The Titan Was Tall (Triple Threat Book 1)

by Kristen Casey

  And yet, girls like Eight always seemed to sniff out his money from a mile away. Didn’t seem to matter what Red wore, where Red went…they found him. They knew him. They were ready for him, and his fat wallet. It was damned exhausting. He couldn’t imagine how much more it might suck to actually be famous—an actor or a rock star or something. He’d probably have to become a hermit.

  Eventually, he decided it must have been his sneakers, this time. They were a little too new, a little too flashy. Red had allowed the sales guy to talk him into them, but only because they were comfortable, and he’d already grown impatient with the process. Just his luck that Waitress Eight knew her high-end footwear.

  Feeling deflated, Red picked up half his turkey club and took a bite. While he chewed, he peeked over at Piper. Just to check on her—not because he wanted to confirm that she was, in fact, far prettier than Eight.

  She’d clearly already spotted him, and even more obviously had witnessed his exchange with the waitress. Rather than rolling her eyes at the presumptuous girl, though—or even looking disgusted with him—Piper merely seemed perplexed, like she thought she’d missed something.

  Whatever spell Piper had been under before had been broken. Apparently, re-entry to the real world was a bitch. She wasn’t watching the other customers any longer or rapidly setting words to the page. She merely stared down at her notebook like her work profoundly disappointed her, then snapped it closed and slipped it into her large leather bag.

  Piper fussed with her hair, taking it down, twisting it behind her head, and tying it back up again. Her lovely face was now marred by an expression of dismay. She glanced directly at him as she gathered up the remains of her lunch, and Red knew with a jolt that he couldn’t let her leave before he’d spoken to her.

  Without thinking too much about that, he bolted upright, tray in hand. Piper’s expression mutated into alarm as he marched toward her, but before she could make her excuses and her escape, Red plunked down his lunch and took the seat opposite her.

  “Why, Ms. Fulham,” he grinned. “What a pleasant surprise. Mind if I join you?”

  Indecision was written all over her face, but there’d be no evading him now. Red sprawled just a little, extending knees and elbows to discourage her easy exit from her sheltered little nook. Piper sure looked like she might try to make a break for it. The question was, why?

  “Be my guest,” she said, her cordial words totally at odds with her jumpy demeanor. She eyed Red narrowly as he dug into his sandwich.

  He winked at her. Piper’s posture relaxed not at all—but she did slide back into her chair the tiniest fraction.

  “Thanks,” he told her, once he’d swallowed. “I owe you one.”

  Red would have to be careful not to miss any steps in this dance, he thought. His body wanted to skip a bit farther ahead than was sensible, now that he was close to her again.

  “I…” Her brow wrinkled. “For what?”

  She smiled, though, the soul of propriety despite her evident confusion. Even though he’d sucked face with her last night, Piper was back to treating him like her boss. And, while the idea did hold a certain sordid appeal, Red wanted her mind in a very different place with him.

  “For giving me a safe harbor,” he explained. He jerked his chin at his former table, where Eight was wiping down the linoleum with a disgruntled scowl. “The vultures were circling.”

  Piper’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline when she squinted over his shoulder.

  “I doubt that woman has ever been called a vulture before in her life.”

  He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”

  Piper was studying the waitress with a bit more intensity than he’d prefer, so he added, “Don’t make eye contact.”

  Startled, she looked back at him. That was better.

  “Why not?”

  He wiped his mouth with his napkin and risked his own look at the other woman. “What do you suppose she sees when she looks at me? A random guy out for a run on his lunch break, or a meal ticket?”

  Piper’s brows darted upward again. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “No need. I’ll tell you. She’s not interested in my devastating wit or my sparkling personality.” That elicited a cute smirk out of his little author. Good.

  “No?”

  “She is, however, quite interested in my bank account.”

  “You talked to her for about two minutes. Was it that obvious?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “Ew.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Red agreed.

  Piper examined Eight again, this time like she would a bug under a microscope.

  “Maybe she thought you were cute,” she mused, darting a glance at him.

  “Possibly,” he conceded, “Though I kind of doubt it. How old must she be? Nineteen?”

  Piper studied the waitress as she stomped past, heading behind the counter and back into the depths of the kitchen.

  “Yeah, probably. Give or take a few years—it’s a little hard to tell, with all that…” she trailed off, waving a hand around her own mostly-unadorned face.

  Red was more than happy to finish her thought. “Makeup. Right. There was an awful lot of it, wasn’t there? It’s certainly her prerogative to look however she wants, but I can’t help thinking she’d look healthier without it.” He polished off his sandwich and went to work on his protein shake. “Besides, I’m old enough to be her father.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  God, it was just too easy. “You didn’t know me when I was twenty,” he remarked.

  That surprised a laugh out of her. Now, Red figured it was time for the coup de grace.

  “Have dinner with me again.” He wanted to be both casual and impossible to refuse. Tricky, that.

  Piper flushed a delicious shade of pink and tensed all over. “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  “But I want to.” Red scrambled to come up with something to convince her. “Listen, you have an early flight out tomorrow, right? I can pick you up at five and have you back to the hotel before you know it.” At least, he probably could. As long as he didn’t end up banging her in the back of a town car or something.

