by Corri Lee
Him. The man from Esme’s.
And he looked almost as surprised to see me. His face broke into a mind-numbing smile mid-examination of me and his weight shifted onto one leg. With no visual impairment, I could fully appreciate the finer details I’d not been able to see in the dimly lit bar with an astigmatism handicap.
The slight surprise in his eyes made them wider and greener, almost inhumanly vivid in emerald hue. He wasn’t cleanly shaven like he had been the night before, and the light muzzle of dark prickles spread up to his perfectly sculpted high cheek bones. A small scar marred his Cupid’s bow, maybe a souvenir from a drunken battle over a lovelorn woman. One small flaw in the face I’d considered a diamond.
Wow. I was careful not to outwardly express that opinion again. It hadn’t been until I locked eyes with him I realised just how much I’d wanted to run into him again and apologise for my less than verbose greeting and unimpressive display of pyrotechnics.
“Well—” I damn near flinched when he finally spoke, “—that’s a much better reaction than last night’s self-harm.”
Not knowing what he meant, I forced focus back onto myself and realised that I was grinning like a fool. Not my customer service smile, something genuine and deceptively soul exposing. And probably manic and shit-eating. He was one of those people who pure exuded joy, someone you couldn’t help but smile around. Just like Hunter.
“Sorry, it’s not intentional. The little man running auto-pilot in my head decided that was the appropriate response to your pheromones.” I cringed and mouthed ‘What?!’ at myself, blushing violently as I turned back to the shelf in self-defence. What the hell had possessed me to say something so obtuse? “So, any graphic novel in particular?”
The amusement in his voice provoked goose bumps. “No, just browsing. Unless you can recommend...?”
“Nope.” Straightening, I rounded him to make an escape. “I’ll be at the desk if you need any more help.”
I could have kicked myself for moving quite so hastily. Any remaining blood that hadn’t rerouted to my cheeks flooded to my hands and made them shake relentlessly against the old world cash desk, so hard that the rose quartz friendship bracelet Daniel had given me rattled against the wood. Esme, Chris and Mrs. Reynolds all stared at me, apparently still locked into the state of total noiselessness that they’d been pushed into when he walked through the door.
Eventually, Chris choked a laugh and shook his head at me. “‘Appropriate response to your pheromones’? Only you could dweeb up a chat up line like that.” My blush got impossibly deeper at the realisation they’d been listening in on the brief conversation and that they could be easily heard now.
“It wasn’t a chat up line,” I hissed, feeling like I might pass out if I didn’t get a grip. Chris muttered something about thinking I had better taste as he excused himself and left the shop, the exact moment the demigod slid into view and started walking towards us. Christ, give a girl a chance, I thought, willing some of the colour to drain from my face. His pace was leisurely enough for Esme to give me a thumbs up, assuring me that I didn’t look like a crazy person.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” I asked too cheerfully, tensing every muscle out of his view. What the hell was he doing to me? I wasn’t the type of woman who got hot and hormonal over men. Man, maybe. Just one.
“Sort of. I found something. Independent author, right?” He threw a book down on the desk in front of me and somehow Esme’s and Mrs. Reynolds’ silence thickened.
I swallowed hard at the sight of ‘Syncretic Sciences’ staring up at me. Of all the books in all the bookshops... “That’s right.”
“Did this Emmeline White do anything else?”
“Uh... no. Just that novel and we have the only two copies that got printed.”
“Huh...” I kept my eyes fixed on his hands sinuously stroking the spine of the book and felt the movement all over my body. He leaned closer towards me, forcing me instinctively back like a repelling magnet. “Shame, really. Did she come to you to sell them?”
“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Reynolds chipped in, granting me a precious second to reassemble my brain cells. “That’s how most of our independent works make it here.”
“Oh, so would you have means of contacting her? I’d like to petition for her to expand her bibliography.”
“No need.” The last ounce of blood in my body pooled in my face when she laughed and nodded in my direction. “Why go through the desk monkeys when you can go straight to head office?”
Meekly, I lifted my head to meet his scorching hot gaze and forced an almost apologetic smile. He hummed inquisitively on an exhale.
“Emmeline White, eh?” His voice caressed my name with aggressive sexuality. The fantasy of him growling it while he was balls deep inside me made my mouth dry. “That’s much better than what I’ve been calling you in my head.” He smirked at my raised eyebrow and clarified—”Lisbeth.”
“The Girl Who Played With Fire. Very clever.” I pulled my eyes away from his, needing to dispel the sunspots he left in my field of vision. “And you are?”
“Blaze.”
I immediately looked back at him and scowled. Giving a name like that seemed like a poor joke at my expense. “Are you trying to be funny?” For a moment it didn’t look like he understood, but then the dazzling smile crept back onto his face. His laugh was satiny and not even slightly patronising like it could have so easily been. He quickly gave off the impression that he’d never lied once in his life because his face could soften even the most brutal truths.
“I wasn’t but if it happened that way, that’s fine by me. Tell me, Emmeline...” The way he said my name again like we were familiar made my stomach knot. “... This is ‘Double Booked’, right? Hypothetically, if there are only two copies of a graphic novel and you sell just one, what happens to the other?”
