Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t cuddle with strangers.
Midnight pancakes are superior to normal pancakes.
Rom-coms aren’t just for women, duh.
I basically flew into the living room. Pried the laptop open with stiff fingers and let out a relieved whoop when my sketch of Captain Caruso looked back at me. It was my laptop, yes, but it was on its last 5%.
I quickly attached the file to the email, double-checked that everyone on the board was cc’d, and hit send. Just then, the screen went black.
“No.”
John stepped behind me. “What?”
I repeatedly pressed the power button, but nothing. I closed the laptop and tried hard not to throw it against the wall. “The battery is dead.”
“Did it go through?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” I put my face into my hands. “I must have been a terrible person in my last life.”
John stood. “Let me call Charlene.”
I didn’t want his pity or his help. But I bit my tongue. I needed to be grateful.
“Fuck,” he swore.
I twisted to look at him. “What now?”
It didn’t matter if I stood on my tiptoes on the patio or laid flat on my stomach in the foyer. We had no bars. All phone lines were dead. We had no light. No heat. No internet. I might as well stay right here and mark this as my grave.
Shuffling beside me, the beam of a flashlight was followed by sleek black boots. John’s raven hair fell over his eyes as he tilted his head to where I still lay on the hallway floor. He slid one hand into his pockets in an infuriating, elegant gesture.
“We won’t know if it’s gone through until the storm has settled.”
I rolled onto my back. “Then let’s drive until we find a signal.”
He shook his head. “I can’t drive in this storm.”
“You promised.”
“I promised to help you find your laptop, not attend your funeral.”
Like a child, I splayed both arms over my face. I didn’t move. Didn’t want to think about the consequences of being stuck here. Unable to contact Mom. Or Otis. But then, the memory of a car in a ditch crossed my mind, and I hoped John didn’t see me wince.
“I will vouch for you tomorrow. Explain the situation. Now…pancakes.”
“You want to torture me.” My stomach rumbled, but I heard the scuffing of his boots retreat into the living room.
The line wasn’t a torture device but an actual dinner invitation.
He was, in fact, making pancakes. There was a lit fire, cocooning the living room in a warm glow.
Candles were spread all over the place, lining the counter and shelves.
John was waving with the spatula from the kitchen, doing his killer move, a.k.a. throwing a towel over his shoulder.
“The stove is gas. Luckily.”
I watched him suspiciously. “It’s past midnight.”
“You’re hungry. I can hear your growling stomach from here.”
John looked up from the pan, his brow furrowed. “You may want to put some more clothes on. The night is gonna be cold.”
After I’d put on several layers of knitwear and huddled back downstairs, the scent of peppermint tea and sweet sticky pancakes mingling with wood smoke made me almost forget we were currently in a snowed-in disaster and not in Santa’s workshop.
I’d sent several messages to Otis and Mom but kept getting red not delivered signs. I even contemplated smoke signals.
John’s long legs were stretched out before him. He leaned on the edge of the coffee table, which he’d pushed against the sofa. Cushions and throws created a cocoon of warmth. John Kater had built a cozy fort.
“Come sit.” John patted the space next to him.
Even though normal-Nora doesn’t like to be coddled nor does she appreciate commands, this present Nora was exhausted, starving, and, frankly, cold.
I slung the soft blanket from the sofa around my shoulders and scooted as close to the fire as I could bear it, warming up my hands.
“I’m gonna die here,” I said while staring into the flames with half a mouthful of pancakes.
“I’m gonna die here with an unsent file eating midnight pancakes and probably losing a toe to frostbite while New York Times bestselling author John Kater is most likely planning me into his next novel as the villain. ”
John tapped a knee against me. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Cause that’s what you are,” I said, watching the fire until my eyes stung.
He shifted his weight onto his elbows. The lines around his mouth went taut, partially hidden behind the curtain of his dark brown hair. “That’s what I am, not who I am.”
