by Staci Hart
When I was five, it was adorable.
When I was ten, I was a pariah.
Children are cruel, as everyone knows. And so, I cried in excess and escaped into books.
I had a million friends there.
Even when my impediment had been corrected with years of speech therapy, I didn’t speak much. Not unless I was in the company of people I knew loved and accepted me.
Thomas Bane was not one of those people. And if he recognized my name, I was well and truly fucked.
I’d reviewed every book of his at three stars or less.
Three stars, you say, but that’s average!
Not to authors, it’s not. And there were few perks in being someone’s top rated negative review on Amazon. At least for someone like me who hated disappointing people.
The thing was, my reviews weren’t bad, per se. But they weren’t exactly glowing either. They were honest, kind, constructive. I didn’t shy away from what I didn’t like, but always tried to present it in a way that was respectful and soft.
I cursed Janessa again in my mind for sending me here, wondering if she’d been intentionally cruel. Maybe she was hoping for me to return with some famous Thomas Bane quip or one liner. Or, if he was drunk, recount of a brawl.
Notorious bad boy Thomas Bane. Model dating, super rich, moderately famous, fist wielding, public drunken and indecent exposure Thomas Bane, fantasy author with a rap sheet the length of my arm.
“Did you want a picture?” I heard him ask. I thought I could hear him smiling.
“N-n-n-no, thanks,” the girl stuttered.
My guts turned to ice.
She’d been talking her brains out with her friend not ten minutes ago with sword wielding bravado about how she was going to French kiss him there in front of God and everybody.
If she couldn’t answer a simple question from him, I was never going to make it out of the building.
I took another breath and straightened my spine, stretching me to the extent that my five-foot-one frame would allow. When she moved out of the way, I almost went out like a candle.
His eyes switched from the parting girl to fix on me, and the air left my lungs in a vacuum that would have snuffed an entire room full of candles.
They were dark as midnight, the iris indistinguishable from his pupil, his lashes thick and long and absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous, every inch of him. The cut of his jaw, covered in a dark shadow from his mildly kept beard. His nose, strong and long and masculine. Those cursed eyes, which had to be brown, but I couldn’t make out anything but bottomless black. His hair, long enough to fall over his shoulders, waving and so thick, I bet his ponytail was at least seven times the diameter of mine.
But the most ridiculous part of his utterly ridiculous face were his lips, wide and full, the bottom in a constant pout, the top a little bit thicker, angled at a ridiculous angle that had me wondering what it’d be like to suck on it.
Which was ridiculous in and of itself. I’d never even been kissed.
But whenever I was, God grant me lips like those.
Hands planted themselves on my shoulderblades and shoved.
Thomas Bane laughed, and I was unsurprised to find that his smile was ridiculous, too. What utterly unfair bullshit that a man should be that gorgeous.
I wondered if he went by Thomas and brushed the thought away. He was like Celine Dion, but with even better hair. No one called Celine Dion just plain old Celine. I imagined bet even her kids called her Celine Dion, yelling through their multi-zillion dollar home, ‘Celine Dion, come wipe my butt!’ I also imagined that on Sundays, she wore a ballroom gown and tiara to lay around on the couch and watch Netflix.
I cleared my throat and unloaded the books the paper had sent with me for him to sign. I couldn’t meet his eyes again.
“Hi…” He paused, probably looking for the name tag sticker on my tiny boob. “Amelia. It’s good to see you,” he said as if we’d met a hundred times.
Say hi. Say hello. Say hi, Amelia, goddammit.
I made the mistake of looking up, and my tongue tripled in size.
Don’t look at him, you idiot!
My eyes darted back down to my hands. I swallowed.
“H-hi,” I whispered.
God, I could feel him watching me. I could feel him smirking.
He took a book as I set it down, his hand entering my line of vision like a giant, manly, long-fingered version of my tiny pale one.
“Who should I personalize this to?” he asked.
“No personalization,” I answered before I lost my nerve.
Another soft chuckle as I added to the stack. “No problem.” The sound of a sharpie scratching the page filled the silence.
Say something! You are a mess, Amelia Hall. You have to tell him who you are. Janessa will shit a brick if you don’t.
I swallowed the sticky lump in my throat, arranging the book pile without purpose. “I…I’m Amelia Hall. W-with the U-USA Times.”
The book closed with a soft thump. “Amelia Hall? As in the blogger for Halls of Books?” The question was thick with meaning.
All of the blood in my body rushed from every extremity and up my neck in a blush so hard, I could feel the tingling crawl of it as my vision shimmered.
I looked up like a dummy anyway. An affirmative word was on my stupid, fat tongue, stuck there in my mouth like a gum ball in a water hose. So I nodded instead.
He was smirking, lips together, a tilted smile that set a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “You’re the blogger who hates me so much.”
I frowned. “I don’t hate you. I just hold issue with your idea of romance.”
The words left me without thought or attempt or desire to reel them back in. I might not have been able to order a pizza over the phone, but I could stand up for a little old lady who someone cut in front of or the kid who was getting picked on. And my ideals. I could stand up for those too, especially when questioned.
