Chapter 3 #3
"When we get to the city centre, I'll have to stop by work. There's no getting around it. I have to get into the bookstore today because of something time-sensitive.”
“We can manage that, fine.”
The huge butcher block table in the kitchen, usually teeming with people, is vacant this early in the morning. The only person here is one of our staff, who dutifully fills our mugs with steaming water for tea and stirs something fragrant on the stove that smells like apple cinnamon porridge.
Islan joins us, and we quickly eat. I drink two cups of strong tea before I’m ready to go, but before I leave, I decide it’s best if I ask some questions.
If Leith gave me this job to perform, I’m going to do the best bloody job I can.
And sometimes, the answers to what I need are right under my nose.
"Islan.”
My sister looks up to me, her eyes wide, her brows rising heavenward. “Aye?”
“You read those books the girls are always talking about, don't you?" She nods. I know she does. I need to know if she is the writer, once and for all. So I don't beat around the bush. I don't suggest anything. I ask her outright.
“Do you have anything to do with those books?”
“Those books?” she asks, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but she pales a little bit. “Just to be clear. Are we talking about the same books?”
I pull out my phone, and tap the e-book app. I show her the latest cover. “Clan Chronicles.”
She shakes her head and busies herself buttering a scone. "So we're back to those, then, are we?"
I blow out a breath. I'm getting a little frustrated with the way that she blows me off like this.
“You were the one that brought it up in the beginning. You were the one that said that it was awfully similar to the Clan life. You and Paisley were the ones that got Cairstina to read them.”
“Aye, I did, but that was going back, now, wasn’t it?”
Fran takes a large bite of toast. “What books are these?”
Islan shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing,” I contradict. I show the book cover to Fran. “These.”
She grins around her bite of toast. "Really, Tate? I never expected you to be the romance type. Since when have you been reading these books?"
“Since last night,” I tell her with a growl. “Since I’m on a mission to find out who the bloody author is, because I'm not the only one that suspects these books are too similar to our way of life.”
Fran snorts. “Do you mean to tell me you suspect that a series of fictional romance books with, I’d imagine, ridiculously unrealistic endings, larger-than-life characters, and nothing but brilliantly beautiful people, are actually based on your precious Clan?”
Oh, the nerve of her. I narrow my eyes at her. “And why wouldn’t they be?”
Her eyes dance at me as she takes another bite of toast. She shrugs. “Oh, nothing,” she says. “But I’ve read enough of these books to know, there’s no way these books are true.”
“No?”
She snorts. “Absolutely not.” She lowers her voice. “No one has five orgasms in a night.”
Islan snorts with laughter, but Fran only holds my gaze, her saucy eyes dancing at me.
Heat flares through me like the sudden flare of a torch.
Don’t be so sure, lassie.
If I had her for a night, I’d show her exactly how many orgasms a woman can have.
One. After the other. After the other.
“You think it’s the sex that intrigues me?” I love the way her eyes meet mine in challenge, like she can tell I’m mentally undressing her and imagining taking her, right here, right now, right on this table in the middle of the fucking kitchen.
I’m dimly aware of a pot lid clattering to the floor behind me. It seems we’re scandalizing a member of the staff.
I don’t bloody care.
“Moving on,” Islan says too loudly, as if she knows something and she wants to get me off the trail. But I ignore her. I'm not moving on. I'm not moving on until I find the author of these books and make her answer.
Or him, there's still that option.
“I think you fancy yourself a character in those books because they’re hot,” Fran says, not willing to move on any more than I am. “But I think romance is a silly, foolish genre for silly, foolish women who believe that fantasy and reality are the same thing.”
“Not true!” Islan says. “For the love of God, why do you people keep saying such stupid things?”
“You people?” Fran and I ask in unison, as if we’re somehow joined in this opinion.
“Aye,” Islan says, frowning. “You people! You naysayers. They’re just fucking fictional books, Tate, and if there’s any resemblance to our Clan, it’s accidental. They have nothing to do with us. I once thought so, but I don’t anymore.”
“Oh? And why don’t you now?” I ask, unwilling to let this go. She’s protesting too insistently for me to let this bloody go.
She gets up from the table in a temper and slams her napkin down.
“Because the blokes in those books actually give a damn. Because the blokes in those books are heroes, not goddamn narcissists.”
And on that note, she storms out of the room.
Fran looks after her and chews another bite of toast meditatively.
“I’d definitely investigate that further if I were you.”