“Sometimes I think I’d rather be pretty than smart.”
He hadn’t known quite what to say. Mindy wasn’t bad-looking. “Why’s that?” he’d asked.
“Because men care more about pretty girls than they do smart ones.”
Well, she was right in a way. Nobody wanted to date a dog. Still, “I dunno. There’s got to be more to a woman than her looks. Otherwise, a man would get bored.”
Now Kyle wondered why Darrow had dumped Jillian. It sure wasn’t because the woman was unattractive. Something had turned him off. Was it because he’d looked behind the facade and saw there wasn’t enough to hold his interest?
Kyle didn’t want a facade, either. He wanted someone he could connect with. Now he realized it wasn’t Jillian.
Following that hypothesis to its logical conclusion—if not Jillian then who? A vision of Mindy in shorts and a clingy top sneaked into the back of his mind. Too late. That Mindy was gone. She’d been replaced by the ice queen sitting next to him.
* * *
The atmosphere was far from festive when the guys sat down to play poker. Kyle was suffering from the pain of disillusionment and had concluded he was never going to find Ms. Right, let alone get laid anytime in the next century. Bernardo was grumpy because Anna was mad at him for cheating on his diet.
And Jonathan was frustrated, plagued by visions of buffness denied. On top of that setback, he’d gone to the eye doc and learned that yes, indeed, he still wasn’t a candidate for Lasik surgery. He’d tried contacts and had no success, so that meant he was stuck with his glasses. Unbuff and bespectacled. How was he going to get Lissa’s attention at this rate?
But everyone’s problems paled compared to what Adam was going through. Chelsea still wanted nothing to do with him. “And we’re gonna have a kid.”
Jonathan felt a stab of envy. A kid. He wished he had a wife and was expecting a kid. Then he remembered the mess Adam was in.
“Congratulations,” Bernardo said. “Now the fun really begins.”
“So do the bills,” added Vance.
“Is it a girl or a boy?” Kyle asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Adam growled. “I’m lucky I even know she’s pregnant. I thought I was in trouble before, but now... Oh, man, I’m in deep shit.”
“Since you’re having a kid, I’d think she’d be more open to taking you back,” Jonathan said. But what did he know?
“She would have. We were this close. Until I blew it. Damn. But it came at me out of nowhere.”
“What did you do?” Bernardo asked.
Adam gave them the lowdown on his meeting with his wife. “Now she’s back to not talking to me,” he finished. “I should have said...something.”
“You did,” Vance pointed out. “You said the wrong thing.”
“What the hell am I going to do?”
No one answered him. Probably, Jonathan figured, because no one had any idea what he should do.
“You know,” Adam said, “it’s funny how when you first meet a woman, all you see is a pretty face and a great body you want to get your hands on. Then you go out with her and things change. You can’t get enough of seeing her, being with her. Before you know it, she’s your best friend, your whole life. She gets to be like breathing, something you don’t have to think about. You assume she’ll always be there. You forget how much you need her, how much...”
Oh, no, Jonathan thought, he’s gonna cry.
The crisis was averted when Adam turned a sob into a cough and cleared his throat. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“You ought to tell her what you just told us,” Bernardo advised.
“Why don’t you do something to show her you’re glad about the kid?” Vance suggested. “That’s a big thing to her.”
“Hey, it’s a big thing to me, too,” Adam said. “But it’s scary.”
“Women never want to know you’re scared,” Vance told him. “It doesn’t give ’em any confidence in you.”
Adam frowned. “It shouldn’t be this hard, dealing with women.”
Vance’s smile was cynical. “Yeah? Who said?”
The game continued halfheartedly. Until Bernardo ran out of money. Then, with a sly grin, he took the copy of Wooing Willow Adam had returned to him and laid it on the table.
“Hey, you were gonna lend that to me next,” Kyle protested.
“Well, amigo, now maybe you can win it and keep it.”
“That’s mine,” Kyle said. “Call.”
Adam folded. “I’m done with it.”
Vance showed his cards. He had a pair of kings.
