The Hooker and the Hermit

by L.H. Cosway

  The Hooker and the Hermit

  by L.H. Cosway and Penny Reid

  Caped Publishing

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events, locales is entirely coincidental if not somewhat disturbing/concerning.

  Copyright © 2015 by Penny Reid; All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

  Caped Publishing

  Made in the United States of America

  Final Edition: February 2015

  ISBN- 978-1-942874-00-3

  ~Dedication~

  In no particular order: baked goods, Colin Farrell's eyebrows, and the thighs of rugby players everywhere.

  And to the city of Edinburgh, where a love story was born.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Sneak Peek: Elements of Chemistry

  Sneak Peek: Hearts of Fire

  Chapter One

  The Email Checker: When one pretends to be checking his/her email on a smartphone, but is instead actually taking a picture of a person/the people directly in front of him/her.

  Best for: Most situations where it is socially acceptable to be checking email, e.g. coffee shops, while dining alone at a restaurant, waiting for public transportation.

  Do not use: In locations with no cell phone or Internet reception.

  *Annie*

  I’m not going to pretend that I have pristine intentions. But to be fair, when he initially entered the restaurant, I was already checking my email.

  In fact, I didn’t look up from my phone until I heard the kerfuffle and squawking of excited females. These sounds—giggling, squeals, oooohhhhh, whispered Oh, My God! and Is that really him?—typically accompanied the arrival of a male celebrity. I’m especially tuned into the signs and symptoms for two reasons: my job and my hobby.

  I am the primary project lead of the Social Media Marketing division at Davidson & Croft Media. My specialty is transforming reputations in the court of public opinion. Give me a disgraced celebrity, politician, or public figure—sex-tape scandal, DUIs, arrests, the great rehab escape, sexting an intern (what I call “Donkey Donging”)—and I will transform that person’s image.

  I will make her sparkle. I will make him shine. I am legendary in my field. I am the best at what I do.

  And I admit this as truth with absolutely no conceit or vanity because I’m terrible at almost everything else in life. Take walking or talking, for instance, never mind attempting both at the same time. Or smiling. Or not being weird. Or not creeping people out. Or not being the cause of every awkward silence in a five-mile radius.

  The only other things at which I excel in life are: 1) responsible financial planning, 2) my hobby blog, and 3) eating.

  Which brings me to now, Tom’s Southern Kitchen, and the group of ladies molting feathers left and right as they try to dry-hump the remarkably attractive and muscular man who has just entered.

  I’d lifted just my eyes, peering at him and the women as I tried to place his face. He was standing in profile, and his handsome mouth was curved in a patient, polite smile. I couldn’t tell if he was enjoying the attention or if he just had exceedingly excellent manners.

  Regardless, he looked quite a lot like the Irish actor Colin Farrell, except a Colin Farrell who’d been working out nonstop, had thighs like tree trunks, and was ten to fifteen years younger. So, maybe a Colin Farrell just back from a visit to the plastic surgeon and a CrossFit boot camp. This glorious specimen of maleness had dark brown hair, spiky and short. His nose was perfect, almost adorable, but it somehow fit his face. His jaw was angular and strong. He even had the actor’s high cheekbones, dark brown eyebrows, thick lashes, and doe eyes.

  I couldn’t decide if this guy was a doppelgänger or if he was the real deal, but it didn’t really matter. He would be perfect for my Saturday Celebrity Stalker post. It was, without fail, the most popular post every week.

  Which leads me to my greatest and most closely held secret. The truth is that I, Annie Catrel, am The Socialmedialite, the owner and purveyor of the blog New York’s Finest.

  That’s right.

  I’m The Socialmedialite.

  I’m that girl, the most influential infotainment blogger in the world.

  And, because I am meticulous about my security protocols, no one knows who I am…that I am she…that she is me.

  Never mind. You know what I mean.

  Anyway, Saturday Celebrity Stalker is my weekly post dedicated to celebrities or their look-alikes wherein their physical features are picked apart John Madden style (John Madden being the famous American football coach-then-announcer who loved to draw on the home viewers’ TV screen with circles, arrows, and random lines to demonstrate errors in football plays).

  Except I do this to celebrities (almost exclusively male celebrities) and question their judgment regarding grooming, makeup (yes, makeup), clothes, and accessory choices. And, if they’re walking a dog, I do it to their little dog, too.

  The degree to which I pick apart the celebrity’s lack of judgment depends on several factors, and I’m the first to admit I’m a good deal easier and/or nicer to those people with talent than I am to celebriturds (people who are famous because they’re famous/rich but with no redeeming qualities to offer society) and celebritrash (celebriturds who are also fame whores).

  However, I try not to comment too much on bodies or facial features. Personally, I feel like we—Western culture—are so body obsessed, there’s no need for me to add to the hysteria. Especially since these famous people already give me so much fodder with their ridiculous million-dollar fanny packs (made in third world sweatshops) and their gold-plated floss holders.