“Um, well...” Coughing away the lump in my throat, I turned to find something arbitrary to distract me from his intense green eyes. “Usually, we take the spare off the shelf and contact the supplier or author to order more. If there are no more prints, it ends up in the book graveyard next door.”
He craned his neck to look at the adjacent unit. “The charity shop?”
“Sure. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ and all that jazz.”
He seemed to bristle at the word ‘trash’ and stalked back off beyond the shelves without a word, leaving the three of us to admire him from behind. That view was almost as impressive as the front from the shoulders down, and for the life of me, I couldn’t get past the primal urge to strip him bare and stare at him until the image of his naked body was permanently imprinted on my mind. Now there was a sight I wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
Too quickly, he came back and tossed the other copy of ‘Syncretic Sciences’ down, free hand digging into his back pocket for his wallet. “I can find a happy home for this,” he promised. “What the proverbs don’t tell you is what happens after that trash becomes treasure. Other people see it as treasure, too. Just look at any aspect of modern economy for proof. All it takes is one man’s idea and another man’s faith.”
Recognising Henry in that statement, I faltered just slightly in my reply. He was the ideas man, and there was no doubting that his unfathomable charisma was how he’d conned—... I mean convinced, people to put their belief in him. But I refused to believe that I was capable of anything like that just by paying for a couple of prints of my doodles.
“I expect my fan club to converge every Friday and send me love notes every month,” I joked.
“Well, today is Friday. No time like the present. This place closes at six, right?” He didn’t pause for a reply. “So I’ll head off now to get a start on those love notes and swing round to collect you later.”
My forehead knit into a frown while I scoured his comment for sarcasm. There was none. Even his seraphic face looked deathly serious—about fetching me from work at least, possibly not the love note
s.
“Isn’t there a pick up line missing from this conversation?”
He ducked down to my eye level, scrutinising me as I rang the books through the till and stuffed them into a paper bag. “You don’t look like you have a desire to be wined and dined before you’re sixty-nined...”
“I don’t.” My obsession with Hunter went deep enough to earn me a reputation as a heart-breaker for anyone who wanted anything more long-term than the time it took to find a vacant bed or sofa, take care of business and see me safely into a taxi. If a sordid screw was what he was after, he’d have done better propositioning me outright. I did, however, feel my pulse quicken at the dark promise in his observation.
“Well, then.” Blaze straightened, scooping his purchase up from the desk. “I’ll see you at six.”
Esme quickly pounced on the computer after we’d watched him leave in an awed muteness you’d probably only see on a playground after a childish brawl. There was a sudden and instant gush of nightmarish teenage gossip between her and Mrs. Reynolds the moment he slipped out of sight, followed by a rapid fire line of questioning I had few answers for.
“Do you think he knows who you are? He would have mentioned if he’d seen you pictured with your dad, right? Oh, but you never wear the specs when you’re out drinking, so maybe it didn’t click. Oh, wow, can you imagine the press coverage of you two?”
“Hold up.” I raised a hand to silence the onslaught. “Are you thinking he’s pursuing me to score a rich chick?”
“Oh, please.” Esme scoffed and navigated to a search engine over my shoulder, fingers flying so fast they were almost a blur. “Blaze has been in everything. Modelling for major labels, acting, he was the Monday’s Miracle front-man before they got big, and...”
A music video pinged up on the screen and blared The Bystander Effect’s cover of Weak into the shop. One of my favourites.
“He was the anti-CJ. He’s been near Amelia Marsh’s mouth.” I had more than a little girl crush on the woman who was more tattooed leg than body.
“Uh huh. That hot tamale who just ‘didn’t’ ask you out is already a big deal. And... well...” She sighed down at me ruefully. “As gorgeous and smoking hot as he is, he doesn’t date. He’s never pictured with female company despite obviously constantly beating them off with a big stick, and barely associates with anyone attached to a vagina. God knows I’ve tried.”
“Gay?” The question had to be asked.
“Implicitly no. He’s been asked in numerous interviews and nothing he says is anything other than the veritable truth.”
I felt slightly smug that I’d correctly identified that trait, but then frowned at the information Esme was laying in front of me in the medium of news clippings and online gossip blogs. “So what the hell was that?”
“For both our sakes, I’m hoping it was pillow talk.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard enough to blanch the skin in my fingers. “Please, Miss Untouchable, tap that. I need to live vicariously through you.”
I didn’t believe for a moment that ‘Blaze’—God, even his name did wicked things to me and described his visceral effect on me perfectly—would turn up in that threshold at six o’clock. Articles of how untouchable he was had been pushed under my nose all day and I couldn’t come up with a single good reason why I might be the woman he broke a pattern for. The more super-talented and gorgeous I found out he was, the more convinced I became that our verbal spar had been nothing but bravado. Even if he did secretly know which family I was really a part of, he had to be worth a lot of money himself. If he wasn’t after the millions I refused to touch, what the hell did he stand to gain?
