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“And what about you?” I ask suspiciously.
“Me? Hell, I love Jane Austen. I’ve read all those books.” He glances up at me, then starts lining up the wine bottles, separating the red from the white.
Um,what? He’s readJane Austen? Mr. Literary Hotshot has dabbled in the romance genre? No way.
Have I met my very own Mr. Darcy?
I stop laying out the charcuterie for a moment and look at Levi. Is he pulling my leg? Mocking me and romance, like so many others who insist it’s formulaic, lacks depth, and reinforces gender stereotypes? Like so many others who’ve never even read asingle freaking one?
A bag of dicks, they all are.
He chuckles. “You seem surprised.”
Flabbergasted, more like. But I’m not letting on.
I shrug one shoulder, all casual and shit. “I think any well-read person has read Jane Austen, whether you’re a romantic or not.”
“Good point,” he says, looking right at me. “Who are some of your favorite romance writers?”
Color me surprised. He actually seems interested in what I have to say.
“Oh, I don’t know. I have too many to name.”
I keep my cards close.
“Say, Amalia, how’s it going at Empire? You’re still pretty new there, aren’t you?” He props an ass cheek on the foldingtable we just set up, crosses his arms, and watches me unstick all the cheese cubes that got squashed together in transit.
I lower my voice. “To be honest, things are… a little crazy at the moment.”
Ugh. I shouldn’t tell him anything. But he’s being so nice and I need a sympathetic ear, and for some reason that’s beyond me, he really does seem to want to get to know me. I hope I don’t come to regret it.
He leans closer. “What do you mean?”
I sigh deeply. “The romance division is not doing that great at the moment, and since I’m the last one to join the team, if layoffs are to happen, I’m the first one out.”
He puts a hand on my arm. “No shit. That sucks, waiting to see if your head is on the chopping block. Sorry to hear that, Amalia. If there’s anything I can do… please let me know.”
My heart slams in my chest, but I tell myself to calm the hell down. Just because he’s being nice doesn’t mean he’s not still some sort of stuck-up literary purist, especially since he’s currently the talk of the town.
But something about him feels good to me. Like maybe he’s not as much of an asshole as I originally thought.
Or maybe, just maybe, he’s not an asshole at all.
And his hand on my arm feels nice. Warm and protective, and a little scratchy from callouses, as if he once did manual labor.
Oh, what the hell. “Don’t worry. I do have some hope. There’s a chance, however slim, that things could work out for me nicely.” I try to tamp the excitement in my voice, but I can’t.
He tilts his head and inches a little closer, close enough that I can see his disgustingly long and thick eyelashes. So. Damn. Cute. “Yeah? You got a plan? Some moves up your sleeve?” he asks.
I finish and wipe my hands on a cocktail napkin, hoping to get rid of the smell of cheese on my hands. I don’t know whether it worked or not because I don’t want to look like a weirdo and sniff my fingers in front of him. “You see, I’ve come across an unpublished manuscript that was hidden in my desk. It’s an erotic romance. If I can find out who wrote it and we can acquire it, I may be in luck. It’s good. Very, very sexy.”
He withdraws his hand from my arm like I’ve got some sort of nasty rash, and I swear he backs away from me an inch or two. His face is slack, and he’s gone pale.
“Well, that sounds promising, your… sexy story. Good luck with that, Amalia.”
He takes off like his pants are on fire. Damn. What a prude. Here he is, a writer on top of the world, the golden child of the moment, and the thought of a sexy story drives him off?
Lame. That’s just lame.
