Chapter 5
Five
That was TD Piaget?
Harriet could hardly believe her eyes. She had expected a crotchety old man in a fifty-year-old sweater with patches on the elbows and a few holes from where the sparks from lighting his pipe might have fallen and done some damage.
She wouldn’t have batted an eye at ink stains on his fingers either from changing his typewriter ribbons or, more likely, from drips left by the dip pen he used to scribble his bestselling novels out long-hand.
She could hardly wait to tell Mac that not only had they been off by decades when it came to TD Piaget’s age, they’d been orders of magnitude away from the reality of his looks.
It was no wonder he never did any public appearances.
Once anyone got a good look at him, they absolutely wouldn’t have paid attention to his books ever again.
The current moment was definitely proof of that.
Everyone standing in his vicinity looked as if they might be on the verge of a good old-fashioned swoon.
She eased herself backwards until she was standing against the wall, then made herself more comfortable so she could indulge in a proper bit of ogling—just for the sake of being thorough in her observations, of course. Mac would appreciate the attention to detail, she was absolutely certain.
She watched her quarry for a bit and realized that while he was undeniably gorgeous, he was also absolutely charming. Even out in the middle of that pack of dangerous plotters he was working the crowd like a pro, but with a self-deprecating style that was thoroughly mesmerizing.
And he had a killer smile.
There was that word again. She nodded wisely to herself. She’d known it would come down to that.
She forced herself to ignore the man himself and concentrate instead on what he was saying.
She could hardly hear him over the slew of questions coming at him from all directions, but there didn’t seem to be much discussion going on about his books.
That was odd, but perhaps he was just modest. She would have held up her hand and told everyone there how much she loved his stories, but she imagined no one would pay any attention to her.
She watched him for a bit longer and had to admit she was grateful his agent had pulled him into the middle of the room.
Whether that had been by design or just good luck she couldn’t have said, but it saved her from being anywhere near a quartet of extremely beautiful women who looked as if they might be willing to do damage to whomever got between them and the man of the hour.
Who knew that a mystery writer’s conference could be so perilous?
Well, she should have, but given that her master list was likely feeding some fire in a Scottish campsite, she would just have to make do until she could get started on remaking it. Either that, or she could start something new, perhaps a collection of curious details about that man out there.
First on the list had to go wondering why in the world he’d been hiding behind a ficus tree with her, though perhaps that was easily answered. Considering how quickly he’d been mobbed once his agent had dragged him out into the spotlight, maybe he’d just wanted a minute to catch his breath.
Next was speculation over how in the world he could hold two such conflicting views of the world inside himself.
On one hand, he wrote mysteries that were brutally unflinching in their assessment of rotten characters.
It made the ending more satisfying when those sorts got huge helpings of just desserts, but the pathway there was generally full of very gruesome details about time periods that she had no desire to become better acquainted with.
On the other hand and in person, he seemed like the sort of guy who might, after a hard day at the keyboard, spend his evenings at the local pub with his mates, downing pints and cheering for his favorite team.
Along with pub crawls, she very much suspected he had a string of women lining up for the chance to date him, hopefully more than once.
He was currently surrounded by a cluster of those, never mind the guys who were looking at him as if they either wanted to be his new best friend or kill him and take his place.
She set those things aside as items to be investigated later and turned to the one thing that intrigued her the most: How was it that he wrote about medieval times with a freshness that made it seem as if he’d just stepped out of 1260 and into his office to bang out a few chapters before marching back into the past to do whatever gorgeous writers did back then?
She half wondered if he had squatting rights to a room in a castle where he could soak up the atmosphere and let his imagination run wild.
She listened to the current discussion turn more fully to his books and how he created them.
She thought it might be better to leave that for a different venue, but the man was notoriously reclusive so maybe those authors surrounding him were afraid he might vanish before they got answers out of him.
That, she could understand. What she couldn’t understand was why that same guy looked so completely unbalanced by a simple question about the fifth book in his current series.
He hemmed and hawed with a modesty that did him credit, true, but that didn’t make any sense.
Why didn’t he just blurt out the answer?
Was he so dazzled by all the admittedly gorgeous women clustered around him that he’d forgotten pertinent details about his work?
Was he suffering from not enough trips to the chocolate fountain?
It certainly couldn’t have been because he’d forgotten about his sword-wielding medieval knight protagonist who moonlighted as a priest and spent his days time-traveling to solve mysteries while running into all kinds of dangerous doings in different centuries.
There was something fishy going on and it wasn’t the salmon dip she’d eyed on her way into the room.
She watched him eye the exits as if he planned on using the nearest one the very moment he could. She recognized the signs because she was doing exactly the same thing.
She had to admit she wasn’t proud of that. Her plan to stride boldly out from under the lingering shadows of her ultra-competitive siblings had definitely taken a blow when she’d decided to hide behind a tree, but old habits apparently died hard.
Then again, she was not a tall, gorgeous, successful man who likely had years of practice being on various stages and should have had no trouble at all fielding questions about his work.
The only thing she could come up with on short notice was that perhaps he didn’t like feeling trapped.
Not only were the Fearsome Foursome seemingly communicating in some silent, chesslike manner to keep him pinned in an ever-straitening trap, his agent was patrolling the exits, apparently determined to keep him from fleeing.
Harriet had a wave of sympathy wash over her, but she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
“How do you get your hair to be just that right amount of blond with those perfect highlights?”
Harriet had to admit she’d initially wondered the same thing, but that was when she hadn’t realized at whom she was looking.
She noted that the woman asking that was one of that same quartet who had him surrounded.
If he’d actually dated any of them, it was no wonder he’d sought shelter behind a tree to avoid them.
“Ah,” he said, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Who’s to say? Instead, why don’t we toss a few ideas for creating memorable characters into the pot and give it a stir?”
Harriet frowned thoughtfully as she listened to him spew out a few innocuous ideas about inspiration coming from the exigencies of the moment and historical details being drawn from England’s rich cultural heritage.
She suspected he was saving the more serious craft discussions for one of his own workshops, not being deliberately coy for his own amusement.
In fact, she had to admit that he looked quite a bit like Mac during that first week of their freshman year when she’d been overcome by the thought of going to acting class.
It wasn’t possible that TD Piaget was uncomfortable in a crowd and that was the reason for his determination to remain off-stage … was it?
She considered the fact that he had hidden with her behind a ficus tree, keeping his identity a secret.
She’d assumed it was because he liked to scope out of the lay of the land before committing to action, but given the way he’d just been swarmed, she couldn’t blame him if he’d just wanted to regroup for a minute or two before walking onstage.
At the moment, he resembled nothing so much as a golden-hued lion contemplating his options for being anywhere else after finding himself in the midst of a pack of ravenous hyenas.
A gorgeous lion, true, but one who was looking around himself with a sort of unease that she found tugged on her heartstrings in a way that surprised her.
And then he caught sight of her.
Harriet would have looked behind her, but she was leaning against the wall and she was the only one in the area.
TD Piaget shot her a pleading look that was so quick, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
She remained where she was on the off chance she had, but he sent her a second look that was longer and contained quite a bit more desperation.
She realized that he was moving slowly but inexorably toward her.
She would have suspected that perhaps he intended to simply take refuge again behind their tree, but he was still attempting to manfully field the endless questions coming his way.
Maybe he was tired, or annoyed he’d locked his keys in the car, or …
Or maybe he was shy.