Learned Behaviors (Higher Education)

by Jayce Ellis

  “Why?” Matt asked, sitting up and letting Jaq do the same.

  “Because I think we should celebrate properly, and I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  Matt grabbed his things and was at the door before Jaq got his shoes on. “I need you to hustle.”

  This time it was Jaq asking, “Why?”

  Matt winked. “I’m thinking it’s so I can love on you a little.”

  And that was worth hustling for.

  * * *

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  Stay tuned for the next book from Jayce Ellis,

  Learned Reactions,

  coming in 2021!

  For more information on books

  by Jayce Ellis,

  please visit her website at

  www.jayceellis.com.

  Acknowledgments

  To my crew who holds me down and buys me drinks and reads really rough versions of these books—I thank you. Maarika, Irette, Gigi, Adele, and Lisa, thank you for keeping me sane.

  Luce, my love, thank you for letting me honor Spitfire this way. It brought back many fond memories of that ornery, crotchety, all-too-perfect cat.

  Mackenzie, thanks for giving this snippet of a story a chance, and helping it blossom into its final form. You’ve believed in it from the beginning, and it wouldn’t have gotten here without your help.

  Last, but never least, J. I feel like I never have the right words to say, so just close your eyes and think about the last line of the first verse of that Method Man/Mary J. Blige song. I’ll play it for you when we get home, in case you forgot.

  About the Author

  Jayce Ellis has three loves: her husband and her two turtles. Hubby loves her back. The turtles she’s not so sure about, but they do love their sports (Bay Area teams FTW!). She still hasn’t figured out why she lives in Northern Virginia, where there’s weather, instead of California, where she’s from, and where it’s just...pretty. Jayce spends her days divorcing happily married couples (or so she’s been told), and her nights talking maniacally to herself. Thankfully the recorder catches her rumblings and magically turns them into words on a screen. Painting nails is way easier when you don’t actually have to type, and with well over 500 polishes to get through, there’s a lot of painting going on.

  Notwithstanding her no-good, very bad, horrible day job, Jayce seriously believes that true love conquers all. Even Maleficent said it. Sure, she was having an epic Mean Girls moment at the time, but she was right. The only thing Jayce loves more than writing about true love conquering all, is hearing from readers who feel the same way. Drop her a line; she’d love to hear from you.

  Website/blog: www.jayceellis.com

  Twitter: @thelawyerwrites

  Now Available from Carina Press

  and Jayce Ellis

  The last thing Marcus wants—or needs—is his

  impeccably dressed, hot-as-hell, one-night stand as his boss.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  André.

  Chapter One

  André

  It was only Tuesday, but my head pounded like I’d already worked sixty hours. My long-held rule not to drink until the weekend was being sorely tested by the man sitting across from me. To be fair, he didn’t look any more pleased than I was, so we could both be pissed.

  I closed my eyes, prayed for patience, and plastered on the thickest smile I could muster. “Mr. Walker, did you bring the statements for your annuity and brokerage accounts?”

  The older white man blustered, his face turning as red as the plaid shirt he wore. “No, forgot about that one. You know my wife keeps all of these things.”

  I knew. I wanted his wife at all meetings for this exact reason. Their retainer agreement said as much. But who cared about rules? Not this guy.

  “Can you get her on the phone? I’ll step away and let you secure the statements here, then give you a more accurate financial outlook.”

  He frowned, like the very thought was an insult to his manhood. “I ain’t got time for all that. What about you tell me my financial outlook based on the numbers I gave you?”

  For all the good that would do. At our initial meeting, even though she’d remained mostly silent, deferring to her husband, a downright placid grin on her face, it was clear Mrs. Walker handled the finances. He’d gone red then too, then showed up by his lonesome today. I didn’t have time for the ego, and I wasn’t doing this again.

  “Without a full accounting of your assets, it’s impossible for me to run projections for you. I’d like to see you again in three weeks. With your wife.”

  “Why?”

  Yep, here by himself trying to play big dog. Waste of my time and his money. “Mr. Walker, these are joint accounts, and you need to be jointly involved in making decisions on them. I’m certain you read that in your contract. Does Tuesday at four p.m. generally work well for both of you?”

  I didn’t miss the way his knuckles fisted the brim of his hat, the way his eyes narrowed like the word “boy” was just itching to fall from his tongue and into the air, but he swallowed and nodded. I penciled it in, then scrawled the date and time on a card, sliding it into the dark blue pebbled folder embossed with Ellison Financial—my firm, my pride—in gold font on the front. About the only positive of this meeting. I handed it over and he snatched it, trying to regain some sense of I don’t know what. I tried not to smirk. He didn’t like being told what to do, and damn sure not by my Black ass.

  He stood and I followed suit, holding my hand out until he took it with a grudging shake. He was out the door in a flash and I leaned on the desk, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. Now I understood why Harold, my mentor and friend, always held his meetings in the conference room. It kept the office pure, he said, free from the anger that lingered even after people like Mr. Walker had left. But I worked in a shared workspace, and someone had already reserved it. Which meant I needed to put my request in tonight for our next appointment.

