Last Fall

by Alexis Anne

  Her voice trailed off.

  “Do you plan on staying in Tampa?”

  Her eyes flicked up to mine. “Yes. My life is here.”

  “Ask me something else.”

  Her eyes did that thing again. They got all big and dark, like she was turned on. “We know you’re a Bear in the streets, but what are you in the sheets?”

  She was being playful and serious at the same time, so I decided to have a little fun with the answer. “A bull, a stallion, a fucking god.”

  She shivered. “A god? Well then . . . I guess I should prepare to be amazed.”

  Amazed? Okay, maybe I’d gone a bit too far. There was confidence and then there were unrealistic expectations. I wanted to keep things closer to confidence. I sat on the edge of the bed because the distance didn’t feel necessary anymore. “I’m not a bear in the bedroom unless you ask me to be one. I think what I like about you so much, what’s always attracted me to you, is that I’ve never felt like I had to be that guy around you.”

  She stared up at me.

  And stared. With these big green, gorgeous, owl eyes.

  “Erik,” she paused, pink lips slightly parted and begging to be kissed, “that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the kind of thing I’d have my hero say.”

  “That’s what I told you last night. Your books are more real than your past. I’m your hero, Darlin’. And you,” I moved onto the bed, over her, hovered near those damn lips, “are mine. I’ve been waiting a long time to make this story real.”

  It was a really good sign that she didn’t flinch away or hesitate. It was all very natural the way she smiled up at me, the way she ran her hands over my shoulders and behind my neck, the way she pulled me closer for a kiss.

  I eased my weight down onto her and sank into it.

  Erasing her fears slowly was going to be hard when she felt this good. It was damned difficult to hold back when I wanted to jump headfirst into everything. But then again, work like this was a lot of fun.

  By Wednesday night Zoe had taken over half my room and all of my life. Every plan now included her. I hated that she was spending the weekend at the beach and that I was on the road the whole next week. I wasn’t ready for this to end and, if I was being honest, worried that a week and a half apart would unravel all the good that happened this weekend.

  Having her asleep beside me every night was difficult to say the least but I wasn’t lying when I told her I was a jealous man. I wanted her, but I wanted all of her. I was selfish like that.

  Every day it got easier for her and harder for me. We were close to a turning point but I didn’t want to rush it.

  And damn was that hard. Physically, painfully hard.

  I had my head on her stomach. The lights were off and we should have been asleep. After the game I brought home burgers and cheese fries. We stuffed our faces. I told her stories about the stupid things the guys had done that week. We laughed.

  We made out like teenagers.

  And now we were both awake when we should be exhausted.

  “I don’t want to wait,” I said as I traced shapes above her knee.

  “Wait for what?”

  “The weekend. To meet your friends. Can I come tomorrow?” She was leaving at lunchtime to pick everyone up at the airport, and then they were driving straight to the beach house. I didn’t see a reason to wait unless it was breaking some sort of girl code. Maybe they needed time alone together and I was being an overbearing jerk, stepping on their toes.

  But two days was too long.

  My head bounced as she laughed. “They will be thrilled.”

  Really? I looked up. “You’re sure?”

  “Very,” she kept laughing. “They asked why they had to wait so long to meet you.”

  Perfect. “Well then I should give them what they want. What time?” Did I sound too eager? I sounded too eager.

  “How about five o’clock? That should give them plenty of time to grill you before we actually grill dinner.”

  I rested my chin just above her belly button. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “You’ll be there quite a bit this weekend.”

  “It won’t be the same.” I didn’t bring up the fact that by the time she dropped everyone back at the airport and went home I’d be gone.

  She knew.

  20

  Zoe

  Six Minutes Was Too Much

  No one recognizes a writer. Not even ones with million-dollar publishing contracts and movie deals.

  I still couldn’t get over that.

  The day my agent said my book was going to auction—basically a bidding war between publishers—my life changed. This story I felt compelled to write? I knew it was special. The idea hit me like a flash and I couldn’t write the words fast enough. I felt this story in my bones in a way no other story had touched me before. My agent lost her mind a little bit when she read it but I was still skeptical. The historical fiction market was different than romance and fantasy. Especially when it came to triumphant, strong female characters.

  I thought Maggie was being a little too hopeful about my chances.

  I didn’t see the auction coming and I most definitely didn’t see the immediate movie deal from a million miles away, but it was one of those right place, right time, right person scenarios. My editor was married to a producer who was actively searching for a script that matched my book description. He had a whole plan for how to crack this historical blockbuster market that had been languishing over the last few years.

  What should have taken years was instead taking months. I was just holding on for dear life, hoping it didn’t all crumble around me.

  Thank goodness I used a pen name and everyone understood my need for privacy without question. My real last name needed to stay out of the spotlight. Tony wasn’t the kind of man to hunt down a woman who left him. I wasn’t worth the effort or the mess that would ensue. He wouldn’t want to look bad.

  But I didn’t know what he’d do if the information fell in his lap.

  “I’m making cookies!” Lindsay said, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “And you’re all eating them.”

