Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3)

by Alice Bello

  People were staring at them, as if transfixed by a bug zapper.

  It was creepy.

  I spotted Greta, Janine’s partner at Branded Publishing. Silver haired and dressed as if she belonged to a country club, she had two of her assistant editors in tow as she crossed the floor in front of me. I waved and she waved back, absently, but kept on walking. And then she stopped dead-- her assistants halted and backed away in a hurry. She turned and took another look at me, and then at Raphael.

  Her eyes got that dreamy look cartoon coyotes get when dreaming about roasted roadrunners.

  To her credit she shook that off and took another long look at me.

  “Hope? Is that you?”

  I nodded. “Hi Greta.” I gestured around me. “This is one hell of a party.”

  She smiled. There was something about Greta that always confused me. She was probably one of the most intelligent women I’d ever met, and that meant that everything I said to her usually counted against me. Plus, one could never be sure what she really meant when she said something to you.

  “I think it’s going well.”

  I nodded.

  She gave me an up and down look again. “I love the dress. I didn’t know you even had breasts.”

  Okay, that was blunter than I’d expected from her.

  Her gaze went over to Raphael again. “And your use of accessories is genius.”

  I gulped as Raphael stood a little taller, and smiled like he was a movie star.

  “Ah… where’s Janine?”

  Greta rolled her eyes and pointed to the rear corner of the ballroom. “Over at the bar, getting soused.”

  “She’s drinking?” I’d never seen her drink before. She usually wanted to be at the top of her game in all business matters.

  “As I said, I think we’re doing great… she’s having a mental breakdown.” She stepped to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Could you go and try to talk her down? We need her to work her magic tonight, not fall off her barstool and face plant on the dance floor.”

  She turned on her heel and marched off, her assistants running after her.

  Okay, this was new. Janine was flaking out. And Greta thought I could calm her down?

  “I’ve missed a step.”

  “What?” Raphael asked.

  I looked up at him and shook my head. “Let’s get a drink and see what’s up with my boss, okay?”

  He smiled, his dark eyes too rich—too warm, too damn sexy to make me feel even the least bit calm. “Lead the way.”

  It was one of those times when you can see where you want to go, and it doesn’t look all that far, but then you keep having to detour, and turn around, and you get run into until you want to scream.

  We made it to the bar in what seemed like a hundred years (and was more like four minutes). Janine sat at the bar, one hand around a half-full rocks glass, her other hand held over her mouth as if she were about to sob or scream. Her eyes were wide open and staring at her own reflection in the wall length mirror behind the bar.

  “Hey boss lady,” I said as I bumped her playfully with my hip. She didn’t seem to even notice, a thousand yard stare her only expression.

  “Earth to Janine!” I took hold of her shoulders and shook her. Her eyes were glazed and they didn’t focus on me as I pulled her so she looked straight at me. This had to be bad. I’d known her for over a year and a half and she’d never been a loss for words.

  She blinked as her eyes finally focused on me, and then she swallowed.

  “Oh, Hope. You’re here.” She brought the glass up to her lips and drained it in one long swallow.

  “What’s going on, Janine. Why are you freaked out?”

  She set her drink on the bar and motioned for the bartender to refill her. “The party…”

  And she just started staring at her reflection again.

  “The party,” I said, “is a smash. Look at all these people.”

  “It’s a disaster.” She looked down at the fresh drink the bartender placed before her. “Terra…”

  Oh no. Terra Banks, the big fish, New York Times Bestselling author Janine had been wooing hadn’t shown up.

  “I’m so sorry, Janine. Maybe she was too busy to come.”

  Janine frowned, her eyes locking on me like she about to shoot me.

  “No, she came.”

  I bit my lip, not understanding. “So what’s the problem?”

  She turned on her stool and pointed across the room to where the buffet was laid out, and tall, naked, muscular men were carved out of ice.

  “Terra Banks is a man, Hope. A freaking man!”

  I shrugged. “And that’s a problem how?”

  Janine glared at me with open hostility. “He’s gay.”

  I blinked. Okay, I never thought Janine was bigoted, but everyone had their prejudices.

  “Writers use pen names of the opposite sex all the time,” I said, trying to smooth things over. “J.K. Rowling… Rob Thurman… Emily Bronte…”

  She rolled her eyes at me and took another long drink. “It’s not that he has a pen name. Everyone uses a pen name anymore.” She shook her head and held her forehead. “It’s that I’m no good with gay men. I just have no idea how to talk to them.”

  Huh? “You never stop talking,” I said, and then wished I’d said something a bit more tactful. “I mean, you can talk to anyone.”

  She looked truly lost as she looked at me again. “Sure, I can charm a woman writer with the best of them, and I can flirt with straight men… even lesbians,”—okay, this was going into TMI territory—“but I just clam up when I’m faced with a gay man. I draw a complete blank.”

  Dear god.

  “He’s a man, he’s gay,” she lamented, “and he’s standing over there Tweeting how boring this party is.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  She picked up her iPhone and showed me the screen. Terra Banks’ twitter feed.

