by Dylan Newton
“So much for man’s best friend,” Drake mumbled to himself, standing to stretch his cramped muscles. Just then, he heard a mad, buzzing sound coming from behind him. He patted the phone in his pocket—not his. Turning, he spotted a pink, sparkly case on the floor next to the trunk Kate had been searching through moments before.
Kate’s cell phone.
Drake set down his laptop and crossed the age-worn thick pine floors to snatch it up. The thing vibrated in his palm, buzzing in a subdued but insistent way.
“Kate!” he called, walking toward the attic entrance. He heard her downstairs, giving directions out the window to a team of men and women who were building scaffolding to gain enough height for the mechanical spider to traverse down his house and hang over his doorway. “Kate, you’ve got a call! No name, just a number.”
“Go ahead and answer it,” came her distant response. “It’s probably one of the vendors. Might be from your mom’s café, confirming lunch delivery. I’ll be there in a sec.”
Drake didn’t recognize the number or the area code, but it could be one of his mother’s helpers.
He swiped to answer. “Hello?” Drake said, putting the phone to his ear.
“Uh, hi?” came a woman’s uncertain voice on the other end. “I think I might have dialed the wrong number—”
“Wait, this is Kate Sweet’s…office,” Drake supplied, a smidge late. He moved toward his laptop, gathering up his papers. “She stepped out for a minute. Uh, did you want me to take a message?”
“This is Kiersten, Kate’s sister. Who the hell is this?” the woman asked, her tone becoming frostier as she continued. “Kate never leaves her phone. Ever. You’d better get my sister on this phone in thirty seconds, or else—”
“Okay, hold on. She left it in my attic while she went downstairs to see about the spider,” he said, and about a nanosecond after the words left his mouth, he realized how truly bizarre he sounded. “Wait. Let me start over. I’m Drake Matthews. Her client. And she just went outside to see about the mechanical thing she’s got rigged to crawl up my house as the finale for the fans coming to my Halloween book launch.”
Kate’s sister was silent for so long, Drake pulled the sparkly phone from his ear to be sure he hadn’t accidentally hung up on her.
“There is so much to unpack in that sentence,” she said finally, and Drake heard the echo of Kate’s dry humor in her sister’s tone. “Let me start with this—my sister is doing a book launch for the Drake Matthews? The guy who wrote Alien Abyss and Creature Crypt?”
At his confirmation, he was surprised to hear Kate’s sister whoop on the other end of the line.
“No way! I called from a friend’s phone because I thought this whole time, she was vibing on some Florida beach somewhere, dodging my parents’ incessant calls and ditching me to deal with their crazy by myself,” she gushed. “And the whole time she’s working on Drake Freaking Matthews’s book party?”
“It’s not a party. It’s an event.”
Drake chuckled to himself at the correction. Kate would be proud.
Wait. An idea to do something nice for Kate slammed into his head, and he switched the phone to the other ear, uncapping his pen again and flipping over a new sheet on his legal pad.
“Kiersten, I’m wondering: do you think you and your parents would like to come to the book launch? Kate assures me it’s going to be a classy and…” Drake searched his memory bank for her exact descriptions from the past. “…spook-tacular Halloween night, and I can have three tickets sent to you and your folks if you’d like to attend?”
Kiersten squealed in his ear, a high-pitched noise he was sure Sasha heard downstairs.
“Yes, we’ll come to Drake Matthews’s book launch! We’d love to come. My parents are going to stroke—”
“Well,” Drake interrupted, “I was thinking we could surprise her. She’s mentioned to me that with how hard your parents work, and with you in med school, you don’t get to see Kate in action. She’s worked so hard here, and between you and me, this launch might even win her an award.”
“Really? I mean, that’s so cool! She doesn’t tell us much about her job, and I’ve never seen her really big weddings.”
Kiersten’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Drake grinned at the phone, taking down the physical address that he could give to his assistant to send three invites. When he was done, he packed up his things and left the attic. Speaking in a low tone, he used the short trip downstairs to conclude the call.