Jonathan had garbage. He shoved in his cards, facedown.
“Ha!” Kyle crowed. “Three of a kind. Come to Papa.”
The game resumed. Fortunes shifted, short-term loans were made. Pretty soon Jonathan was low on money. “Okay. I’m out of cash.” He grabbed a couple more romance novels from his coffee table. “These should be worth a few chips.”
A discussion ensued regarding how many chips a library sale paperback was worth.
“At least twenty blues,” Jonathan argued. He held up Vanessa Valentine’s The Swan and the Leopard.
“Oh, yeah, put that in,” Bernardo said. “Anna hasn’t read it yet.”
“And what makes you think you’re gonna win it?” Adam taunted.
“I’m feeling lucky now that Vance has lent me five bucks,” Bernardo said.
The game continued and two more of Jonathan’s books found their way to the poker table. “I’ll see your Vanessa Valentine and raise you a Harlequin SuperRomance.”
Vance let out a whistle. “High rollers. Fold.”
Bernardo and Jonathan followed suit, and then it was down to Kyle and Adam.
Kyle scowled. “Fold. You were bluffing, weren’t you?” he demanded as Adam raked in his winnings.
Adam just grinned.
Bernardo chuckled. “You scored big, amigo. Hope you read those and learn something.”
“Man, I need to,” Adam said. “I’ve got to get Chelsea back. I’ve got to make things right, got to show her I’m cool with the baby.”
“Try doing what the hero in A Delivery for the Doctor did,” Jonathan said. If anyone overheard this conversation, they’d think he and his friends were nuts.
“What did he do?” Adam asked.
“He went out and bought a bunch of stuff for the kid,” Jonathan said. “Put a different gift on the woman’s doorstep every day for a week.”
“And then what happened?” Adam asked.
“The last day he stood on the doorstep with a big stuffed bear. She took him back.”
“As easy as that, huh?” Adam mused.
Vance frowned. “Don’t be a dip. When it comes to women, nothing is easy.”
“But it’s worth trying,” Bernardo said.
Adam nodded vigorously. “At this point I’ll try anything.”
“Well, that takes care of you. Wish I could wrap up my love life like that,” Kyle said sourly. “I was wrong about Jillian and I think I blew it with Mindy.”
Bernardo looked confused. “Who’s Mindy?”
“She works next to me. She’s a lot of fun, and she doesn’t care what kind of car a man drives.” Kyle shook his head. “I keep asking myself, what would Vanessa Valentine do?”
“Yeah, well, we’d all like to know that,” Adam said.
It occurred to Jonathan that Vanessa Valentine, queen of romance, would probably have the solution to all their problems. Was she anywhere in Washington? Did she ever make house calls? “I saw her on TV. I wonder where she lives.”
“Are we gonna play cards or what?” Vance growled, and Kyle started dealing.
At the end of the evening Adam was the big winner. He held up a copy of A Delivery for the Doctor. “I’m reading this one first.”
Bernardo took a handful of chocolate chip cookies out of the package on the counter. “Looks short enough. You should be able to handle it,” he said with a grin. “Hasta Las Vegas, amigos.”
The party broke up, Adam opened his book and Jonathan decided to check out Vanessa Valentine’s website. He got his iPad and did a search. Of course, big-name writer that she was, her name came up all over the place. He didn’t bother reading the articles and interviews but went straight to her website.
It wasn’t what Jonathan had expected. Instead of a girlie home page, all pink and plastered with lacy hearts, Vanessa had opted for a simple, cream-colored page with her name written across it in a black scrawl. There was only one heart on the page, and it was her logo—a small, red heart with two interlocking Vs inside it, which occupied the upper right-hand corner. Under her name he read, “Home of the bestselling romance writer.” Various tabs took visitors to pages where they could read book excerpts, enter contests or check her appearance schedule.
He went to her bio. There she was, in her black suit and pearls, posing with arms crossed in front of a bookcase stuffed with Vanessa Valentine novels. He started reading. The woman had written a ton of books, been on every bestseller list known to man and even had one of her books made into a movie. And, whoa, what was this? She lived in Seattle!
