I shook my head. “Let me get you a triple-shot mocha latte tomorrow.”
“Hmm…”
“Please?”
I didn’t want to be out of this woman’s debt. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to find every way of making up for being an asshole to her.
“Sure.”
Throughout the rest of the meal, she kept me laughing with her smart-ass wit, regaling me with stories of trips she’d taken with her father to ancient sites around the world. Although she had attended actual schools throughout the years, she had been partly homeschooled while on location with her father. Xanthe spoke of how she’d been fascinated with the dead for as long as she could remember and how they’d inspired her to write about the paranormal.
“You weren’t frightened or anything?” I asked. “Didn’t you find it even a little creepy to be around all those dead people?”
Xanthe shrugged. “It’s not like they could hurt us. They were dead. Besides, they had lived once, so they’d had stories of their own. I just always wondered what they were.”
I’d never really given much thought to death. The only person I knew who had passed away was Trey’s mother, and I had been very young at the time. Hell, all four of my grandparents were still living. But Xanthe thought about death, what it entailed, if there was anything after life. It made me begin to wonder, too.
It also made me think of Elaine and if she thought about death the way Xanthe did.
We decided to skip dessert. Xanthe had tackled the meat mountain with as much gusto as I had, and there wasn’t room left inside either of us. Sneaking off under the pretense of needing the restroom, I went ahead and paid for our dinner.
“Ready?” I asked as I approached the table, finding her rubbing her belly. Surprisingly, that had to be one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen, and that was saying something.
“Do we pay on the way out?”
I rolled my eyes.
“You already paid it,” she said flatly.
“So?”
Huffing, she pulled herself out of the booth and headed for the door, giving me the immense pleasure of walking behind her. Now, my hands were itching to smack that sweet bubble butt. She shrugged on her jacket, and I grew a second pair of balls and plucked the hair tie from her hair.
“Hey!” She whipped around to face me.
I tossed the tie at her, and she caught it midair and stowed it in her pocket once more.
“Can I touch it?” I asked her as we stood at the curb to hail a cab.
“Can you touch what?” she asked.
“Your hair.”
“Only if I can touch your beard.”
“Deal,” I replied.
I buried my hands into that thick mass, rubbing my fingertips into her scalp. With a quirky little smirk on her face, she reached up with both hands and dug her fingers into my beard, getting down to the skin. It felt so…damn good. Goose bumps erupted all over my body, and my groin and nipples grew tight.
“People must think we’re weirdos, standing on the sidewalk, molesting each other’s hair,” she said.
“We’re in New York. There’s weirder shit going on than a couple of follicle-obsessed oddballs waiting for a cab.”
“Yeah, probably.”
After we released each other, it took a few minutes to hail a taxi, and too soon, we were back at The Plaza, our first date over.
“May I walk you to your room?” I asked her as the elevator stopped on the tenth floor.
She thought about it for a few heartbeats. “Okay.”
At room 1013, we stopped and just looked at each other. Surprisingly, it wasn’t awkward at all.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, finally breaking eye contact.
“Xanthe?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d really like to kiss you,” I told her, my heart speeding up in tempo.
She blushed prettily and smiled. I was done for. Closing her eyes, she turned her face up to mine.
I had been thinking of doing it all damn day. Bending forward, I pressed my lips to that adorable black freckle, my beard scratching against her cheek. I breathed her in, intoxicated with the heady scent that was Xanthe.
She sighed softly.
“Thank you for an amazing date,” I whispered against her cheek before taking a step back.
Looking down into her eyes, I had no idea what she was thinking. Her face was a blank canvas. Then, she smiled, and I witnessed true joy in her.
“My pleasure,” she replied. Then, she turned and slid her key through the lock. Pushing open the door, she looked at me over her shoulder. “See you.”
Xanthe
Mandy Arthur opened the door to her office, all professional grace and decorum, ushering me inside. Then, she shut the door, spun to face me, and squealed, flapping her hands around her face and jumping up and down. “Oh my goodness!”
I was experiencing the same feeling, and I bounced and squealed right along with her.
Mandy and I hadn’t actually met in person. Initially, we’d met through social media before I had finished writing Haunted Bonds. We were fans of another author and had met in a forum promoting that author’s work. Her honest reviews had prompted me to ask her to read my manuscript before I published, and she’d absolutely loved it.
When the workload of writing and staying active on social media platforms had become overwhelming for me, she had volunteered her services as a PA. She’d believed in me that much. She wasn’t just my PA. She had a list of clients she provided the service for, and she had several others working beneath her.
Over the years, we had struck up a strong friendship, messaging and sending emails, until eventually video-chatting on Skype.
“I can’t believe it! Finally!” she cried.
“I know!” I cried back.
We launched ourselves at each other and hugged tightly. Ollie was right. Her breasts were big and magnificent squishy mounds that I enjoyed smooshing myself up against. After fangirling over each other, we got right down to business, going over the schedule for the convention and then photos from Ollie’s shoot the day before.
The photos were breathtaking. Ollie was a talented photographer, but he was also intense and engaging in front of the camera. With ease, he’d captured the essence of Donovan—sexy, soul-crushingly intimidating, and drop-dead gorgeous.
“I have to tell you, Xanthe, that man drips sex. He’s Donovan in the flesh! When I first saw him at the hotel, it was like watching your pages come to life!”
Ollie was Donovan Colt down to each minute physical detail. That he’d agreed to do this was just plain awesome for me.
“I know,” I replied, a thick note of guilt in my voice.
“What is it?” she asked, shrewdly eyeing me.
I met her gaze. “I don’t think he’s very happy about it.”
She gave me a startled look. “He told you that?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“He told me he’d never met you,” she stated.
My guilt increased a hundredfold. “He doesn’t know me as Elaine.”
“What?”
“He…we met on the flight over. I…I introduced myself as myself. He doesn’t know that Elaine is me, that I wrote the Paranormal Hunters series.”