Like Father, Like Son (A Family Affair #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

CADE

Low and steady, his voice drifts across our office. Laced with patience, heady with bass, it’s the last thing I want to rouse me on a Tuesday morning. But without fail, it does, on every day of the week I’m around him that ends in a Y.

Professor Noah Ryan sits at the desk opposite mine, sleeves of his faded, evergreen button-down rolled to the elbows, forearms corded, a tattoo peeking out.

He leans forward, elbows braced on a stack of ungraded essays, listening to the junior across from him like the rest of the world does not exist.

It’s an incredibly intoxicating feeling, being in conversation with Noah Ryan. You really are the focus of his world, and it feels like such a reward. Like you’ve won something to be polished and put on a shelf, like having a handful of his time is something that can spruce up your resume.

But of course, I’d never tell him that. I’d never even admit that aloud.

“Emily, your thesis isn’t about proving you understand the book,” Noah says slowly, voice as warm as the sunlight slicing through the wooden blinds. “It’s about the question that keeps you up at night. Answering that question, for yourself, while selling it to me.”

I keep my eyes on the paper in front of me, some freshman’s labored and partially CliffsNotes analysis of The Great Gatsby, but the words blur. Years of sharing this miniature office in the English department annex, and I still catch myself taking note of the ways Noah Ryan surprises me.

The man I’d met in that sterile room during my interview had been all easy charm and gorgeous smiles, the kind of guy who looks like he’d rather be at a bar than buried in theories on popular fiction.

I’d written him off before he’d even finished his first question.

Boisterously charming and likely superficial.

The type of faux-professional who coasts on charisma and leaves the real work to the rest of us. I hate people like that.

I really thought I’d summed him up and figured him out. But I was so very, exceptionally wrong.

Noah continues to advise Emily, and the way I was an ass when he and I first met, the memory pulls me under before I can stop it.

Five years earlier, sitting in front of an interview panel, my first university panel, in fact.

There were four tenured professors, a tenure-track professor (Noah) plus the department chair, all of us crammed around a scarred oak table in the main humanities building, as if even seeing the English department was reserved for those who passed this first round of panel interrogations.

I’d worn my best suit and carried my portfolio like armor.

I needed the job, mentally and emotionally.

After two years adjuncting at a community college up north, this tenure-track slot at a respected college was my shot at having everything I wanted. Stability. Respect. A life built on merit with a career that I’ve wanted since I was 12 and bought my first collection of Keats books.

Noah was the youngest on the panel, mid-twenties at most, and was recently promoted from visiting professor, as the chair noted.

He was wearing a maroon henley that hugged his shoulders and when he shifted behind the table, I noticed he’d been wearing jeans.

The outfit had no business in a formal interview, and it made me dislike him a little almost immediately.

His dark hair was a little too long, curling at the nape, and when he flashed a smile at me, I judged him.

Phony academic. The kind who charms his way onto committees and leaves the grading to TAs.

The type of guy who literally claws his way through grad school on favors and charm only to become the worst professor ever, and who sleeps with his students.

I’d seen his type before, even in community college.

Just as I’d worked myself into righteously hating him, the panel shifted their focus and he asked me his question. First.

“Mr. Mercer,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair with so much ease and confidence that it unnerved me.

He wormed under my skin, clawing up my veins, disruptive and frustrating.

But my breathing quickened, and my chest thumped.

“You wrote your master’s thesis on narrative silence in Hemingway.

You argue that what’s not said carries more weight than the actual written dialogue.

So tell me how you teach that to a room full of nineteen-year-olds who’ve never had to shut up long enough to hear the quiet?

” He paused, and something sharp and hot swooped through my stomach. I reached up and touched my glasses.

The room fell still. I’d expected the usual questions about pedagogy or research plans, but not that.

Not the way his whiskey eyes held mine, curious and sharp, like he actually wanted the answer.

I fumbled the first few seconds, then sort of found my footing.

We ended up going back and forth for a few minutes while the rest of the panel listened, heads ping-ponging between us as we did.

By the end, I was sweating under my collar, not from nerves but from the unfamiliar thrill of being seen.