He scooted over to the page that listed her appearances. She was all over the country, hitting every major city from New York to L.A. But hey, she was making an appearance in Seattle at Emerald City Books.
Emerald City Books? That was Vance’s bookstore. Vanessa Valentine was coming to his bookstore and he hadn’t said anything. What was with that? Who knew? But there was one thing Jonathan did know. He was going to Seattle to meet Vanessa Valentine.
Chapter Fourteen
Jonathan arrived at Emerald City Books on a balmy Tuesday evening. There hadn’t been an inch of space on the street for blocks, and he could see why as he looked in the store window. He’d be lucky to find a seat.
A tall, middle-aged man in jeans and a polo shirt was walking a small Boston terrier back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the store. The dog saw Jonathan and went into a barking frenzy.
“No, Bubba,” the man commanded.
Jonathan could tell Bubba was all bark and no bite. He knelt to pet the dog.
Sure enough, Bubba was happy to make instant friends with anyone who wanted to pet him and started jumping on Jonathan, licking his hands.
“Are you here for the signing?” Jonathan asked the man.
The guy looked at him as if he were insane. “My wife is.”
And he and Bubba were keeping their distance. Jonathan understood. He’d been like that himself. Until he became enlightened.
He gave the dog a final pat, then entered the bookstore. Once inside he found himself in a steamy fog of perfume thick enough to give a guy an asthma attack. The Vanessa Valentine book party wasn’t scheduled to start for another twenty minutes, but the store was packed with women of all ages and hotter than an oven in spite of an open door and two fans working overtime. And the noise level—between that, the perfume and the sight of women everywhere, he was teetering on the brink of sensory overload. Everyone was talking, laughing, eating chocolate and grabbing books.
The women came in all ages—good-looking babes decked out in tight jeans and clingy, sleeveless tops and not-so-good-looking babes, hiding extra pounds under baggy tops (he recognized that strategy—baggy tops worked to hide a lack of body, too). Then there were the cougars with fancy jewelry and tantalizing makeup, and older women, many with gray hair and spreading waistlines. It seemed half the women in Seattle were there, each one clutching the new Vanessa Valentine hardback. Many also carried other books, a mix of hard- and paperback, for her to sign, and Jonathan wished he’d brought his other Vanessa Valentine novels from home.
Watching the disappearing inventory, he decided to get over to the checkout counter before the store ran out. In addition to snagging a copy for himself, he wanted to get one for Bernardo’s wife and for Juliet, who would kill him if he didn’t bring her a book. Heck, she was probably going to kill him when she found out he’d gone to this without her. But he was on a mission, and it wasn’t the kind of mission where a guy brought his sister.
He swam through the sea of estrogen to the counter, where a pretty, brown-haired woman around his age was ringing up sales, along with the only other man in the place—Vance. It was Vance, wasn’t it?
This version of Vance didn’t look like him, though. He’d shaved, and he’d exchanged his slob uniform for slacks and a shirt and sport coat. Here in the store, with his game face on, he not only looked like a different man, he acted like one, too. He was smiling and genial, flirtatious even. It was as if his body had been taken over by an alien life force. Who was this Vance? Jonathan could feel his jaw dropping.
The alien Vance caught sight of him and mirrored Jonathan’s expression. Then he frowned. “Jonathan. What the hell are you doing here?”
Jonathan frowned back. “I saw on Vanessa’s website that she was doing a signing here. You coulda told us, you know.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to come. These things are a zoo. Anyway, I was going to bring you all signed copies.”
“You were?” Now, that was darn nice of him.
Vance took four books off a rapidly shrinking stack. “Here. On the house.”
“Thanks. Uh, can I have one more? For my sister. I’ll pay.”
Vance shoved another book at Jonathan. “What the hell. Just take it. That stack is all presigned so now you can leave this circus.”
Jonathan didn’t want to leave the circus. “I’ll stay. Juliet will want Vanessa to write something personal to her.”
For some reason this didn’t seem to make Vance all that happy, but he shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. But don’t expect her to have time to talk to you.”
