Mr. Fix-It

by Crystal Hubbard

  “He’s straight?”

  “—is on his sixth or seventh longtime companion,” Khela finished. “January Rose was married for twenty-eight years. Her husband died last year. Heart attack. Rose is the only person I know, author or civilian, who found true love. Then her husband ups and dies on her.”

  “I’m sure, given a choice, he wouldn’t have upped or died.”

  “It just frustrates me.” Khela stared at her feet. “Even the people who find real love don’t get to keep it.”

  “They had twenty-eight years,” Carter pointed out.

  Khela whipped her head around to face him. “Would that be enough for you, if you managed to find the one person in the world who made every day worth living?”

  Her gaze locked onto his, the yearning in her eyes almost palpable. Too late, Carter looked away, self-conscious at having perhaps revealed too much of his own longing.

  “January Rose is a genuine sorceress,” Khela said softly, looking away. “Her romances are so good because she has lived what she writes.”

  “What about Carmen?” Carter passed her the champagne.

  “What about her?” Khela remarked sharply.

  “Is she divorced?”

  Prickled, Khela snapped, “What if she is?”

  The left side of Carter’s mouth rose in a telling smile. “You’re jealous.”

  “Of what?” she scoffed.

  “My interest in Carmen.”

  “No, I’m not,” she lied to his face. A spiky ball of acid green jealousy rolled around in her stomach, surprising her with its potency. “Are you really interested in her?”

  He sat back, holding the bottle to the chandelier light to gauge the amount of champagne remaining before he answered her. “She’s really beautiful.”

  The jealousy ball expanded exponentially.

  “She seems very smart, too,” Carter went on.

  Khela’s champagne hissed and fizzed in her belly and started to come back on her.

  “But she’s not my type,” Carter grinned.

  “You suck,” Khela snarled around a reluctant smile. She relaxed into the sofa and snatched the champagne from him. After her stomach settled, she gulped another swig. “But since you brought it up, what kind of woman is your type?”

  Carter picked up two more strawberries and toyed with them in one hand. “Do you want to know my ideal, or what I’d settle for?”

  “Both.”

  “My ideal is easy.” He cleared his throat. “I want someone smart. Attractive. Unpredictable.” He glanced at her. “Unpredictable in a fun way, not a let’s-carry-vials-of-each-other’s-blood way.” He found it easier to confess his desires to his strawberries, so he kept his gaze on them. “I want someone who’ll look at me and see what really matters. And want me, anyway.”

  “What about money?” Khela’s mouth went dry.

  “What?”

  “You want your dream woman to be smart, pretty and a barrel of monkeys. Don’t you want her to have a well-paying job, too?”

  Confused, Carter shook his head. “I’d rather she had a job that made her happy.”

  She thrust her chin at him. “But money would be a nice perk, wouldn’t it?”

  “Why do you have your tail up all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not…” She stopped when she heard the hostility in her voice. She softened and said, “I don’t mean to. It’s just that men seem to be more attracted to my bank account than to me.”

  Carter snickered. “You’re no better.”

  Khela almost punched him. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You invited me tonight because of the way I look. That’s just as bad as someone wanting to date you because of your income.”

  She stifled her initial reaction to his insult, which was to cuss him out, when she noticed his somber expression. He was right, not that she’d ever admit it to him.

  “You sound like you’ve got experience in being used,” she said quietly.

  “I was engaged to a woman who wanted to marry me because she liked my genes,” he sighed.

  “I don’t know if I blame her,” Khela admitted. “You do look pretty good in your Levis.”

  Carter reached over and gave the end of her nose a light thunk. “G-E-N-E genes, scribbler, not J-E-A-N-S. I overheard her and her parents debating our future the night before the wedding. It was at the Cypress Ridge Golf and Tennis Club in Decatur. Her parents were paying for everything, since my people didn’t have a pot to piss in. Savannah—”

  “You were engaged to a woman named Savannah?” Khela chuckled.

