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Letting her guard down some, she couldn’t help but smile as she answered. “Why do you think it’s your favorite?”What am I saying, talking to him like he’s really from my book?
Blake entered the room and handed her the cup, then leaned casually against her desk so he was across from her.
“Quite clever. Quite clever,” he commented.
Alex positioned herself next to JJ on the sofa.
JJ took the coffee and tried to lift an eyebrow like she had some of her favorite characters do. But they refused to work independently of each other. She had to settle for communicating with words. “How so?”
“Most people, upon discovering I’m English, naturally assume I drink only tea. But no, you break that stereotypical mold and make me an avid coffee lover. Touché.”
With some hot java circulating through her system, she could feel that helium in her head dissipating. The violent pounding eased. As her head cleared, she relaxed a bit. Surprisingly, she was beginning to feel quite at ease with these two intruders—whoever they were.
Then Alex evidently decided it was time to raise the real reason for their visit in a little more detail. She turned her body, so she faced JJ.
“Can’t you see you two were made for each other?”
“Of course,” the Englishman agreed.
JJ swiftly looked in Blake’s direction as she attempted to make sense of the conversation.
“Think of the encounter as a scene from one of your novels. All you need to do is kiss him, jump him, and get on with the good part of the relationship.”
At that, she gagged and spit out her coffee. Alex glared at him.
“What?” he said, seemingly innocently. “I was only agreeing with you.”
“What he’s trying to say is that your chance meeting sounds exactly like something you’d write in one of your novels. And you know darn well that if you had written this, and you weren’t the main character of this episode, as you are, the two of you would be approaching a love scene by now.”
She looked at them blankly. “And just who and what are you talking about?”
“Why Professor Kennedy King Cooper, of course. And don’t try to tell me you don’t remember him. You have to be totally out of it not to take note of a hunk like him.”
She was so stunned by the subject of the conversation, she didn’t even question how they knew about this dismal episode in her life. She hurriedly countered their amazingly stupid suggestion. The audacity of these two.
That man was the most ill-mannered, arrogant…She stopped herself in mid-thought and turned toward Alex before she continued.
“Oh, come on. You mean that man in the bookstore? I’ll never see him again. And thank goodness for that. He’s a sexist, elitist egotist.”
“You liked him that much,” Blake mumbled. Alex nudged him in the ribs.
“What?”
Chapter 3
JJ shook her head as she thought about that incident. She remembered it as if it happened yesterday. Wait, it was yesterday.
The “encounter” had started innocently enough—but then these things always did. Somehow, it had snowballed into a series of totally inane incidents. Before she knew it, she found her career being attacked by a total stranger. Granted, a handsome total stranger.
And in some ways, she thought wistfully, it really was a shame. For the first few moments of their meeting, she did feel that special spark she made sure her heroines experienced. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she might say she was sexually attracted to him. That’s silly, though. You can’t be drawn to a man you don’t even know. That sort of emotion is, well, for the pages of fiction.
She had bumped into him—literally—at a book signing at the local bookstore,A Likely Story.After nearly an hour of nonstop smiling and autographing, JJ finally slipped away to browse the shelves. She naturally drifted to the history section of the store, being a former history professor herself.
Her eyes became laser beams as they locked onto all the new releases she’d missed the last several months since she’d buried herself in her fictional world. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking. And she walked right smack dab into him.Embarrassed, she looked up at him (her five-foot-two-inch height always seemed to put her at a disadvantage). She apologized but couldn’t help notice that he was not only good looking but radiated a definite sensual aura.
He was tall, but, heck, everyone appeared tall to her. She guessed he was five-foot-ten, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if he were six-foot. His dark brown hair was so meticulously coifed, she couldn’t help but wonder if he were a news anchor.
His angular facial features, square jaw, and aquiline nose were features that could appear harsh and craggy if viewed separately. But when combined, though, it created an alarmingly handsome appearance.
