Daddy In Charge_A Billionaire Romance

by Natasha Spencer

  “More like frustrating,” he said.

  He leaned forward in his chair and Emily could see the strain in his face. This project that the University president had commissioned was clearly weighing on him.

  “If you like, you could take a break and help me grade these papers. You might as well. It is your class, after all.”

  She set the papers on top of the book he’d been looking through. It was a thick text, filled with prints of Paul Gaugin and Vangoh paintings.

  Post-impressionist art work was the professor of art history’s forte. He’d written numerous academic papers on the subject. Now, the president of their small university wanted him to write an ‘accessible’ book. One that could be published and potentially make the New York Times Bestseller list.

  This was certainly not the Professor’s forte.

  Maybe that was why he looked relieved when he picked up the first in the stack of papers Emily had set down on his desk. Before glancing through it, he looked up at her with the heart flip inducing smile.

  “I think we both know it’s more your class than it is mine.”

  “I just let you take all the credit for it,” Emily said with an accompanying smile. “And get the salary while I have to work at a bar just to make rent on my little apartment.”

  “Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you,” he said bringing his pen down on the first page of one of the five page papers. “Not many people get a full scholarship for Art History here. If the most you have to do is grade a few papers and give some lessons, I’d say you’ve got it pretty easy.”

  “Says the man who holes himself up in his office during the school day,” Emily quipped. “I wonder if the board of directors would pay you as much if they knew you spent your time writing books instead of teaching classes?”

  “They already know how I spend my time,” Kurt said, his eyes still focused on the page in front of him, circling an apparently unsatisfactory paragraph. “That’s why they pay me a salary. I’m more valuable to the University when I research than I am when I teach.”

  Though Emily would never admit this out loud, she could see the reasoning behind that. Kurt, while he was very knowledgeable about his subject and didn’t give terrible lectures, had very little interest in them. He had even less interest in the students taking his course.

  Emily knew he’d taken this professorship at a small but notable school in Northern California, mainly so that someone would pay him to write about the subject he loved. Namely, art from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

  The bored expression on his face as he finished his first student paper, marking it with a B, reinforced his disinterest.

  That was why Emily taught most of his classes. She didn’t mind, really. Unlike Kurt, she enjoyed teaching and she thought she was better at it than she would be at researching. Going through endless periodicals and double checking academic facts filled her with as much dread as dealing with students did for Kurt.

  She also didn’t mind helping grade student’s papers. But, that had less to do with the work itself and more to do with the fact that she got to sit next to Kurt, alone in his office while she did it.

  Again, telling herself not to get too excited, she picked up the next paper on the stack and began going through it. As she worked her way down poorly written paragraphs about the inspiration behind the impressionist movement, she couldn’t help glancing up at Kurt at various intervals.

  “Speaking of research,” Emily asked finally. “How’s the book coming?”

  “If it were going well, I wouldn’t have stopped to grade papers,” he said a tiny hint of frustration edging in his voice. “I would have just asked you to do it.”

  “You’ve done that often enough.”

  Kurt glanced up at her and gave her a superior smirk which, like his smile, caused her heart to flutter more than a bit. Once again, she told herself that after almost two years of knowing the man, she shouldn’t be so taken with him. Once again, it didn’t help.

  “You’ve never had a problem writing before,” she said mildly as she finished the paper in her hands, marking it with a “C +”.

  “This is different,” he said. “All my other writing was for academics. It was published in journals and periodicals. This is supposed to be…accessible.”

  The emphasis he put on the word accessible told her just what he thought of having to write a book for the general public. The click of his pen as he marked his second paper, this one with an ‘A’, emphasized his frustration.

  “I’m already on the third draft of the first chapter,” he said. “Apparently, the publisher doesn’t think anything I’ve written so far will resonate with a general audience.”

  “Have you shown it to anyone besides your publisher?” she asked. He gave a humorless chuckle.

  “If it’s so terrible that my publisher rejects it, why would I want anyone else to read it?”

  Emily couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that. Kurt always talked that way about his writing. Even when he won awards for it. And, he often spent months editing a paper to death, typing and re-typing paragraphs repeatedly before he so much as let someone else glance at it.

  “Emily, you did tell them Vangoh was an impressionist?”

  She looked up to find Kurt’s expression confused as his pen was poised over another student’s paper.

  “No,” Emily said. “Well…I did say that he’s sometimes lumped in the impressionists but he’s better classified as a post-impressionist or a realist. Why? Have you gotten a lot of papers on Vangoh?”

  “No. Just this one. But it’s all this student’s really chosen to talk about,” he said. “Apparently, he’s also under the mistaken impression that Vangoh painted in the twentieth century and not the nineteenth.”

  “Whose paper is that?” Emily asked glancing over at the name on the top of the page.

  “Oh,” she said, not surprised at all. “That’s Aaron Coffee. He’s kind of an idiot. Never pays attention to any of the facts but, he’s obsessed with Vangoh. Apparently, cutting your ear off and committing suicide makes it a requirement for romantic, pseudo intellectuals to love you.”