I pushed the thought of him to the back of my mind with copious amounts of coffee and random reads from the Double Booked science-fiction shelves, and eventually Esme and Mrs. Reynolds forgot about him, too. The afternoon passed in what was essentially an audio-described flashback for Mrs. Reynolds’ benefit; Esme recalling the tales of her dire childhood to explain exactly why she was seeking asylum with us. At times it looked like they might both cry, so totally engrossed in the woe, and these were the times I dozed covertly, having heard the montage of memories often enough to no longer empathise.
My head and elbow leaned against the window, cooling the throb of both the hangover and the burn enough for me to feel drowsy. On my lap laid a battered old sketchbook full of the more decorative pieces that had been too detailed for my graphic novel.
God, at least one person was going to read that book and have a damned good laugh. Of all the graphic novels in this shop, and we had a pretty extensive collection, why did he have to pick mine?
I was toying with the idea of him using the other copy for toilet paper when a peculiar little bug of a maroon car pulled up to the kerb outside the shop and idled, engine still running but no signs of life inside. The windows were tinted enough to reveal that the lone occupant was male but little else.
“Looks like your sexy visitor came back after all,” Mrs. Reynolds quipped, pulling my attention away from the window long enough for the driver to step out onto the street and lean up against the side of the vehicle, casual as anything.
Once the disbelief melted away, horror struck me. Turning to Esme, I opened my mouth to insist that I’d see her home safe before I even entertained putting my safety in the hands—and car—of the man standing outside.
“If you blow him off, I will kill you. I know where you sleep,” she muttered, staring lustfully through the window. “But if you’re not at the bar by nine to gossip, I’ll send out a search party.”
“Thanks,” I said wistfully, wrinkling my nose at the spectacle outside. “I appreciate it.”
The minute the clock ticked around to the hour, Blaze was on that threshold looking divine and almost hopeful. He’d shaved and styled his hair back, looking more like the hot stud I’d seen at the bar and less like the ruffled bad boy I’d seen in the shop earlier that day. I couldn’t possibly decide which side of him I preferred because both were equally as delicious.
He greeted me with a purr and took my sketchbook from my hand. “Ready to go?”
“Almost, I just—” Esme appeared with my bag and draped it over my shoulder, discernibly whimpering with need for the demigod. “Okay, so I guess I’m ready.”
With a smile, Blaze lead me out to the path and paused at the passenger door, pulling it open for me to climb in.
“Seriously?”
“You don’t like my city car?”
I scoffed scornfully, the unwillingly well groomed feline in me unleashing fully sharpened claws. “That’s not a car. It’s a Cygnet.” My form had graced the back seat of many fine vehicles over the past twenty-two years, and his boxcar didn’t make the grade.
“It’s an Aston Martin,” he objected.
“It’s a gremlin car.” Shuddering, I resigned myself to my fate and stepped past the open door to get it, flinching when he slammed it behind me.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, he started the engine before I had chance to fasten the seatbelt. “Do you have something better than this tucked away?” I bit my lip. I’d never confess to anyone that I had an untouched cobalt blue Bentley hidden away in a private garage. It was another token of Henry’s ‘affection’ that I refused to touch. “Don’t worry, I don’t fill her up after midnight, so she won’t mutate and eat you.”
“Unless ‘she’ secretly transforms into Optimus Prime in the dead of night, I’m withholding any hope that this thing won’t put me in a coffin.” He stopped to look at me and laughed before pulling out into the dense city traffic, tutting at my white knuckle grip on the seat either side of my legs.
“So how’s the elbow?”
“Fine, just stiff.” A blatant and pitiful lie. The amount of analgesics pumping around my system might have just been the reason why I could string coherent sentences together around him, but there was still a searing pain in my elbow every time I moved. Luckily, I think I’d cried so much over my teenage years
that my tear ducts were paralysed through over use.
“You need an aloe vera plant,” he mused, tossing an arm around my headrest to bridge the gap between our seats. I wanted to scream at him to keep both hands on the steering wheel but fear for my life kept me quiet. “Don’t worry, I checked our route and there are no open flames.”
“Our route?” There was a glint of mischief in his eye that he didn’t put words to. I shuffled uncomfortably, hands moving from the seat to my bag where I had a better grip on something—anything—to steady my nerves.
“So... you don’t hang out with women.” Shrugging apologetically, I tried to not get preoccupied with the way his eyes darkened like something bothered him.
“You’ve been doing some research?”
“Well, you know. A guy you meet in a bar strolls into your workplace and bluntly tells you that he’s picking you up when you finish without really asking if it’s okay. It pays for a girl to be armed with information. ‘Knowledge is power’.”
“I suppose you’re right. How very prudent of you.”
“Ah, well...” Scratching the back of my neck, I lifted one shoulder in an awkward shrug. “I kind of had it forced on me the minute you left. I’m really more a fan of blissful ignorance. But for curiosity’s sake, uh... Why?”
His gaze flickered over me then settled back on the road ahead. “Why don’t I hang out with women or why you?”
“Yes.”
He sighed, almost amused by my response and shook his head. “I made you set yourself on fire. I suppose this is the least I can do.”
“That’s all it takes? Stop the presses, I need to let the entire female population of Great Britain know it’s that easy.”