“Will you call back in two minutes? I’m going to pretend that I lost the call in the attic, and then you can call and I’ll find Kate for you. That way, she won’t know we’ve been planning behind her back.”
Kiersten agreed, and the phone went dead as he rounded the carved newel post and jogged down the rest of the stairs to the first level. Drake spotted Kate with a set of white bags in her hand, the PattyCakes logo emblazoned on the front, and walking in lockstep with her, also laden with PattyCakes bags, was his mother.
“We scored on this delivery, getting lunch and Patty both,” Kate said, raising the bag in triumph as she flashed a smile to Patty. “I thought we could—”
The phone in Drake’s hand rang, and without asking permission, he answered it.
“Good afternoon, Sweet Events. Kate Sweet’s office. How can I help you?”
Kiersten’s voice sounded uncertain on the other end.
“Uh, can I talk to Kate?”
“Yes, Kate’s right here,” Drake said, and then pretended to listen to her sister’s earlier objection. “Oh, don’t worry, she’s okay. No, Kate is better than okay. She’s amazing. Absolutely, one hundred percent incredible, in fact. Hold on, and I’ll get her on the line.”
Looking puzzled, Kate took the phone, handing Drake the Pattycakes bags.
“Hello?” She paused, and her puzzlement turned to worry and then to embarrassment. “Oh, Kier! I’m so glad you called. No, that’s not my new secretary. He’s…a client.”
Kate moved her mouth from the phone to speak to Drake and his mom.
“If you’ll excuse me—I’ll join you guys in a minute.”
“What in the world are you up to, Drake Hawthorne Matthews?” Patty Matthews said once they stood alone in his kitchen, unloading bags. “You may be thirty-four years old, but I know when you’re up to mischief. You have the same expression on your face you had when you colored Zander’s face with red and black markers to make him look like Spider-Man.”
Casting a look at the door, Drake swiftly explained his plan with Kate’s sister, cautioning her to silence.
“For goodness’ sake,” his mom said, with an affronted sniff. “Of course I can keep a secret!”
Just then, Kate entered the kitchen, tucking the phone into her front suit-coat pocket.
“What secret?” she asked, casting her look from Drake to Patty, then frowning when neither one leaped to answer. “Is it…do you both secretly hate the decorations? Are you regretting the spider? I can still change things if you tell me now—”
“No,” Drake said, waving her off, although part of him wanted to ask that the spider not make an appearance on Halloween. “We were just talking about…”
Drake trailed off, cursing his hours at the keyboard where all of his creativity in dialogue and intrigue had apparently been sucked into the manuscript, leaving him adrift in a black hole of slack-jawed stupidity.
“We were just talking about the Harvest Festival this weekend,” his mom said, tossing a lifesaver to him in the void. “And he was saying that he’d like to ask you to come with him.”
Kate looked dubious. “Then, what’s the secret part?”
“The fact that he’s never brought a date with him to the festival, and he was worried about asking you,” his mom said.
And just like that, the lifesaver was yanked away.
Then, as if unable to help herself, his mom furthered the lie.
“I was saying he should go for it. I knew you’
d be perfect for each other as soon as I sat down next to you in my café. I said to myself, ‘Here’s a woman with a brain in her head and one who doesn’t have frost running through her veins, to boot.’ That last was the secret part.”
Drake’s mouth opened and closed, and he looked at Kate apologetically while giving his mom a warning glance that she shrugged off. Finally, he managed to string a sentence together.
“Which is no longer secret. But as I was getting ready to explain to my mother, I don’t want to put you in a strange conflict of interest. We’re working together for the book launch. And we need to be focused on that. Kate doesn’t have time for…” Drake riffled through his mind for an appropriate verb and selected one Kate had created. “…flitzing around.”
His mom threw Kate a wink.
“So, it won’t be an official date. But it’s okay to come as his event planner, isn’t it?”
