Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Being around Brody was excruciating. Not because I hated him. No, it was the exact opposite. I wanted to be closer. It was impossible for me to avoid the truth a second longer.
I liked him.
I didn’t want to like him. I wasn’t in a place in my life where a relationship was a good idea. I had just moved into a new home. I had an idea for a new series that would take a lot of time. I was trying to … well, I was trying to be an adult. Brody would distract me from that mission.
Yet I liked him.
It was so frustrating. He had a ridiculously soft smile that made my heart do somersaults.
His dry sense of humor matched mine, and I found myself laughing whenever we were in close proximity.
He was hot to the point of doing strange things to my lady parts, like a scene from a book.
Not one of Hayley’s books but one of the spicy ones I read late at night and never on a beach because the man-chest cover was a dead giveaway.
Brody was an engaging person who understood the difficulties of what I did for a living. That pretty much made him the perfect man.
This isn’t the perfect time, though.
And that was the part I couldn’t get over.
This was not the time to be futzing around with a relationship, especially with a guy I had to see regularly for work.
We were on the third of twelve planned events.
If I took him home and rode him like the tingly parts of me wanted, then we would be hot and heavy for two weeks—that was always how my relationships went—and I would inevitably lose interest in him after.
If that happened, these events would be torturous. Why make my life more difficult?
No, I couldn’t engage with the constant whispers from my lady parts. They might be encouraging me nonstop, but I was, above all, a realist. That meant I had to nip this attraction in the bud.
Fortunately, the readers served as a distraction after dinner.
One in particular had caught my attention.
His name was Andrew Fisher. He was thirty, worked as a tech developer, and supposedly loved mysteries.
Despite the fact that he was there to meet different authors, I found him hovering around me the entire time.
He had a lot of questions to go along with the cleft in his chin and a pair of dimples that definitely would have had me going weak at the knees under different circumstances.
“So, how do you decide what sort of creature you want to feature in each book?” he asked as I sipped my iced tea and eyed him warily.
“Creature?” The question confused me but only because my attention had been drawn back to Brody, who was two tables over, talking to an attractive blonde. Her shirt was so low-cut I was convinced she was trying to pretend her breasts were elves.
“Well, you said you write about witches, vampires, and werewolves,” Andrew prodded.
“Shifters,” I automatically corrected. “Almost nobody uses the word werewolf in paranormal fiction. There are shifters … and they’re not always wolves.”
“Really?”
His smile was easy, but there was a gleam in his eyes I couldn’t quite identify. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was feeling triumphant. What’s up with that?
I nodded, trying to see the pitfalls of continuing to talk to him. I was the sort of person who liked to get ahead in a conversation. Is he laying a trap? Is he flirting? What exactly is this?
“What other types of shifters have you had in your books?” he asked.
This entire conversation was surreal. He knew nothing about paranormal fiction.
He was a straight Michael Connelly guy. He liked mysteries with a touch of action adventure.
All the heroes were men, but there was always a hot woman around to have sex with when there was a lull in the action.
In my mind, Andrew was the type of guy who’d imagined himself as James Bond when he was growing up.
“Well, I have a series set in New Orleans,” I replied, forcing myself to keep the conversation going so I wouldn’t obsess about Brody. “I have alligator shifters in that story.”
“And alligators are hot?” Andrew was understandably dubious.
“They are the way I write them.” I shot him a cheeky smile that he didn’t return. He really did seem to be working the alligator thing out.
“But wouldn’t there be a scale issue?” he pressed.
“I don’t believe so.” I shrugged. “I don’t think about it too hard, though.”
“Oh.” Disappointment rippled across his features, which really did look as if they belonged on the pages of a fashion magazine. They were doing nothing for me, even though I recognized—at least on a superficial level—that they should be sending my heart fluttering.
“What other type of shifters have you written about?” he asked.
I had to bite back a sigh. It took effort. He just wouldn’t let it go. “Bears,” I replied blandly. “I once did a rabbit shifter, but that was a joke. It was basically an excuse for me to throw a really horny guy into the story.”
