Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (19 page)

He smiled, his dark eyes too rich—too
warm, too damn sexy to make me feel even the least bit calm. “Lead
the way.”

It was one of those times when you can
see where you want to go, and it doesn’t look all that far, but
then you keep having to detour, and turn around, and you get run
into until you want to scream.

We made it to the bar in what seemed
like a hundred years (and was more like four minutes). Janine sat
at the bar, one hand around a half-f rocks glass, her other hand
held over her mouth as if she were about to sob or scream. Her eyes
were wide open and staring at her own reflection in the wall length
mirror behind the bar.

“
Hey boss lady,” I said as I
bumped her playfully with my hip. She didn’t seem to even notice, a
thousand yard stare her only expression.

“
Earth to Janine!” I took
hold of her shoulders and shook her. Her eyes were glazed and they
didn’t focus on me as I pulled her so she looked straight at me.
This had to be bad. I’d known her for over a year and a half and
she’d never been a loss for words.

She blinked as her eyes finally focused
on me, and then she swallowed.

“
Oh, Hope. You’re here.” She
brought the glass up to her lips and drained it in one long
swallow.

“
What’s going on, Janine.
Why are you freaked out?”

She set her drink on the bar and
motioned for the bartender to refill her. “The party…”

And she just started staring at her
reflection again.

“
The party,” I said, “is a
smash. Look at all these people.”

“
It’s a disaster.” She
looked down at the fresh drink the bartender placed before her.
“Terra…”

Oh no. Terra Banks, the big fish, New
York Times Bestselling author Janine had been wooing hadn’t shown
up.

“
I’m so sorry, Janine. Maybe
she was too busy to come.”

Janine frowned, her eyes locking on me
like she about to shoot me.

“
No, she came.”

I bit my lip, not understanding. “So
what’s the problem?”

She turned on her stool and pointed
across the room to where the buffet was laid out, and tall, naked,
muscular men were carved out of ice.

“
Terra Banks is a man, Hope.
A freaking man!”

I shrugged. “And that’s a problem
how?”

Janine glared at me with open
hostility. “He’s gay.”

I blinked. Okay, I never thought Janine
was bigoted, but everyone had their prejudices.

“
Writers use pen names of
the opposite sex all the time,” I said, trying to smooth things
over. “J.K. Rowling… Rob Thurman… Emily Bronte…”

She rolled her eyes at me and took
another long drink. “It’s not that he has a pen name. Everyone uses
a pen name anymore.” She shook her head and held her forehead.
“It’s that I’m no good with gay men. I just have no idea how to
talk to them.”

Huh? “You never stop talking,” I said,
and then wished I’d said something a bit more tactful. “I mean, you
can talk to anyone.”

She looked truly lost as she looked at
me again. “Sure, I can charm a woman writer with the best of them,
and I can flirt with straight men… even lesbians,”—okay, this was
going into TMI territory—“but I just clam up when I’m faced with a
gay man. I draw a complete blank.”

Dear god.

“
He’s a man, he’s gay,” she
lamented, “and he’s standing over there Tweeting how boring this
party is.”

“
You can’t know
that.”

She picked up her iPhone and showed me
the screen. Terra Banks’ twitter feed. party blows. Can’t wait to go home!>

Okay, that was bad.

Janine’s eyes opened up wide and she
reached out and grabbed my arm. “You have to help me!”

Lord, take me now…

“
I-I-I can’t.”

“
You. Have. To.”

I shook my head emphatically. Raphael,
silent until now, started to chortle in the background. I was going
to kick him where it hurt if he started in on me. I swear to
god!

“
Just go over there and talk
to him. Get him to sign with us.”

Really, just go over there and talk him
into signing with Branded Publishing. When she, the CEO hadn’t been
able to.

Sure…

“
You’re part of the team
here, Hope!” Her eyes shined with desperation. “We need her to join
us. She’s the biggest name in Indie publishing.”

“
I don’t know what I could
say…”

“
Sell her…
him
, on your
covers.”

I sighed. “You said he already has a
cover artist.” The amazing and much vaunted Poe.

She pulled me even closer. Her grip was
tight enough I’d probably have bruises tomorrow. “Change her
mind.”

“
Okay, okay,” I said as I
pried her fingers from my arm. “I’ll give it a try.”

“
Hope,” she almost screamed,
“we need her…
him
,
you know what I mean! We have to get him to sign. This is a must. I
need Terra Banks. The company needs him.” She lowered her voice to
a hostile growl. “Don’t fail me.”

Shiiit…

I’d thought my job was secure. Should
have known things were going down the toilet when she’d practically
started panting when she mentioned Poe on the phone last
week.

So now I had to wow the big time
author, face to face, when my boss was too scared to even speak to
him.

Perfect.

I felt kind of numb as I turned and
started across the room to the buffet, Raphael by my side. This was
so not the way I had hoped the evening would turn out.

I was hoping I’d just stand here for a
little while and smile as Janine sang my praises and then maybe I’d
answer some questions about my covers.

And then I’d go home.

I wanted to go home.

But so did Mr. Terra Banks.

I needed to make him want to
stay.

Fat chance…

“
I don’t like the way your
boss talks to you,” Raphael said.

I looked up at him, and he looked
genuinely ticked.

I shook my head. “She doesn’t usually…
she’s just under a lot of pressure.”