  With Walker gone, the flash of pride I’d felt just moments ago was eclipsed by a deep-seated irritation. One day I wouldn’t need to take clients like this, but I wasn’t there yet. No matter what Harold said about starting picky and staying picky, my bills had their own plans, and right now, I needed all the income I could get. Enough that I held my tongue and my breath, and cursed into a glass of kombucha I pretended was whiskey every night before getting up the next morning and doing it again.

  A soft chuckle drew my attention and I looked up. “’Sup, lady?”

  Fiona, my Fenty 460 diva and receptionist for all the companies that worked here—meaning she basically ran the place and everyone in it—sauntered in and draped herself in the seat Mr. Walker had abandoned. “I don’t even know why you took that client. You knew he was gon’ be a hot mess when you met him.”

  Fiona and I lived in the same complex. She’d told me about the space when I first launched on my own, and got me in mad cheap. Usually she was all business, sometimes she was like this. I huffed. “Something something beggars choosers.” She rolled her eyes while I slumped in my seat and breathed out, “What’s going on?”

  “Harold called, wants you to call him ASAP.”

  My heart dropped, straight to the soles of my feet, and burrowed itself in the place my arch would be if my flat-footed ass had them. How that made me incapable of forming words, I didn’t know, but I had to hack a few times in a pathetic attempt to clear my throat. “He say what for?” I asked, proud of how even-keeled I sounded.

  “Nope, but he said he needed a call back today, even if it’s after hours.” She looked at her watch. “Which it’s about to b
e for me.”

  “Go on and get out of here.”

  She stood and gave me a mock salute before striding out of my room and down the hall. With that white pencil skirt—still pristine after eight hours on the job—her hair black this week instead of her usual summertime blonde, and red-bottomed stilettos, she looked like a runway model. And she damn well knew it. I shook my head and played off like I was cool until she was out of sight. Then my barely suppressed anxiety kicked in and I had to take a few deep breaths before picking up the phone.

  Because this? This call could mean no more Mr. Walkers.

  Conversely, it could also mean no more Ellison Financial.

  Harold answered on the first ring. “Took you long enough.”

  “Got waylaid by a man who keeps his figures in his head.”

  The low rumble Harold gave turned into a full-bodied laugh, and something about that loosened the knot in my chest. “Success rate?” he asked.

  “Thirty percent. Maybe. Not really.”

  “Let me guess. Came without his wife?”

  I joined him, feeling my shoulders finally start to sag. “You got it. Now what’s so important that I had to call you back today, hour be damned?” I knew the reason, but still I waited.

  Harold sobered, the laugh cutting off immediately, and I sucked in a strong breath. I could picture him, silver hair shining, the only sign he was over fifty, staring at the phone as intensely as if I was sitting in front of him. “Remember the family that was coming in and wanted a partnership between large and small firms to plan and manage their estate? The Penningtons?”

  Of course. Harold had nagged me until I’d submitted a proposal, even though I had no clue how I’d actually handle a project of that size. I kept a full-time office here, but I had no employees and, as much as I wished she did, Fiona didn’t work for me. The amount of time this partnership would require, over and above keeping tabs on my actual clients, was tremendous. I’d have to find more hours in the day somewhere. But this was a make-or-break chance, and my little one-man show needed this to make it. Enough to try to get in good with my old firm, Clarymore & Toth, and Harold knew what that’d cost me.

  I cleared my throat before answering. “How could I forget? Pulled three all-nighters getting that proposal together. They make a decision yet?” The words tumbled out and hung in the air. The churning in my stomach at the idea that they’d gone with someone else drove home how much I needed this.

  “I told you about waiting ’til the last minute. They’ve narrowed it down to three, and you’re one of them.”

  My lungs deflated on a deep exhale, and I flopped back against the chair. “You serious?” Excitement I hadn’t dared let myself feel before bubbled up, and I laid a hand on my chest to calm down. Didn’t much help. I fished out my antacids from the desk drawer and popped two in the mouth, concentrating on chewing.

  “Because it’s a joint venture, they want to know how well we work together. But we can’t loan out our associates for an indeterminate length of time. We made them a compromise.”

  Alarms pinged around my brain. This was why he was calling. Whatever Harold was about to tell me, I wasn’t going to simply dislike it. Chances were high I’d actively despise it. “And what was that?” I asked cautiously.

  He chuckled again, and I knew I was in for it. “We agreed to loan out some of our interns to the finalists. One to each firm.”

  I didn’t even try to muffle my groan. After nine years working for him, Harold was well aware there were few things I hated more than dealing with interns. They almost exclusively came from upper-crust MBA programs, the Whartons and Stanfords and MITs of the world and, regardless of their experience—or lack thereof—they still believed they knew more than people who were actively doing the job. I’d pawned them off on younger associates as soon as I was able.

  Now Harold was positively laughing at me. “I knew you’d feel that way. I told the guys you’d hate the idea, but it’s what the client wants.” His voice lowered. “You deserve this, André. After what happened with Phil...” He trailed off, not needing to say more.