  Okay, that was bad.

  Janine’s eyes opened up wide and she reached out and grabbed my arm. “You have to help me!”

  Lord, take me now…

  “I-I-I can’t.”

  “You. Have. To.”

  I shook my head emphatically. Raphael, silent until now, started to chortle in the background. I was going to kick him where it hurt if he started in on me. I swear to god!

  “Just go over there and talk to him. Get him to sign with us.”

  Really, just go over there and talk him into signing with Branded Publishing. When she, the CEO hadn’t been able to.

  Sure…

  “You’re part of the team here, Hope!” Her eyes shined with desperation. “We need her to join us. She’s the biggest name in Indie publishing.”

  “I don’t know what I could say…”

  “Sell her… him, on your covers.”

  I sighed. “You said he already has a cover artist.” The amazing and much vaunted Poe.

  She pulled me even closer. Her grip was tight enough I’d probably have bruises tomorrow. “Change her mind.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said as I pried her fingers from my arm. “I’ll give it a try.”

  “Hope,” she almost screamed, “we need her… him, you know what I mean! We have to get him to sign. This is a must. I need Terra Banks. The company needs him.” She lowered her voice to a hostile growl. “Don’t fail me.”

  Shiiit…

  I’d thought my job was secure. Should have known things were going down the toilet when she’d practically started panting when she mentioned Poe on the phone last week.

  So now I had to wow the big time author, face to face, when my boss was too scared to even speak to him.

  Perfect.

  I felt kind of numb as I turned and started across the room to the buffet, Raphael by my side. This was so not the way I had hoped the evening would turn out.

  I was hoping I’d just stand here for a little while and smile as Janin
e sang my praises and then maybe I’d answer some questions about my covers.

  And then I’d go home.

  I wanted to go home.

  But so did Mr. Terra Banks.

  I needed to make him want to stay.

  Fat chance…

  “I don’t like the way your boss talks to you,” Raphael said.

  I looked up at him, and he looked genuinely ticked.

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t usually… she’s just under a lot of pressure.”

  He scowled, his dark eyes digging into me, making me feel as if I was about to spontaneously burst into flames.

  “From what you and Bette have told me, and from what I just heard, she’s threatened your job three times in the last month.”

  Okay, when he put it that way…

  “I don’t think it’s acceptable for the CEO of the company to act like that to their employees. It’s very unprofessional.”

  I stopped in my tracks. I’d never thought of it like that. I was just grateful to have a job I loved that paid the bills and then some. I’d never thought about the way I was being treated.

  Not that Janine was a monster, or a boss from hell. But still…

  The man had a point.

  I turned and pulled him close, holding him by the front of his silk shirt, looking imploringly up into his dark brown eyes. “Maybe you’re right.”—He was completely right—“But I need to do this now… help me out?”

  He sighed, his sweet breath tickling my nose. “Fine, I’m your man.”

  It was my turn to sigh. Thank god. I didn’t think I could get though this if he was going to keep bringing up how much my life sucked.

  We trekked the rest of the way to the buffet and I strode right up to Mr. Terra Banks. At first I thought he was staring at the six foot tall naked male ice sculpture, but then I realized he was gazing at the new Olivia Lovelace cover: the one with Jake on the cover.

  I felt my get-up-and-go drain down to less than a half tank in a matter of seconds. What if he asked how I’d done it, taken such a great picture?

  “So, you like my picture?”

  He turned and blinked at me through stylish wire framed glasses. He was thin, tall, a coppery redhead with pale green eyes and peach freckles.

  Just adorable…

  “You’re Hope Jones?”

  Okay, he knew my name… that was creepy. Well, maybe not. I was sure Janine had given all the potential clients my name.

  “That’s me.”

  He took out his impossibly thin smart phone and typed out a text.

  If he was the type to text in the middle of a conversation… this was going to be much harder than I’d thought.

  “So, you like the cover… Terra?”

  He winced. “Name’s Michael.” He typed with his thumbs with inhuman speed. Then he hit send and slid his phone back in his jacket pocket like a gunslinger. “And yes, I do like your covers.”

  Okay, cool. He liked them.

  He turned and pointed to Jake’s cover. “But this one is different from your others.”

  Yep, he was going there.

  To lie or not to lie?

  I took a deep breath and made my choice. “It was an accident. A fluke snapshot, and I ended up using it for a cover.”

  He laughed on perfect ha, and then slid his eyes my way.

  “An accidental shot, huh?” He waited for me to elaborate.

  “Yeah, we were…” I couldn’t say it.

  “Having sex?”

  “Yes,” I said, “having sex.”

  Raphael coughed uncomfortably.

  “I… I regret it now.”

  Michael, a.k.a Terra, raised an eyebrow. “He got mad when you asked permission?”

  “He got furious when I didn’t.”

  “Oh…”

  I sucked in some air and tried to steady myself. I could still feel the guilt and hurt churning inside me. My eyes started to burn, ready to start tearing up.

