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Redeemed by His New York Cinderella,
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Content Warning
The Sweetest Charade features brief depictions of drug misuse and references to cheating.
The Sweetest Charade
Jadesola James
To Dr. Gary, who told me
I could write a book in the first place,
and to my husband, John,
who cheered me on while I did.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Author Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Redeemed by His New York Cinderella by Jadesola James
Chapter One
Professor Alexander Abbott-Hill was not vain enough to think that his class of undergraduates had suddenly taken an interest in the history of commuter travel because of his skill as an instructor, but something was going on.
All twenty-two students tramped in on time, dressed in their usual athleisure, toting glass water bottles and Starbucks coffee cups. They slid into their seats with uncharacteristic alertness, opening their tablets and laptop computers almost as if they intended to listen this time. Pleased, Alexander greeted them with none of the irritation he usually felt at the presence of the electronic devices.
“How was everyone’s weekend?” he asked as he powered up the instructor’s station.
“Not as good as yours, I bet,” someone murmured from approximately the second row, and the titters that followed that show of wit made Alexander roll his eyes. What passed for irony with this generation...
“What, because I was up reading your midterms? I couldn’t think of a better use of time myself,” he retorted, and pulled up his slides for the day. “All right, everyone log in. We’re starting with your reading on Robert Moses...”
The class went on and grew—well, stranger and stranger. Instead of being half-asleep, students were texting and scrolling and whispering. Oddly, Alexander seemed to be the object of scrutiny. Two girls whispered fervently in the back with round eyes fixed on him. One actually pointed at him, then at her phone. A young man in a lacrosse jersey gestured in his general direction, waving his hands not-too-subtly while talking to his tablemates, who gaped.
After a subtle check to see if his fly was open, Alexander gave up thirty minutes into his lecture and confronted them directly. “Is there something going on?”
Silence.
“Everyone seems very preoccupied this morning.” He shot a significant look at the young lady who’d been sharing her screen earlier. “Is there something going on in the news that I missed? Has someone died?”
“Um, no,” she said, blushing and staring down at the tabletop.
“Have I got anything on my face?” He tried to inject a little humor. “I know I’m fully dressed.”
At that, there was an explosion of mirth in the back. “Now you are,” he thought he heard a student mumble, but he couldn’t be sure. His patience was wearing thin anyway.
“Look,” he said. “We have forty minutes left. Either everyone gets it together, or you dump your phones up here. Your choice.”
His students managed to calm themselves, thank goodness, and Alexander finished his lecture feeling more than a little ruffled. His students filed out relatively meekly, shooting looks at him over their shoulders. Some were still whispering. Alexander headed for his office, riding the waves of his own irritation.
“Something is definitely in the air,” he announced as he opened the door. His teaching assistant, Natalia, was seated at the desktop they shared, squinting at something on the screen. “My class just now? Completely distracted. You’d think Kennedy was shot just this morning.”
To his horror, Natalia turned and goggled in the way his students had that morning. She tugged at her nose ring nervously.
“What?” he exploded.
“Um. Dr. Abbott-Hill, have you had a chance to see—”
They were interrupted by a ringing phone. Alexander raised a finger, shot her a “don’t move!” look and picked it up.
“Alexander Abbott-Hill.”
“Hello, Dr. Abbott-Hill.” A woman’s voice floated smoothly over the line. “This is Theresa, from the office of the dean of humanities; he’d like to ask if you have any time this morning?”
“Oh. Well, I’ve just gotten out of my eight-thirty class—”
“Yes, I know. That’s why we’re calling now.”
“When would you want to—”
“Now, if possible.”
“Right this moment?”
“Yes, please, if you can. It’s quite urgent. Thank you,” she trilled, and was gone with a click.
Christ, what a morning. “We’ll finish this later,” Alexander said to Natalia, who clapped her jaw shut and nodded. He slipped his tweed blazer over his shoulders and raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to see Wayne.”
“I thought that might be Theresa. She always cuts you off when you’re speaking,” observed Natalia.
Alexander just shook his head and left.
The walk to Wayne McDermott’s office was fairly short, just the next building over, and the crispness of autumn was sweet and soothing. He took deep breaths of the earth-scented air, and arrived at his supervisor’s office in a decidedly better state of mind. He was ushered in by Theresa, who smiled serenely at him; the dean was seated at his large mahogany desk, frowning at his desktop screen. Alexander eased himself into one of the two burgundy leather chairs that flanked the desk and waited for the man to speak.
He took his time.
“Dr. Abbott-Hill.”
“Alexander, please.” He desperately wanted to roll his eyes whenever one of the senior faculty approached him with such formality. As the only child of a former faculty member—and a prominent one at that—he’d practically grown up on this campus. He hadn’t liked Wayne McDermott then either, and the man always found a way to take a subtle dig at the fact that he was nowhere near the scholar his father had been.