  “Do you wanna hear my tale of tragedy and woe or not? ’Cause I can just go on to bed, if—”

  “Go on,” Khela urged. The champagne loosened his tongue, intensifying the slow, sleepy, undiluted ’Bama drawl that Khela could listen to all day. “I’m sorry.” She giggled softly. Savannah…“I’ll bet she was a pageant girl, wasn’t she?”

  He chuckled. “The name gave it away?”

  “Yep. So what was she? Miss Chilton County Peach Blossom? Miss Elkmont Soybean?”

  “She began her career at three when she won Grand Supreme at the Southern Baby Belles and it ended nineteen years later, when she came up third runner-up for Miss Alabama. That’s when she decided it would be best to get hitched, start makin’ babies, and force her husband into her daddy’s cattle business.”

  “At least she told you her plans up front.”

  “Uh uh.” He slowly shook his head. “I didn’t know the master plan until I overheard it at the wedding rehearsal dinner. She and her parents were talking to some of their kin, and I heard them say that Savannah’s people had enough brains and money to take care of us, but that I had good genes to contribute. Our children would be tall, strong and good-looking, and in another generation, you’d never know that ‘lesser’ stock had been a part of their evolution.”

  “That’s gross,” Khela said.

  “I was just a human version of Secretariat to them. Someone to sire good foals. Savannah and I had words about it. She admitted that love wasn’t her motivating factor in accepting my proposal. I called off the wedding, left Alabama before her daddy could load his rifle and I haven’t been back for more than two days at a time since.”

  “So we’re both walking wounded,” she replied.

  “I guess so,” he muttered.

  They sat, silent, watching the bright lights break over the harbor.

  “I’m sorry I used you,” she said softly.

  “I’m sorry I’m so handsome.”

  His remark was just the right thing to break the tension, and they spent the next moment laughing. Carter scooted closer to Khela, putting his feet up on the cocktail table so that his ankle touched hers.

  “If we were characters in one of your books, what would be happening to us at this point in the story?” he asked.

  She shrugged. Looking at her strawberry rather than at Carter, she answered his question. “I suppose what was supposed to happen would have happened already. My heroine would have slipped into the shower with the hero for hot, urgent ‘first sex’ in the tight, steamy confines of the shower stall.”

  Carter inhaled deeply through his nose, his eyebrows rising with the expansion of his chest.

  Khela ran her knuckles along her thighs, unmindful of the way Carter’s eyes followed their path. “The showerhead is on a flexible cord, so they would have had all kinds of fun with that. They would have spent at least fifteen-hundred words learning each other’s tastes, textures and responses,” she went on, “and then he would have surprised her by putting her pleasure first. And he’d know very creative ways to please her. She would respond in kind, of course, probably trying techniques and positions she’d only heard of or read about.”

  Her voice softened, and now she spoke more to herself than to him. “The way he stared at her would almost be enough to bring her to orgasm. She might touch herself while he watched, partly to tease him, partly to let his reaction thrill h
er even more. When she was ready, she would pull him to her, and their bodies would fit together as though they had been made for each other. She would have found carnal freedom and expression the likes of which she hadn’t before thought herself capable.”

  She shook herself from her reverie and looked up to see Carter staring at her, his forehead creased in rapt attention. “She would make love to this man with her whole self. Without guilt, without regret…without expectation.”

  After a moment of silence in which he was aware of nothing but the contact between his ankle and Khela’s, Carter rattled his words loose. “Would your hero ask permission before he kissed the heroine?”

  Pensive, Khela stared at the chafing dish. Seduction in a bowl. That’s what the warm chocolate represented as she toyed with the giant berry in her hand. Everything about chocolate was designed to seduce—its scent, color and certainly its creamy, sinful taste. But the pool of melted chocolate before her held no temptation, not compared to Carter.

  His eyes fluctuated between honey and cinnamon as they delved into hers, and Khela longed to run her fingers through his dark hair. He smelled so fresh, masculine and clean. So much better than chocolate.

  “No,” she replied. “He wouldn’t need to.”