  “It was an amazingly effective way to get a guy to walk out on me.”

  Raphael touched my back, his hand so warm and gentle.

  “Yeah,” Michael said, “guys can be funny like that.”

  I blinked back my tears. “So, Michael… you’re a dude?”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “I couldn’t even giveaway my first novel as a man.” He picked his cell phone out of his breast pocket and looked at the screen, then stuffed it back in the pocket. “I did get a couple reviewers who fell all over themselves telling me that I, as a man, had no idea how to write women. That a woman would never think like that, or act like that, or do the things I had them doing.

  “I’ve been working with women since I was sixteen. Most of my friends are women. And they most certainly talk and act like the women I write about.”

  He leaned against the buffet table and stared off into space for a moment. “And then I decided to get a sex change, identity wise, and voila… I’ve never had one reviewer say a word about my not writing from a woman’s point of view correctly again.

  “Hell, just last week I had a man email me that I didn’t understand men enough to write from their side of the story.”

  I had to smile.

  “I couldn’t stop laughing at that one.”

  I groaned as I tried to broach the subject I’d come to talk to him about.

  “Janine really wants to get you to sign with her.”

  Michael’s eyelids lowered as he gave me a wily stare. “You mean the Janine who hasn’t said two words to me since I introduced myself?”

  I sighed. “You noticed.”

  We both laughed.

  “What’s up with that?”

  “Says she’s no good with… ah…”

  His smile turned ruthless. “With gay guys?”

  I shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “She did seem a lot more charming in her emails and texts.”

  “She sent me to try and smooth things over, I guess.”

  “I like your covers,” he said, “but I’m committed to my current cover artist. He has an eye like no one else.”

  “I understand that.” Okay, this was where I was supposed to tell him that my covers were better, even when they weren’t. I was supposed to sell myself. “But I’m sure that if you sign with Branded, Janine would be happy to keep Poe as your personal cover artist.”

  I could practically feel about two layers of skin peel off my back as I said it.

  Michael looked at me and smiled, befuddled. “You are a most unusual woman.”

  “You have no idea,” Raphael chimed in. “The first time I met her she threatened to take a shotgun to my balls.”

  Oh dear god… “I’m going to kill you, you know?”

  He shot me with his brilliant, lady killer smile. And then he aimed it at Michael.

  Michael’s eyes widened, his pupils dilated, and his mouth slid open.

  “Want to dance?” Raphael said, clearly flirting.

  I stood there and stared in awe. I had no idea he was gay… or was he bi-sexual?

  For crying out loud, I’d had a sex dream… no, two sex dreams, about a gay guy!

  Michael closed his mouth with a click and gulped. But then he stepped back and gave Raphael a weary smile.

  “You’re straight. I can practically smell it on you.”

  Raphael grinned and ran a hand through his short Mohawk, tousling it.

  “You’re right. But just for one song… you really don’t want to dance with me?”

  I had to give him credit… the man was good.

  “Okay…” Michael said. “One dance.”

  Raphael reached out and took his hand, and pulled him behind him across the room and onto the dance floor. A remix of Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody pumped and thumped as they started to dance.

  I just shook my head, not able to quite wrap my head around how my night was going.

  But just look at Raphael dance. I smiled, thinking about two men named after archangels gettin
g their dance on in a Texas ballroom.

  I looked over to the bar, and Greta and Janine looked back at me, Greta holding up her flute of champagne.

  I hoped they didn’t think I’d gotten him to say yes. All I’d done so far was get him to talk to me, taken my services off the table—which wasn’t at all smart of me—and then watched as my date stole him off to the dance floor.

  I glanced over to the dance floor and saw Michael had his damn cell phone out again and was texting.

  Really! He was that close to Raphael and could think of something other than sex?

  Okay, I so didn’t just think that. I was impartial. I was not going to start drooling over my arrogant, irritating, sexy-as-hell neighbor.

  Shiiit… I was already flashing back to him shirtless in my side yard, that damn chainsaw in his hands—boy, that had really made his muscular arms stand out.

  I practically jumped when I saw that Michael and Raphael were heading off the dance floor and right back to me.

  I put up my hands pleadingly. “Really, boys… I don’t dance.”

  Michael stopped right in front of me. “I have to confess something.”

  Oh god, he used to be a woman? He’s my long lost brother? What?

  “I didn’t come here to let Janine talk me into signing with her.”

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  “I came to meet you.”

  Okay, he went all creepy on me again. “But you said you want to keep your cover artist.” Where the hell was he going with this?

  He looked at his cell phone again and thumbed in a text again.

  That damn phone was going to make me have a stroke!

  He looked up at me and grimace. “I came so Poe could come and see you.”

  “Huh?” Poe wanted to meet me?

  No… he’d said Poe wanted to see me.

  “What do you mean see me? Do I already know him?”

  “I sure hope you do,” a chillingly familiar male voice said from behind Michael and Raphael.

  The two men parted and a tall, blond man with haunting hazel eyes and a crooked smile looked back at me.