He’d challenged me, and not without merit or thought, and it felt good, exchanging educational repartee.

He surprised me, and though he didn’t know it, I owed him an apology.

A week later, when the offer letter arrived, the decision I made to take the job had nothing to do with Noah Ryan.

But the first day I walked into this office and found him already there—feet propped on the desk, coffee in hand, grinning like he’d been waiting for me—I felt the same unwelcome spark I felt when we bantered on the panel that day. It is quite unwelcome.

Surprise and annoyance bubbled in my throat. And something else I did not care to name. In fact, refused to name.

A chair scrapes the floor, and it brings me back to the present, where Emily gathers her laptop and notebook, cheeks flushed. “Thank you, Professor Ryan. Seriously. I was spiraling.”

“You weren’t spiraling,” Noah corrects gently. “You were thinking. Big difference.” He stands, claps her shoulder once and walks her to the door. “Send me that revised outline by Friday and I promise you, we’ll make it pop.”

The door clicks shut behind her. For a moment the office feels larger and quieter with the only sound being the distant chatter of students crossing the quad and the low hum of the mini-fridge in the corner. I flip a page in the essay I wasn’t reading, pretending to absorb it.

Noah doesn’t return to his desk. He lingers by the window instead, arms crossed, staring out at the blooming dogwoods.

The late-morning light catches the stubble along his jaw and the faint scar above his left eyebrow, some soccer accident from grad school, I’d heard him describe to someone once.

I know too many of those small details. Five years of shared space does that to you, even when you keep your distance.

The knock at the door comes soft but audible.

I look up as the door opens again. Lauren Beckett steps inside.

A senior and an English major, Lauren is one of my older students who came back to finish her degree after a half a decade in the real world.

In a soft gray sweater that matches her eyes, she carries the faint scent of vanilla and campus coffee. And not the good stuff by the library.

“Professor Mercer,” she says, smiling tentatively. “Got a second?”

I lower my pen to the desk. “Of course, Lauren. Come in.”

Noah returns to his desk but doesn’t sit. He leans against the edge instead, flipping through a stack of mail like he isn’t listening. I feel his attention anyway, the way you feel a shift in air pressure before a storm. I always feel his attention.

Lauren perches on the edge of the visitor chair in front of my desk, hands clasped over her knee. “I just wanted to thank you again for the recommendation letter. The grad program at Long Beach wrote back—they’re flying me out for an interview next month.”

“That’s fantastic,” I tell her, meaning it. “You earned it. Your paper on sociopolitical commentary in dystopian fiction was exceptional.”

She bites her lip a little before laughing under her breath.

“Well, thank you but… uh, full disclosure. That’s not the only reason I’m here.

” Her gaze flicks to Noah, briefly acknowledging his presence before coming back to me.

“I’ve been trying to work up the nerve for weeks.

Would you… want to grab coffee sometime?

Or dinner? Off campus. I mean, of course not until after the semester is over. ”

The question lands between us like a dropped book.

Heat crawls up my neck, not from flattery but from the familiar, exhausting awkwardness of having to let someone down.

Lauren is lovely. Kind. She deserves someone great, but mostly, someone truly interested.

I prepare my soft deflection, which I’ve mastered by now.

I choose my words carefully, the way I always do. “Lauren, I’m incredibly flattered. Truly. But I don’t date students. Even graduating ones. It’s a hard line for me.”

Her smile doesn’t falter, but it softens into something rueful. “I figured. Worth a shot, though.” She stands, smoothing her sweater. “No awkward feelings?”

“None at all. And congratulations again on Long Beach. You’re going to crush that interview.”

She waves, including Noah too, as she splits a glance between us before slipping out. The door shuts with a quiet finality.

Silence stretches. I pick up my pen again, ready to get back to reading and grading papers. Across from me, Noah exhales a low sound—half laugh, half something I can’t parse.

“You could have said yes,” he says quietly. “I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

My hand stills. The words hang there, casual as a comment about the weather, but they land somewhere deep in my chest. I don’t look up, and stay quiet.