  Her strawberry fell to the carpet and rolled under the cocktail table as she pitched herself onto Carter. His strong hands caught her ribcage in time to keep her mouth from crashing violently into his. She kissed him, and he let her, opening his legs to cradle her between them. Her heavy, eager breaths mingled with his as she tasted each of his lips and his chin before deeply kissing him once more. Awkwardly, she maneuvered her hands under his T-shirt and raised it, exposing his chest. Tiny nips here and there sent his blood rushing south, and Khela settled more comfortably upon the hard bulge pressing into her lower abdomen.

  He palmed her backside as she cupped him and caught his lower lip between her teeth. Carter shifted, rolling her onto her back to lie half atop her. He covered her throat and chest with kisses, savoring her softness. She took his face and brought his mouth back to hers, amazing him all over again at how well she kissed.

  If her writing was only half as good, it was no wonder she’d had so many bestsellers. Carter grinned against her lips, wondering what else she did with such skill.

  He slipped one strap of her camisole from her shoulder, kissing its path to the cap of her shoulder. His lips traveled lower, over the thin cotton jersey, until they closed over the taut tip protruding from it. Khela drew in a shivery breath, her spine arching toward Carter. The warm, languid melting sensations she wrote about began to flow through her as Carter spoiled her flesh. When he slipped a hand under the waistband of her pants, she thrust her fingers into his hair and guided his head to her neglected breast. His fingers delved deeper, his longest coming to rest along her moist cleft. Slowly, wonderfully, beautifully, he began to stroke her, his touch light and knowing.

  Khela shamelessly moaned into his kiss, gripping his wrist and thrusting her hips against his hand. His finger slid inside her in time to feel her tight constrictions, and he kissed the graceful arch of her neck as she closed her eyes, surrendering to the pleasure of release.

  “Khela?” he whispered between calming kisses applied to her face and neck. “Why did you throw my bag into your room earlier?”

  Still panting, she choked back a laugh. “I didn’t want housekeeping to come in tomorrow and see that we were sleeping in separate bedrooms. Word spreads fast in a hotel.”

  He nuzzled her neck and took one of her hands. She smiled lazily when he directed it to the rigidness distending the front of his sweatpants. “Are we sleeping in the same bedroom?”

  She chewed a corner of her lip. “Would we actually do any sleeping?” she chuckled. “I still can’t feel my toes.”

  Carter hooked his fingers into her waistband and peeled her pants from her body. He took his time running his hands along her smooth legs. “Is that a line from one of your books?”

  Sensation returned to Khela’s extremities in the form of indignant fury. She scrambled to sit up and yanked her pants from Carter’s grasp.

  “Uh oh,” he mumbled, sitting up and adjusting his pants.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Carter. I’m a writer, but I’m not what I write, okay? In my day-to-day life, I don’t work from a manuscript. If I say something, it comes from me, from in here.” She gave her heart two hard jabs. “It doesn’t come from some made-up story!”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  Khela knew that she was overreacting, but she was committed to her rant because it was a fine distraction from the hunger Carter had started raging inside her.

  “Maybe I should have just gotten separate rooms.” She angrily thrust her legs into her pants. “We’re not fooling anyone. No one’s going to believe that we’re red-hot lovers.”

  “You convinced me, for a minute there.” He rested one arm along the back of the sofa. “Now the writer is writing me off.”

  “You certainly have a way with words, Carter.” And with his hands, and lips, and fingers…

  “Maybe I should write a book,” he said. “A mystery. It would try to explain why a love-starved woman would initiate a kiss with a man she’s enlisted to be a hot prop, only to turn him away after a harmless slip of the tongue.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Had she imagined the emphasis he placed on his last few words? They had a very real effect on her pulse, which throbbed hard in unusual places. “I’m going to bed now.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stiffly walked toward the master bedroom.

  “Khela, don’t.” He stood and followed her. “Don’t just walk away without giving this a chance.”