Dean McDermott grunted. “I’ll get right to it. I asked you to come”—summoned me, Alexander thought—“because something has been brought to my attention, and I wanted to address it immediately.”
“Yes?”
“I thought it best that it come from me. Your dad would have wanted it that way,” he added, magnanimously.
Despite the seriousness of the conversation Alexander had to stifle a smile. His father couldn’t stand the man. “Appreciated, sir. I’m sure you’re right.”
“Social media,” the dean began grandly, straining the confines of his button-down shirt, “is a tool which is used fairly broadly in our departments. We want to give you young folks the freedom to get the word out, as it were, to the general public and academic world about what we’re doing. However, when it’s used inappropriately...” He trailed off. “Do you understand what I’m getting at, Alex?”
Alexander, he corrected mentally. Alex had been the little boy coloring on the floor of his father’s office, eating the cheese sandwiches the older m
an had packed for both of them that morning, waiting for him to get out of class so that they could go to their big, silent home and crawl into their beds. “I completely agree, but I’m a little confused as to why—”
“You are a vibrant and talented young man, a credit to your father, and I’m sure that you have a swinging social life. However, I would prefer that you keep it separate from your academic accounts.”
“I’m not sure what you mean—”
“After all,” Dean McDermott continued as if he hadn’t heard Alexander, “your evaluations have given you enough of an issue this year, haven’t they? And with tenure approaching...”
Alexander’s heart began to hammer, even as he felt a flash of anger. His student evaluations last semester had been the worst out of increasingly lackluster reviews. “Boring,” “No relevance to real life,” and “too old-school,” had been some of the tidbits that stood out particularly in his mind. Irritation at the students aside, it hurt. He truly loved his subject, and it was painful knowing that his enthusiasm wasn’t enough to carry his class along.
Dean McDermott interrupted his thoughts. “Good man. I’m glad we understand each other.” He stood up, and extended his hand.
Wordlessly, Alexander stood and shook it. The dean didn’t release it immediately; instead he squeezed it and smiled at Alexander, a toothy man-to-man smile that was disconcerting at best. He ran a hand over his thinning hair, and Alexander thought he detected a wink.
“You won’t mind my saying she’s absolutely gorgeous, absolutely—” The dean whistled softly between his teeth. “You’re a lucky bastard. They didn’t make them like that when I was an associate. If they did I’d never have left teaching—it’s obviously gotten sexier since my day.”
What the—?
Alexander found himself slapped on the shoulder and outside in the hallway in moments. Dean McDermott ambled off in the other direction, presumably in search of coffee or a bathroom, scratching his stomach through his shirt as he went. “I want that picture down within the hour,” he called over his shoulder. “There’s a good man.”
“What on earth?” Alexander muttered, and headed back to the department, a bit quicker this time, a sense of foreboding building with every step. When he opened the door, Natalia was exactly where he’d left her, still gawping at the computer. “Natalia, what in God’s name is going on?”
“You’ve gotten almost four thousand new followers since last night,” she breathed. “And the comments on the photo...”
“What photo?” As he spoke he leaned over her shoulder—he obviously wasn’t going to get any sense out of her by asking any questions. He pulled his tortoiseshells up to his forehead in order to see better; when he did, he sucked in a breath.
Natalia was on the photo-blogging site he used, looking at the account of someone named Delysia Daniels. So no one hacked me, then. The photo Natalia pointed at was slightly out-of-focus, a black-and-white filtered affair featuring a couple cuddling on a mess of tangled white sheets. The man’s torso was slim but muscled, decorated with a smattering of dark hair. Thankfully, a sheet covered the essentials.
Beside the subject was another person, presumably female, and looking at her in such an intimate position made Alexander’s mouth go dry despite himself. It took only a few seconds to register the details: a gleam of oil on warm skin, the substantial curve of a bare hip and leg.
A hand, not her own, gripped her thigh possessively. Everything else was cropped out. The caption read:
Every night spent with you is a marvel, @shhistorian.
@shhistorian. Southampton Historian. His username.
“It’s very artistic,” Natalia chirped in. Her voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. He blinked rapidly, forced himself to focus.
His eyes met hers and she blushed hard.
“She tagged you in the photo,” she rattled on hurriedly, fingering the keys nervously. “People are flooding you with comments. Dang, Dr. Abbott-Hill. I didn’t know you were seeing anyone, you’re not even following her.”
“Why would I—”
“I mean, Delysia Daniels?” Natalia’s voice graduated to a squeak. He’d never seen his sensible TA like this; she was fairly sparkling with excitement. “I mean, congratulations. I know, it’s kind of personal. But still—”
“Wait, you think that’s me?”
“She tagged you in the photo!”
At that, Alexander groped blindly for an office chair. His face was burning. If she thought that was him—well, it could be any dark-haired man with his skin tone, really. “Untag it,” he ordered.
