Chapter 1
ONE
PRESENT DAY
“Ah, luxury.” I sipped my cognac with exaggerated glee and smiled at the woman across the table from me.
Hayley Clifton looked less than impressed. “You’re such a tool,” she muttered, tucking a strand of her blond hair behind her ear.
I grinned. My favorite thing about Hayley was that she didn’t hold back when stating her opinion. I appreciated bluntness. “You love me, and you know it.” I winked, and it probably would have come across as flirty to somebody else. Not to Hayley, though.
Before she could respond, a woman moved closer to our table.
Hayley and I were having a late lunch at Arnie’s Tavern, which was one of the many restaurants at The Landings, my new home on Skidaway Island just outside Savannah, Georgia.
When my best friend, Brody Bates, had moved into the community, I’d called it bougie and ridiculous.
But I’d quickly come to respect the finer aspects of the community—meaning I enjoyed that I could get almost anything without actually leaving the neighborhood.
That included a great meal and a solid cocktail.
I smiled at the woman, unsure what she was after.
Her focus was on Hayley rather than on me, so I had to parse things out.
Hayley was a lesbian, so maybe the woman had picked up on a certain vibe and wanted to flirt with her.
I was always open to watching Hayley flirt.
She was the most awkward woman in the world when it came to potential romance.
It turned out to be something else.
“Are you Hayley Clifton?” the woman asked, nervously glancing at a table where three other women sat.
Hayley nodded. “I am.”
“Um… Hayley Clifton, the author?”
Ah, there it was. The woman—and likely her friends—were fans of Hayley’s wholesome brand of romance writing. It always made me laugh that a lesbian was writing clean romance, but Hayley wasn’t a fan of swearing or sex scenes. As boring as I found it, she made a solid living.
“I am.” Hayley’s smile was hard to read. She tended to be shy in social settings. When it was a meet-and-greet—multiple authors interacting with a lot of fans—she was okay because she could take regular breaks. That meant the focus wasn’t entirely on her. This scenario was different.
I decided to help her out. “I’m an author too,” I volunteered, unleashing what I knew to be a devastating smile on the woman. I’d been told, on more than one occasion, that women found my smile to be one of my finest features, second only to my butt.
Yeah, I know how good looking I am. I try not to be a creep about it, but I’m not afraid to use my appearance to my advantage when the opportunity presents itself.
“You are?” The woman looked me up and down. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Do you recognize all authors?”
“Well, no. Just the good ones.”
I sent an amused look toward Hayley, who appeared to be relaxing, at least somewhat.
“She’s got you pegged,” Hayley said on a half-laugh. “You’re right. He’s not a good author.”
“Hey!” I jabbed a finger in her direction. “I’m trying to be helpful.”
Likely because she knew that was true, she sighed. “This is Nathan Cooper. He writes horror books.”
“Oh.” The woman looked taken aback.
Apparently, the word “horror” didn’t fill her with warm and fuzzy thoughts. That was fine. My readership was mostly male, although a solid twenty-five percent was female. Hayley’s audience, for comparison, was ninety-nine percent female.
Statistically, women read more than men, not only on an individual basis but on a volume level too.
Some women readers—Hayley’s audience, actually—sometimes read three to five books a week.
She didn’t get to cash in on the people who wanted sex in their books—and there were a lot of them—but she had a solid following of readers who invested in her as an author.
My readers tended to invest in my stories, not me.
Although I did have a fan group on Facebook that talked about how hot I was.
Not that I regularly peeked in there or anything.
Fine. I peeked at least once a week. Who could blame me?
“I was wondering if I could run back to my house and get a book for you to sign,” the woman said to Hayley, clearly forgetting about me. “I only live five minutes away. If you were still going to be here…” She seemed uncertain. “I don’t want to interrupt your lunch with your boyfriend or anything.”
Hayley and I burst out laughing in tandem.
“He is not my boyfriend,” Hayley said once she’d recovered. “I barely let him be my friend.”
The woman looked relieved. “Oh, I wondered. I’ve read your bio a few times, and it said you were a lesbian. I thought maybe that was just for show or something.”
“Not for show.” Hayley shook her head. “Nathan and I met last summer during a series of author events. He’s pretty much insufferable, and I’m the only person who will hang out with him.
