“You don’t have to personalize them,” she said, apparently noticing my stunned expression. “But if you could sign them all, that would be great.”
“Of course I’ll personalize them.” I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. I’d suspected upon noticing the suitcase that she might have brought some of the Kitty Katz books with her, but not all of them. “You brought these all the way from Canada?”
“Not just these.” Lauren twinkled at Will, who was also watching her with disbelief as she dug more deeply into the suitcase. “I’ve got some for you, too, Will!” Out came every book that Will had ever written, as well, each almost as battered and well loved as the copies of Kitty Katz. “Your books mean so much to me. Kitty Katz made me want to be a writer, but your books, Will, taught me what it means to be a woman.”
Oh. No.
“Well, thank you.” Will began scribbling away. “It means so much to me to hear you say that.”
Which was exactly what I’d been saying to every reader who’d come up to my table in response to their telling me that a Kitty book had meant something to them. Was it possible that Will was doing the one thing so many of my girlfriends had assured me that Justin—or any man—would never, ever do: change?
No. It couldn’t be.
Except it did happen sometimes … but usually only in books. In The Moment, for instance, Johnny Kane was turning from a lawless criminal into a tender lover for Melanie West.
“You’re very welcome,” I said to Lauren, practically hurling her books back to her as I signed each one, I was so eager to get out of there and tell Bernadette what had happened. Because of course Bernadette, finished with her signing line, had wandered away to order a drink from the cocktail wagon. (Yes! The Little Bridge Book Festival had a cocktail wagon that served alcoholic beverages to festival attendees, right there in the parking lot.) “Am I, uh, going to see you later?” I couldn’t just take off and run when this girl had been such an awesome fan and bought so many of my books (in the past, not new at this event—not that I had any new books for her to buy). “Maybe tonight, at the banquet?”
“I’ll be there.” Jasmine was sucking noisily on the remnants of her coconut water. “I don’t know about Lauren. She’s going to be too busy writing.”
Their other friend, Cassidy, who’d been watching Will sign the half dozen copies of The Moment she was buying for her friends, apparently having decided against the chest-signing request, looked up and said, “Oh my God, yes. On TripAdvisor it says that Cracked, where they’re having the party, has like the freshest seafood on the whole island.”
“You really ought to come tonight, Lauren.” Garrett was still working on his drawing for a young fan, a small boy in an actual wizard cape whose father looked as thrilled to be receiving a Garrett Newcombe original as he did. “I agree with Jo that you should take all the advantage you can of being in such a beautiful place. It will definitely give you something to write about when you get home to Canada.”
Lauren raised her perfectly plucked—or possibly waxed or threaded—eyebrows. “Do you really think so?”
“Oh, definitely.” Garrett examined his drawing, then, apparently dissatisfied with his work, bent to add a finishing touch. “I know Will here thinks the way a book gets written is with discipline, and of course that’s true. But you’ll never be able to write anything if you haven’t experienced anything to write about.”
I was a little irritated to hear Garrett “You Are My Sunshine” Newcombe, of all people, so perfectly sum up my own thoughts on the matter.
But I was less irritated when I saw how much it made Will frown … especially when Lauren beamed at Garrett and asked, “You really think so?”
“Oh, I know so. Plus, I’m going to be performing an act of dematerialization at the dinner that you aren’t going to want to miss. It’ll be an experience I suspect you’ll want to write about.”
“Dematerialization?” Lauren glanced at her friends, who were giggling at each other, most likely because of the number of times the word “dematerialize” had been used. “Okay, cool. I’ll be there.”
Garrett smiled at Lauren like a kindly uncle, then handed the kid in the wizard cape the book he’d been drawing in. “Here you go, Dylan. And here’s an official Dark Magic School number eleven commemorative guild piece to go with it.”
“Gee, thanks!” Dylan—and his appreciative father—looked ecstatic.
It was at that moment that Chloe came bouncing over. She’d been working with the other Snappettes at managing the line, putting Post-it notes on the covers of all the readers’ books so we’d be sure to spell their names rights (it was important, if someone had a name like Michelle or Alyssa, that we knew how many l’s or s’s it had).
But now that almost everyone had departed for the scheduled conch chowder luncheon, she was leading around a dark-haired boy who wore an expensive-looking Leica camera around his neck.
“Miss Wright, this is Elijah.” Chloe pointed at the boy. “He’s the festival’s official photographer.”
Elijah nodded at me coolly. “Hey,” he said.
“Would it be all right if he got a few pics of you and Will in action, signing some books?” Chloe asked.
“Absolutely.” I posed with my pen hovering over the last of Lauren’s books, while Will did the same. Elijah began snapping away in a manner that really did seem quite professional.
“How’s Molly doing, Elijah?” Will asked.
“Good, I think,” Elijah replied, as his camera clicked. “Katie called a little while ago from the hospital, and said Miss Molly—I mean, Miz Hartwell—is four centimeters dilated, whatever that means.”
I heard all the mothers left in the tent—Frannie, Kellyjean, and Bernadette, as well as a few others—make sympathetic sounds.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Kellyjean asked. These kinds of things were important to her. In the Salem Prairie series, werewolves were always getting witches pregnant, and vice versa. Birth control did not exist in Victoria Maynard’s supernatural universe.
“They want it to be a surprise. I mean, to everybody else. They know. I know, because Katie told me.” Elijah was evidently someone important in the lives of Molly and the sheriff and his daughter. “But I’m not supposed to say. So, uh, Miss Wright, if you wouldn’t mind scooting your chair a little closer to Mr. Price’s—” To my dismay, he walked over and moved my signing table a few inches nearer to Will’s. “And, Mr. Price, if you could scoot closer to Miss Wright so I could get both of you in one shot … that’s right—”
Will obligingly moved closer to me. So close that I could smell his cologne, which had a fresh, clean, citrus scent, and feel his body heat against mine. So close that I could see that he’d already begun to grow a five o’clock shadow even though it was nowhere near five o’clock. So close that I spied a few dark chest hairs curling out from the opening of his shirt.
And that wasn’t all that was happening, either. Something about the combination of his scent and how tantalizingly masculine those dark hairs looked was making me feel warm. Much warmer than I knew it was in the tent, since electric fans had been set up to cool off the area as we signed, even though the temperature was really quite pleasant.