  Why does anyone need a gold-plated floss holder? Tell me. Why? Why? Why?

  I don’t know. I don’t get it.

  Most men loved being featured on my blog. My posts typically resulted in emails of praise and thanks from publicity-hungry agents and celebrities. Sometimes they’d make a donation to charity in the name of the blog or respond with a self-deprecating parody on YouTube.

  I took care to focus on satire, poking fun at the extremes, playfully objectifying these untouchable gods among men. Women, especially females of notoriety, in our society had to suck up and swallow daily doses of criticism about everything—too fat, too skinny, wearing the same outfit twice in public, having an opinion—from fake TV personalities and tabloid vultures.

  In comparison to these self-esteem vampires, I provide a public service. So I make fun of these famous-people-specific idiosyncrasies on a blog followed by twenty million people. It’s all in good fun.

  Th
e look-alike continued to smile and sign napkins for the group of ladies. He might not have actually been the Irish actor, but he was definitely a somebody. Luckily for him, it was 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon; that meant Tom’s Southern Kitchen was virtually empty of customers. Surreptitiously, I angled my telephone and clicked out of my email, pulling up my smartphone’s camera.

  I then took about forty or fifty shots over the next two minutes until my view of the hubbub was blocked by a waiter bringing over my bag of takeout. I didn’t quite make eye contact with my server as I paid for the food, collected my belongings as leisurely as I could manage, and left the small restaurant.

  Eye contact is difficult for me. I know that seems strange; it is strange. For the longest time, I assumed I was just very shy—that is, until I started engaging with people online. That’s when I discovered in-real-life-Annie might be introverted. She is reclusive and quiet. She observes. She seldom speaks. She dislikes attention of any kind.

  But The Socialmedialite, my online handle, is gregarious and silly. She is opinionated. She craves interaction and attention. She is clever and witty (mostly because, online, wittiness is not a factor of time; in real life you have to be quick-witted in order to be considered witty).

  My bag slung over my shoulder, I carried the takeout in one hand and held my phone in the other. I was eager to thumb through my new pictures on the short walk back to my apartment. I hadn’t taken notice of much while sitting at my table, pretending to check my email, except for the guy’s resemblance to the Irish actor.

  Therefore I was anxious to analyze what he was wearing, what he was carrying, and any other potentially remarkable external manifestations of eccentricity. I turned the corner, now just a half block from my building, and studied the shots.

  Initially, all I saw was a guy who looked like Colin Farrell with a strange-looking, albeit small, apparatus strapped to his back, his feet in those godawful toe-shoes that make the wearer look like a hobbit. His shirt was lime green, skin tight, highlighting his impressively muscled physique, and appeared to be made of Lycra; his thighs were corded and thick, plainly visible because he wore spandex—black spandex, not lime green.

  On 99.9% of people, this outfit would have looked completely ridiculous. But not on this guy. He looked hot. Really, really hot.

  However, during my second, third, and fourth perusals—and especially in the pictures where his face was turned toward the natural light of the windows—I noted something remarkable about his eyes. Though his mouth held a wide, welcoming grin, his eyes struck me as sad. Terribly, terribly sad. And when I say “struck me,” I mean his eyes made my steps falter and slow, and caused a sudden involuntary intake of breath.

  Here was this guy, physical perfection, obviously living a charmed life, walking around with mesmerizingly sad, soulful eyes. They were the kind of eyes that pull you in, ensnare you, bind you, hold you and your focus and your priorities hostage.

  They took my breath away.

  Some strange, long-dormant, and heavily suppressed instinct urged me to run back to the restaurant and wrap him in my arms. My heart gave a little twist. I wanted to kiss away his hurts…or at least make his hurts some cookies.

  I shook myself, forcing my feet to move purposefully forward toward home, where I intended to bury these arresting and unwelcome instinctual reactions.

  The critic in me reassessed the image and couldn’t ignore the toe-shoes, the lime green workout shirt, or the spandex—SPANDEX!—shorts. Even the top 1% of good-looking men should know better than to wear spandex shorts outside of a sporting event.

  Just…no.

  Sad and soulful notwithstanding, this man needed an intervention.

  Although, spandex is nice for highlighting….

  Struck by sudden curiosity, and because I am a red-blooded woman, I zoomed in on the area of his groin.

  That’s right, I’m a reclusive pervert, and I make no apologies for it. And, giving the matter some thought, a reclusive pervert is much preferable to an extroverted pervert. I might also be a tad sexually starved, since I avoid all physical, real-life human interaction.

  Just a tad.

  I walked past my doorman and into my building, keeping my attention fixed on the phone as I studied the bulge in the man’s spandex running shorts. Tearing my bottom lip between my teeth, I boarded the elevator and tried another picture; in this one, he was angled toward the window, half facing the camera. I zoomed in a bit more.