I feel sorry for him, and since he just moved to The Landings, I figured I would sit with him for lunch so he wouldn’t be completely alone and look like a loser. ”
I gave her a measured look. “Do you really want to start playing that game?” I demanded. “You know I always win when we play that game.”
She ignored me. “We haven’t even ordered yet,” she said to the woman. “We’ll be here a long time because Nathan just got a new haircut, and there’s nothing he likes more than talking about himself.”
She wasn’t wrong. But it was still grating to hear.
“Keep it up.”
The woman had zero interest in me. None. Hayley was clearly her hero, because when my friend said she would still be here to sign the book, the woman’s smile spread so wide it eclipsed the sun.
“Thank you so much.” The woman let loose a weird sound, something between a shriek and a giggle, then she took off, waving at her friends before heading toward the door.
“This feels wrong,” I lamented as I watched her go. “You don’t even live here, and yet you already have a fan in my community. That’s all sorts of wrong.”
Hayley made a face. “I live in downtown Savannah, which is better than this bougie community by a long shot. We have actual culture there.”
“Your version of culture and mine are vastly different.”
She ignored the dig. “I still can’t believe you moved here.” She looked around the tavern and shook her head. “It’s so ostentatious. I don’t get it.” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Is it because you now have your own golf cart to drive around? Is that the appeal of this place?”
I shrugged. “The golf cart doesn’t hurt. Mine is awesome. You have to admit it.”
“Yes, I like the big snake you had put on the hood. Do you have any idea how phallic that is? Any woman with sense is going to take a look at the size of the cobra and assume you’re overcompensating for something.”
Was that true? I hadn’t even considered it. “I didn’t get the snake because of the whole penis thing.” My frown was pronounced. “My new book involves an infestation of irradiated snakes taking over Arizona. I thought it would serve as free advertising.”
Hayley’s smile slipped as she considered it. I thought she might apologize—she rarely went that route but occasionally made the effort—but then she shook her head. “How did the snakes get irradiated?”
It was a wonder Hayley and I were friends.
She had almost zero imagination, which should have been the kiss of death for an author.
But she was one of those people who spent all of her time thinking up stories.
It took her two months to come up with one outline, and the people in her stories never did anything wild or out of the ordinary.
I, on the other hand, was sitting on a pile of outlines I would never get to.
Whenever I saw a story about a crazy murder or animal attack, my mind instantly went to how I could turn it into a book.
The wilder, the better. My stories had no basis in reality.
Well, except for the emotions of my characters.
Those were always real, no matter the wacky circumstances.
“There was a meltdown at a nuclear power plant,” I replied.
“Did you check to make sure there is an actual nuclear power plant in Arizona?”
Of course that would be what worried her.
“Yes, not that it matters. Pablo Verde Generating Station is there. I made up the one I used in the book, though.”
“Why would you make it up if there was a real one?”
This was our big problem. She followed every line logically. I zigged and zagged all over the place.
“Because, believe it or not, if you use a real place and then create a storyline in which they’re inept, they don’t tend to like it.”
“Oh.” She nodded sagely. “You don’t want to get sued.”
“That would be part of it,” I readily agreed. “It’s also just easier.”
The server picked that moment to take our orders.
“Ladies first,” I teased Hayley.
She gave me a sneer but dove right in. She complained nonstop about The Landings being bougie but ate here—with me and one of our other author friends, Bree James—as often as humanly possible.
“I’ll have the Steakhouse Salad, please,” she said, flashing a smile.
The server wasn’t interested in Hayley. She nodded absently. Her attention was solely for me. “And for you, sir?” she practically purred.
This was more like it. Our server likely had no idea I was an author. That wasn’t out of the ordinary. Very few authors were recognized unless they were one of the big ten, like Stephen King, James Patterson, or George R.R. Martin.
“I’ll have the French Onion Burger and fries, please.”
“You’ve got it.” The server winked at me.
I smugly smiled back.
Once she left to put in our order, I found Hayley glaring at me with abject disgust.
“What?” I whined. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re so gross,” she replied. “Like… the grossest gross guy who ever grossed.”
“That’s not a thing.”