Now it was Kate’s turn to flounder. Warm color flooded her neck and cheeks. “I, um, guess it’s appropriate for me to promote the launch at the festival, maybe chat up some of the town council to smooth our path for the permits? I could check out the local vendors to see if they can help with food trucks too.”
“Then it’s settled!” Patty clapped her hands. “Festival starts at eleven, with the pumpkin-carving competition to benefit the women’s shelter starting at one o’clock sharp, which my oldest son has promised to announce. Can you make sure Drake doesn’t lose track of time, or that he’s not squirreled away in a corner somewhere writing in that notebook of his, oblivious to everything?”
Drake watched, helpless, as his mother orchestrated his first date with his event planner, realizing it was as possible to stop her as it was to halt a blizzard. He turned to Kate to tell her it was okay to say no, but instead of the awkward look he expected, he saw Kate wasn’t frowning. Instead, she had a bemused, almost gobsmacked expression.
“O-okay. I’ll do my best, Patty,” Kate said. Although her face was now the color of a deep pink rose, she met Drake’s gaze. Her green eyes were direct as her mouth curved into a wry smile. “After today, I think we both deserve some time to flitz, and the Harvest Festival sounds perfect.”
The rest of lunch flew by in a haze of disbelief as Drake realized the impossible: although presented with the world’s most awkward date-ask…
She’d said yes.
Chapter 13
Kate debated on her outfit for a full ten minutes before deciding that casual was better than professional, given today’s activities. Saturday morning had dawned bright and balmy, with the temperatures forecasted to be in the low sixties by the afternoon, so Kate determined layers were most sensible. She had on a pair of jeans and a trendy, long-sleeved shirt she’d bought a few days ago at a local boutique. The outfit was topped off by her black suit jacket—the unfortunate one she’d chosen for her first meeting with Drake. Today she wore it unfastened, making it less constricting and disguising the fact she still had two missing buttons. With the sleeves rolled up and pushed back, the blazer lent the ensemble a casual vibe.
Or at least as much of a casual vibe as Kate was able to muster. She just felt more comfortable in a suit than she did in jeans, but Drake had reminded her via text that she should “Definitely leave the heels at home,” so she’d cobbled together an outfit with boots that had more of a riding heel than a stiletto.
Kate sighed, checking her reflection in the hotel’s bathroom. She’d skipped the chignon and secured all but the shortest layers into a low ponytail. She hadn’t realized how long her hair had gotten, having only opted for a quick trim a couple months ago, and now it hung almost to mid-back, with the front layers not quite long enough to secure in a ponytail, but too long to really look elegant. Kate tried once more, unsuccessfully, to tuck the errant strands into the rest of her hair, and then huffed a breath, giving up.
“It is not a date,” she told her reflection. “We clarified that. It’s a scouting mission, focusing on food vendors for my client’s launch and chatting up the town council. It’s work.”
The words of Drake’s mother were still ringing in her ears when she’d returned to the hotel last night—empty after Imani had returned to the city two weeks ago, both she and her boss pleased with Kate’s handling of the event. Kate herself was proud of what she’d accomplished in twenty-ish days; all the boxes were checked off on her spreadsheets, and the only thing overdue was obtaining the town permit for the mechanical spider and the one authorizing the blocked street for the haunted maze. She should’ve slept like a baby, but her mind kept replaying Patty’s words.
I knew you’d be perfect for each other as soon as I sat down next to you in my café, Patty had said.
While she rationalized that the woman was likely doing what mothers across the universe seemed to do—set up their older, unwed sons—her mind had snagged against Drake’s response to Kiersten on the phone when her sister had called from a friend’s phone to check in on her.
Kate is better than okay. She’s amazing. Absolutely, one hundred percent incredible, in fact.
Had Drake meant that? He’d seemed so sincere when he’d said it. Her mind turned the words, and the maybe-date today, over and over, attempting to place the checkmark in the appropriate box in her mind—was it under “definitely getting vibes from this guy,” or under the category “he was just being nice”?
