“You think so?”
“Of course. She moves into the house and then the doorbell rings. Of course it’shim.”
“Come back from the dead?”
“Stranger things happened in that novel,” I pointed out, and through the crack in the door I watched him think back on the time travel and the maybe–maybenotwerewolf neighbor.
Finally, he said, “Fair. How’d you come to start ghostwriting for Annie?”
“Why do you keep calling her Annie?” I shimmied into myhose—the knee-highs weren’t going to cut it—and tucked my white blouse into the skirt.
“A habit, I guess,” he replied in that aloof way that very much sounded like bullshit, but I didn’t press it. Maybe it was a weird editor thing. “Did she contact you?”
“No, actually. Well, sort of. I met her in a coffee shop about five years ago. You know, the one on Eighty-Fifth and Park?”
“Oh, they’ve got great scones.”
“Right? Totally the best. Anyway, it was empty, and I’d just broken up with my agent after my publisher dumped me, so I was writing some saucy smut—”
“Noted, you write sex scenes when you’re depressed.”
“Just some good foreplay. Very titillating stuff.Anyway, she sat down at my table and critiqued what I was writing. She’d been reading over my shoulder, apparently, and I asked her what the hell and that was that. She critiqued my work and then asked if I wanted a job.”
“Five years ago?” he asked, perplexed.
“Yeah.” I tugged on my skirt, and zipped it up in the back. “Why?”
“Because I was—what the hell could you have been writing to attract her?” he asked, though I got the feeling that he wanted to ask something else.
I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Guess.”
“Had to be something off the cuff. Alien barbarian erotica?”
“No, but I’d read that.”
“Omegaverse?”
“Anyway,” I said loudly, pulling my hair back into a bun, and left the bathroom. “She gave me pointers on a confession scene. She said that people usually weren’t overly eloquent, and grand romantic gestures are obtuse and obsolete because they’re toocorny. I argued the opposite—that people like grand romantic gestures because theyarecorny. Because people need more corny in their lives. Like this”—I outstretched my arms to encompass the room, this moment—“is corny. All of it. Right down to how much I want to touch you, and how I can’t.”
“And do tell, how much do you want to touch me?”
“You’re terrible.”
“You brought it up! And I would point out that this scene is not so much corny as rife with romantic tension. If it’s corny, then perhaps you’re writing it wrong.”
“Oh, then tell me, how would you write this scene, maestro?”
“Well, first off,” he began, and turned his dark eyes to me, “I would ask you what you wanted.”
“Ooh, consent. That’s sexy.”
“Very,” he murmured in agreement, his voice low and gravelly. He stood and stepped close to me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “Skip the banter, shelve the soul-searching. It’s morning, and the sunlight is glorious on your hair, and you are exquisitely stubborn. You’d never tell me what you’d want.”
“Ha! Go on.” I tried to keep my voice level. “Then what do I want?”
He came up behind me, outstretching his arms, hovering over my skin as he traced the contour of my hips to my middle. “I have an inkling that you would like me to reach my hand beneath your pretty lace underwear,” he whispered, his lips pressed close to my ear, “and stroke you slow. And while I did, I would kiss your neck and nibble at your ear.”
I felt myself flush, my heart beating in my throat as quick as a rabbit. I held my breath as he bent closer still, closer than he’d ever been, never touching, his fingers painting over me like a sculptor’s, relishing in my design.