by Holley Trent
He didn’t need to explain in seventy different ways why he’d dumped her. One had been enough. He’d decided that he couldn’t compete with her career and her “fake paper people.”
It’d been a year since he’d left, but she didn’t really try to connect with people anymore. Partly, she was busy. Partly, she worried that Oren was right that her priorities were upside-down. She wasn’t an easy person to be with, and he certainly hadn’t been the first to tell her that.
As the hired car pulled up to the curb, her phone vibrated from the incoming text message from a number she didn’t recognize.
how about now? They’d included an embarrassed emoji. i keep weird hours. don’t want to miss you.
“Adrien,” she whispered. “Now?”
Raleigh was holding the back door open and gesturing for her to get in.
She scooted in and to the left door, and tapped in, Heading to hotel now.
can be downtown in thirty minutes. meet you somewhere?
She chewed on the inside of her cheek and pondered her options. If Raleigh were involved, the encounter would turn into a big to-do, and incredibly awkward, and Stacia was too tired for added awkwardness. Meeting at some darkish bar for drinks to loosen up her dorky ass and then a few quick selfies was just about her limit. She didn’t really know how to be social outside of publisher events anymore, except with Raleigh, and he didn’t count. He only pretended to be a people person when there was a paycheck involved, and he was very good at pretending.
Adrien texted, can drive you to hotel afterward if u want. won’t keep you long.
Those were her magic words—the promise of brevity. He was making it hard for her to find a reason to say no, and, if she had to be honest with herself, she didn’t want to say no. Beyond the fact that the opportunity was one that shouldn’t have been ignored, she wanted to squash that nervous energy she felt every time she saw his picture.
Fictional character. Real person. Same face.
Tell me where, she sent.
He relayed a street address, which she quickly input into her map app. The location was about a ten-minute walk from the hotel.
She texted, Make it forty minutes in case there’s a delay with hotel check-in.
She cut a side-eye to Raleigh to see if he was watching her.
He was busy looking out the window at a fender bender to their right and shouting into his own phone, probably at his assistant.
And I need to get rid of a headache, she added to the message.
c u in 40.
She tucked her phone into her tote and cleared her throat right as Raleigh disconnected his call.
“Do I have to do everything myself?” he groused. “Sheesh. Seems like I can’t even leave the office.”
“You know what?” she said. “Take a break tonight. I’ll get out to the photo op on my own.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. I don’t need to be babysat. I’m a grown woman who’s been making her own way since seventeen. I can certainly get from the hotel to the restaurant and back.”
Raleigh narrowed his eyes.
“What?”
“You’re going to flake, aren’t you? You’re going to your room to...hmm, what was that last lie you told me?” He tapped his chin contemplatively, and then snapped his fingers. “Oh, yes. You’re going to brush your teeth, and then I won’t hear from you again until you’re due at the next meeting tomorrow morning.”
“I’m not going to flake.”
“Don’t piss in my pond, girlie. Meet and greets are my bailiwick.”
“Yes, but your bailiwick is also making five-minute meetings turn into three-hour-long soirees. I don’t have the endurance tonight.”
If Raleigh narrowed his eyes any more, his upper and lower eyelashes would knit.
“I’ll behave,” she insisted.
“Writers make the best liars. I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll send you the picture first thing.”
“Smile in it or I’m coming there.”
“Jeez.” Had Raleigh been a reasonable person, she would have thought he was joking, but the scene was playing out in her head like a clip from an old silent film, and Raleigh was the overly flamboyant villain.
Minus the cape.
She shuddered, and spat, “Fine. Tiny smile. No teeth. Too late for teeth.”
“Nine eastern is too late for teeth?”
“It is when you make a habit of going to bed at nine thirty.”
Really, it was probably a good thing she was single. She’d become such a bore.
Don’t miss Writing Her In by Holley Trent, available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2019 by Holley Trent
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ISBN-13: 9781488053894
Three Part Harmony
Copyright © 2019 by Holley Trent
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