The corner of his sardonic mouth climbed. “Well, lucky for me, I don’t write romance.”
A derisive sound left me. Lucky for all of us. “I don’t hate your books at all, Mr. Bane.”
He shrugged and took the next book off the pile to sign. “Wouldn’t guess so from your reviews. My least favorite phrase on the planet is unforgivable sin, thanks to you.”
The heat in my cheeks flared again, this time in defense. “Your world building is incredible. Your imagery is so brilliant, sometimes I have to set my book down and stare at a wall just to absorb it. But every hero you write is, frankly, a—” An asshole, that was what I was going to say, but landed on, “—an unkind man.”
He nodded at the title page as he scrawled his name. “Viggo?”
“He left Djuna because she was pregnant with his half-breed baby. And she took him back, even though he wouldn’t even commit to her for good.”
“Blaze?”
I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t come for Luna because he was more worried about himself. He could have saved her from the Liath!” My hand rose in the universal sign for What the hell? and lowered to slap my thigh with a snap.
“Even Zavon? He’s everyone’s favorite.”
My face flattened. “He cheated on her out of spite. That, sir, is the ultimate unforgivable sin. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she took him back for no reason. He didn’t even apologize.” I said the words as if it had been me who he’d cheated on. Honestly it felt that way.
The curse of a reader.
He slid the book to me and picked up another. But he didn’t sign it. Instead, he turned that godforsaken smirk on me which subsequently turned my knees into jelly.
“But he loved her. Isn’t love enough to forgive?”
It was that tingle again, climbing up my face like fire. “Of course it is, but your heroes never make heroic decisions about the women who love them. In fact, they don’t seem to love their women at all, not enough to sacrifice their own comfort. They’re irredeemable. Why isn’t love enough
to make them act less like assholes?” I clapped a hand over my mouth, my eyes widening so far, they burned from exposure to air.
Something in his eyes changed, sharpened with an idea. He was otherwise unaffected, chuckling as he opened the book and turned his attention to his Sharpie again. “I mean, you’re not wrong, Amelia.”
The way he said my name, the depth and timbre and rolling reverberation slipped over me like a drug.
I blinked. “I’m not?”
His eyes shifted to meet mine for only a heartbeat before dropping to the page again. “You’re not. Every time I publish a novel, I wait for your review to see if I finally won you over.” He closed the book, pushing it across the table to me before reaching for the last. “I think you should help me with my next book.”
Somewhere, a needle scratched. Tires squealed from a pumping of breaks. Crickets chirped in a chorus in an empty room.
Help him?
“Yes, help me,” he answered. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the question. “I could use a critical voice on my team. I think they’ve been telling me yes for years when they should have been telling me no. I need a no. Are you interested?”
“Interested?” I echoed stupidly.
“Are you interested in being my no?”
I blinked at him. “What a weird question.”
A chuckle through a closed, sideways smile. His eyes had to be black, black as sin. “I’ve got to admit, I’m usually asking for a yes, especially where women are concerned.”
My face flattened, not only because he was a cocky bastard, but for the flash of rejection that I wasn’t considered a woman worthy of a yes. “What would the job entail?”
He watched me with an intensity that made me want to crawl out of my skin, like it was too small for everything inside of me. “Be available for meetings to plot and character develop. Read for me when I send the manuscript and provide critical feedback. Talk me off any ledges. Or push me off them, if that’s what you think I need. Help me make my stories better. What do you say?”
What could I say? Thomas Bane was a sensation, famous not only in the literary world but in the pop culture stream. His Instagram had seventy million followers. Page Six followed him around like he was their only job. He was, at that very moment, on a forty foot billboard for TAG Heuer in Times Square.
And he was asking me for help.
“Say yes, you idiot!” the girl behind me hissed, presumably the one who’d shoved me toward his table when my feet had failed me.
Thomas Bane’s smile tilted higher. Otherwise, he didn’t react.
Say something. You have to answer right now.
In the span of a handful of seconds, I weighed it out. He wanted my help, and I loved to help people. I’d beta read for authors a hundred times and had always found it fulfilling, to offer my advice in order to make a story the best it could be. In fact, I loved it and took every opportunity to say yes, should it arise.
So why wasn’t I jumping at the chance to help Thomas oh-my-God-quit-smiling-at-me-like-that Bane?
On paper, there was no reason. Floating around in my head were a hundred, the topmost being that when he looked like that, I actually felt like my panties were on fire.
He watched me expectantly. But when that smile of his dropped incrementally, coupled with the almost infinitesimal draw of his brows, I caved.
He wanted my help, and I had to give it.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed in thought. “Wait. No as in yes? Or no as in no?”
“I will happily tell you no at every opportunity. If that’s what you want, I’m your girl.”
There it was again, that smile that probably cost more than most people’s cars. “I like the sound of that. I’ll message you through your blog and we can set up a time to meet.” He arranged the stack of books, straightening their corners before moving them a couple inches closer to me, the gesture strangely nervous and utterly disarming.
