“I’m just—excited,” I said, having to gulp for air between words.
“Yeah,” Lance said. “Like a dog who just spotted the park out the window. If you had a tail, it’d be wagging right now.”
“Her butt does kind of wiggle when she walks this fast,” Trinity said, leaning her neck back to get a look.
I ignored them. We’d reached an auditorium style room with hundreds of chairs arranged in a wide semicircle around the central stage. We were some of the first in the room, but I still kept up my breakneck pace until I had secured seats for us at the very front. I melted into the chair and mopped sweat from my brow. “Success,” I whispered.
Trinity and Lance sat on either side of me. “What’s so special about this author, anyway?”
I blinked. “Weren’t you listening when I explained all this to you?”
Trinity gave me a level stare. “You mean when you got drunk on wine coolers and ranted about some “amazing book” for like two hours? You also had to interrupt yourself like fifteen times to get up and pee. Besides, if I gave you a two-hour lecture on anything, how much do you really think you’d remember?”
“Wine coolers go right through me,” I muttered under my breath.
“You read this guy’s book before anyone else, right?” Lance asked. “I remember that.”
“See?” I said. “Somebody listens to me. I’m on his advanced review team and I’m confidently going to say this book is going to be a global bestseller the moment it releases. Seriously. The guy is an absolute. Freaking. Genius. He’s already getting all the big publishers fighting over future contracts. All kinds of awards are coming out from the early review copies they sent out. And nobody knows what he looks like, so.”
“Wait,” Trinity said, a grin forming. “Is that why you were in such a hurry? You want to get a look at this author guy you have a ladyboner for?”
“I do not have a ladyboner. If anything, it’s an intellectual erection. I respect his work. And maybe I’m just a little curious to see what he looks like? So what?”
Lance made a disgusted noise. “Can you two not talk about ladyboners in front of me, please?”
Trinity chuckled to herself. The room was filling up quickly as the slower movers made their way in through the back doors.
“Well,” Lance said, leaning forward so he could see Trinity. “I say we stop giving Kenzie such a hard time. Imagine if you got to see Gordon Ramsey at a place like this.”
Trinity leaned back in her seat and let out a wistful sigh. “The things I would do to hear that man call me a fucking donkey just one time.”
Lance and I shared a raised eyebrow but didn’t comment. Trinity was notorious for having inappropriate, often confusing fantasies about just about anybody who knew their way around a kitchen.
It was close to thirty minutes before the room had filled up. The lights dimmed. A woman with an Author’s Anonymous lanyard went to the microphone and gave a quick introduction for Sebastian St. James, which was met with hushed murmuring and then a round of applause.
The man who strode out onto the stage made my jaw drop. His tall, delicious frame was clad in a suit the color of smoke and he had a stark red tie around his neck. He took the microphone from the holder and held it casually, regarding the crowd from beneath two bold eyebrows. His eyelashes were so thick he almost looked like he was wearing eyeliner, and his tan skin, coupled with the seething intensity of his gaze, made my stomach rumble. He was looking down on all of us, literally and figuratively, and it was confusingly hot.
I had an unfortunate tendency to get hungry when turned on. Yes, I knew that was super weird. It was also super embarrassing when my stomach decided to gurgle and whine every time a cute guy made eye contact with me. Maybe it was a side effect of being around Trinity for too long.
I missed the opening of Sebastian’s presentation because I was too mesmerized to focus. I watched that glorious dark hair of his and followed the lines of a body that looked like it belonged to a professional athlete and not someone who spent his days at a keyboard.
All I could do was sit and stare as I tried to comprehend the life-changing book I’d read was his. A man like that wrote Embers? It wasn’t even fair. Someone with a brain so perfect shouldn’t look perfect, too.
Trinity made me stir from my daze with a nudge to my side. “Are there any autobiographical accounts of sex in this guy’s book? Because I might need to borrow a copy.”
I hushed her, because we were sitting so close to the stage that he could probably hear us.
I finally tuned my brain into what he was saying and realized it wasn’t at all what I expected to hear.
“So really,” Sebastian continued in a deep, commanding voice. “You’re all wasting your time. Succeeding in this industry either takes an astronomical amount of talent or an astronomical amount of luck. If you have neither, you’d be wiser to get a real job and give up on this dream.”
I stared, open-mouthed.
Sebastian had the nerve to grin as he looked out over the entire room full of hopeful authors whose dreams he’d just stomped on. “And I think that fulfills my contractual obligation to speak to you all. Enjoy the rest of the conference.”
The gorgeous asshole I’d spent the last few months dreaming about seeing in person walked his tight ass off stage.
“Kenzie,” Trinity said softly. “I’m sorry.”
There were a few seconds of stunned silence in the crowd, and then a general roar of outrage. Some people were getting up and leaving while shaking their heads. Others stayed in their seats; mouths still agape.
“Kenzie…” Lance said slowly. “I don’t like that look on your face.”
“Asshole,” I whispered. “Fucking asshole.”
“She’s got that I’m about to do something stupid glint in her eyes,” Trinity said. “Should we tie her to the chair?”
I bolted out of my seat, took the stairs up to the stage, and followed the same path I’d seen Sebastian take.
Because, yep, I was about to do something stupid. Shoot first and ask questions later, baby.
2
Sebastian
The last thing I needed was to be wasting my time at a writer’s conference. But there I was, walking away from a stage where I’d probably just crushed the dreams of a few hundred hopeful writers. The only part I regretted was the tongue lashing I was going to get from my assistant in a few moments.
I rounded a corner backstage and spotted Nilla sitting on the ground in her pantsuit. She had a phone in each hand and a notepad on her lap. From the looks of it, she was already juggling calls about the stunt I’d pulled.
Nilla was twenty-seven, ambitious, and had been exhausted from the moment she’d taken the job as my assistant. Once I signed with a publishing house, everything had moved impossibly fast. I’d gone from someone who wrote on my own terms and at my own pace to being swept up in a whirlwind of public appearances, obligations, and, of course, the kind of guy who needed a personal assistant.
I would’ve loved to ditch all of it if I could. My only genuine desire was to write a book and have people read it. I didn’t need them to come to this kind of place and worship me. I didn’t need to pretend I was more than the asshole who put the words down. Honestly, I wished I could go back to my creative writing classes in college, where the motto had been that the story speaks for itself. It didn’t matter if the author wanted to jump in and defend it. It didn’t matter if you liked him or her. All that mattered was the story.