Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love Book 5)

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Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love Book 5) Page 12

by Ali Parker


  This thing between Wes and I felt much different than that. He was a breath of fresh air to me as well. Sure, we’d met by happenstance and what others might call convenience, but he’d been the wind in my sails that I’d lost in just a day of being in New York City. This place would have eaten me whole and spat me out in pieces if not for his warmth and kindness.

  Hell, I might have already hopped on a flight home if not for Wes.

  It was difficult to tell whether or not I felt dependent on him or if I was actually falling for him. The emotions felt so closely linked and I wasn’t sure if I could trust myself to pinpoint the difference. I needed more time.

  “How was your first day of work yesterday?” Wes asked. “I was thinking about you.”

  “You were?”

  He nodded nonchalantly, like he didn’t realize the weight those last five words possessed. “Yes, of course, I was. A new job is a big deal. Especially when you have so much riding on it. Go on then. Tell me all about it.”

  His genuine interest in my day had me grinning from ear to ear as I recounted the events of my shift and how I’d nearly burned the place down within my first few hours.

  “It was so strange,” I said. “Back at my old coffee house, I was so in control and organized all the time. But at Books and Brews, I feel so out of my element. The pace of literally everything is so much faster, and right when I feel confident about one thing, I’m thrown into something else. I haven’t even grazed the surface of everything I have to learn. Mare is starting me on coffee before she even bothers teaching me the bookstore half of things. They’re two completely different POS systems and—”

  “POS?”

  “Point of Sale,” I said.

  “Ah.” Wes nodded for me to continue.

  “Each and every book has to be added to our inventory when it gets dropped off. We have to assign it a price based on a checklist Mare has and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get the hang of it like the rest of the girls. They’re all so—so—”

  “Experienced?”

  “Yes,” I said a little breathlessly. “They could do this work in their sleep.”

  “Well, that’s normal, isn’t it? Before you know it, you’ll be one of those girls leading the blind new employees through the hurdles of training. New jobs suck until they’re not new anymore.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Is that more writer’s wisdom?”

  “I didn’t realize writer’s wisdom was a thing.”

  “It is where you’re concerned,” I said. “Somehow, you always have a way of making me feel better. Less isolated.”

  Wes swallowed.

  Why was it so easy to be vulnerable with him? I wouldn’t say shit like this to Madison and Riley, and I didn’t even want to sleep with them. And I’d known them for ages where I’d only known Wes for what, a week?

  Nothing and everything made sense when it came to Wes.

  Our food arrived before Wes had a chance to answer and our attention was drawn to the plates of hot, hearty, cozy breakfast food. My omelette oozed cheese and sautéed veggies. I poured the side of hollandaise sauce from its little tin container over the omelette and hash browns, dashed pepper over everything, and dug in.

  “Do you like the people you work with so far?” Wes asked after dabbing his mouth with a paper napkin.

  I nodded, chewed, and swallowed. “I do. The boss seems pretty chill. I worked with her niece yesterday, who is a lot of fun and energetic. Pretty funny, too. The only concern I have is the money. It might still be pretty tight but we’ll see how things go. I may need to get a part-time job a couple of nights a week or something just to give myself some wiggle room.”

  “Two jobs?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not ideal but it’s better than living paycheck to paycheck. I need to be able to put some savings away. Otherwise, I’ll be a stress case about my money and then I’ll be no fun at all to hang out with and you’ll run in the other direction.”

  Wes got a coy look in his eyes. “I highly doubt that.”

  “Ask my old roommates. They had to deal with me and I think I almost got evicted two or three times.”

  “Your roommates sound like fools.”

  I snorted and covered my mouth. Wes flashed me a smile and passed me a napkin.

  “Thank you,” I muttered before diving back into my omelette.

  Chapter 20

  Wes

  Briar and I indulged in another cup of coffee after we finished our breakfasts. We ignored the fact that dark, looming clouds had rolled in and blocked out the sun, and I took that as a sign that she was enjoying herself just as much as I was. We were comfortable under the heaters, and the cold that accompanied the cloud didn’t bother us.

  The hot coffee helped.

  “Can I ask you something?” Briar said, tilting her head to one side as she wrapped both hands around her ceramic mug.

  “Go ahead.”

  She rubbed her lips together, and for a moment, I thought she’d changed her mind and she wasn’t going to ask me anything at all. Then she let out a little sigh, almost like she thought the question she had wasn’t worth asking, rolled her eyes a little, and asked, “Have you ever given serious thought to telling your fans who you are? I mean, putting a face to the pen name, so to speak? I know for a fact there are a lot of people out there who would love to know who you are. And you’d settle a great many bets, I imagine. Have you read the online message boards of people debating whether you’re a man or a woman?”

  “Those folks have too much time on their hands.”

  “They’re curious. Your books are a big part of their lives. It makes sense that they’d be so invested, doesn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “So?” she pressed. “Why not give them what they want and tell them who you are?”