“But, Dr. Abbott-Hill—”
“Actually no, I’ll do it myself.” He took in a deep breath, trying to hide the hammering of his pulse, summoning his usual calm. “Please go to the library, and pick up some blue books for History 226’s exam tonight.”
“But—”
“Now, Natalia. And shut the door behind you.”
Natalia pouted. She logged out, slid her chair back and left the room. It took Alexander a full minute to compose himself before he logged into his account.
The thing was made primarily to remind his students about assignments and department events, as well as acting as a photo journal for some of the primary documents, studies and projects he was working on. The last photo he’d posted was of him posing cheerfully with a local Audubon Society representative at Southampton’s History Day.
At the bottom of the screen was the notification he was looking for: @thereal_Delysia_Daniels had indeed tagged him in a photo, in that photo.
He clicked, and there it was again, large as ever, with a comments section at least as long as his latest historical bibliography. He swiftly untagged himself, then scrutinized Delysia Daniels’s account.
She was a...model, of some sort? She was attractive, he supposed, in a very filtered sort of way, with glossy piles of black hair and smooth skin that stretched over round dimpled cheeks when she smiled, which was often, revealing a mouth of milk-white, slightly crooked teeth.
Her account mostly featured her romping round the Greater New York area with a set of people that were very expensively dressed, if a little dead about the eyes. She also seemed to be the spokesperson for a bewildering variety of products. She had over a million followers who all seemed to comment on her every move, her clothes, her body parts, her jewelry, what she was eating, drinking, dancing to, and the comments on the picture—
@oatsnhoney123: Damn, that’s hot. Well done Delysia ! ;)
@thomasjprince: He’s grabbing on her thigh lyke...you gotta wonder what happened after that... :-O
@wonderfulwoman99: Delysia !!! Deets!!! Who is heeeeee??
@collegegyrljess: He teaches at my school, his classes are boring af. But I’d hit it now that I’ve seen it.
Alexander felt dizzy, hot, cold, and wanted to throw up all at the same time. No wonder his students had been so distracted this morning. And the dean...oh, man. He clicked through her profile, looking for any information, any information at all...and there it was! A booking number for an agent. He pulled his cell from his inner pocket and dialed the number swiftly.
He had to get a retraction on this, and he needed one now.
The line was promptly answered, which both surprised and startled him. “Integrity Talent, how can I direct your call?”
“Oh. I—Good morning. I’d like to speak to someone about a matter concerning Ms. Delysia Daniels, if possible?”
“Are you an agent?”
“No, I’m a—”
“Are you a publisher, a journalist, a potential sponsor, or—”
“No,” Alexander sputtered. “I’m a—a—civilian. Ms. Daniels posted something about me on her social media account, and it is untrue. I need her to—retract this.”
There was a long pause. Then—
“I’ll
connect you to our legal department.”
Alexander groaned.
* * *
The source of Alexander’s would-be retraction, Delysia Daniels, was cruising at 37,000 feet over the Grand Canyon on a flight back from Los Angeles to New York, and having a marvelous time.
American Airlines had contacted her weeks ago, offering the flight in exchange for a “candid review” on her photo-blog account. While this domestic flight was nothing compared to the trip a competitor had footed to Amsterdam two months ago, she certainly wasn’t about to complain. She was fuzzy round the edges with the ice-cold Krug she’d had in the first-class lounge at LAX, and sushi she’d described as “so fresh, it might have still been wiggling” made a comfortable dent in her stomach.
She was now three hours into the flight and swaddled in the softest pair of knit lounge pants she’d ever worn (courtesy gift from a swanky English company, which she had yet to feature) and a cashmere-lined blanket and socks. Were she not working she’d have popped half a Valium so she could enjoy this experience in sleepy bliss, but she needed to take notes along the way.
Delysia pulled out her courtesy preview model of a new smartphone and began recording, automatically tilting the screen to capture her face at the most flattering angle. Despite years of dieting on and off, cryolipolysis sessions, and firming facials, that childish roundness she inherited from her mother refused to budge. She’d already filmed her “Mile-High Minute-Long Beauty Routine” featuring honey, coffee grounds, and frozen La Mer cream in the tiny bathroom; it’d garnered two thousand views already. Once she posted this, she’d be free to sleep or veg until they landed at JFK.
“Hey, everyone, American Airlines is spoiling me rotten right now, and I am loving it. I never thought I’d say that about a domestic flight, but here I am,” she gushed in the husky, hushed tones she reserved for social media. “I don’t want to disturb my cabin-mates—” She panned the camera quickly round the space, taking in the masked businessmen—and possibly one rapper—who sat to her right and left, respectively. She was sure her followers would try to ID them anyway; she never had to. “—but I just wanted to check in. See you all in New York!”
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