by Kay Williams
“Then how could you possibly know that you haven’t made a million yet?” Harper shook her head as if she thought I was stupid.
“I think that if I made a million pounds in less than a week that my publisher would have told me about it,” I chuckled.
“Maybe they told everyone but you,” Ignis offered.
The snide comment made me uncomfortable but Ferris chuckled, Harper realised that Ignis was making fun or her and sat back in her chair glaring at me as if it was my fault.
Thankfully we had all finished our coffee by that point and the waiter had brought the bill. With our packages covering our food and drink Heronsgate and I didn’t have anything to pay, the others split their share but I found it interesting that Harper’s was paid by Harcourt.
Ignis surprised me by offering me his card and saying that he would like to see me again before I left New York. Ferris did the same and I promised both of them I would to drop them a text with my number.
We shook hands and said our goodbyes at the elevator as the others took a regular one back to the lobby and Heronsgate and I waited for the secure one to take us to our respective floors.
“That wasn’t quite how I saw this evening going,” Heronsgate apologised when we were alone.
“Could have gone a lot worse,” I replied.
“You had no idea who you were having dinner with, did you?” Heronsgate chuckled.
“Not a clue. Ignis seems an unusual man.”
“How about a night-cap?” Heronsgate asked as the elevator arrived.
Did people actually have those? I thought they were something that happened in fiction.
“Sure,” I agreed, I didn’t have to get up in the morning after all.
“You didn’t meet Gabriel at his best,” Heronsgate confessed as he chose a button for the thirty-third floor. “Sarah was supposed to start modelling for him at the beginning of the year, but after a month of her turning up late and not performing well he had to let her go.”
“Some of his comments now make more sense.”
The doors opened and rather than another corridor they opened up into huge bar, plush sofas and chairs framed glass tables that were polished until they sparkled in the dim lights and the little candles on each. Divides between groups of chairs gave the open space a surprising sense of privacy and intimacy. Though it advertised itself as a twenty-four hour bar it was almost empty, with only a few guests enjoying quiet conversations.
Heronsgate led the way with a familiarity to the floor plan that he had already confessed to and found us a sofa away from anyone that might have overheard us. He scanned his room card in the order pad built into the table and smiled at me.
“What would you like? Anything other than your usual cocktail.”
I smiled at the tease, my choice of drink had raised a few eyebrows at dinner, but wine had a way of loosening all my inhibitions and I had no intention of making a fool out of myself at a table full of strangers.
“White Russian.”
“Good choice. Why didn’t you have wine at dinner?”
“I’m not good with wine.”
“It makes you ill?”
“No, one glass and I get mellow, two glasses I will not stop asking questions and I’ll have no regard for your privacy, three glasses and I get cuddly and would need to be carried back to my suite.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s only wine and champagne. Spirits and ciders I’m fine with.”
“Peculiar.”
“I prefer idiosyncratic,” I smiled making him chuckle. “So, be honest. How long have you been dating Sarah Harper?”
“Please, don’t!” Heronsgate complained collapsing back against the sofa. “Not even in jest!”
The waiter brought our drinks over; Heronsgate had ordered a glass of some kind of clear spirit poured over ice and twists of lemon and lime rind which the waiter topped with tonic water.
“I freely admit that a few hours is not enough to get to know anyone very well, but she didn’t seem that bad,” I grinned, reaching for my drink and enjoying my first sip.
“Her dad, Ryan, is a hobby racer with Pre-Pause cars. He goes to motor-shows and charity racing events and we met there and he introduced me to his kids, Sarah and Frederick.”
“Because they were more your age?”
“Yeah. Freddie is a ballet dancer, but that career is more or less over and he is slipping into ballroom and Elvish now. Sarah calls herself a model but I have never known her actually work as one. Neither of them are into cars at all and I find I’m actually more comfortable in Ryan’s company then in theirs.”
“And since you met, Harper had been all over you?”
“No.” Heronsgate picked up his drink “That’s the strange thing. She was flirtatious, but it was my company and my bank balance she was flirting with. I called her out on it straight away and she backed up realising her wiles had been clocked. Until three months ago when it all kicked off again. ‘Everyone knows we are dating’ has become her favourite phrase and no matter what I say or do nothing is getting through to her.”
I hesitated while he savoured his drink.
Heronsgate spoke so dismissively about Harper flirting with him for his money and business assets. I had my own mini crash course in how the monetary motivator could turn family and friends into begging bowls and the bad feeling that would set in when I didn’t fill those bowls up, but I had still been hurt by those people when reading the author board.
Heronsgate appeared to have developed a thick skin and a keen eye when it came to identifying those kinds of people and cutting them off before they could get hold of him.
“You should be careful around her,” Heronsgate added. “She has the habit of talking to gossip columnists about things you might consider privileged information.”
“My sales record for example. I did not like the way she levelled that question at me.”