  Walker had asked me the same thing several times over. He figured one day I would change my mind and come clean with all those fans who, as he’d put it, had made me rich beyond my wildest dreams and who therefore I owed my identity to.

  I didn’t think I owed them anything. They didn’t have to buy my books if they didn’t like how private I was.

  “Honestly?” I set my coffee down and leaned back in my chair as the first drops of rain struck the sidewalk on the other side of the enclosed patio. “I don’t want the attention of a famous writer. I have no interest in book tours or promotions or interviews. I like the simple quiet life that my pen name provides.”

  “It has to be more than that.” Briar rested her chin in her palm and waggled her eyebrows. “Tell me.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “Well,” I said slowly, “I also don’t want who I am to cloud people’s judgment about me. Take how we met, for example. Had you known I was W. Parker that night in the pub when we first met, I doubt our relationship would have extended past that. You’d have asked for an autograph, maybe asked some curious questions about the books you’ve read that you’ve always wondered about, and then we’d have gone our separate ways, and you’d have called your friends to tell them you met a famous writer on your first night in New York City.”

  She blinked at me.

  “Am I wrong?” I asked.

  Briar frowned. “No, I don’t think you are. That’s probably exactly what would have happened.”

  “Celebrities can never turn off the fact that they’re a celebrity and the rest of the world treats them differently because they’re ‘someone.’” I used air quotes and Briar giggled. “I don’t believe in that nonsense. And I don’t want my status, for lack of a better word, to be the thing that stands between me building genuine and authentic connections with people. I just want to be a normal guy. I am a normal guy.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. But to play devil’s advocate, do you truly think your desire for normalcy isn’t in turn doing your fans a disservice?”

  “Perhaps it is,” I admitted. I’d weighed all sides of the coin on this matter. “But I’m a p
rivate person. The things I write about? Not so private.”

  She snickered. “You could say that again.”

  I smiled. “I suppose it’s a little easier for me to write about those kinds of intimate things and share them with the world when I can maintain some anonymity.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Thank you.” I chuckled into my coffee.

  Briar swirled the last few mouthfuls of hers around in her mug but didn’t sip it.

  “There’s more you want to say,” I said.

  She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re intuitive and wise. I’m doomed.”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I just…” She trailed off and rolled her eyes at herself like she was being silly for not just coming out with it. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping but in my experience, ‘hiding’ and ‘easier’ are never the right things to choose.”

  I grinned. I couldn’t help it. There was nothing funny in what she was saying. She was spitting hard truths at me. She was bold and clever, and deep down in my gut, I knew she was also quite right.

  “It looks like my wisdom might be rubbing off on you,” I said.

  “So you agree?”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “I’ll take what I can get.” She smiled, sipped her coffee, and set down the empty mug.

  I noticed the umbrella beside her chair propped up against the glass partition that made up half of the enclosed patio. Mine was in my car and it hardly seemed right to let a little bit of rain stop us from embarking on the afternoon I had planned.

  I nodded pointedly at her umbrella. “Should we get out of here and head to Times Square and behave like proper tourists?”

  “Sounds fun.”

  Briar stood with her face practically crushed up against the glass wall caging us in on the observation deck on the top of Rockefeller Center. Tourists mingled around her, snapping pictures of themselves and the view, but she hardly seemed to notice them. All of her attention was fixed on the city below and all around.

  My city.

  I wondered how long before it would start to feel like her city, too.

  I stepped up beside her but didn’t say a word. I recalled the first time I’d set foot up here. I’d been a young boy, maybe nine or so years old, and I’d come with my father, who brought me right up to the edge and proceeded to point out all the buildings he knew by name. He’d been obsessed with architecture and he always pointed out what made a building unique compared to all the ones around it.

  I still saw New York City through his eyes, especially from way up here.

  I slid my hands into my pockets and watched Briar out of the corner of my eye. “What do you think?”

  She never tore her gaze from the view. “I think this is the most beautiful and frightening thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Frightening?”

  I’d heard a lot of different adjectives used to describe the feeling and the view from up here, but frightening had never been one of them.

  Briar nodded slowly. “There’s just so much.”

  “So much what?”

  “So much everything. Buildings, people, cars, things to buy, places to go, things to see. It’s… it’s a little overwhelming.”

  I tried to see it how she was seeing it. To me, New York had only ever felt like home and possibilities. Sure, it was excessive. Hell, one would argue it was the capital city of excessive and unnecessary, but it was so much more than that. It was vibrant, strong. It was a survivor.

  Just like so many of its people were.

  Heavier rain drops began to fall, and dozens of people cleared off the observatory deck to retreat inside where it was warm and dry. Briar remained by the edge, staring out, her eyes reflecting the lights of the city as the sky darkened overhead.

  “Do you ever wonder what everyone else is doing?” Briar asked. “Hundreds of thousands of lives are going on down there that we have no part of. What’s it like to be someone else? Who do they go home to? Who do they want to be? Who are they grieving for?”

  I studied her like it was the first time I’d ever seen her. There was so much more to Briar than met the eye and what she’d shown me so far.

