“Why is me being single important?”
“I’m myth-busting. They call you The Love Doctor. I just wonder where it all came from. What made you give the advice you gave in your book, and in such a way?” He narrowed his eyes at me like he was really considering it.
That was just a roundabout version of the question I hated so much.
What inspired me…
“I’m pretty certain you listened in on the show yesterday and got my answer on what inspired me.” I nodded.
He ran his finger along the side of my hand, warming the skin where he touched.
“That shit answer. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be here.” He tilted his head to the side.
“You think something is wrong with me saying I’m inspired by the people around me and the experience I’ve had working with them?”
He deepened his stare, really looking at me, and I almost felt naked from the intensity. It was like he could see inside my head, inside my soul.
I didn’t like it, and the more he stared, the more I wanted to hide away. Hide my feelings and secrets.
He was a stranger. A handsome stranger who oozed sex appeal and that daring personality that was similar to mine.
People said it took one to know one, and it looked like that was happening here because he looked like he could see through my lie.
“Nothing’s wrong with it, Goddess, but it’s not true,” he spoke, confirming my fears. “It reads like a ‘How To’ guide on how to prevent mistakes.”
“Isn’t that what people want? A lot of relationship disasters can be avoided by preventing mistakes.”
“True, but that’s not the impression I got when I read your work.” A lock of his hair drifted over his eye, giving him a sexy edge. “You wrote that book long before you became known to anybody. To me… it seems like something happened to you.”
All I could do was stare at him. A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want to talk about what happened to me, and definitely not with him.
Definitely not with him when I couldn’t even talk to Olivia, and she was the person who was closest to me.
“I may have started the book long before anyone knew me, but that doesn’t mean people around me didn’t inspire me.” That was me side-stepping this whole conversation.
He smiled again. “The first principle of the Go With The Flow Method is to vet your potential partner like you would if they were applying for a job in your company.”
“What the hell is wrong with that?”
“There’s no emotion. A job is a job. It’s not the same thing as a human being with emotions that click. And beware of scrubs? What if a guy lost everything trying to save his family? What if he just got back from a war and is suffering from PTSD? What if he’s studying and doesn’t earn much? There are so many possibilities.”
“Right, so if you vet him, you’ll know. Right?”
“Sweetheart, let me tell you something. I understand women a lot. More than they do themselves.”
I raised my brows. “Do you now?”
“Oh yes. I know ninety percent of the women who read your book will do anything you say. If Dr. Jada Dane said it, then we’ll do it. And her actions speak louder than words. There’s not a single man I’ve seen you with who doesn’t have deep pockets.”
He had a point. They were all rich and gorgeous.
I didn’t like the way this guy was calling me out on my personal choices.
“I can’t help who’s interested in me. If they’re rich, then they’re rich.”
“Woman, please. There’s not a man in the vicinity of this planet who wouldn’t be interested in you. You just pick the rich, good-looking ones. Makes me wonder what hope a guy like me has. I have the looks, but my pockets aren’t as deep as they used to be.”
I had to laugh. “Football?”
“Oh, so you do know something about me.”
“It’s enough. You’re a jock who thinks he has more privilege than everyone else.” I managed to take my hand back.
“I’m not a jock, Miss Jada.”
“Then stop trying to destroy me.” There, that was all I wanted to say. That was the crux of my issue. I wanted him to stop with his bad press.
“And miss out on these little meetings of ours? No. I don’t think so.”
My hands returned to my hips. “You can leave now.” I stepped aside, away from him.
“Goddess, your methods aren’t based on love. Mine are. Your fame and the way you present your methods are so farfetched that people completely gloss over what you’re truly saying. I don’t know who hurt you, but clearly it’s his loss.”
He was trouble because he seemed to see what I didn’t want people to see. In addition to that, he had this way about him that paralyzed my defenses. It made it so when he reached out to touch the edge of my cheek, I couldn’t back away.
“No one hurt me. I would never allow that.” Bold-faced lie.
“Alright, sure. Let me, however, give you a piece of advice. Whatever you write for your readers and clients should be more holistic. Not all men are dogs or pricks.”
His hand returned to his side.
“You’re a prick.”
“Goddess, I’m a prick to you because you don’t like that I can see straight through your fine ass. But this is gonna be interesting. You and me, like Venus and Mars colliding, but really all they want is to get it together.”
“I don’t want to get together with you,” I threw back, but deep down I doubted myself.
He quirked a brow. “Keep telling yourself that, baby. Rule one of the Dr. St. James Method: Never give up on what you want.”
“You have a method?”
He nodded. “Yup, one that will rival yours.”
I folded my arms. “What?”
“Yeah, so I guess we’ll see what the people want, right?” He shrugged and stepped away from me. “Me with my methods on how to actually fall in love and maintain a relationship, or you with your book that was inspired by the men who caused you heartbreak.”