  Yeah, Phil. The lover who got mad when I wouldn’t let him top. The lover who set up a video in his room and recorded himself using a dildo on me, the most I’d allow, while I deep-throated him. Of course, he’d been smart enough to keep his face off camera. And then he sent it to the partners. All of them. It wasn’t grounds to fire me, but the resulting HR conversation made it clear I’d never move up.

  So I moved on instead. Harold was the only person I kept in touch with. The one who’d asked, point-blank, “Who set you up?”, and was Team André from jump. He referred a lot of business to me, had forced me to submit this proposal to a company I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to work with again, regardless of whether I needed the score, and I was apparently going to repay the favor by taking on an intern.

  It was my worst nightmare, but my options were to accept this condition, bust ass and get this contract, or pack up shop and move back to Tallahassee. And I loved my family, but from a distance. A big one. If ever there was a time to swallow my pride, this was it.

  I ignored the whispered rumblings in my head, asking how the hell I was going to pull this off, and spoke. “Okay, what are the parameters?”

  Harold chuckled and I flipped him off, wishing he was there to see it. I grabbed a notepad and pen, and settled in.

  * * *

  By the time I got off the phone with Harold, I was even more ready for a drink. The self-imposed rule I’d started after two too many happy hours playing with the big boys seemed unduly restrictive under the circumstances. But now more than ever I had to stay on top of my game, especially since I’d be responsible for someone else. I grabbed a soda from the shared fridge and sat my ass back down.

  I’d said I needed more hours in the day to pull this off, and having an intern who could actually do the job and not equal more work for me would be a blessing. If I got one of those. If not... I couldn’t afford to think about that right now.

  I pulled out a notepad, because some things just always felt better on paper than a computer, and found my proposal file with the submitted copy. I’d scratched out some initial ideas, but it was time to go deeper, find the thing that would connect what looked like three, maybe four generations of Penningtons who had vastly different visions for the future of their assets, into something that could make everyone happy.

  By the time I took a break, it was after ten. As a rule I tried to limit the number of days I worked late, because that grind-’til-you-die foolishness just led to an early grave. But this, this was going to take all the hours I had available, and some I didn’t.

  I closed my eyes for a minute, and had to be well more than halfway to sleep when my cell rang, startling me awake with the office lights blazing overhead. My phone was set to do not disturb after nine thirty, so whoever was calling had to have called twice in rapid succession to bypass the setting.

  I reached out and answered it, putting it on speakerphone. “Yello?”

  “What? Is you sleep or something?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and groaned. I should’ve double-checked the screen before picking up. My baby brother, George, who had zero sense of time. And I loved him, I promise you I did, but he would talk forever if I let him, no matter the hour. The absolute last thing I needed.

  “Normal people are, G,” I said, answering him.

  He laughed, loud and long, and I could hear his smile on the phone. “Us Ellison boys have never been normal. Why start now?”

  I didn’t even have a good retort for that. He wasn’t wrong, but Jesus. Eleven was still too late to be calling.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked, hoping to steal, and therefore shorten, this conversation.

  “So, Dad’s birthday is in three weeks.”

  “Yup.” Just before Labor Day.


  “Me and the guys got him and Mom a cruise, but we’re kinda feeling like that’s not enough, you know?”

  Because this year was Pop’s seventieth, and that was cause for celebration. Not that my family needed it, because they loved to find excuses to party. I couldn’t ignore this one the way I did some of the others, but fifteen hundred miles was a long trip for a family friend’s son’s third anniversary. I’m just saying.

  And then I remembered the rest of what he’d said. “Wait. What do you mean y’all got a cruise for them? Why didn’t y’all tell me?”

  George huffed. “You get too damn economical and shit. Don’t want to buy nothing until you’ve compared prices at like six different sites or whatever. No one wants to do all that, man.”

  Again, what was there to say? I snagged the photo of us from Tracey, my youngest brother, at his graduation, and thumbed over the frame. It was the only personal item I kept in this otherwise sterile office space. I was glad they were all doing well enough that they could pay for something like that, but talk about being out in the cold.

  George cleared his throat and I focused back on him. “But that’s part of why I called.” His voice trailed off at the end, and I straightened. George was known for many things. Being unsure around me wasn’t one of them.

  “What’s up, G? What do you need?”

  “So, Mom and Pops know we’re doing the cruise and all, but we want to have a party for his friends too. Like, it’s a celebration, bitches! But we’re kinda tapped out, though. Wanted to see if you could pitch in.”

  “Of course,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. But as much as I avoided going home, I didn’t like feeling left out of things surrounding it. That was a problem, I knew. My brothers, George, Tracey, and the quiet one, Wallace, all still lived near Tallahassee. I was the one who’d flown the coop, who always found some reason to stay away. To explain it, that even at thirty-four the nagging and teasing about my sexuality had bordered right at the edge of malicious, enough that I didn’t subject myself to it more than necessary, sounded silly. I mean, shit. At thirty-four, who gave a fuck what people thought? Apparently, my sorry ass did.