“And you did well to avoid it,” Heronsgate complimented me. “She is nice in a general sense and a social butterfly, and I won’t deny that even if you don’t feel like being out she has a way getting people to enjoy themselves, but she doesn’t have any kind of working or charitable ambition I can pin down.”
“Somehow she is managing to coast along without working?” I frowned. “She is cleverer than I am then.”
“And me, though I would get bored if I didn’t work at all.”
“I wouldn’t. I have an over-active imagination and a time consuming hobby.”
Heronsgate chuckled and put down his empty glass while I was still cradling half of mine. If he had told me that night caps were drinks that had to be guzzled quickly I would just have asked for vodka shots.
“You spend no time on your phone,” Heronsgate spoke as he fetched his buzzing one from his pocket and, shooting me an apologetic look, he began to answer the text.
To make him happy I dug my own device out of my bag and unlocked the screen.
I had three messages.
The first was from Rosemary.
‘I’m so glad you said that. I know you wanted everything to die down quickly but as a company it would be very unprofessional if we ignored trends and failed to provide customers with a satisfactory experience on our boards or buying our products. We have already started to look into something. I’ll call you tomorrow. Have a good evening!’
The next was from my parents telling me they were having a great time, hadn’t been harassed at all at port, or on excursions and now the initial shock of the moment had passed that I should try to enjoy myself as much as possible. They had included a selfie they had taken with the captain of the cruise ship, apparently he was a massive fan of science fiction and had shown them proof he was actually one of the initial five who had bought a download before Heronsgate made me infamous.
I texted them a short message updating them on my trip to New York and the signing that was upcoming, I promised them I would sign a postcard for the captain and have it delivered f
or him to the Southampton head office for when the liner returned from its journey.
The last was from Lucy who had attached a list of presents for her and her brothers, she was watching my author board and already knew I had been cornered while out shopping and was cheerfully warning me that Sebastian was building me a cage in the barn he was going to lock me in and was planning to bite any fan that got to close. She finished with asking what I was doing. I replied telling her I was having drinks with Heronsgate before bed.
‘Prove it!’
“How would you feel about another photo?” I asked Heronsgate, explaining the text.
“In this tie?”
I laughed at his mortified expression.
“You can take it off if you like.”
Heronsgate looked down at his suit as if he wasn’t sure what would be worse, a photo with the brightly coloured tie, or a photo without one at all. In the end I took pity on him and twisted so I was posed on the edge of the sofa, with him relaxed back into the cushions my shoulder blocked out most of this chest and the offensive tie. Seeing what I was doing Heronsgate moved closer to put himself more in the picture while continuing to hide his tie.
“You even tense up when it’s your own camera,” Heronsgate grinned. “You need to relax.”
He reached up and ran his hands over my shoulders with a little squeeze and dragged both deliberately down my back in a firm caress.
“What was that?” I was proud of myself for not blushing or yelping in surprise, but I hadn’t expected him to touch me and he laughed at my wide-eyed expression.
“I was trying to get you to relax,” Heronsgate continued to grin at my reaction. “Would you like me to do it again?”
“No.”
“No?” Now it was his turn to look surprised, but he recovered quick enough to tease. “A woman who doesn’t want me to flatter and touch her? Where have you been all my life?”
“England,” I replied.
“Ah, yes,” he continued to torment me. “That strange and unusual land.”
I rolled my eyes at him and he laughed again. I turned back to my phone and adjusted the focus. I didn’t tell him to smile he was still grinning and despite my best effort not to I found it irresistible and my lips turned up of their own accord. I still didn’t like the result but I sent it to Lucy anyway.
“Send it to me as well?” Heronsgate asked.
A new text message popped up from an unknown number that simply had his name on it, I saved him as a contact under ‘chicken-scratch’ for my own amusement and sent him the picture as well.
‘I am so jealous right now.’
I smiled at Lucy’s text and put the phone away, she wouldn’t text again but would probably expect a full ‘confession’ in the morning of what we got up to.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“One I am going to send to Will, just to make him jealous,” Heronsgate grinned. “The other is going on your author board.”
“You’re doing what with it?”
I wasn’t one to pry on other people’s phones but I found myself leaning to take in the screen of his, and thankfully he showed me exactly what he was doing without complaining about my manners, or sending the post.
The post kept his username anonymous and was the picture with a simple phrase beneath ‘After dinner drinks. She won’t even give me a straight answer! #NewYorkSigning!’
“You are not sending that,” I complained.
“Why not?” He asked, but didn’t submit the post. “Are you not going to be doing a signing?”
“How did you know there is going to be one?”
“I didn’t. Not for sure. I don’t know how much sway you have with your publishers or anything about your contract. But I know that when my company does anything that ends up trending with a hash tag we take advantage of it.”