  She turned slowly to look at me. “I’ve never felt so small before.”

  I reached out and caressed her cheek. She leaned into the touch and closed her eyes. Her cheek was warm and soft, and I ached to let my thumb wander to her lips so I could trace her cupid’s bow.

  “I don’t think you’re small,” I breathed.

  I meant it. To me, Briar felt too expansive for words to define. She was everything and anything all at once, and the overwhelming feeling she had looking at the city matched the feeling I had in my chest when I looked at her.

  She was not just a muse. There was so much more to how I felt about her than writing inspiration.

  Walker, the bastard, had been right.

  “I don’t think you’re small at all,” I said.

  Briar let me step in close. Her lips curled in a smile and I indulged my desires by running my thumb along her full bottom lip. She didn’t pull away. Her cheeks turned a pretty rose shade and she reached up to place both hands flat against my chest.

  Then she arched an eyebrow. “Are you calling me fat, Shakespeare?”

  My mouth fell open in surprise. “That’s not how I meant it.”

  “You said you didn’t think I was small. So what do you think I am?”

  “I—wait, what?”

  Briar’s other eyebrow arched and she stared expectantly at me. “So what am I then?”

  Fuck. “I didn’t mean it like that. All I meant was to me, you’re so much more than just a tiny speck in the universe and—”

  Briar threw her head back and laughed.

  I stood there like an idiot trying to piece together what was so funny.

  She slid her hands up my chest and neck to cup my cheeks. “I’m screwing with you, Wes. Now kiss me already. I can’t think of a better spot in this city to let you sweep me off my feet.”

  Chapter 21

  Briar

  Wes grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me like the only oxygen he had access to was in my lungs. Rain drops kissed my cheeks and eyelids as the kiss deepened, and he leaned me backward with one hand on my lower back. I lost track of what was up and what was down. All I knew was this was the kind of kiss Wes wrote in his books.

  I never imagined having a moment like this with anyone, let alone the W. Parker.

  We broke apart when the rain picked up and started soaking through the shoulders of our coats. Wes wore a grin beneath his dampening hair, and he nodded toward the doors that led off the observatory deck.

  “Should we get out of here?” he called.

  I covered my head and we dashed under cover to catch an elevator down to the lobby. Had there not been other people riding down with us, I could only imagine what kind of shenanigans we might have gotten up to. It was easy enough to pretend, so for the whole ride down I pictured Wes pinning me up against one of the elevator doors and kissing me like he had on the roof. I imagined he’d get a little touchy, a little desperate, and he might have even tried to cop a feel.

  I would have.

  The doors opened and we emerged in the lobby. Wes cursed that his car was parked so far away and we resigned ourselves to getting wet. We had umbrellas, but the sidewalks were so jam packed with pedestrians that the umbrellas slowed us down.

  We closed them and ran through the crowds with my hand in his.

  We reached his car and climbed in. We were soaking wet and I felt bad about getting his interior wet. He assured me it didn’t matter, put the car in drive, and pulled away from the curb.

  “My place isn’t far from here,” he said as we took a right and wove around backed-up taxi cabs. “We can go there and get dry and warmed up.”

  I had a couple ideas of how we could warm up and it had nothing to do with getting dry.

  I’d told
him I needed time to sort out how I felt about him and what I wanted. That had been the truth. However, it was clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to take that time to slow things down because my body had a mind of its own.

  I wanted him.

  I wanted him more than I’d wanted anyone or anything before. I spent the majority of the drive fixated on everything about him that was too sexy to resist.

  I stared at the bit of his exposed wrist beneath the sleeve of his jacket as he rested his hand on the steering wheel at a red light. I stared at the tendons flexed on the back of his hands and wondered how well he could use them. I admired the spread of his legs and how he sat back in his seat, comfortable and confident, masculine and steady.

  He glanced over at me as we pulled away from the light. “You all right?”

  I nodded. “Uh huh.”

  “You sure?”

  “I just need to get these wet clothes off.”

  Wes drove a little faster, and ten minutes later, we were dashing up the front steps of his townhouse. The rain pelted down on our heads and shoulders and I squealed as it soaked me from the edges of the canopy above his front door.

  We stumbled inside and Wes closed the door behind us before slumping heavily against it. His hair was soaking wet, and water dripped from the edge of his nose, but he gave me a charming, lopsided smile. “Welcome to New York.”

  I laughed and stripped out of my jacket, scarf, and wet boots. “I like the rain.”

  Wes raked his fingers through his hair. The sight of it made my knees practically buckle. I shifted my weight and peeled a second sweater off so that I was down to my jeans and navy-blue T-shirt. It clung to my body in the most uncomfortable way. I’d never been so aware of my nipples before, but it was all I could think about as they pressed up against the inside of my bra. The sensitivity did not help how turned on I was.

  Wes pushed off the door. “Come upstairs. I’ll find you something dry to put on. You can have a hot shower too, if you need to.”

 

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