  Other than the signing on Saturday and a dinner with a group of our fans, our entire weekend would be spent here, cooking, writing, and drinking a ridiculous amount of bourbon.

  “What kind?” I yelled back.

  “Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and sugar!”

  So all of them. “Carry on!”

  “What are you working on?” I asked Laura, who was lounging on a chaise fit for a queen with her laptop perched on her lap.

  “Mermaid sex,” she sang. “No seriously. They’re in the cave from Julia’s book and they’re about to bang.”

  We’d taken to crossing over into each other’s books even when they had nothing in common, simply because it made us happy. I mean, what was more fun for writers than writing? It was our version of playtime.

  “So when does Erik arrive?” Julia asked, cutting right to what everyone clearly wanted to know.

  Our group was tight. We shared pretty much everything. They knew about Erik right away and I hadn’t held back on sharing the details of our week. As someone who processed her world through words I think maybe it was just easier for me to share my life with my writer friends.

  There’s also the fact that I didn’t see them in person all that often. Oh sure, we talked all day every day, but it was different. I didn’t usually see them in their pj’s, flicking off a Twitter post like I did with June.

  So in a way it seemed right that I would introduce Erik as my boyfriend to them first. June, Carrie and Eve knew Erik. They knew me.

  But these six women had followed along as we became a couple.

  My phone vibrated at that exact same moment.

  Erik: Headed your way. Be there in an hour.

  “Is he on the way? Is he on the way?” Alexandra clapped.

  Oh, how I wanted to draw this out just for the fun of it, bu
t I couldn’t do that to them. “Yes, he’s on the way.”

  “It’s like we’re having our very own novel play out in real life,” she sighed, back of her hand to her forehead. “He better be good hero material.”

  Which brought me to something important. “So here’s the thing. I don’t think I can objectively evaluate us.” And neither could June, Carrie, or Eve. “And since you all are the foremost experts on all things love, I was hoping—”

  “That we’d study you guys and give you a report! Yes. We accept!” Laura exclaimed.

  For the next hour we sipped cocktails and cooked, all while the anticipation grew to epic proportions.

  “Is he as sexy as he seems in Sports Illustrated?”

  “When you say patient you really mean patient?”

  “Where is he from?”

  “What does he do in the off season?”

  “Are any of his brothers single?”

  I answered the ones I could and ignored the ones that were flat out wrong. “His older brother is divorced, but I’m not sure he’s over his ex-wife.”

  “Rats,” Laura sighed. “I love a good rebound. Bonus points for being a former athlete. Bonus, bonus points for being a sexy coach.”

  “You’ve looked him up?”

  She held up her phone. “Wikipedia, baby! If only he was a ginger . . . ”

  “Sex truck! Sex truck! This is not a drill!” Alexandra yelled from the front window. Sex truck was an old joke we couldn’t let go. It was also very applicable to the situation. Erik drove a big fancy pickup truck.

  My heart jumped into my throat. This was it. For the very first time I was introducing a guy to my friends.

  No not a guy. My guy.

  The girls lined the front window giving me a play by play of his arrival.

  “His truck is so nice and big.” That was Lindsay.

  “Oh, his foot is so nice and big, too. I wonder if everything is . . . oh, yes, yes it is,” Julia sighed.

  I peeked over their heads in time to see Erik step out of the truck and slam the door looking kind of like a giant in his Mantas-blue t-shirt and matching ball cap. My mouth went dry. He made jeans and ball caps look as good as any suit and tie.

  “I’ll get the door!” Mary offered very helpfully considering the rest of us were behaving like a pack of kids. She flung it open just as he stomped up the wooden steps.

  “Hey there. I’m Erik,” he said with a little wave.

  “I’m Mary, nice to meet you.” She shook his hand and welcomed him inside.

  Even though we were all crowded into the large living room with the expansive ceilings and beach-chic white paint, he seemed to fill the space.

  Laura immediately started giggling uncontrollably.

  My nerves went haywire as it all really sank in that this was happening. I liked a guy and he liked me. He was here with the people I loved, seeing me in work mode. In a lot of ways this whole weekend for me was like a three-game series for Erik.

  I hurried over and took his hand. “Welcome to the beach house.”

  He squeezed back, dropping a kiss onto my cheek. “Thanks.”

  My cheeks turned pink as everyone stared.

  And stared.

  So before things got anymore awkward I began introductions. “You’ve already met Mary. This is Laura.”

  More giggling.

  “Laura,” Erik said. “I have heard wonderful things about you.” He took her hand and she blushed.

  “Nice to meet you too.” Even more giggling.

  Okay. Not sure what was happening there. So I turned to Julia. “Miss Julia. Our queen of historicals and mermaid hair.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Erik. We promise to be kind.”

  “Kind of nosy,” Alexis quipped.

  I sighed. “This is Alexis. Watch out for her.”

  She scowled. “I’m not that bad.”

  “Yes you are.” She really was. I moved quickly on to Alexandra. “Our Mistress of Positivity.”