He scowled, his dark eyes digging into
me, making me feel as if I was about to spontaneously burst into
flames.

“
From what you and Bette
have told me, and from what I just heard, she’s threatened your job
three times in the last month.”

Okay, when he put it that
way…

“
I don’t think it’s
acceptable for the CEO of the company to act like that to their
employees. It’s very unprofessional.”

I stopped in my tracks. I’d never
thought of it like that. I was just grateful to have a job I loved
that paid the bills and then some. I’d never thought about the way
I was being treated.

Not that Janine was a monster, or a
boss from hell. But still…

The man had a point.

I turned and pulled him close, holding
him by the front of his silk shirt, looking imploringly up into his
dark brown eyes. “Maybe you’re right.”—He was completely right—“But
I need to do this now… help me out?”

He sighed, his sweet breath tickling my
nose. “Fine, I’m your man.”

It was my turn to sigh. Thank god. I
didn’t think I could get though this if he was going to keep
bringing up how much my life sucked.

We trekked the rest of the way to the
buffet and I strode right up to Mr. Terra Banks. At first I thought
he was staring at the six foot tall naked male ice sculpture, but
then I realized he was gazing at the new Olivia Lovelace cover: the
one with Jake on the cover.

I felt my get-up-and-go drain down to
less than a half tank in a matter of seconds. What if he asked how
I’d done it, taken such a great picture?

“
So, you like my
picture?”

He turned and blinked at me through
stylish wire framed glasses. He was thin, tall, a coppery redhead
with pale green eyes and peach freckles.

Just adorable…

“
You’re Hope
Jones?”

Okay, he knew my name… that was creepy.
Well, maybe not. I was sure Janine had given all the potential
clients my name.

“
That’s me.”

He took out his impossibly thin smart
phone and typed out a text.

If he was the type to text in the
middle of a conversation… this was going to be much harder than I’d
thought.

“
So, you like the cover…
Terra?”

He winced. “Name’s Michael.” He typed
with his thumbs with inhuman speed. Then he hit send and slid his
phone back in his jacket pocket like a gunslinger. “And yes, I do
like your covers.”

Okay, cool. He liked them.

He turned and pointed to Jake’s cover.
“But this one is different from your others.”

Yep, he was going there.

To lie or not to lie?

I took a deep breath and made my
choice. “It was an accident. A fluke snapshot, and I ended up using
it for a cover.”

He laughed on perfect ha, and then slid
his eyes my way.

“
An accidental shot, huh?”
He waited for me to elaborate.

“
Yeah, we were…” I couldn’t
say it.

“
Having sex?”

“
Yes,” I said, “having
sex.”

Raphael coughed
uncomfortably.

“
I… I regret it
now.”

Michael, a.k.a Terra, raised an
eyebrow. “He got mad when you asked permission?”

“
He got furious when I
didn’t.”

“
Oh…”

I sucked in some air and tried to
steady myself. I could still feel the guilt and hurt churning
inside me. My eyes started to burn, ready to start tearing
up.

“
It was an amazingly
effective way to get a guy to walk out on me.”

Raphael touched my back, his hand so
warm and gentle.

“
Yeah,” Michael said, “guys
can be funny like that.”

I blinked back my tears. “So, Michael…
you’re a dude?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “I couldn’t
even giveaway my first novel as a man.” He picked his cell phone
out of his breast pocket and looked at the screen, then stuffed it
back in the pocket. “I did get a couple reviewers who fell all over
themselves telling me that I, as a man, had no idea how to write
women. That a woman would never think like that, or act like that,
or do the things I had them doing.

“
I’ve been working with
women since I was sixteen. Most of my friends are women. And they
most certainly talk and act like the women I write
about.”

He leaned against the buffet table and
stared off into space for a moment. “And then I decided to get a
sex change, identity wise, and voila… I’ve never had one reviewer
say a word about my not writing from a woman’s point of view
correctly again.

“
Hell, just last week I had
a man email me that I didn’t understand men enough to write from
their side of the story.”

I had to smile.

“
I couldn’t stop laughing at
that one.”

I groaned as I tried to broach the
subject I’d come to talk to him about.

“
Janine really wants to get
you to sign with her.”

Michael’s eyelids lowered as he gave me
a wily stare. “You mean the Janine who hasn’t said two words to me
since I introduced myself?”

I sighed. “You noticed.”

We both laughed.

“
What’s up with
that?”

“
Says she’s no good with…
ah…”

His smile turned ruthless. “With gay
guys?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“
She did seem a lot more
charming in her emails and texts.”

“
She sent me to try and
smooth things over, I guess.”

“
I like your covers,” he
said, “but I’m committed to my current cover artist. He has an eye
like no one else.”

“
I understand that.” Okay,
this was where I was supposed to tell him that my covers were
better, even when they weren’t. I was supposed to sell myself. “But
I’m sure that if you sign with Branded, Janine would be happy to
keep Poe as your personal cover artist.”

I could practically feel about two
layers of skin peel off my back as I said it.

Michael looked at me and smiled,
befuddled. “You are a most unusual woman.”

“
You have no idea,” Raphael
chimed in. “The first time I met her she threatened to take a
shotgun to my balls.”

Oh dear god… “I’m going to kill you,
you know?”

He shot me with his brilliant, lady
killer smile. And then he aimed it at Michael.