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His smile revealed creases around his sepia-brown eyes that hinted, JJ thought, at an innate boyish charm. If she were creating a hero for a novel, she would model the character after him.
It felt as if someone had trickled ice water down her spine as she took a step away from him. Then almost instinctively she checked what she was wearing. She couldn’t remember.
She wore, as was her custom for a professional appearance, her most conservative clothes. White button-up blouse, men’s cut, buttoned rather high and a brown jacket thrown over a pair of nice, but not overly tight jeans. Wouldn’t you know it?
When she dressed that morning, she thought she presented a tastefully refined appearance. Now there were only two words she used to describe her appearance: Dowdy. Frumpy. And, yeah, ten years older than her actual age. Okay, so that was more than two words. She stopped there, even though she could have continued in that vein for a while.
Just my luck, she thought, bedraggled ex-history professor meets hunk at bookstore. Hunk yawns, excuses himself in a panic, and breaks the sound barrier running in the opposite direction.
Surprisingly, he didn’t run. Instead, he struck up a conversation. They chatted politely about history. It seemed like the obvious topic with World War II flashing at them from the shelves and the Civil Rights movement towering before them. Then he made a remark about the book signing. She listened, amused, and then she slowly became irritated as he rambled on about the absurdity of the “trash” of romance novels (his exact words, she recalled).
“It’s refreshing to see a woman who appreciates the finer points of an education,” he told her, “and doesn’t stoop to reading such mindless garbage. Only a hopelessly mindless bimbo would read that stuff. And I couldn’t imagine what type of woman would actually lower herself to such depths to write that drivel.”
Just at that moment, as fate would have it, a fan walked up to her.
“Excuse me, Ms. Spritely, I hate to bother you, but the clerk said you wouldn’t mind. Would you please sign my copy ofLove’s Revenge?”
She smiled, retrieved all the details needed for the autograph, chatted for a few moments with her fan, and then turned back to the gentleman. “And you were saying?”
The man’s jaw hung open wider than the entrance to a cavern. She, however, glowed.
“Yep, that’s me,” she said. “And by the way, you know what this hopelessly mindless bimbo—those were your words, weren’t they?—did before she became a fulltime author?” She paused for the sole purpose of creating a dramatic moment.
“This bimbo was a history professor.” She abruptly turned on her heel, smiling broadly as she headed for the in-store café. She bought her favorite coffee, a caramel mocha, grabbed an asiago pretzel as a treat, and went back to her seat at the book signing table.Oh, yeah. Life was good.
Later, the man stopped by the booth to apologize. She smiled graciously. Her thoughts, though, were anything but gracious. What a waste of a sexy, attractive body. It’s stuck in the mindset of an arrogant Neanderthal. Just my luck, she thought. To meet a guy with some chemistry to him—and even similar interests—only to find he’s not just the proverbial frog, but the pompous ass as well.And that’s my modern fairy tale.
“May I make this up to you?” he offered. He had asked for her phone number, but she declined to give it to him. Not to be brushed aside quite so easily, he handed her his business card. “Kennedy King Cooper, Professor of History, University of Northern Ohio.” She read it briefly.
“If you should like to go for coffee some time and help me remove my foot from my mouth, I’d be grateful.”
She held the card for a moment, almost tempted to take it. He did look attractive there in a boyish sort of way, part pouting, part pleading for a second chance on making a first impression. And, yes, she really did feel some type of attraction to him, pompous ass or not. But something told her not to take the card. She politely handed it back to him.
“No, thank you. I don’t think we have much more to talk about.” Thankfully, an individual with a book to sign walked up, signaling the end of the conversation.
“But he didn’t mean to be such a sexist, elitist egotist, JJ.” Alex pleaded the professor’s case for him. “Remember the absolute bozo Blake was when I first met him? And we overcame it.”
Blake’s eyebrows scrunched together, his lower lip jutted out as he quietly muttered, “Bozo? I was a bozo?”
Alex calmly shook her head and took his hand. “You were a loveable bozo, honey.”
The characters’ banter shook her out of her reverie, and she discovered they were peering at her, apparently still expecting an answer.
Lowering her voice to almost a whisper, she said with a controlled anger, “He came off as a perfect pompous ass.”
Chapter 4
“I made a perfect pompous ass of myself.” Kenn stared trance-like into his cappuccino. He sat across from his college roommate, Rob Jenson, in a booth at the Physics Café, just off the campus of the University of Northern Ohio.
“I did try to make amends by offering her my card. But it was futile to think after that encounter she would call me.”
“Where did you meet this woman?” Rob asked as he swirled the coffee in his cup.
“At the bookstore. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. We accidently bumped into each other in the history section. For a fleeting moment, I thought I may have found the woman of my dreams, beautiful and fiery.”
He took the last sip of his coffee. “I just didn’t know how fiery she was.”
“What happened?” Rob asked.
