Home > Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love Book 5)(9)

Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love Book 5)(9)
Author: Ali Parker

She straightened. “You’re not making me feel any better, you know?”

I smiled and hoped it looked trustworthy and unthreatening. “I’m sorry. I just… well, I saw you come in and you looked rather defeated sitting here by yourself. I can spot someone new to the city trying to get their bearings and I’d say you had a hell of a day today. Am I wrong?”

Her green eyes flicked back and forth between mine and she pursed her full lips. “No, you’re not wrong.”

“Then let me make up for how hard my city was on you today. Let me buy you a drink. Charlie here makes the best Old Fashioned in the state. It’ll take the chill out of your bones.”

She licked her lips and glanced down the bar at Charlie, the bartender. When her shoulders dropped a little, I knew she was going to agree before she even nodded and said okay.

When Charlie made his way down to us, I ordered the two drinks. He went about pouring them and I left my credit card on the bar beside my notebook. He took it after he dropped off our drinks. I slid one to the pretty stranger beside me and tapped my glass against hers.

“Welcome to the big apple,” I said.

She smiled in earnest this time. “Thank you.”

The first sip of the drink tingled on my tongue. She grimaced, sputtered for a minute, and went back in for a second sip which I always found went down easier than the first. She nodded appreciatively at it and set it down.

“Not bad,” she said.

“Right? New York can be a torturous bitch. But a stiff drink fixes everything.”

“A torturous bitch,” she mused. “You hit the nail on the head.”

“Tomorrow morning before you do anything else, get yourself an umbrella. Then you’ll be ready to face whatever the city throws at you. Rain, hail, snow, general douche-baggery of the human variety—whatever it is, an umbrella will help. Trust me.”

She held her hand out to me. “I’m Briar.”

“Wes.” I shook her hand. Her fingers were small and cold but her palm was warm.

Briar turned to face me squarely on her stool, crossed one long leg over the other, and nodded at my notebook. “So what’s with the notebook? Are you one of those brooding dudes who likes to sit in dark corners and write poetry about dying trees?”

I grinned. This girl had an edge to her.

I liked it.

“Poetry? No, but I am a writer.”

Her eyebrows inched upward. I enjoyed her facial expressions. A lot of people were good at hiding their emotions on their faces. I’d gotten good at searching for micro-expressions and slight suggestions that might hint to what a person was feeling or thinking. I was good at catching the slightest twitch of the lips, a hair raise of an eyebrow, a scrunching of the nose. All of it pointed to an emotion.

But Briar?

She didn’t have micro-expressions. She wore her emotions boldly.

“No shit,” she said, surprised. “Sorry about the writer crack. I didn’t actually expect you to be one.”

I chuckled. “Personally, I have no soft spot for poetry, so you can go right ahead and say whatever you want about those pretentious wordsmiths.”

Briar giggled.

The sound bubbled out of her like a joyful tune being strummed on a harp. It made me smile and instinctively lean in toward her as she leaned back, sweeping a drying strand of red hair over her shoulder.

“What do you write?” she asked.

“Oh you know, a little of this, a little of that.”

Briar clasped her hands together. “This and that, huh? Wow, sounds fascinating. You must be terribly talented and well paid to write about such precise, relevant subjects.”

She was the definition of the perfect muse. Inspiration seeped out of her and I wanted to harness all of it and channel it onto the page. Her attitude was charming and the playful banter made it easy to go back and forth with her. She was still guarded, that was easy to see, but so was I.

Then again, this was the first time I’d ever told a stranger that I was a writer. Usually, I played that close to the belt with someone I didn’t know. I never wanted to risk them finding out who I was. It complicated things every damn time.

Briar rested her cheek in one hand. “You’re really not going to tell me what you write? Not even the genre?”

I shrugged. “Guess.”

Her lips curled in a devilish smile. “I like guessing games.” She sat up a little straighter and scrutinized me like I was a chess board. “Suspense.”

“No.”

“Horror.”

“Definitely not.”

“Science fiction?”

“Nope.”

Briar removed her hand from her cheek and drummed her nails on the bar. “Non-fiction?”

“I’m offended.”

She rocked back on her stool and laughed. It made me smile in turn, and when she collected herself, she took a sip of her drink. “You’re good company, Wes. I’m glad you came and sat with me. I needed a laugh today. It’s been a rough one.”

“You know,” I said, “there’s only one thing writers are really good at besides writing.”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

“Listening.”

Briar rolled her eyes but smiled. “Is that so?”

I nodded earnestly. “It is. So, if you’d like to talk about it, I’m all ears.”

“Promise you won’t put it in a book?”

“Why does everyone think their life is so interesting that writers want to put them in their books?”

Briar crossed her arms. “Why are writers so good at evading questions with more questions?”

I chuckled. “All right, all right. I won’t put it in a book.”

 

 

Chapter 7

 

 

Briar

 

 

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about Wes that just made him easy to talk to. He sat in rapture, leaning inward, eyes fixed on me, and all the while, I blabbed about my last forty-eight hours, including the very beginning when my friends were late driving me to the airport. He sympathized and scowled and shook his head at the unfair tidbits of the story, and nodded with what seemed like pride when I told him how I’d spent my first night alone in a motel.

“You weren’t lying,” he said. “You’ve definitely had a rough go.”

Having someone else acknowledge how hard my day had been took a weight off my shoulders. “I know, right? And here I was naively thinking everything would work out in my favor and I’d fall into a well-paying job and find an apartment all within my first day.” I smirked at my own foolish optimism. “Stupid, right?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re just being nice.”

“Maybe a little.”

I laughed and so did he. Wes had a nice laugh. In fact, he had a nice everything. When he first came and sat down next to me, I hadn’t been sure what to think. My guard had been up because every guy who ever made a move on me in Waynesville had done so after having one too many drinks. Those fools thought they were charming as hell as they slurred about how pretty I was and mispronounced my name and tried to order me shots of tequila.

Wes didn’t have any of that small-town classlessness to him that I’d grown so used to. He was polite and calm, and he had a disarming smile that made me want to trust him and believe he was good to his core.

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