I leaned my head against my blanketed legs, rubbing warmth into the tip of my nose. “You’re right. I don’t know who you are.”
He sat his cup on the floor. “Do you want to know?”
I turned my face away from the heat once more. “I want to know why you would go through all this trouble to help your competition if you could sit in your black marble penthouse drinking the blood of virgins from crystal glasses served by your smoke-show of a fiancée.”
He twisted, pulling another knitted blanket from the sofa and draping it around his shoulders. “You’re talented.” After a beat, he added, “And it would be a shame if I didn't have anyone to antagonize in the next round.” He shrugged. “Maybe I just like looking at you.”
My heart tripped. “Dangerous words for a freshly engaged man,” I whispered under my breath. And into the flames. Hoping the words would burn away before they reached his ears.
But the little huff that was almost a grumble told me he had heard them. I could see him twisting his watch.
“Can you keep a secret?”
There it was again, another silly stumble my heart did for no apparent reason. “You’re wearing adult diapers?” I asked, stretching my toes towards the flames as I scooted backward, pushing against the coffee table, shoulder-to-shoulder with the enemy. “You actually don’t know how to read?”
He turned his face toward mine. “I’m serious.”
“Why would you tell me, of all people, a secret of yours?” I didn’t want to sound desperate to know what he wanted to tell me. I wanted to sound nonchalant. Indifferent.
“Maybe telling you, a person that cares so little, feels like it would have no consequences. Maybe I just need to get it off my chest. Maybe I just want someone to know the truth.”
“Okay then,” I breathed.
Our faces were close, his eyes so dark, I wanted to turn away. Instead, I forced myself to meet his stare. He looked away first.
“My relationship…the engagement…it’s a farce,” John finally said.
“Sounds like the depressing first words of an autobiography.”
He huffed a half-laugh. “Not that Viv isn’t lovely. She is just not…real. Not in that way.”
This was unfamiliar territory. Honest territory. It made me feel…nervous. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a PR stunt,” he said, emptying his cup and putting it on the side table. “I have…plans. She has plans. Books on the line, a movie deal… we both benefit.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “I’m telling you too much. I had too much to drink.”
“So you’re not really engaged?” I pushed.
John angled his body towards me, as if he wanted to see all of me.
He shook his head. “We don’t even live together.”
“Why not just have a real relationship?”
He smiled a bitter smile. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you all my secrets in one night, Nora.”
Dangerous words. Words that could mean different things. A promise. Of more secrets? Of more nights? He scanned me so intensely that I double-checked if I wore clothes. Something fluttered in my chest. It needed to be suffocated.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t let myself get distracted. I was here for one reason only. Get this deal, get the check, save the shop. It was probably just another one of his tactics.
“What about you?” he continued. “Who is the Joe Fox to your Kathleen Kelly?”
It took me a moment to place the names. You’ve Got Mail. “I didn’t take you for a Meg Ryan fan.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
My shoulders tensed. “There is none,” I said. A small white cloud puffed before me. The temperature must have dropped significantly. John seemed to notice, too. He scooted closer.
“We could go back in the hot tub.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
He let his gaze drift down my body. “Maybe I would.”
I elbowed him, trying to ignore the heat spreading in my body.
He laughed. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I just…don’t date. That’s all there is.”
“And is there a reason for that?”
I leaned my head on my folded knees, looking up at him. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you all my secrets in one night, John.”
I could swear the air between us sizzled. He smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile back. A tentative smile. A smile that was dangerously close to crossing a line in the sand.
“I gotta admit, this trip didn’t turn out as expected,” I said, rubbing my hands. Trying to regain some sort of composure and distance between us. Talking to John like this felt like walking a tightrope. “I didn’t even prep for a survival bootcamp.”
“Oh, you need to know that working in publishing trains you for the worst.”
