she knew their attraction was mutual thanks to some alcohol enabled hasty words and furtive glances from both of them. They’d come close, too close, to sneaking off to a back corner like naughty teenagers at a school dance. She’d learned her lesson and so had he: never get drunk in each other’s company. They hadn’t mentioned it again since. They had too much to lose.
Except, despite all that, she really wasn’t a fool for hiring him. Adding Phillip to the faculty was probably the best decision she’d ever made.
“No, seriously.” She stood up and moved around her desk urgently needing this story from him. “Tell me how you did it.”
His eyes rounded as she got closer, and he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t just one conversation. It was days of little comments in passing.”
She trailed her fingers along the corner of her desk, her heels clicking on the hard wood floor. “What kind of little comments?”
His gaze followed her, lingering a moment too long on her neck and possibly her mouth. He was so subtle and his glasses hiding just enough of his gaze, she wasn’t completely sure. She couldn’t help getting an inch closer to him than she should. The des
ire to smell his cologne, the same one he wore every day, mixed with that other scent that was so him—all man—the need was too strong to resist.
He took a slow inhale, hesitating before he spoke, and…his gaze definitely passed over her mouth. “Yates needs to hear that, uh, things will benefit him so…”
She leaned her hip against her desk. “So…?”
He cleared his throat. “So, I dropped hints that if he supported the pay gap inquiry, it would actually look good for him and help him keep his job longer. Unlike—”
“—his colleagues—”
“—whom we fired last year.” His eyes seemed to give a pleasurable twinkle, but it was hard to know if it was just the glare on his lenses.
She wished, not for the first time, that she could lift her hands to his face and take his glasses off—to see his eyes better. That she would get to run her fingers over his cheek to see if his skin was as smooth as it looked or if it would be scratchy with stubble. She thought it would be smooth, but she’d give an awful lot to find out. Maybe even her job.
“I’m impressed,” she confessed, the kind of concession she didn’t make, as a rule.
The corner of his mouth lifted slyly. “I’d say I did it for you. But it wouldn’t be true.”
Regina chuckled low in her chest. “For the faculty?”
“For us.” He said it so quickly, it surprised them both.
She knew they’d worked on it for themselves as much as anyone else. White women, black men, anyone non-white-cis-hetero-male, none of them were paid what they were worth. They deserved to be compensated the same as all the David Yateses in the workforce. Regina knew her salary was not equal to the other male headmasters of private schools nearby. She knew as hard as she’d negotiated for Phillip’s salary to be equal to David Yates’, the school board hadn’t approved it.
But the way Phillip had said us sounded more intimate than just that generalized category.
He inhaled, breaking the tension between them. “For all the work we’ve put in. I couldn’t let this one fail.”
Like their initiative to educate the faculty in their bias against vulnerable students—LGBTQIAP+ kids, students-of-color, the economically disadvantaged kids on scholarship—that had fallen like a tree in a forest with no one to hear it. The response had been so negligible, it was as though they’d said nothing. Not that they wouldn’t try again next year.
“No, this one won’t fail. It’s going to work!” She almost giggled with excitement. She had to bite her lip to stop the sound.
“We still have to present it to the board,” he cautioned.
“They have to approve it. They’ll have no choice.”
His gaze sank to her mouth, and she nearly gasped. She’d felt her attraction to him many times, but she never been more away of his desire for her than in this moment, not even at the faculty party. With his eyes on her mouth, his lips parting as she watched them.
The temptation to lean into him, to wrap her arms around his neck and press their mouths together in celebration of their achievement was nearly unbearable. In fact, she just might—
The door to her office clicked open, and Regina jumped backward in surprise.
“Dr. Masterson?” Olivia poked her head in at the same time Regina crossed her arms creating the physical barrier she was supposed to have with Phillip.
If Olivia, her administrative assistant, had addressed her as “doctor,” it meant there was a student outside her door. Regina calmed her breathing and stepped toward the door. “Yes, Ms. Hopper?”
“The leaders of the international student association are here to see you, when you finish.” Olivia ducked out and closed the door.
Phillip made a loud exhale. “We can plan the next steps and our presentation to the school board tomorrow and—”
“Tonight. I’ll be working late,” she blurted too fast, not ready to see him leave.
He stilled beside her, and she turned her gaze to meet his. An amused grin crept over his mouth. “Tonight?”
“Do you have plans?” She couldn’t help her pulse pumping faster. It was almost like asking him out on a date. Except it wasn’t. It was a work date. Sort of.
He tilted his head and lowered his voice. “You want me to bring you takeout, again?” It shouldn’t have been a suggestive thing to say, but it was. He’d done it before, discovered her working late on his way out for his dinner, and brought back food for her, too.