She wanted to ask Imani her opinion, but since she’d returned to Manhattan, she was busy with her other clients. She wasn’t due back until next Thursday, before the Halloween launch on Saturday night. Also, Imani would not be thrilled that Kate was mooning over her client and possibly distracting him, especially since he was already late on his deadline. She was still under the assumption Kate and Drake were acting like professionals did when they worked together—not…whatever it was that she and Drake were doing right now. Flirting?
“It’s not a real date,” Kate reaffirmed, giving her reflection a stern look. “You just go, scope out the food vendors, and maybe meet someone from the town council to put in a good word about the permit. Do your job, Kate. Do your damn job.”
She repeated the mantra as she caught the hotel’s shuttle down to the town’s Island Park, so named because it was a large wooded area surrounded by the swift-flowing Genesee River. She breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted Drake’s black vintage truck parked at the front of the gravel parking lot in what must amount to the VIP section, telling herself that the fluttery sensation in her stomach was probably nerves. Or maybe she was hungry. It definitely was not giddy excitement at the thought of spending time with him today without a spreadsheet of to-do items in front of her.
She marched through the Harvest Festival’s entrance, flanked by scarecrows and haybales, smiling professionally as she checked out every volunteer’s nametag, repeating her mantra as she searched for the names she’d memorized for the town’s council members. She was all business, moving confidently through the crowd, checking out the decorations and the huge amount of pumpkins set on tables in the center of the wooded park. She’d just caught the tantalizing whiff of a pretzel truck and was following the scent of baked goods, when a familiar voice sounded in her ear.
“Just like a superhero, you’re here when I needed to be rescued,” said Drake, the low rumble of his voice causing something deep in her belly to twirl and purr to life.
“Good morning to you, too.” Kate turned, her professional smile melting away as she took in Drake’s attire.
He stood, shoulders hunched as if to blend in, which right now was pretty impossible. He wore a silver, upside-down funnel as a hat on his head, and a skin-tight, silver bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination. Thrown over it all was the leather jacket he’d worn the day of the cemetery visit; a jacket that was several layers too warm for the day, if the sweat at his brow and the scowl were any evidence.
“Um, why are you dressed as a…grumpy robot?” Kate asked.
A single bead of sweat trickled down Drake’s temple, and
his black glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them up impatiently.
“Mom decided on a Wizard of Oz theme this year, and I’m the—”
“Tin Man,” Kate filled in. “I see it now.”
From behind them came the sound of male laughter.
“He does look like a grumpy robot,” said a man dressed in a massive, tawny-colored fur costume. His face was painted elaborately to look exactly like a lion’s. “Whereas, I am the King of the Forest. Nice to see you again, Kate. Where’s that stunning publicist? I’ve yet to officially meet Imani. Is she here today?”
Kate blinked, recognizing Zander, Drake’s youngest brother.
“Hi,” she said. “No, she’s in New York City, but she’ll be back for the launch.”
“Zan, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you had a crush on Drake’s publicist,” came the voice of another tall man sauntering up to them. The guy wore a flannel shirt with straw sticking out at the sleeves and faded denim overalls that ended just above a gleaming metal foot on one side and a foot in a combat boot on the other side. Although he wore a tilted straw hat, Kate immediately recognized the man as Ryker, Drake’s other brother.
“Shut up, dude,” Zander growled.
“What? I’m just speaking truth. And, bro, you’re not the king of anything. You’re the Cowardly Lion,” Ryker said, tugging on Zander’s tail and evading the big man’s swatting hand. He glanced over at Drake, his mouth curving in a wicked smile of delight. “But you, big brother, you look like a male stripper from a bad Terminator-themed porn movie. Bow-ba-da-bow, bow!”
Ryker did a hip gyration, his hand snaking around to pinch Drake’s backside.
In a blur of motion, Drake snatched his brother’s hand, twisting it around until Ryker’s arm was behind his back.
“Mom chose the right character for you, Ryker,” Drake said, as his brother tapped out, laughing good-naturedly. “You are brainless.”