I emptied my mug. Feeling myself relax, my body yearned to move closer to his warmth, but I scolded silly-Nora and stayed where I was. “Even so, you’re probably the last person I would ever get stuck with during a zombie apocalypse. So none of this has any practical value.”
“I would be the last person I would want to be stuck with during a zombie apocalypse, too.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “So our survival would lie mostly on my shoulders?”
He smirked. “Unless there’s a pub quiz or a dance battle, I’m afraid I’m out.”
Laughter bubbled out of me, part hysterical, part tired. My cheeks warmed with it. “Is that all you can bring to the base? Random knowledge and moves like Jagger?” I pulled the blanket off my shoulders and over my legs. Now the other half of me was cold.
“And what about you? How would you battle us out?” John tugged on said blanket until I lifted a flap so he could share the heat. Our sides pressed against one another. When the heat of him seeped into my skin, my muscles relaxed further, while other parts of me seemed to switch to high alert.
I chewed on the inside of my cheeks. “I can name all Robert Rodriguez movies in alphabetical order. Fold a paper boat blindfolded. Mix a mean margarita.”
His brows rose.
He stretched his feet towards the fire. “You like horror movies then?”
“You are trying to bond with me, aren’t you?” I said. I shivered when the cold air hit my back as he shifted.
He wrapped his blanket around my shoulders. His arm stayed in place so it wouldn’t fall. Goddamn this felt…nice. More than nice.
“I’m just trying to figure you out, Nora.” The way he said my name. The grating N, the whispered A.
I swallowed. “I love horror movies, especially the ones featuring monsters because...” I shrugged.
“It’s a tangible evil. There is always some way to defeat them.
You cut their head off or shoot them with your machine gun prosthesis.
” I leaned my head back, resting it on his arm like it was no big deal, because it wasn’t, and watched him watch me.
“But there’s always a way, not like in real life. ”
A sad smile crossed John’s soft lips. And maybe it was because night had settled in and it was just us in this tiny cocoon of flickering firelight, but the man that shared his body heat with me, that made me pancakes and said my name in that special way of his…
he didn’t feel like the John Kater I knew from the media, not even the one I had met years ago.
This guy next to me was different. Maybe even likable.
I was definitely stuck in a Black Mirror episode.
I yawned. Then scanned the dark behind the living room. I shivered just at the thought of having to go up the stairs and sleep in an ice-cold bed.
As if reading my thoughts, he stretched. “We should sleep here. It’s only a few hours until morning, anyway.”
He threw two pillows on the floor. Tugging the blanket up to his chin, he patted the space on the fluffy rug beside him. The one closer to the fire.
“If we’re lucky, the storm will have settled by then.”
“And if we are unlucky?” I said.
“I can imagine worse ways to die. Come on, I won’t bite.”
After a moment of hesitation, I placed myself between the fire and John. His arm wrapped around my middle, drawing me into him. When his breath caressed my neck, a totally different kind of shiver ran over me.
“Is this okay?” He asked into the crown of my head.
I nodded, heat sinking into my back. I could feel his chest rise and fall in rhythm with mine.
The valleys and dips pressing into my back.
Heat filled me, heat that had nothing to do with the fire warming my face.
His scent wrapped around me as I nuzzled deeper into the pillow.
I had to stifle the urge to turn toward him and bury my face in his chest. He smelled expensive.
I caught myself trying to get a lungful.
John’s breath tickled my ear, then my neck.
I remembered the heat that had pooled between my legs when his thigh had pushed between them.
I wondered what it would feel like if he did that now.
Was I breathing heavily?
“Just to be clear,” I said, ignoring the vibrating feeling beneath my skin, “this doesn’t mean we are friends. I’m just using you as an oversized hot water bottle.”
“Mmm,” he made a throaty sound that tickled my neck. “That’s okay. I’m not sure I can be your friend, anyway.”
I held my breath. Instead of asking him to clarify, I watched the flames flicker. Neither of us spoke another word that night.