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“You need more help with your outfit?” Vi yells from the bathroom.
Afraid she’ll turn my dress into a bikini, I grab my lame smile, my event schedule, and what’s left of my lukewarm tea. Before I head into the hall, I peek at the end of my bed to ensure she can’t see the diary I slipped between the mattress and box springs—one of the many hiding places I’ve learned over years of living with Mom. The slim journal fits better than a fifth of Jack Daniels.
My door doesn’t even have time to click behind me when I plow tea-first into Donna. In one horrific second, the lid flies off my cup, and I paint her cream silk blouse in brown impressionist art.
She flaps her hands over her shirt like she can somehow shoo the stain away. “Are you kidding me?” Her everyday alto shoots past soprano.
“I’m so sorry.” I reach out to dab her blouse, and my cup slips from my fingers and hits the carpet, splashing her tan pants with the remaining liquid.
“What’s wrong with you?” She jumps back, her face blazing with a color Crayola would callfire engine.
Merging into the wall behind me, I wait for her to spontaneously combust, praying for the floor to have mercy and suck me in. “I’ll get it dry-cleaned.”
“That doesn’t help me now. I’m going to be late. Or was that your plan?” She yells like I can’t hear her. Like the ladies wearing conference badges who just came around the corner can’t hear her.
She thinks I did this on purpose? By the looks on the ladies faces, they do too. “I would never…”
“This is what I get for doing Vi a favor that involves you.” Holding her sopping blouse away from her chest, she stomps back the way she came.
Blinking back the sting building behind my eyes, I speed-walk away from the judge-and-jury blocking the way to the elevator and head toward the huge hotel atrium and the multiple sets of escalators that lead five floors down to the lobby.
It’s not until I get on the second set that I realize my hands are empty. I lost my schedule along with my tea. “Adult up, Jess,” I channel my inner Vi. “Figure out where to go.”
Two floors from the lobby, I’m distracted by a commotion at the bottom of the escalator. A group of women swarm some guy, taking pictures, handing him things to sign. Close to my age, he reminds me of a younger Sam fromSupernatural—the only show I sometimes watch. I’d rather be scared than sad.
A few inches shorter than Sam’s 6’4”, this guy’s still tall and lean in a pair of washed-out jeans. A fitted Eminem T-shirt puts the muscles in his chest and biceps on parade, and messy brown hair flops over his forehead in the front and grazes his collar in the back. Wearing charm like a million-dollar smile, he’s laughing with the crowd, but there’s a subtle stiffness in his spine that makes me think he’d rather be anywhere else.
We could start a club. I get onto the last escalator and like my empathy becomes a beacon he lifts his head and finds me. His slow study starts with my heels, dallies on my legs, moves to my misbehaved neckline, then rests on my face.
A trace of what might be a genuine smile lifts his lips, stirring an unfamiliar spiral in my stomach that ripples out making it impossible to look away.
As the steps carry me closer to the landing, closer to him, he inches closer to me.
Is he trying to ditch his rabid fans by running past meupthe down escalator? The last step levels off, leaving me nowhere to go but into him. Turning sideways, I attempt to squeeze by, but my stupid heel sabotages me again and sticks in the groove between the step and the carpet, and I start to go down.
Strong hands catch me around the waist, firing tingles that spark up my spine and set off alarms around the perimeter of my hot-guy immunity. My savior has major melty eyes. Milk-chocolate, suck-you-in eyes. They take me hostage, twist me up, giving me a thousand words to describe my next heroine’s crush—if only I could write her.
His hands slide to hug my hips. Heat from his palms sizzle through my dress. He leans so close his mouth grazes my ear. “Do a desperate guy a favor?”
“W-what?” The smell of fresh laundry and the hotel shower gel combine into kryptonite that buckles my knees.
His hands hold me up, but he pulls back so I can see his face. His fifty-watt grin comes with its very own set of to-die-for dimples.
“Baby,” he says. “I’ve missed you.” Then tilts his head, closes his eyes, and presses his mouth to mine.
My world slips sideways, and I know I’ve written Sara and Dante’s first kiss inHauntedall wrong. I never mentioned the shivers that pour over Sara’s skin at the same time her body flushes. I didn’t describe the flutter in her stomach as Dante’s lips brush hers. I left out the very real urge for her toes to curl when he flattens his palms against her back. I’d given their kiss a paltry paragraph when it deserved an entire freaking page.
Because up until now, Jessica Thorne—the girl who’s penned thousands of words and hundreds of pages of romance—has never, ever been kissed. Not even once.
chapter 4
Gabe
“Use your assets.”
~ Meredith Morgan
(played by the award-winning Meredith Wade)