  She bounced her eyebrows. “You have a nice big truck. Has Zoe ridden in it yet?”

  I almost choked, but I’d warned Erik many times what he was in for. Innuendo, sex jokes, and cookies were always in large supply.

  He smiled wide. “No, actually she hasn’t,” he said without missing a beat.

  Maybe ballplayers really were as dirty as romance writers.

  “Hm. Such a shame,” she said.

  I shook my head and moved down the line to Lindsay. “Our Grande Dame of Snark and Mysteries.”

  “She’s too much. Really,” Lindsay gushed with all the theatrics she could muster. “I’m also the self-proclaimed cookie queen. Speaking of which, why don’t we all move this to the porch?”

  The minute they left, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “So that’s them.”

  One could make the argument that because we spent so much quiet time with our characters we had no choice but to let out all our personality at once, anytime we came into contact with multiple human beings. It would certainly help explain the over-the-top introductions I just witnessed.

  Erik pulled me back for another hug and a real kiss. “I like your friends. They are as bad as I ever was.”

  “What do you mean?” I wrapped my arms around his waist, looking up.

  “Oh, were you were too busy freaking out to notice the death threats?”

  “I was not freaking out.”

  “You were totally freaking out.” He squeezed me against him. “They all just gave me the silent third degree. I can guarantee you Laura will kill me if I hurt you. Lindsay will bury the body. Julia will concoct the cover story while Alexandra distracts everyone.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Mary will make sure no evidence is left behind. I’m fairly certain Alexis is already planning ways to blackmail me.”

  “That’s stunningly accurate.”

  He shrugged. “They love you. When you love someone you don’t dick around. You make sure the new person knows their balls will be sliced off without hesitation.”

  I could have done without the graphic description, but knowing that my friends had my back and that Erik was aware of it, was strangely comforting. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “I’ve been looking forward to it all week,” he said with all the sweetness I could stand, all while his steady gaze dug deeper inside me. “I’ve missed you.”

  “It’s been six hours.” Six long hours without him.

  “Six minutes is too much.” He ran a finger under my chin and stole a kiss. “I like seeing you every day. I like kissing you every day. And I really like the way I feel when you’re around.”

  My heart thudded harder. “And how is that?”

  “Like I’m right where I should be, Zo.” He dropped another kiss on my lips and gave me a good squeeze. “Let’s go hang with your friends.”

  For the next two hours we sat on the back porch listening to the gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico while we grilled, ate Lindsay’s delicious cookies and polished off glasses of bourbon.

  The sun had set a while ago and Erik had his arm slung around my shoulder. “All right, so let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said. “The seven of you all write completely different stuff but you have the same goal, so it works.”

  “Exactly,” Julia said, holding up her nearly empty glass. “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, actually it makes perfect sense.” Erik’s eyes got a little unfocused as he looked past Julia. “It’s kind of like a baseball team, actually. If we were all exactly the same we wouldn’t be a good team. Every position requires a different set of skills, and all the positions together cover the field of play. Our different talents are what make us a strong, dynamic team.”

  “Oh . . . wow,” I said. “Erik, we’ve been trying to explain why this works for over a year.” And here he waltzed in and figured it out in an hour.

  The seven of us met at a conference and quickly became friends. The
fact that we wrote very different types of books didn’t become a concern for a long time.

  And then we wondered how we ever made it work. I mean, how was someone who wrote about sex in explicit detail supposed to work with someone who never wrote about sex at all? We didn’t share readers. Our marketing looked nothing alike. It shouldn’t work, and yet we all loved each other so much, and we loved the process of writing so much, that we never let that detail stop us.

  Eventually it all started to make more and more sense as we each began to stretch and write more diverse types of stories. The fact that we had already established a strong connection made that growth so easy for all of us. I jumped from romance to fantasy to historical saga and back again. Julia moved from contemporary romance to historical fiction. Lindsay seemed to write in five different genres but always with the same smart voice.

  Because our foundation was built on our love of reading and writing we could talk about anything from the business end of the publishing industry to the nitty gritty details of crafting a character. It simply didn’t matter what the story was about anymore.

  “You’re a genius,” Alexandra whispered. “How did we never come up with an analogy like this? I like him, Zoe. He fits right in.”

  “He can be our mascot,” Laura declared. “Our sexy mascot.”

  “He’ll be good for carrying things at conferences and signings and stuff,” Mary said. “Our husbands will be happy to have help for a change.”

  “Hey,” Alexis said, “are you implying I’m lazy?”

  “Yes,” I laughed. “You have to admit the husbands do a lot for us all.”

  She grinned. “They like feeling useful. Do you like being useful, Erik?”

  Luckily he seemed to love my friends’ weird senses of humor and went right along. “I do. Did Zoe mention I have four sisters?”

  There was a collective “Oh . . . ” from the whole group.

  “Well that explains why he doesn’t look like he’s two seconds from running for his truck,” Julia nodded.

  He squeezed my hand. “I feel most at home with a group of bossy women.”