It was co-incidental that the same building on campus that housed their offices was also the boys’ dorm. And he lived upstairs. So, even if he wasn’t working late, he knew when she was because he saw her light on.
They hadn’t planned it the other times. It just happened. To plan it, on purpose, felt…rebellious.
“Bring me my usual,” she said, and her voice came out surprisingly husky. Who knew talking about lo mein noodles could be sexy. But it would be—the two of them in her office, no one else around, the boys in the dorm locked in their rooms for study hall. It was the closest to alone time they ever got.
He nodded, his throat working on a tight swallow. “We’ll make a plan.”
It wasn’t foreplay, but the pleasure of being alone with him wasn’t the only thing arousing about it. This was the thrill of success, of taking their goals to the next level—that was sexy too. Almost dirty talk.
She lowered her lashes and couldn’t help giving him a sultry agreement. “I’ll see you at seven.”
2
Phillip stood outside her door, bag of Chinese food in his hand, and stared at the light drifting from her office. He could see her shadow pacing back and forth, probably reading something to herself.
He’d never hesitated to walk in her office before. They were just going to be working, talking about this meeting next week and congratulating themselves on their achievement. He’d debated bringing a celebratory bottle of wine.
But he’d decided not to. Wine in her office—she might not be okay with that. Especially not after what happened between them at the holiday party the last time they drank alcohol in the same room together.
What he had decided on, what was burning a hole in his pocket, was the condom he’d put in his wallet.
He wasn’t delusional enough to think the firehouse, tight-ass, hard-nosed Dr. Masterson would allow him an occasion to use it. She was known as the Wicked Witch to most of the faculty for good reason. Many trembled in fear of their jobs when she walked in a room, and she liked it that way. He liked her that way—too much.
Watching men decades her senior stutter in front of her; hearing seasoned administrators whisper about her ruthlessness; having board members prefer to meet with him and shyly confess they were afraid of her; it turned him on. He couldn’t help it.
His boss was a tiger with claws and teeth who took zero shit from anyone. Most of the time. There were other times when she would look at him, he’d swear she was a breath away from rubbing against him and purring like a kitten needing to be scratched. More than scratched. Fucked, hard.
And sweet Jesus, how he wanted to.
But she was his boss. Anyone else, he would’ve asked out months ago, the first day, no, the first hour he met her. Hell, the day she’d fucking interviewed him, sitting there with her lips all pursed and eyes narrowed on him like he was in an inquisition.
He knew lesser men had squirmed and been dismissed, found wanting. Not only had he passed her scrutiny, he reveled in her daily reassessments. He knew she was only ever a whisper away from telling him how she really felt about him. Phillip was sure Regina kept a running list of all his professional flaws and mistakes, like she did with everyone else, ready to be pulled out like a weapon if necessary. Though he’d never understood why so many found her tactics so intimidating. Her daily scheme hatching was exhilarating and always toward a goal of greater good. Working with her every day…
He needed to quit stalling and get in there.
“I smell Chinese food.” Her voice preceded her head peek
ing out the doorway. “I knew it!” Her eyes, usually lined and made up meticulously, had gone smoky with her makeup smudging late in the day. Her lipstick had worn away to show plush lips. Her dark hair tied up behind her head revealed her long neck.
He was a fool for accepting her invitation. He was literally putting his job on the line, as tempted as he was by her. He should turn around, he should walk away, he…followed her inside.
He had to make this as professional as possible. She would, too.
He froze inside the door. He’d expected her to sit in her usual place behind her desk, keeping a physical barrier between them, her in the power pose. He liked that, too. But no, she sat in the chair next to where he always sat.
He abruptly wished he’d kept his work clothes on, like her, not shown up here in his sweat pants and a t-shirt. At least he still had his jacket on. He’d keep it on.
“Come on,” she pointed to his chair. “I’m hungry.”
He still didn’t move. Her skirt was just tight enough to show off the curve of her thighs, just short enough to show off her knees. The way her legs were crossed, he couldn’t help checking out her shapely calves, which lead him to her ankles and her…bare feet. She’d taken off her heels. Why was it so sexy to see her so relaxed?
He should say something innocuous. He really should speak.
She sighed with impatience and stood up to take the bag from him. “I guess I’ll feed myself.”
“It’s hot.” He choked on the words. “The food, I mean. The food is hot. Warm.” There he’d said something. Probably would’ve been better if he’d said nothing.
Her mouth lifted in a smile, and she walked to him, moved past him, and to his shock, closed the door behind him. He swore under his breath as he heard the click of the lock.
Rogue Passion (The Rogue Series Book 5) Page 16