Eliza Harper had always been the smartest person in any room she entered.
Top of her class in undergrad. Full-ride scholarship to one of the most prestigious graduate literature programs in the country. Published a paper in an academic journal before most of her peers had even finished their master’s theses.
And now, at twenty-four, she was Dr. Lucian Vale’s graduate teaching assistant—the youngest ever appointed in the English department.
She told herself that was why her heart raced every time she stepped into his office. Pure professional admiration.
Nothing more.
Dr. Vale was everything the rumors promised: mid-forties, tall, broad-shouldered, with prematurely silver-flecked dark hair and piercing gray eyes that seemed to see straight through pretense. His voice—low with just a hi