“I don’t know when this week, but there is going to be one. I offered after I was stopped by those schoolgirls, but they were gearing up to ask me to do one anyway. The signing would be a great way of making them money and drawing attention to their site and their other authors, and they are a business. I get that.”
“So what is wrong with the post?”
“You are going to whip them all up into a frenzy. I’m going to need armed protection and a bulletproof vest if you aren’t careful. Most of these posts are from people who are already manic.”
“It’s nice to know you have started to keep track of your own public. It’s alright to let someone else manage it but you should always be up to date with your profile,” Heronsgate smiled. “As for the rest, your publishers took very good care of you at the last event, and though these posts are manic now ninety per cent of these people aren’t going to know what to do with themselves when they actually meet you.”
I wanted to argue with that but I remembered how it took those seven schoolgirls almost an hour to work up the courage to come and talk to me and they had been shy and silly even then. I may not want to believe it but Heronsgate probably had a very valid point.
“I just thought that all this would be over by now,” I confessed.
“It's weird that all these people want to see you. I understand.”
“Exactly. I’m nothing special. Thousands of amazing eBooks are published and self-published every year. The only reason that mine has be over embellished is because you were caught reading it.”
“It wouldn’t have become popular if it was a bad story, Harriet,” Heronsgate replied. “Your sales would have gone up and then all been refunded back if people didn’t get it.”
I looked down at his phone, still waiting for his post to be submitted and something so obvious I should have seen it before suddenly fell into place.
“You said that you never get involved in other people's marketing campaigns or allow people to use you or your interests to drum up support for their project but that post is doing both. You are trying to keep me in the public eye.”
“You worked that out quickly,” Heronsgate complained, looking guiltily down at his phone. “I like you. The more you do to promote your book the longer you are going to be around for.”
“I’m not going to drop off the face of the two worlds once my book stops being popular.”
“No, but you are going to go back to a full-time job, your old friends and your family. I have a very small window of opportunity to solidify our friendship so you don’t forget me when you go home.”
“Forget you?” I laughed at the idea.
“Once you are back in your normal life would you really want to wake up on Saturday morning with the media on your doorstep because I am popping over for coffee?”
“Do I have to give them coffee?” I asked.
Heronsgate rolled his eyes, he let me tease him but I knew he could see that I got his point. I had assumed that I would go home and this would all stop. I had been okay with that. I hadn’t considered that Heronsgate would want to keep seeing me once I was passed over by the media for more interesting things and people.
I leant over his phone again and hit the post button.
“Thank you,” Heronsgate said softly.
“Thank you for flattering me,” I answered.
I didn’t realise just how close to him I had ended up until I sat up and found we were almost nose to nose.
Heronsgate didn’t look as surprised as I felt and just when I was about to apologise for invading his personal space he closed the gap and lay a soft chastised kiss against my lips. I froze, I was far from innocent and I was never going to get away with wearing white at my wedding but at the same time I found myself blushing as if I had never been propositioned before and shyly looking away as I struggled with what was happening.
When he was first met it had been in a room full of people and he had directed the conversation from behind a podium, but even then the moment we had started talking it had felt like we were the only people in the room. He had surprised me at the club and as he had been trying to dire
ct the conversation I hadn’t felt that connection but there had been a more than a moment between us at the hotel exhibition, and every time we had spoken since it had been easy and comfortable.
I had never felt intimidated by his celebrity status, his global enterprise or his formidable reputation.
It was amazing how one gentle, questioning touch had reminded me exactly who I had been teasing, laughing and playing with.
“You do taste as good as you look.”
Wine, Harriet! I reminded myself sternly as I forced my heart to stop racing and to muscle back the embarrassment. I might not have been drinking through dinner, but he had had three glasses of wine, port and whatever had been in his cocktail. He might be able to handle his alcohol, but he wouldn’t be acting like he was right now if he was stone cold sober.
“I think you need to get some rest,” I said.
“You are beautiful if I am tired or not,” he smiled.
I was proud of myself for winning against the second blush those words caused. Heronsgate had been fine when we had sat down, but it was called 'one to many' for a reason and Heronsgate had clearly had that extra drink he shouldn't have. I wasn’t going to hold his suddenly odd behaviour against him, I was well versed the perils of just one more myself, that last glass of whatever that took me from merry and functioning into a giggling, cuddly drunk. He needed a good night's sleep if he was going to be able to go to work tomorrow without a hangover.
“Thank you. I don’t believe you right now, but thank you.” I got up and offered him my hand. “Come on. I’ll escort you back to your room.”
“Why don’t you believe me right now?” Heronsgate scowled.
“Ask me that again in the morning.”
“I will.”
Heronsgate looked annoyed with me, but that was better than another drunken kiss or heartfelt compliment he might regret having issued in the morning. He didn’t take my hand but followed me to the elevator; he remained distant and irritated but ever the gentleman he saw me back to my room first.
“Good night,” I smiled as I let myself into my room. “Thank you for inviting me to dinner.”