I blinked several times. He hit the nail with the hammer big time.
“I told you nobody hurt me.”
“And I said alright. Doesn’t mean I believe you. Nothing wrong with writing about past experiences. I just have a better method. See you on the show, Goddess.”
I glared at him as he walked away.
Numbness filled me as I worried about what lay ahead.
For years, I got by on pushing what happened to me right to the back of my mind. But Ivan seemed hell-bent on stirring it all up.
I couldn’t even be as angry as I wanted to be because he was completely correct.
It wasn’t men, though, in the plural sense. It was just one guy. A man who I definitely shouldn’t have been with. A man who had been off limits to me purely due to his title.
My college professor. Brian Cordon.
Chapter 6
Jada
Twelve years ago…
Oh my God, I was so nervous I could throw up and wither away. Or possibly implode from the clash of emotions that fought within me.
Emotion overload.
That’s what this was. I should let Professor Lightfoot know that I got what she meant now in her lecture on emotional development and the instigations for the range of emotions we felt as humans.
She said emotion overload was more serious than what we took it for because it was the initial starting point to stress.
That was what she found from her research. Textbooks would tell you it was the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline that would make the heart beat faster.
But she took it right down to the minimum and looked at where stress started in the mind.
It was there we needed to focus on whenever we felt stress. I could not do that today.
Or any other day when I was in the presence of Professor Brian Cordon.
Brian.
He preferred for his students to call him on a first-name basis. Along w
ith the Hollywood good looks and his godlike body, the man also had the coolest personality.
And, like every other young woman on the campus of UCLA who thought the man was a dead ringer for Shemar Moore, I took one look at him at the start of our fall semester and fell head over heels in love with him.
Unlike every other young woman, however, I, Jada Dane, got the chance of a lifetime to have him as my personal tutor for my thesis. And what was the topic of my thesis?
Sex and Relationships. I picked the topic from last year because I wanted to go into relationship counselling after I completed my degree. I’d loved psychology from way back in high school. It always fascinated me, and I always planned to go into it in some way as a career. Being the diva I was, though, I didn’t see myself counselling people who were depressed, stressed, or anxious.
I respected my fellow colleagues who wanted to do that because I always felt it took a special kind of person to help people who suffered from those issues.
I just believed that it also took a special kind of person to help those too, with relationship problems. Someone like me. Someone like me who was always confident and sure of herself, who could look past the sex and delve in deep into the aspects that made people fall in love with each other.
The risks they took that were beyond sex. Fun as it was, sex was just a physical thing, and I felt that when you added emotion to it, it could be so much more.
I’d only had one relationship like that. Back in high school with my ex, Todd.
Before the summer vacation, I stated what I wanted to do for my thesis, and no one else wanted to do it because at the time it was being taught by Professor Jefferson, who was in his seventies and looked more like a Wookie than Chewbacca did.
I didn’t care about that, and I was handsomely rewarded on day one of our return when we were informed that he decided to retire early and Brian would be taking his place as not only our lecturer but also my personal tutor.
Oh, what a day. Needless to say, a huge number of the class tried to transfer, but they were turned down. He did, however, accept five other students. Me, though, I got first pickings on what days I wanted to see him.
This week was the week when we were getting down to the practical stuff. It was mid-November, so I’d had a great ten weeks of him already. I was excited to see what he had planned for me, but God help me, was I excited to spend time with him too. I couldn’t help myself. We’d gotten to know each other a lot since September, and wow, was he ever the guy a girl could dream of.
Emotion overload was upon me because I knew I was playing with hell fire by crushing on my professor. More than crushing, if I was being honest.
That was something I couldn’t help either. When I was with him, it was like we had this connection I’d never felt with anyone. When he looked at me sometimes, I saw this inner admiration that I wished could be more than just what he saw in me as my teacher.
It was foolish of me to indulge in such a fantasy.
Foolish and totally nonsensical, and I was starting to fantasize about him to a degree that was becoming unhealthy, doing things I wouldn’t normally do.
Like me wearing my best Victoria’s Secret set under my pink summer dress that was way too overdressed to meet him. As if he was going to see my sexy lingerie, and should I even be considering him seeing me in my sexy lingerie?
No.
I pulled in a breath as the last of his students went through the main doors of the lecture theatre.
I was sitting in the back, waiting. He didn’t mind us doing that if we’d missed out on a lecture earlier in the week and wanted to catch up on the evening lectures he offered, or if we came to see him like I had.
It was late. I’d come in for his lecture on cognitive psychology he was teaching some freshman-year students. I remembered when I had that lecture three years ago, and it was definitely not as fun as how he delivered it.
This was my last year here, and I had to say while nothing would make me want to turn back the clock to those very stressful first years, I would happily jump in a time machine if I knew Brian was going to be my professor.
Just for that smile of his. Jesus.