  “Huh,” Kurt said. He stopped with his pen in hand and looked up from the paper. “I never really thought of that.”

  “What?” Emily asked glancing up at him.

  He didn’t answer right away but pushed the stack of papers yet to be graded to the side and pulled out his art book and notepad again.

  “I take it this means you’re done grading papers?” Emily asked. She knew she should feel frustrated or put upon that he was, once again, handing the grading work back to her. But, his eyes had become bright and focused once again and the middle of his nose got that adorable wrinkle that always appeared when he was focused on something important.

  He looked so adorable when he became ‘inspired’ by something that she never had the strength to be angry with him.

  “You’ve just given me an idea,” he said. “You don’t mind grading the rest of the papers, do you?”

  “Not if you tell me what this brilliant idea is that I gave you,” she said.

  “You said that people like that Aaron Coffee, people who just read books for fun, like Vangoh because of his personal life as much as his art,” he said. “That’s what the focus of the book can be about. Vincent Vangoh and Paul Gaugin’s relationship. First as roommates and then as artists on parallel journeys. That should be accessible enough, don’t you think?”

  Emily blinked in surprise. This was the first time, that she could remember, that Kurt had ever asked her opinion. In fact, it was the first time he had ever asked anyone for approval about anything. Normally he just rolled his eyes at people and called them idiots.

  Of course, when he did that with her, she just rolled her eyes right back and called him an arrogant jerk. But, this was very different.

  She looked up from the paper in her hands and across the desk. He was staring at her intently; small silver spect
acles gleaming in the florescent light. Behind them, his grey eyes looked…there was no other word for it…uncertain. As though Kurt Schmidt, the great professor of art history was unsure of himself.

  Clearing her throat, she looked back at him and nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. That sounds good. Just don’t forget about the prostitute.”

  That adorable pink blush came back to his cheeks.

  “Prostitute?”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “The girl Vangoh gave his earlobe to after he cut it off. People love a good love story.”

  “I don’t think I would call that a love story exactly,” he mumbled as though he were vaguely embarrassed. He turned back to his desk and the pen began furiously scribbling on his notepad again. Emily knew that she should leave it there. But, something inside her wouldn’t let the thought dangle. So, trying to go back to the paper in front of her, she opened her mouth again.

  “The thing is, no one’s really one hundred percent sure what it was,” she said. “Some people say she was just a friend and a model. Some say he paid her for her ‘services’ regularly. If you can claim that he was in love with her and then find some evidence to fit, you can turn it into a love story.”

  The pen stopped scratching and Kurt turned back to face her. Emily looked up from a surprisingly good essay on Degas that was still much less interesting than the conversation happening in front of her.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little…intellectually dishonest?” he asked. “I mean, I’d essentially be telling a lie for a good story.”

  Emily rolled her eyes and set the paper down.

  “It’s not a lie,” she said emphatically. “For all we know he was desperately and tragically in love with this girl. Who’s to say he wasn’t? Besides, the point is accessibility. Popularity. Even if you make a claim historians will dispute, it will get them talking about your book. That’ll get more people reading it. And, for this book, that’s the point.”

  He glanced from her back to the book in front of him, that adorable little focused wrinkle in his forehead coming back into view.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Romance is popular. I’m just not sure I’ll be good at writing it.”

  “Well, if you need any help,” she said grading the degas essay with an A+. “I’m just an email away. I can look at passages you’re having trouble with. Add a feminine touch.”

  He let out a small chuckle, looking her up and down. Emily tried to keep her heart from sinking when she imagined what he must be thinking. She didn’t look at all feminine at the moment.

  Her too thick and too curly red hair had been pulled back into a tight pony tail, her natural skin, uncovered by makeup shown with freckles and her full, curvy body looked much more full than sensual now. She’d been doing more stress eating while working on her thesis than she liked to admit.

  Perhaps this was why she crossed her arms and gave him a stern look.

  “Believe it or not, I am a woman,” she said. “And I’ve read my fair share of romance. I just might be able to help.”

  Kurt laughed again and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  “Ok, no need to get defensive,” he said. “I know you’re a woman and I know you’d be able to help.”

  “Then what’s so funny?”

  “It’s just…you seem more eager to talk about a prostitute than you do about post-impressionist art. I’ve got to wonder what that says about you.”

  She tossed the red pen in her hand across the room at his head, he dodged it, laughing as he did. This laugh wasn’t the humorless chuckle or arrogant laugh he usually affected. This one was much rarer. This was the full-throated laugh he used when he was truly happy. It was another thing about him that made Emily’s heart flip in her chest despite herself.

  “Another remark like that and I won’t help you at all,” she said.

  “Ok,” he said again. “Fair enough. I’ll let you know when I get to the romance part. You can add your feminine touch.”

  They spend another forty-five minutes in his office working, mostly in silence, on their separate projects. Emily finished grading the student essays and Kurt kept scratching away at his note pad, occasionally clicking his pen in frustration and muttering to himself.