  She paused at the door to her room. “There’s no ‘this.’ You and I aren’t a ‘this!’ We’re a weekend of make-believe, and I lost sight of that for a minute. Once we get through the luncheon tomorrow, you and I can go right back to being what we were before.”

  “Tell me what you think we were, Khela. I’m curious.”

  His challenge cooled her blood, transforming her lust into needles of humiliation at having thrown herself at him. “We were just another couple of single thirtysomethings in the Back Bay,” she said. “Look, you don’t have to come to the luncheon. There’s really no point in carrying on with this charade. I apologize for dragging you here.”

  “Khela,” he said, starting after her when she disappeared into the master bedroom. She closed the door, nearly snapping his nose off. He rested one hand lightly on the door and debated his next move.

  He was still working out what to say when she reemerged to set his duffel bag at his feet. He was at a loss for words, but Khela wasn’t. “Goodnight, Carter,” she said softly, and retreated once more behind the closed door.

  Chapter 4

  “How shall you know Temptation? Not by its taste, scent, touch, appearance or voice, but by its persistence…”

  —from An Angel’s Prayer by Khela Halliday

  An ocean of faces, most of them female, swam before Khela. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision, to better focus on individuals. Her left hand gripped the edge of the podium centered on the dais while her right flirted with a glass of ice water sitting at the upper-right corner of her prepared remarks. ECWA romance writers and RAAO members comprised her audience, so she recognized quite a few of the people staring expectantly at her. Unpublished members outnumbered the “pubs” twenty to one. Khela couldn’t decide which group frightened her more—the unpubs, with hope and hunger shining in their eyes, or the pubs, most of whom barely managed to conceal their boredom.

  What was another keynote address to women who had been in her position before, some of them four or five times a year?

  Merrie Bollinger sat at a table smack in front of the dais, her benign smile doing little to ease Khela’s nerves. To the uninformed observer, Merrie looked as if she should be wearing a gingham apron and baking oatmeal
cookies for her eleven grandchildren.

  But Merrie was a seasoned veteran, the author of eighty-seven historical romances for RayderThorne Publishing Corporation. She spoke at RAAO chapter conferences several times a year, which frequently had Khela wondering how the sweet-faced Merrie could write so many books.

  But then Khela had read a few of Merrie’s books, and she’d discovered her secret. It was easy to write dozens and dozens of books when you were recycling the same story over and over.

  Khela swallowed back her catty deduction, and scanned the crowd. She had no right to criticize Merrie’s work, or anyone else’s. There was a time, not too long ago, when she had attended her first romance writers’ conference, and she had been captivated, listening to a seasoned author who had taken time out of her life to impart wisdom and encouragement to a roomful of writers.

  She and Daphne, her roommate of three years, had been juniors at Fieldcrest. Back then, Daphne had the largest personal library Khela had ever seen, and it was built solely of Cameo romances. While Khela had been an able student, double majoring in biology and western civilization, Daphne had been working on a creative writing degree, with the ultimate goal of becoming a Cameo author.

  Khela majored in fields that would prepare her for employment that would grant her financial security, but she honored her love of storytelling through a minor in English. And she continued to scribble her stories in spiral-bound notebooks, which she never showed to anyone, not even Daphne.

  Daphne had done all the right things—according to Daphne. She’d joined RAAO and one of its Missouri chapters; she had attended meetings, annual conferences and the national convention. She belonged to critique circles and book-discussion groups, and she maintained the strictest discipline, faithfully writing from 10 p.m. to midnight five nights a week.

  When Daphne invited her to the Chicago RAAO chapter’s fall conference, Khela had gone primarily out of curiosity and to enjoy a weekend with her roommate in the Windy City. Daphne had registered for a one-on-one appointment with one of the major-league editors attending the conference. Her fearlessness hadn’t fully matured yet, so she dragged Khela with her to the five-minute, make-or-break meeting. Tongue-tied, Daphne had barely managed to babble the pitch she’d practiced for two weeks prior to the conference, and afterward, she’d rushed off to the ladies’ room to barf up the bleu cheese and artichoke soufflé she’d had at lunch.