by Ella Brooke
Hazel closed her eyes for a moment, trying to imagine what it would be like to watch Cartwright speaking without saying anything. Sometimes it seemed as though he did already, but Hazel felt like she must just be unable to parse his communication. Likewise, he didn’t always seem to pick up the meaning when she spoke.
It was easier to imagine Dr. Cartwright shucking off that stiff suit jacket, unbuttoning his shirt with one hand as he continued to talk and talk and talk. Button by button, he’d reveal a broad set of pecs that didn’t belong to a professor…
He wasn’t really a professor though. Dr. Cartwright came by his Ph.D. as an honorary award from the university. His qualifications lay instead in being a multinational corporate billionaire. His suits were filled in such a way that Hazel could tell he had plenty of time to work on his muscle tone outside of his business meetings and classrooms. There wasn’t a girl in the department who hadn’t gone out of her way to check out the ring situation on his left hand.
No ring. Definitely not married. Hazel could’ve confirmed as much before she’d even found out about Topics in Entrepreneurship 5436. Cartwright’s most recent divorce had been well-covered by the checkout magazines at every store. Since Hazel spent most of her nights swinging the night shift at the local discount grocery, Hazel had plenty of reasons to check in on the lives of the rich and the feckless.
“Miss Greenwood?”
Hazel flushed as her eyes popped open to the rest of the class looking at her. Daydreaming in class. How unprofessional. She was a senior now. She couldn’t be doing that stuff.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cartwright. What were you saying?” Hazel said with as much dignity as she could muster.
His lips curved into a smirk as he crossed his arms and leaned back on his desk. “I was hoping you could elaborate for us how the Nonprofit Sector would handle a miscommunication between partners.”
Hazel frowned and thought on that. “I don’t know that our communication practices are that much different from in for-profit ventures. Maybe in that we have structures in place to mobilize a base of citizens to action…”
“No? I would have thought the tone of the workplace would be different—when none of you are getting paid,” Cartwright said, light teasing undergirding his words.
Why was it that every man over thirty-five thought women thought being undermined was fun?
Hazel felt like she might sprain something rolling her eyes. “There are positions for volunteers, but people in the nonprofit sector do get paid. Job growth for nonprofits was up 57% last year, compared to 36% in for-profit businesses.” She tapped her pencil impatiently. “Anyway, no one’s paying a soccer mom, but you still have to mediate conflict there.”
“Every business has to pay competitively, or lose their talent,” Chris, the male student, said. He sprawled back on his desk, taking up as much room as humanly possible. “You can’t kumbaya your way to having a strong workforce. It doesn’t matter how good your communication skills are.”
“Your goal for a nonprofit is to create a job worth staying for. Job satisfaction is just as important as competitive pay,” Hazel snapped. “There’s a lot of research to prove people don’t only base their job decisions on salary, especially young people entering the workforce right now.”
“I’d be satisfied with a six-figure salary,” Chris said.
Gina, another female student, leaned forward at her desk and gave Dr. Cartwright a saccharine smile. “I’d like to hear about how you retain your… talent.”
Hazel felt her skin burning again and glanced back at Gina, who was grinning completely without shame.
“Maybe another day,” Cartwright replied, to Hazel’s immense relief. “For now, I want us to start talking about how you will each develop rapport with your employees and how you will deploy your communication structure.”
Hazel sighed and pulled up the work she’d prepared for the day. Her mind began to drift back to that daydream and, for a few moments, all thoughts of corporate communication were pushed out of her head by the image of her professor’s bare chest and abs. She had to focus. It was important that she learned as much as she could from every class, no matter how difficult it was to get along with the professor.
***
Ian Cartwright scanned over his classroom with a confident smile. While he’d never doubted his own business prowess—that spoke for itself— the concept of teaching had seemed more daunting at first. Now, a few weeks into the semester, and he looked forward to greeting his students at the beginning of class. They all had such vibrant energy and so many ideas. Granted, plenty of those ideas were complete nonstarters, but the important thing was that every student in this class was highly motivated and highly intelligent. They would be able to feel out the market in time, as they gained experience.
His eyes drifted, as they often did, to Hazel. She didn’t look very impressive at first glance. She had a fair complexion, and almost always wore her ginger hair drawn into pigtails, or one large ponytail nearly on the top of her head. She had a smallish frame and the way she tilted her head back when she was assessing what someone said was almost birdlike. There was something about her, however, that made it hard to keep his eyes off of her.
She leaned over as she spoke, ever the emphatic budding demagogue, and lectured Chris on appropriate team-building activities for employees. The young man was teasing her, of course, amping up his own feelings of superiority. She was right in principle, as usually was the case. It was just difficult to take her seriously at times. She cared too much. And she dressed like she was on her way to a construction site, or she’d rolled out of bed minutes before class and gotten dressed in the dark. Today was another black tank top (with the words I’ll save myself thanks printed over the image of a crown), layered over a white tank top and an electric blue bra. And of course, her jeans, which looked as if they’d survived a hurricane.