“Yes.” He bobbed his head as if that was the answer he was expecting. “You write sex. How does that work?”
Suspicion had me shifting and giving him my full attention for the first time in ten minutes. He’d been droning on so long he’d become mostly background noise. Until now.
“Why are you asking about that?” I asked.
“I’m just curious.” His shoulders hopped. “I would think sex scenes would be easy.”
“Not really.” I shook my head. “There’s only so many different ways you can write Tab A being inserted into Slot B.”
He blinked. Then he blinked again. “I see,” he said, his forehead creasing.
“Are you an author?” I asked, playing a hunch.
“What?” He visibly shook himself out of whatever reverie he’d been lost inside. “No, but I have a few book ideas.”
This was normal. It was rare for me to meet a book lover who hadn’t at least imagined him or herself writing their own book.
Readers had vast imaginations, and authors filled their wells.
Sometimes readers wanted to fill their own wells.
I had started that way. For every me, however, there were a hundred other people who never got past the dreaming.
I had lost track of how many loose acquaintances and old classmates I’d run into at various events who floated the idea of telling me their story idea and having me write it.
Then we could split the money. As if the idea was the hard part.
I had more ideas than I would ever get to write about.
Ideas were easy. Writing, while often fun, was still work.
“I’ve been doing market research,” Andrew explained, reminding me he was still there. “Romance is apparently the top-selling genre.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
“I prefer mysteries.”
I just waited him out.
“I was thinking maybe I could write a mystery and include romance in it,” he explained, his eyes sparkling. “Like … I could hit the two hottest markets and make a killing.”
I had to temper my response because it involved an eye roll and a derisive throat sound. Somehow, I managed to keep my face bland. “That’s called romantic suspense.”
“What is?”
“When there’s a mystery taking up half the plot and romance taking up the other half. There’s already a genre out there for that, and it’s pretty popular.”
He frowned as if I’d kicked his puppy. “I wasn’t really talking about romance. Just sex.”
“Okay, but to get female readers, you need to include emotion. They’re not really into the mysteries just for the banging. They need an emotional connection, so you have to build up the main characters on that level.”
“But… why?” He wrinkled his nose. “That’s so boring.”
I’d come across plenty of people with that mindset over the years. I had long since given up arguing on behalf of my genre. He didn’t get it. More importantly, he didn’t want to get it. That meant I didn’t want to take the time to explain it to him because it would be a waste.
“I could use another drink.” I moved to stand, but he wasn’t ready to end the conversation.
“The server should come around.” He reached out to touch my hand, but I smoothly evaded him.
“I need to stretch my legs,” I lied.
The words were barely out of my mouth before I realized the aisle between tables was being closed off by a different individual.
If I thought Andrew was boring—which I did—I still would have taken ten of him over one of the man looking back at me with a mocking smile.
He reminded me of a smug serial killer from a Lifetime movie.
Joey. He was here again. My heart sank.
“Hello,” he drawled in a raspy voice. It sounded unnatural, making me wonder if he’d watched some bad porn and thought that was what women fell for.
“Hello,” I replied warily.
“Long time no see.”
His eyes were bright, but there was something predatory there. He wasn’t overt when looking at me. He didn’t focus on my chest … or lower. He did puff himself out to the point where there was no way I could get around him without risking an accidental grazing.
“You seem to love these events,” I commented to buy myself time.
My phone was on the table. I could text Hayley for help.
How would that make me look, though? Technically, Joey wasn’t doing anything other than trying to talk to me.
These events had been designed for that.
He wasn’t touching me. He wasn’t making crude comments.
He was just staring and making me uncomfortable.
“Andrew Fisher,” the romance hater announced, extending his hand to Joey. “Are you an author?”
Joey seemed caught off guard by the introduction. After a moment’s hesitation, he took Andrew’s hand and shook it. He did not provide his name. Instead, he merely smiled. “I’m a reader. Actually, I think I might be Bree’s biggest fan.”
“Really?” Ever dry, Andrew nodded. “What do you think about the alligator shifters with the scales?”