I stood up and made my way down the steps leading down the theater. He smiled when he saw me, and the smile seeped into my heart. I was crazy for even thinking about what his lips would feel like on mine right now.
Brian was thirty-eight, and I’d just turned twenty-one. I was a woman with the ego the size of the planet, but even I had to have sense and embrace reality. He’d never be interested in me.
“Miss Jada, my favorite student. You look like you just stepped off the runway,” he said, turning his smile up a notch.
Of course, it would be harder to embrace reality when he made comments like that.
“Thank you. You know I try.” I smiled, tossing my ponytail over my shoulder.
“Yes, you do. Are you going out later?” He chuckled, and his eyes sparkled. Then he got this cautious look. “Wait, are you going out now? Come to turn me down for another man?”
This was his personality, and I absolutely loved it.
“No, I’m all yours for the evening.” Heat crept to my cheeks when I realized what I’d said.
He held my gaze, giving me that stare that warmed my insides.
“Well, lucky me. I have a long session planned. Hope you’re up for it.”
“I am.” I held up my notebook.
“Come on, then. Do you want to order pizza?”
“I’m on a diet, so it’s been protein shakes for me.”
“God, you women. I’ll grab us some Chinese. No protein shake is gonna be enough for our session. You can have a veg stir-fry.”
Well, I wouldn’t say no to that. “Thank you. That sounds nice.”
We went to his office, he ordered, and I got myself set up with my notes from last week and the answers to the questions he’d set for me.
He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me. Then he rolled up the sleeves to his thick forearms, and I tried not to get too turned on by the definition in his muscles.
“So, let’s start with the questions and tasks from last week.” He nodded.
He’d set everyone in his group different tasks depending on the topic area of their thesis. He didn’t want us to choose a topic yet because the subject was so broad, but I had something in mind.
Last week, he’d set me with the bizarre task of watching five minutes of porn. I nearly died when he told me. In fact, I thought he was kidding. Like it was some sort of joke to see if I’d really fall for it. But no, he was being totally serious. I was supposed to watch five minutes of porn and pick some scenario where the people just met. The specific things he told me to look for were how they acted when they met and the buildup to the action.
Now, I was supposed to not only talk sex with this gorgeous man, we were supposed to be talking porno too. Lord help me.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, raising his brows.
“Did you do the main task?” he asked.
“I did, of course, in the privacy of my room and definitely not while my roommate was around. Thin walls.” I laughed.
He did too. “Good, well, let’s hear it. What did you watch?”
“Jesus, you want me to tell you what I watched? Like, properly? Also, you do realize this stuff is all staged, right?”
“Maybe so, but people do behave that way in real life. You know that. And yes, I want you to tell me what you watched.”
I grimaced. “Okay. Let’s do this.” I pulled in a deep breath and avoided too much eye contact. “I went with a hitchhiker scenario where the woman paid for her ride with sex.”
“Good, and what did you think?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but I’d give my thoughts. “It was dangerous. I thought it would be a dangerous situation in real life.”
“But people do that, Jada. It’s a fantasy, and when two people come together in real life, they move past danger an
d forget things they should consider. They don’t think about time and the fact that they just met. You’re going to meet people like that if you decide to go into this area of specialty, and you have to have an open mind that their way of thinking is not necessarily going to be your way. Never judge people. It’s the first rule in this profession. The minute you do, that’s it. Sex and relationships is one of those gray areas, taboo if you will. People don’t like to talk about it. That’s why it’s often the last thing anyone addresses.”
I really loved listening to him when he talked like that. His passion was so evident in everything he said.
“You couldn’t have told me that without making me watch porn?” I couldn’t help it. I knew I should have done the studently thing and just agree with him, but this was me coming out.
He chuckled. “Five minutes wasn’t long enough to cause any damage.”
“I watched ten minutes. I got completely sucked in and wanted to see if they really were going to do anything.”
“Oh Lord, please don’t tell Dean Matterson that. He’ll fire my ass.”
“I swear to God my lips are sealed. Next time, just send me the link so I don’t have to go scrolling through.”
His lips parted, and he suddenly looked embarrassed. “Jada, I’m not one of these men who watch porn. It’s good for activities like this because you see how quickly emotions and decisions change. People giving in to their desires.”
“I don’t think they should do that. Is that wrong for me to think that? I feel they should learn how to control themselves.”
“Well, hello, Miss Behavioral Psychologist. Please don’t hate on me because I take a psychodynamic approach.” He laughed, and I winced. He’d never told me that before.
“Do you really?”
“I thought you could tell.” He shrugged.
“No.” I shook my head.
Behavioral psychologists believed that you could be trained to act in a certain way and in a system of rewards and punishments. For me that seemed like the natural way to go. I knew that if I studied and worked hard, I would get good grades, and that would equal increasing my chances in getting a good job.
The Love Doctors Page 5