It was hard to watch such an articulate young woman holding herself back with her youthful ideals. If she’d clean herself up a bit, put on some makeup and maybe a dress, Hazel would find so many more doors opening to her. But she was so stubborn. Ian wasn’t certain whether that trait attracted or repelled him. Either way, Hazel had managed to catch his interest in a way he couldn’t shake.
“That’s Clarence Thomas levels of wrong, Chris!” Hazel snapped, slamming her palm against the table.
“Clarence Thomas still has a job,” Chris gloated, shooting finger guns at her.
Ian rubbed his fingers over his lips, spotting a few eye rolls from other students, as he walked over to break up their spat.
“If you don’t mind, this is a bit too much drama for the beginning of the week,” he said.
Hazel’s eyes fixed on him, their slate gray suddenly piercing and vivid. “So you think it’s perfectly fine to require all female employees to wear skirts above the knee and plunging necklines?”
“We don’t want our clients to be bored!” Chris laughed at his own joke.
Hazel turned her glare back to Chris. “And require employees to attend biweekly parties hosted at the male executives’ houses? Are you trying to court a lawsuit?”
“It’s important for employees to socialize with one another.” Chris grinned.
Hazel was about to snap back when Ian touched her shoulder gently.
“That’s enough. Chris, you know you can’t require those kinds of things. We’re looking for businesses plans set in this century, after all.” Ian patted Hazel’s shoulder.
For some reason, this only served to rile her up more, but she bit her lip. Literally. Her eyes, however, were calling for his death.
“Finish up your notes, everyone. I’d like to set out our objectives for the next class meeting.” Ian strolled back to the front of the classroom.
Hazel let out an audible sigh. Had she really been that angry? Over a joke?
The class seemed to calm down as he discussed what their next reading, due Thursday, would entail and what he would like them to p
repare. Hazel’s fingers flew across her tablet, taking notes. She was the perfect student, sometimes. Others, she really could be a pill.
“Miss Greenwood, could you spare a moment?” Ian asked after he’d dismissed the class.
She had been putting her things into her messenger bag, and she looked up curiously and gave a nod. “Sure. What did you need talk about?”
Ian leaned back on the table at the front of the room and thought for a moment how to phrase what he wanted to say.
“If you’re going to reprimand me for arguing with Chris again, I’m going to remind you that he’s the one wasting class time trolling us all with ideas that we all know could never be put into effect in a real business setting—”
“Hazel,” Ian said.
“Plus, before you came over, he was suggesting a “Guys’ Night” for all the men in the company, so they can bond over video games in which you murder prostitutes!”
Ian rubbed his forehead. “I wasn’t going to talk to you about that, but I will send him an email about not fooling around during class activities.”
“Thank you.” Hazel pulled the strap of her messenger bag over her head and crossed her arms. “You set the tone. He’ll follow whatever you do. So when you laugh or act like it’s okay, he’s going to keep doing it.”
“I would never condone actions like those in a business. You know that.” Ian shook his head. “Honestly, what you must think of me.”
“You condone it here,” she argued.
“I’ll handle it,” he replied firmly.
Hazel drew in a deep breath as she nodded again and seemed to shrink.
“I don’t always appreciate the way you challenge me in the classroom.” Ian held a hand up when she automatically began to argue. “However, I think it will ultimately prove useful to me. I was hoping that you might consider shadowing me at my office here in the city. I could use an assistant.”
Hazel’s mouth opened, then closed.
Ian smirked. “Not for coffee, or anything that you would find ‘offensive’ but rather, for research. I’ll be working on a book about mentorship in business over the next year, and you are by far the most scholarly of my students, with your double major and impeccable GPA.” Ian stood and took a few steps to close the distance between them. She looked up at him, her rosebud lips parted just slightly and her cheeks flushing.
Part of him adored how intimidated she was by him. Another part loved that she didn’t let that intimidation keep her from speaking her mind.
“What do you say, Hazel? It would be a superb opportunity for your career, even if you insist on wasting yourself on nonprofits.”
“I um…”
Hazel wet her lips and looked down at her bag for a moment. Then, she squared her shoulders and looked up at him, with her brow furrowed and that stubborn little wrinkle across her nose.
“I’ll have to think about it. I have a lot of commitments,” she said with a confidence that her body language didn’t support.
“Well, do let me know. I’ll need to hire someone in the near future, and it needs to be someone who isn’t going to be making jokes all day.” Ian left her to pack up his briefcase. “You may go.”
Hazel bit the inside of her cheek and wished him a good day. As she left, Ian stole a look back at her. Those battered jeans of hers slipped just a bit, revealing the blue hem of her panties. How a person could be both a killjoy and sexy as hell at the same time, Ian wasn’t certain. He’d never spent time with a woman quite like Hazel, but he knew she’d take him up on his offer. It was too good for a smart girl like her to refuse.
Chapter Two
Hazel walked down the hallway with her palms sweating. She was shaking a little from the proximity to Dr. Cartwright. He was so damn tall and so damn sure of himself. More than that, her adrenaline had already been going from her altercation with Chris. Why did Cartwright have to let that guy run wild? It was really the worst part of the class—watching a man that she respected otherwise (even if their business ideals didn’t align) let the guys in the class get away with murder.