  Red willed Piper to say yes. It was suddenly imperative that she agree—he could taste his need for her acquiescence on his tongue like a wine that had turned sour.

  Piper fiddled with her pen, delaying. In all the attention Red had been paying to her face, her hair—her freaking collarbones, for crying out loud—he hadn’t noticed that she was still gripping it. When she registered that he was watching her, her hands froze.

  “Okay,” she said, and Red exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  “I’m at the St. Regis,” she added. Unnecessarily, in his opinion, given that he’d already tangled tongues with her in that exact location.

  Red’s grin stretched across his face and he hoped it didn’t come off as too fucking feral. “Yes, I remember. I’ll meet you out front. Five o’clock, if that works.”

  Piper swallowed. “Sounds good,” she told him.

  “I agree.”

  She jammed her pen deep into her bag and looked around a little wildly. “Okay. Well. I should—”

  Red should…whatever…as well. He still had to shower and change before his next meeting.

  “One more cup of coffee,” he blurted quickly.

  Piper looked taken aback. Damn. He had to be more careful with her. Charging around like a bull in a china shop was not the way to approach this.

  “Please,” Red added, forcing himself to say it gently.

  “Okay,” she said once more. “Thanks.”

  He gestured toward the front of the shop, relieved that Eight was not working the register anymore. “I’ll go order. How do you take it?”

  Piper ran her palms over the scuffed wood table and took a deep breath. “Half-caff medium roast, with about a quarter cup of two-percent milk,” she instructed him.

 
Red studied her. For someone who liked to look askance at his demanding mannerisms, Piper sure had her moments.

  “That’s oddly…specific,” he told her.

  She shrugged. “I know what I like.”

  He’d had her pegged as the fancy coffee type. Red would have bet that Piper liked it sweet and weird, with soy milk or caramel foam or some other nonsense. He supposed that fit his admittedly ass-backward notion of a romance writer, better than the reality of Piper Fulham did.

  To be sure he hadn’t missed anything, he asked, “You sure you don’t want to spice it up a bit?”

  “No. Why would I?” At his quizzical expression, Piper confided, “Sometimes, I’ll get the medium, instead of the small. You know, if it’s an especially rough morning. But I’m pretty good today.”

  Red snorted. Piper took umbrage and dropped the social niceties for once.

  “Okay, big shot. What about you? What’s so special about your coffee order, huh?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “Full octane dark roast, brewed at home, sometimes with half-and-half. I don’t even grind my own beans,” he added, in case she got any ideas from him knowing it was dark roast. Red had simply spent many dejected, under-caffeinated mornings staring at the label over the years, waiting for his coffee machine to whir into life.

  Piper tilted her pretty head and regarded him with a frown, something in what he’d said stoking her inveterate curiosity. “What’s the deciding factor?”

  Red was busy repeating her coffee order to himself in his head, over and over. He didn’t want to forget it when he finally reached the counter, but he especially didn’t want to forget it if he ever managed to get this woman to spend a night in his bed.

  Not if—when. That was something that absolutely had to happen. This woman had his jaded, shriveled heart beating like no one else had in years. Red stared into space, calculating his odds of success.

  Absently, he replied, “What do you mean?”

  Piper rolled her eyes. “I mean, what determines whether or not you take cream in it?”

  Was there something wrong with him? When Piper got all exasperated, everything she said came out sounding a little dirty. Red looked back at her and gave her what he hoped was a seductive smirk.

  “That’s easy. If the half-and-half in my fridge is still good, I put some in my coffee. If it isn’t, I don’t. I am very easy to please.”

  She popped up out of her chair and turned toward the counter, plainly deciding it was safer to order her own coffee. “Oh my God,” she groaned as she edged away. “That was such a guy thing to say.”

  Red rose and slipped his hand around Piper’s arm before she could get too far and wished he could press her back against his chest—and other interested parts of him. He wanted to hear Piper let out that little sigh again, like she had when she melted into his embrace in her hotel hallway.

  Red dipped his head and breathed next to the delicate shell of her ear, “In case you haven’t noticed, I am very much a guy.”

  She gasped.

  Sadly, that was the moment Wayne chose to come flying into the café like his hair was on fire.

  “Oh, cool,” his assistant said, looking between them. “You found her.”

  “Excuse me?” Piper said.

  “Oh. Busted,” Wayne muttered.

  Piper squinted up at Red, looking like she was making all sorts of feminine calculations behind those amber eyes. “I was under the impression this was a lucky coincidence,” she said.

  Wayne opened his mouth, but Red held up his hand before his assistant could say anything dimwitted. Piper’s gaze dropped to his fingers and hitched there.

  “It was, and it wasn’t,” he told her.

  Piper rolled her eyes and groaned.

  “Still want that coffee?”

  She looked at Wayne. “Do we have time?”

  “Yeah, sure. This meeting wasn’t supposed to be anything formal. I’ll just call and tell them we’ll be late.”

  “Okay, good,” Piper chirped. “Then you can eat the portobello melt I got you.”