  It was well after five o’clock when Emily finally put a large, red “B” on the last paper.

  “Well, that’s it,” she said setting the large stack of papers next to Kurt on his desk. He didn’t look up and barely nodded in acknowledgement as he highlighted a passage in the book he was reading.

  “I should head out,” Emily said. “I’ve got work tomorrow morning and I want to get in a run before that.”

  “Have a good night,” he said absently, now jotting another note down in his note book. Emily simply gave an absent smile, too used to this absent-minded treatment from the professor to be offended.

  She moved to the chair and grabbed her purse, pausing before she opened the door.

  “Don’t stay too late,” she said. “I’m sure your wife’s expecting you home.”

  Kurt paused a moment to give another of his mirthless chuckles as his eyes absently glanced to the picture of a pretty, slim and decidedly feminine looking blonde woman on his desk. This, Emily knew, was his wife, Cheryl. Though, she had never met the woman in person.

  “Cheryl’s…out of town again,” he said. “Won’t be back for another week or so.”

  “Oh,” Emily answered. Suddenly unsure what to say to that. It seemed that Kurt’s wife was out of town more often than she was in these days.

  If Kurt had been one of Emily’s girlfriends, she would have asked if he wanted to go get some coffee and talk about it. But, she knew him well enough to know that an invitation to discuss his feelings wouldn’t be welcome.

  “Well,” she said finally. “Try not to work too late anyway. Who knows, you may want to teach a class tomorrow.”

  He paused again and turned back to her. His grey eyes gleamed with amusement.

  “Why would I do that when you’re so much better at it?”

  He gave her that smile that made his eyes light up even more. She gave him a playful eye roll in return.

  “Good night, Kurt,” she said.

  He waved his hand at her in response and turned back to his jotting.

  As Emily walked out of the building, she was again hit with that mixture of elation, contentment and confusion that she always felt when she spent long hours locked in with Kurt. It wasn’t a bad sensation but she knew it wasn’t helpful either.

  And, she also knew there was only one antidote for it.

  Taking a deep breath, she sucked in the fresh, crisp, pine filled air that the mountains of Northern California provided. Turning her eyes to the mountain range in the west, she looked at the bright pinks, oranges and yellows that came with the setting sun.

  Sunsets like these, with the light breeze of late summer, beckoning in the winds of autumn always made her remember why she came to school here in the first place.

  It wasn’t the famed Art History department that drew her here (though it was a bonus), and it certainly wasn’t professor Kurt Schmidt. It was the perfection that was the Pacific Northwest.

  Allowing the sunset and the air around her to fill all her thoughts, she decided to take the long way home. Hoping, silently, that all this beauty would make her forget about her married professor for the foreseeable future.

  Chapter Two

  Forgetting about Kurt Schmidt wasn’t as hard as Emily thought it would be.

  In the next two weeks, he hardly spoke to her. Though, to be fair, he hardly spoke to anyone at all. He stayed holed up in his office with the door locked. Even during his required office hours, he responded to student questions with nothing more than monosyllabic answers and grunts. The only reason Emily knew this was because some of their more studious art history pupils came to her with their questions about the mid-term when the professor wasn’t helpful.

  That
was not to say that she never saw Kurt. She would still stop by his office to hand him attendance reports or grade student papers. But, when she did, they hardly spoke. While grading, she worked at the desk next to his, mostly in silence while he muttered and clicked his pen or tapped furiously on his laptop keyboard.

  He was so involved in this accessible new book that he no longer had time to help create lesson plans for his class. That, left Emily to do the work. And, while she didn’t mind, she had to admit, between that, her own term papers due and her part time job at the “Art for Keeps” studio, the strain was becoming a bit much.

  Even Audrey, Emily’s roommate and work mate was beginning to notice to stress Emily was under. And, she took a darker view of it than Emily did.

  “You’ve got to put your foot down with that professor,” she said one day as they set up the blank bowls and paints at the studio, preparing for another group to come in. “You’re letting him take advantage of you!”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Audrey,” Emily said putting a bowl down at the head of the table a little more forcefully than necessary. “He’s got a lot of work too. Besides, TA’s usually do this kind of stuff for their professors. It’s kind of expected of us.”

  Audrey let out an ironic snort.

  “Most professors I know at least pretend to teach their classes,” she said. “This guy's got you doing all his work for him at half the price of a full time assistant. And, I think I know why.”

  “Audrey, don’t start,” Emily said. She stared intently down at the white smock covering the table, her cheeks blushing all the same.

  “A crush is one thing, Em,” Audrey said. “But you can’t let it run your life. Doing this guy’s work for him is not going to make him leave his wife.”

  “I’m not trying to make him leave his wife,” Emily said a little too defensively. “I’m just trying to do the best job I can. That’s all. Besides, he’s more than my boss. He’s my friend. And I know how much this book means to him.”

  “Whatever you say,” Audrey said quietly, shaking her head.