Or, if not murder, at the very least, wasting the other students’ time and tuition dollars with sexist garbage.
Wiping her hands on the front of her jeans, Hazel shifted her bag and jogged toward the bus stop. Normally, she would walk across campus, but she was too tired to bother. It was never a good sign when one class got her so worked up that she couldn’t function most of the day. Trying to calm down, after she’d gotten a seat on the bus, Hazel opened the little vial of rock salt and lavender that she wore around her neck as a pendant and took a deep breath. She didn’t know if stuff like this actually worked. Her stepfather, Steve, made fun of her for keeping stuff like that around. But it smelled nice, and she figured if people could cure their colds with a placebo cocktail of vitamins and sucrose, she could treat her anxiety with pretty smelling oil.
Just that morning, Hazel had been thinking about dropping the class. If she were honest with herself, her pro-con lists on the matter were mostly con. The only major benefit that she could think of was not having to explain to Cartwright why she wanted to leave. That was the odd thing about how most people perceived Hazel. It was like they thought they knew her—had put her into a type based on a few interactions. But getting into arguments and standing up for people in the moment was a far cry from the self-determined heroine so many had cast her as. While most of her teachers and friends would say she was a confident, almost headstrong woman, Hazel knew that she would avoid confrontation whenever she possibly could. She stayed at jobs longer than she wanted to, she put up with far more from her brothers than a normal human being might, and she really, really didn’t want to have to tell Cartwright that she wanted out of the class.
This offer to work for him was even worse. At some point, she would have to go into his office and tell him no. She took another deep whiff of her lavender before screwing the top back on and pulling the line for a stop. Giving the bus driver (Ron) a wave, Hazel headed off to the bus right on the edge of Campus Corner.
The area wasn’t officially run by the university, but there was a slew of businesses set up right by the college, since a student customer base was built into the location, and they could get even more business on game days. Hazel tended to avoid campus on those days but visited after almost every class. She spotted her roommate, Natalie, through the window of the Terra Café and hurried inside.
“Hey! How was Professor Hotpants today?” Natalie asked with a smug grin.
“Let me catch my breath. God, Nat. Not everything is about catching a man.” Hazel picked up a menu.
“Don’t bother hiding. I ordered for you already.”
Hazel narrowed her eyes at her.
“What? You always order the same thing, and I owe you for last week when my debit card got stolen.” Natalie snatched the menu from Hazel’s hands. “So your nasty banana/kale smoothie with a shot of hemp protein is coming, as well as that weird fake chicken salad sandwich you love.”
“It’s delicious. You can’t even tell it isn’t chicken.”
“You make me die inside. And it makes me wonder how bad a cook your mom is, if you think that’s what food is supposed to taste like.”
“My mother never cooked. She can heat up frozen stuff, but that’s about it.”
“I swear to God, next week, we have to go somewhere I can get a burger.”
Hazel slammed her palms on the table. “Burgers are terrible for you and the environment!”
“Could you be more annoying? I came here for vicarious leering at your hot professor. I don’t know why you have to deny me.”
Hazel rolled her eyes. She was starving, and there was no way that she could get Natalie to change the topic until she was satisfied, so Hazel began to relate her day in as much agonizing detail as possible. Eventually, after their food had come and Hazel had gotten through her story without too much interruption (though Natalie said as she always did that Chris could use a good pegging
), Hazel finally felt her insides settling, and she munched contentedly on her side carrots in between bites of not-chicken salad.
“I know you don’t wanna hear this, kiddo,” Natalie said.
“Again, I’m only a year younger than you.”
Natalie pointed a forkful of loose tuna salad at Hazel. “You need to take that internship, or whatever it is Cartwright is offering you.”
“Are you kidding? Why would I subject myself to that?”
Natalie ate the bite of tuna and then held out her fingers to count on them. “For starters, he’s a dish, even if he’s an asshole, and I want to hear everything you get on him—”
Hazel started to protest.
“But second, you also need to be developing your connections, Miss Save the World Businessgal. Third, after you’ve made your connections with him and whoever you’re able to work with at his company, he will almost certainly write you a letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school. And fourth, you know as well as I do that it’s harder than ever to get a job without already having experience, and this would give you that, in spades. Who’s going to say you’re underqualified after you worked for Ian Cartwright?” Natalie stole a baby carrot. “No one, that’s who.”
“Why do I let you boss me around?”
“Because I’m cute. And I’m always right.”
Hazel sipped her smoothie and thought about that for a moment. Hazel liked to think of herself as practical, but sometimes her principles did get in the way of pragmatics. Natalie was the kind of girl who was unapologetic about the things she wanted and how she went about getting them. Hazel often wished she could be that way—just going out and demanding what she wanted. And more than that—not feeling bad about having wanted something more than what she had. Maybe it came from being a twin, as well as the only girl. There were times when her brothers were given things so easily, but her mother would deny her the same treats and give her more chores. She hadn’t seen her real father in years. Steve was a dick, but at least he was around after getting her mom pregnant. It seemed like whenever she asked too much of her father or made him feel like she needed him, he pulled away even further. Rationally, guilt wasn’t a functional emotion, but Hazel had never been able to rational her feelings.