I found myself smiling. I picked up the books and deposited them in my bag. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Did you want a picture?” he asked.
I got the distinct impression he asked everyone that question simply because there was no way in hell anyone could have the constitution to make that request on their own. Not with his energy sapping everyone in a twenty foot radius of their wits.
“I…erm…”
He was out of his seat and stepping around the table before I could say no again, this time meaning the word in full. But there he was, approaching like a thunderstorm. My chin lifted as he approached. He was at least a foot taller than me, the air around him charged, everything about him dark. His hair. His beard. His bottomless eyes. His jacket that smelled like Italian leather and combat boots to match, the laces half untied and the top gaping open with irreverence.
My senses abandoned me completely. The effect of him was amplified by his proximity, and there was nothing to do but submit. And so, there I was, tucked into Thomas Bane’s side with his arm wrapped around me like hot, heavy steel.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to curl into him, fist the lapels of his jacket, and bury my face in his chest.
I couldn’t have reached anything else if I’d tried. My nose came approximately to his nipples.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked, but the rumble of the words through his chest vibrated through me to the point of absolute distraction.
“Ah…um…”
“Here, we’ll take one with mine.” With a slight shift, he retrieved his phone, holding it out for a selfie. “Say irredeemable asshole!”
A laugh burst out of me. And then his hand lowered.
I stiffened. “Wait, did you take it?”
He nodded, smiling down at his phone. “I’ll tag your blog on Instagram.”
“But…I mean…is it okay? I’m not…”
He looked down at me, and for a second, I lost myself in the vision of him this close, from this angle. I could see the fine lines in his lips, the thick clusters of his lashes, the depth of his eyes—the brown was finally visible, so deep there were almost hints of a deep, dark crimson.
“You look gorgeous. See?”
I tore my eyes away from his to glance at his phone and almost didn’t recognize myself. My eyes were closed, my nose scrunched, my smile big and wide and happy as I’d unwittingly leaned into him.
A hot flutter brushed my ribs. “Oh…that’s…”
He laughed, a short sound through his nose as he pulled away. “I’m glad you came today. Tell Janessa to email my brother if she wants any more books signed, and we’ll send them to the office.”
“O-okay.”
The girl behind me cleared her throat, and I glanced back at her apologetically. She looked furious.
“Sorry,” I said quietly.
“Ugh, life is just not fair.” She brushed past me and plunked a stack of books on the table.
Thomas Bane’s smiling eyes were on me as he took his seat, and I waved lamely before turning to walk away.
And I swear I could feel those eyes burning a hole in my back the whole way out the door.
BOOKED, coming January 24, 2018
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Thank you
Once again, my husband Jeff gets the first thank you, as without him, I would not only be a soggy, lost, miserable mess, but would have no idea what true love was. You’re the reason for everything, babe. Thank you for every bit of your love.
Kandi Steiner — Thank you for always listening, always making me smile, always granting me your love from thousands of miles away. I love you forever and always, more than tacos.
Kerrigan Byrne — You make everything better. Everything, always, all the things. Working with you, laughing with you, tearing my hair out with you, everything has changed me in the best way. Cheers to another b
ook under our belts, and here’s to many more.
Abbey Byers — Eights rule. Eights are basically the best thing to ever happen to the world (which we are sure to tell that to everyone who asks and all the people who don’t), and you’re one of the best things to happen to me. When we put our crazy eight brains together, magic happens. I am so thankful for you, for your time and energy, for your devotion and utter brilliance.
Jana Aston — Goddammit, woman. Working with you, plotting with you, laughing with you, has been one of the highlights of writing this book. I am so glad we glommed onto each other like barnacles and are working together daily. You make my days better and brighter and less lonely.
Kyla Linde — Blurb hound extraordinaire. Pinch hitting beta. My extra set of eyes and my daily dose of companionship. I am a richer woman for knowing you, and I am fortunate to call you one of my best friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything.
Sasha Erramouspe — YOU, my darling, are an absolute gem. Once again, you read for me in a pinch, petted my hair, sent me all the feedback, listened to all my waffling, and laughed at my corny lines like a champ. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your time and energy and brain and heart and soul.
Laura Leiva — Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this and correct all my Spanish, even those words that had no meaning and made no sense! Next time I’m in Spain, paella is on me.
Marjorie Whitehorn — To the President of the Staci Hart Hair Petting club, thank you for always reading my excerpts and telling me how pretty and smart I am. Some days, I really, really need that to go on, and you have always got my back for that.
Scott Kolman-Keen — Thank you for finding the time with your busy schedule to help me with the ins and outs of belonging to a pit orchestra. Your advice was instrumental to this process and story, and the life you breathed into this aspect of the novel is undeniable.
Carrie Ann Ryan — Thank you for the abundance of advice and support you’ve given me! You have helped shift how I see so many things in ways that have made a huge difference
Karla Sorensen — Thank you once again for reading for me, for your honesty and practicality. Your advice is so necessary in my life, and I’m so honored to be the neediest person in your life that didn’t actually come from your body.