  “Whatever you’re looking at must be really interesting.”

  I jumped back and away from the voice, sucking in a startled breath, jostling the bag of takeout in my hand, and clutching my phone to my chest. I hadn’t realized that I was not alone on the elevator.

  I found him, my companion, looking at me with an amused smile. His blue eyes were suspicious, but good-natured, slits. I recognized him immediately as my very tall, very nice-looking, ambiguously single next-door neighbor.

  Ambiguously single because he always had a date, but it was never the same lady friend twice.

  I didn’t blame him, not at all. By all outward appearances, this guy was a hot commodity. Impeccably tailored designer suit and Italian leather shoes that announced both power and wealth; a chiseled jaw beneath perfectly formed lips framing stunningly white teeth; strong nose, bright blue eyes, expertly spiked and shaped blond hair. He looked like the type that subscribed to a beauty regimen. I was pretty sure his eyebrows were plucked and shaped by a professional.

  I guesstimated his age as just cresting thirty; hard to tell with the meterosexualizing of his appearance. Add to all this a body that reminded me of a cyclist or a runner—lean and well-maintained—and he was a well-groomed wolf in wolf’s clothing, and the females in Manhattan were helpless sheep.

  After two seconds of stunned staring, I ripped my eyes from his amused half-lidded gaze and blinked around the mirrored space, trying to get my bearings.

  “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry; in fact, I was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh. “Sorry I scared you.”

  I shook my head, my phone still clutched to my chest, and fixed my attention on the floor of the elevator.

  “It’s fine. I was just startled,” I said, swallowing.

  We were quiet for a beat, but I could feel his eyes on me. I glanced at the display above the floor buttons, trying to gauge how much longer I was going to have to share the elevator with Mr. Ambiguously Single.

  To my dismay, he spoke again. “You’re Annie, right?”

  I nodded, my eyes flickering to the side to glance at him and then back to the display.

  “I’m your neighbor Kurt.” In my peripheral vision, I saw that he’d turned completely toward me and offered his hand.

  I glanced at him again, at his friendly, easy smile and friendly, easy eyes. Then I glanced at the takeout bag in my right hand and the phone held to my chest. I seriously debated whether or not to shrug and say nothing.

  See, the problem with being a really well-paid hermit is that you have no incentive to ascribe to social niceties and norms. My company loves me (most of the time); the clients love me—they love the magic I work. I seldom go into the office—only Wednesdays and Fridays. I have an office; I just prefer to work from home.

  I’m not agoraphobic. I go out in public, I walk five miles in the park every day, I love the Natural History Museum and visit once a week; as well, I frequent places where celebrities are typically spotted, so I can get shots for the blog. Being a lurker doesn’t require social interaction. Yes, I often people-watch, but I’ve long since learned to bury the feelings of envy at seeing scenes of human connection, like clusters of women, close friends, sharing an afternoon of compassion and confidence, or a loving couple holding hands through the park.

  Therefore, if I speak—in person—to more than ten people during any given week, then it’s been an above-average week.

  Nevertheless, some part of me rebelled against being rude. I might contemplate becoming a wackado
odle recluse in my brain, but I could never fully commit to the role. Therefore, I shifted my belongings, placed my phone—with the crotch shot—in my bag, and accepted his hand for a quick shake.

  But it wasn’t a quick shake. His fingers tightened around mine until I lifted my eyes to his and relaxed my hand. His gaze was expectant, interested, his smile soft and really very attractive. I was wary as to why he was wielding both in my direction.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you, Annie.” He sounded like he meant it.

  I returned his smile as best as I could, felt my eyebrows lift on my forehead. “You, too, Kurt.”

  “We should get together some time. Get to know each other.” He said these words in a rush, almost like he was afraid I might disappear before he finished speaking.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, trying to mimic his intonation of sincerity. “Sure. We should do that.”

  Thankfully, the doors opened. I took advantage of the distraction to pull my hand from his and dart out of the elevator. Of course, he was close behind since we both lived on the same floor.

  “You know, we’ve lived next door for going on two years, and this is the first time we’ve spoken to each other?” He asked this conversationally with a lilt of humor in his voice.

  “Hmm,” was all I said, placing my takeout on the floor and digging in my bag for my key.

  I did know it. But I didn’t think it was all that remarkable. He was a good-looking playboy who likely spent more on one bottle of moisturizer than I did on all my hygiene products over the course of a year.

  I did my best to be a mousy, low-maintenance eremite. The chances that we moved in similar social circles or had similar interests were not good. Not good at all. Why talk to a person if you had nothing in common with them? What would that accomplish, other than a painfully stunted conversation?

  Successfully unlocking the door, I tossed the keys back in my bag and picked up the food. Kurt hovered at my side, leaning against the wall. Again I could feel his eyes on me. Rather than ignoring him and ducking into my apartment, I turned slightly and gave him a small wave.