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    Love and Lyrics: Passonate Professors
    Love and Lyrics: Passonate Professors
    Love and Lyrics: Passonate Professors
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Love and Lyrics: Passonate Professors

    By Louise Lennox

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    About this ebook

    What happens when her love and his career collide?

    Raina Simpson is a bold, free-spirted poet and reluctant graduate student. Having written off love and dating, she spends her days teaching high school on the Southside of Chicago and most nights performing spoken word at The Shrine. Her laidback attitude towards school comes back to bite her when she finds herself with one final academic year to complete her master's thesis. Lucky for Raina, her new thesis advisor, Luke Attah, instills order in even the most undisciplined students. But after their first class, Raina finds out the sexy professor is not as by-the-book as he seems.

    Luke Attah is an unbearably cocky and risk-averse British Ghanaian Professor of Poetics. According to the Dean of the English department, his career advancement depends on Raina's successful defense of a thesis. He is initially defiant but agrees after it is clear there is no way around it. Luke is sure his charm and good looks will win his new pupil over, as it has countless others. What he does not count on is a drunken moment after one of Raina's performances, making him Raina's number one enemy. Despite Raina's thinly veiled contempt, the usually cool Luke finds himself warmed up by his fiery advisee.

    Will Luke be able to secure Raina's heart and keep his job? Can Raina trust Luke after she's been so badly burned in the past by men that fall quickly for her and disappear?

    Love & Lyrics is a fun and steamy short read that will leave you wanting your own professor to bare all too.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLouise Lennox
    Release dateDec 15, 2020
    ISBN9781393539094
    Love and Lyrics: Passonate Professors
    Author

    Louise Lennox

    Hello! I'm Louise Lennox and I'm glad you are here! I am a writer, true rabble rouser, hopeful romantic, wife, and mother of the cutest two dragons ever to walk the earth. I write to provide Black women with a diverse presence on romance novel pages. I am a voracious reader of contemporary romance. Often, I bemoan the lack of opportunities to see women like myself, friends, Spelman sisters, aunties and cousins on the page. I’m here to fix that! I write what I like to call #happyblackromance. I highlight joys of our relationships. We should admire them for their strength and downright sexiness. It’s time to share some of our magic! My female characters are highly educated influencers, always seeking to change the world around them. My male characters are alphas committed to the responsibility of leading their homes and communities.  In my novels sparks will fly; the sex will amaze; and the characters will always leave the world better than they found it through their love.

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      Book preview

      Love and Lyrics - Louise Lennox

      Love & Lyrics

      Lesson One: Poets Bare All

      The Shrine

      Raina

      The weed smoke is overwhelming—the dense cloud permeating the crowd coupled with the single bright spotlight will make the audience impossible to see. That is what I prefer. Whenever I perform, I pretend no one is listening to the words I speak but me. The funny thing is, when I teach creative writing every day in my old south side Chicago high school, the opposite effect is required.

      The host, Malik, spies me lurking on the side of the stage and signals I’m up next with a wink. With one giant leap, Malik jumps on stage, forgoing the stairs completely. Impressive. I take a deep breath.

      Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Spoken Word Thursdays here at The Shrine. We’re opening the night up with a sister who is no stranger to the South Loop. Shrine, give a warm welcome to Ms. Raina Simpson.

      The applause begins. It always comes. I wonder if the Shrine crowd is clapping because they are excited to hear my poetry or if I serve as a predictable pit stop in their weekly Thursday night plans.

      I have graced this stage as an opening act for the past five years. The owner, Malik Jackson, and I grew up together in Hyde Park . When Malik opened this spot five years ago, I was one of the first and only acts. I did not bomb. I also did not bring down the house. Instead, I warmed the crowd for opening night’s star. Since then, I always open the night. Malik calls me his safe bet.

      I approach the microphone. It’s a good night—I can’t see a thing.

      Hello, Shrine. This is a piece I wrote for a lover I once had. That man is no longer mine. A few snaps and a yass, girl come from the audience. They must understand what it means to think you have someone, only to find out you’re still going through life alone. In solidarity, I begin my performance.

      Rapidly I like him.

      I am tripping over my own common sense. 

      It is silly to pledge more than unnerving infatuation to a man I barely know.

      But I will not help it.

      I am declining inside of two deep brown eyes.

      I am devoted while he woos me for the first time.

      There is no air when I cannot breathe it in with him.

      He has become my center of thought, the purpose of my pen.

      Once I hear the signature snaps of approval for the first stanza, I breeze through the second, third, and fourth with my signature husky voice and performance moves. The crowd is warm, and now I need a drink. At 29, I am perpetually unlucky in love, and that poem reminds me of the fact.

      As I head to the bar, I notice it is full, save one chair next to a man dressed in what looks like a tweed jacket. The jacket is the classic kind with elbow patches. The man must be insane; it’s the beginning of August. As I take the lone seat and brush up against him, I feel the familiar scratch of marbled wool against my bare arms and can’t believe it. The tall stranger must die a thousand deaths of heat exhaustion every hour inside this jacket. Chicago summers are brutal.

      Hello, beautiful! Do you want the usual tonight?

      I smile and nod at the bartender. Skyler asks me the same question every week. Skyler and I are also old childhood friends. As Malik’s partner in business, life, and love, he occupies several roles at The Shrine. I admire their mutual devotion. The world needs as much love as possible in all of its exquisite incarnations.

      Yes, please. And can you add an extra lime? I need my rum and coke to have a refreshing twist in all this heat and weed smoke. Seriously, y’all have got to get the air conditioning fixed in here. I thought this was Chicago, not the Mississippi delta.

      Skyler holds his hands out and motions around the room. Customers don’t seem to mind. Only our friends.

      We laugh as he mixes my drink. So, what did you think of my poem tonight?

      OMG, girl, it was amazing! Every week I’m so inspired by your words. You’re such an amazing poet! Skyler leaves to serve another customer and I happily sip my drink.

      How, pray tell, can a bartender know what makes an amazing poet? The deep voice in tweed rumbles beside me. before looking looking up from his glass of wine Between his voice and appearance, three things are clear right away: he’s British, he’s Black, and he’s drunk.

      His skin is smooth and dark, his deep brown eyes are watery and unsteady, and his perch on the bar stool is precarious. Somehow, he still maintains a cocksure presence. The English mannerisms and accent help in that regard. It’s dark, but I see enough to know he is tall and handsome-a Black Mr. Darcy.

      Trust me, he continues, placing his hand on mine. Do not quit your day job. What I just witnessed was a cross between a badly written love song and serial abuse of couplets and rhyme scheme. Pretty spectacle? Sure. I am not surprised the masses mistake it for poetry. All they care about is being entertained, not holding artists to any kind of critical standard.

      My mouth is agape. Who says that to someone they’ve just met? Drunk Darcy is tripping. I snatch my hand away.

      What a terrible thing to say to a poet baring her soul to you. What I do takes courage!

      Pfft. He waves his hand in front of my face dismissively as he steadies himself. You bared nothing on stage except a throwaway poem you pulled from a notebook you have long since discarded. It was a cute…performance, if you could even call it that. It did the trick for tonight’s crowd, but it wasn’t fresh. Damn. He’s right. Mr. Dark

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