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Why couldn’t her professors be more on the ball? Hazel blinked sleepily. She was so tired. She’d been up since 6:00 am. She also hadn’t eaten since that salad amazing salad with Dr. Cartwright.
“God, I’m hungry. But I don’t want to get up.” Hazel sighed and dropped her head against the armrest. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“You’re so well-versed in the genre,” Cartwright’s voice had said warmly.
Hazel ought to be beyond this. Her exhaustion was no match for the feeling of excitement and pride inside of her. It was so much better getting along with Cartwright, earning his praise, and showing him how capable she could be. It left her feeling like she could do anything.
Distracted now, Hazel got onto the library website and started looking up what the library had on industrial and organizational psychology. If she could get Cartwright a good annotated bibliography on this aspect of business mentorship (which he would definitely find too boring to look up), they could be talking about how the research matched his years of experience by next week.
Chapter Five
Hazel’s head bowed diligently over her new laptop. She’d been working with Cartwright for almost a month now, burning the candle at both ends to put in her best effort in her classes and at the assistantship, but there had been a clear winner for her attention. Every week, in addition to shadowing Cartwright in his business meetings (or watching, in the case of video conferences) they sat down to discuss the book.
These sessions were the most invigorating part of her week. The way Cartwright spoke when he came up with a new idea… The look on his face as he listened, intently, to her research… She didn’t even mind when the meetings ran over, or that sometimes he asked her to come with him after class to keep talking about the book.
Oh, they still argued during class, but it was different. Hazel found herself smiling when he said something she disagreed with, and she could see the expression on his face when he knew she was going to challenge him. Her hands still shook, and her heart still pounded, but now, she didn’t mind it. She knew that after class, and after their squabbles, they would be going out to dinner to talk in-depth about her research and his experience, and how they could bring both of these together most productively.
“How is it going over here?” Cartwright leaned over her shoulder.
“I think I have the outlines for each chapter down. I’ll upload to our drive so you can look over them when you have a minute. That way, I can work on each chapter as we finish our content discussions for that section. Oh.” Hazel clicked save and looked back at Cartwright. “I also finished the introductory chapter. We’ll have to edit it after the book is finished, but it’ll be a good, solid anchor for us as we proceed.”
“Right. And I have the preface done, if you would like to look over it.”
Hazel smiled, feeling her cheeks growing pink. She couldn’t help but love how he was asking for her approval on something. Of course, it would be nearly perfect. The parts of each book that had come out under his name, that were beyond reproach, had been the prefaces he wrote for each and the personal anecdotes that illustrated his business principles.
“I’ll get to it tomorrow,” she replied.
“I wondered if you wanted to come out with me to the club? You can see an out of office business meeting in person.”
“Is this alright for the club?” Hazel looked down at her outfit—another crisp pantsuit.
“It’s fine. The heels might be a bit tricky on the course, but we can get you something appropriate.”
Hazel nodded and began to pack away her notes. Cartwright put a hand on her shoulder.
“If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. I don’t want anything to make you uncomfortable. And I do know that you have other classes.”
Hazel stilled; she couldn’t help but enjoy the firm warmth of his touch. “No, I want to be there. I don’t work tonight.”
“Excellent. I’ll have Vicki get you some shoes.”
***
In addition to the shoes, Ian acquired a burgundy golf hat for Hazel. He placed it on her head before they entered the club and smiled down at her. She looked adorable, so excited to be a part of this, even if she had complained a bit on the way that doing business deals on the golf course systemically excluded others from being a part of the conversation.
“Where would you suggest we hold out of office meetings? At a nail salon?” Ian asked.
“Why do you need to do business out of the office? Doesn’t that open you up to a host of problems?” Hazel countered.
And so on. He would have picked the conversation back up, but Jenkins and Huang were already in the lobby, so he approached them and introduced both to Hazel as his associate and co-author. Hazel, as always, blushed a little at the attention, but she kept up her part of the conversation. As they made their way out to the course, it occurred to him that she was speaking up much more than he’d expected. In the actual office, she spoke to him, and to assistants and other low-ranking employees, but she hesitated around the conference table.