That was exactly what Jonathan was hoping for.
“She’s on a tight schedule and she doesn’t want to be here all night. She can’t stay and yak.”
Jonathan supposed that was how it went with celebrities. What he wanted to ask was something no one in his right mind would ask someone like her. But he was going to do it, anyway.
Books in hand, he searched for a place to sit. The crowd had already taken up most of the folding chairs arranged in rows on one side of the store. If very many more people showed up, there wouldn’t be enough to seat everyone.
As he scanned the rows of seats he got another surprise. There, over in a far front corner, was Pat from Mountain Escape Books, along with Cecily’s mother, Muriel, and Dot Morrison. Oh, boy, this was awkward. Would they wonder what he was doing here? Of course they would. Enlightening as romance novels were, he was still embarrassed to ’fess up that he read them, especially in front of Dot, who was bound to have some dirty crack ready to embarrass him.
Maybe they wouldn’t spot him in the crowd. He positioned himself toward the back, next to a middle-aged woman who gave him a friendly once-over.
“It looks like you’re a big fan,” she observed.
He was suddenly conscious of a petite brunette settling in on his other side. Her curiosity was palpable and the room got even hotter. “Uh, these aren’t for me,” he explained.
“For the women in your life, right?” the woman asked, and he nodded.
“That’s so sweet,” said the brunette. “Is one of those for your girlfriend?”
Was she coming on to him? When was the last time that had happened? The answer was easy. Never. He couldn’t help smiling. “No.”
She cocked her head. “Got a girlfriend?”
“Not yet. But I hope I will soon.” Had he just said that to a perfect stranger?
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “You’re seeing someone.”
He’d been “seeing someone” all his life. She’d just never seen him back. “Sort of.”
“I should have known that a man who reads romance had to be taken,” the brunette said.
Here was another benefit of reading romance, Jonathan realized. Obviously, carrying around a romance novel was almost as good as having a dog when it came to
attracting women. Who knew?
As anticipation grew, so did the buzz of female voices. Women began checking the door for a first glimpse of Vanessa. Up near the front, Pat turned around in her seat, probably also looking for her.
Jonathan hunched down and dropped his gaze, willing himself to blend in with the crowd. It would have taken a grand wizard to accomplish that. He stuck out like a rhino at a tea party.
When he finally ventured to lift his head, it was to see Pat staring at him in astonishment. Now that they’d seen each other, though, she smiled and waved at him. He raised a hand in return and she leaned over and said something to Dot and Muriel. It wasn’t hard to guess what, since they both turned, smiling and waving. Dot’s smile was downright puckish.
He waved back, his own smile strained. Great. Just what he needed. Using a romance novel as a ploy to attract a woman was one thing; having all of Icicle Falls learn that he read them was another altogether. Maybe if he offered Dot free computer maintenance for life he could buy her silence.
“You’ve got a fan club,” the middle-aged woman said.
Was that what you called it?
Now Vanessa Valentine was in the building, and a burble of excitement followed her as she worked her way through the crowd up to the front, where a podium stood ready for her and, nearby, a signing table decorated with a vase of red roses. Tonight she was wearing a flowery summer dress, her dark hair falling onto her shoulders. She was a pretty woman, and if Lissa hadn’t owned Jonathan’s heart, lock, stock and barrel, he’d have been smitten, in spite of the fact that Vanessa probably had ten years on him. He hoped his brain wouldn’t freeze when it was his turn to talk to her.
Vance joined her at the front and held up his hand for silence. The women quickly obliged.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming out to meet Vanessa.” He turned to her. “It’s always a treat to have you at the store.”
“I’m always happy to come see my friends at Emerald City Books,” she said.
She’d been at the store before. She knew him. How come Vance never mentioned that when they were all talking about her books on poker night?
“And we have another popular writer here tonight. Muriel Sterling is with us. We carry several of her books,” Vance continued, “and, if you want to buy one, I’m sure she’ll be glad to sign it. Muriel, it’s good to have you here.”
What She Wants Page 17