  Red arched an eyebrow at his right-hand man. “That bad?” he wondered. The minute shit got critical, his assistant, without fail, began craving cheese. It didn’t matter what form it came in—Wayne’s urge was as reliable as death and taxes.

  “Um, yes. Are you surprised?”

  Red shook his head. “You guys have a seat,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Wayne, you want something to drink?”

  “Just some water.”

  Red watched the two of them cozy up at the table and battled back the annoyance that had sizzled to the surface with Wayne’s arrival. It didn’t matter that he had to share Piper, now. Red had secured an even bigger prize for later, in the form of a second dinner date.

  While he stood in the line at the register, he refocused and began plotting their evening.

  SEVEN

  “MR. MACLELLAN, I hardly need to remind you that my client won the Goldstein award for Come Hither, Moon. It’s very prestigious. And I should think PKM would want that kind of cachet as it moves forward with the Trident transition,” Samantha Copeland said.

  “Nevertheless,” Red pointed out, “Ms. Wilbon has been promising us a new title for the last two years, and she has yet to deliver.”

  Rachel sniffed and tossed her hair, though the intended effect was marred somewhat by the fact that she’d shellacked her yellow curls into near-total immobility.

  “The Dentons understood that the literary arts can’t be forced to bend according to some…” Rachel paused and scowled in evident distaste, “…bottom line.”

  Red reminded her, “Trident’s bottom line is what ensures you get paid, Ms. Wilbon.”

  Samantha cleared her throat and tried a placating smile on for size. “Rachel still has four months left on her contract,” she said. “And she’s so close to finishing her manuscript. You can’t cut her loose before you even see it. That would be madness.”

  “And not the kind of madness that gets a man’s blood pumping. Red, you have to trust me. This book will be worth the wait and then some,” Rachel purred.

  Speaking of crazy, Red was totally fed up with these two women’s efforts to alternately bully him and seduce him into submission. He had a dinner with Piper to get to, and he did not intend to be even one second late to it.

  He flipped Wilbon’s file closed and folded his hands on top. “You have four months. If your book is not complete and in the hands of Trident’s editors by then, you’re done. No more extensions. No more exceptions. Understood?”

  Rachel’s cherry-red lips popped open, but her agent was quicker. “I knew you’d see reason,” Samantha said, then pulled her client out of her seat and dragged her away.

  Red gritted his teeth and watched them go, resentment simmering. He had no doubt the battle had not been won—merely delayed somewhat. Robert was going to have an absolute field day when he found out.

  THE IRRITATION THAT Rachel Wilbon and her agent had left festering in their self-important wakes simply wouldn’t dissipate. Red knew he’d been handled, but it had been a necessary concession in pursuit of a larger goal.

  After they left, he gave up on getting anything else accomplished for the day and made the trip over to Piper’s hotel earlier than necessary. Red ordered a stiff drink, parked himself in an armchair near the doorway of the hotel bar, and settled in to wait.

  Piper had gotten out of her last meeting an hour before. As instructed, Wayne had called him the minute they’d finished up. For all their sakes, Red hoped the second conference had gone more smoothly than the first, but Wayne would fill him in on that in the morning.

  For now, Red was simply looking forward to seeing Piper. He was jonesing for their dinner, so he could watch her across the table, unfettered, like a lovestruck puppy.

  When she finally appeared, he admired her outfit once more. She was still wearing the black sleeveless dress she’d had on earlier, with a small flared ruffle that brushed
the tops of her knees. Feminine, yet professional. It hugged her curves like…like Red wanted to.

  There was almost no one else in the place, but she didn’t notice him when she came in. Red didn’t make his presence known. Call it research—he wanted to see what she’d do.

  Piper paced directly to the bar, back straight, head high. She slipped onto a bar stool and a scant minute later had two fingers of MacLellan Black in front of her. Once she’d taken her first sip, her shoulders relaxed fractionally. Hard day, he guessed.

  Red frowned, wondering what specifically had driven Piper to drink. Anika was only supposed to briefly outline the terms that had changed in the new contract, then let her go. Piper didn’t even need to sign the thing for another couple weeks. And it was hardly like they were shafting her—Red had sweetened Piper’s deal considerably, to underline how committed they were to keeping her in the fold.

  There were two other possibilities. Her second meeting with the design people could’ve devolved into a worse mess than before, but Red expected Wayne would’ve warned him if that was the case.

  Or maybe it was the notion that she had to meet him again that had Piper looking for some liquid courage. He couldn’t imagine why that might be—Piper didn’t even know about his raunchier impulses yet. Red had been on his best behavior so far. Mostly.

  Perhaps this was simply what Piper did with her evenings. Maybe he was kidding himself and she was just a drunk. Watching her, Red doubted it, though. Sure, she was putting on a good show of being sophisticated, but she looked a little too stiff to be at ease with the whole solo barfly routine. This was something else.

  Before long, Piper had polished off her glass and stood to leave. Red straightened his tie and cuffs, then cleared his throat when she passed his table. Piper jolted in surprise.

  He liked the way her eyes went wide at the sight of him and loved the bronze sheen of her hair in the low lighting.