Mr. Fix-It (12 page)

“You can’t make an accusation like that and just run away without explaining it,” she said, taking Carter’s plate from him and setting it in the sink.

“I just think that all writers probably borrow in part or whole from real life when they’re creating their characters,” Carter allowed, leaning against the Le Cornu stove. “Seems like a bit of truth would only enrich the fiction.”

“It does,” Khela agreed.

Carter crossed his arms over his chest and, staring at his feet, asked the one question that he most wanted answered. “What would you do to me to turn me into one of your heroes?”

Without hesitation, Khela met his gaze straight on and said, “I’d make you black.”

* * *

Carter watched as Khela retrieved a black lacquered platter from the refrigerator and set it on the prep island. He moved closer to investigate the colorful tidbits comprising her dessert course.

“Cake for dinner, now sushi for dessert?” he asked.

“In keeping with the theme, I thought I’d make a main course dessert.” Khela pointed to each item as she described it. “The sticky rice in the California maki is actually a mini cupcake topped with shredded coconut. The seaweed wrapper is a Fruit Roll-Up. The carrot, cucumber and avocado are actually cut from jellied fruit slices, and the crabmeat is vanilla taffy with a bit of food coloring. The nigiri is a hillock of candied coconut with a Swedish fish on top. The seaweed strip around it is more Fruit Roll-Up.”

“I gotta give you credit for inventiveness,” Carter said. “May I?” he asked, reaching for the platter.

“Please.”

Khela groaned as he popped a fat slice of candy California roll into his mouth. “I don’t know where you plan to put that,” she chuckled. “You look like you’re going to pop.”

“There’s always room for sushi,” he said, his cheek bulging.

“There’s always room for Jell-O,” she corrected.

“That, too,” Carter agreed. “So, um, why would I have to be black to be your hero?”

“The book I’m working on now is an African-American romance.” Khela picked up a piece of coconut nigiri. “My hero is black. If I use a real person to flesh him out, that man has to be black. Other than that, you have most of the qualities I’d like my hero to have.”

“Oh, yeah? Such as?”

“Well, you’re reliable. You’re straightforward. And honest.” Seeing Carter’s self-satisfied expression, she added, “And you’re really not all that good-looking.”

Carter’s head jerked up. “What’s wrong with my face?”

“Your eyes. I think one is a little tiny bit higher than the other.”

“Anything else?”

“Your hair is too short. It emphasizes the roundness of the top of your head.”

“It’ll grow out. Problem solved. What else?”

Khela rolled her eyes. “There is nothing else. I just made up that stuff about your eyes and your hair. You’re stunning, Carter. Quit fishing for insults.”

“So I’m hero material after all?”

“No. You’re very handsome and you know it. My hero is very handsome and doesn’t know it. That makes a big difference.”

“I see.” Carter said pensively. “You’re sayin’ that I’ve got an Adonis complex.”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Khela retorted, nibbling the end of her nigiri.

“But you think I’m hung up on my looks.”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

“Then what
are
you saying?” He closed the distance between them to meet her eye to eye and toe to toe.

“I’m saying that I would like to experience the kind of love I write about,” she said plainly. “I don’t think I could have that with you.”

“Why not?” he asked softly, searching her eyes.

Because your looks and my money are a bad combination
perched on her tongue, but she turned it into, “We don’t complement each other.”

“Because you look at me and see some dumb Mr. Fix-It, and you’re the sophisticated novelist?” He took a step back, and Khela’s feet moved her in his direction.

“I never said that,” she insisted. “I never even thought about it like that! Is this the reason you bought my cake? So you could come here and ambush me in my own house?”

“This is
my
house,” he countered. “I’m the one who takes care of it, and—”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

“You wrote me off after the convention because you’ve become a victim of your own competence!”

“I have not!” she fired back. “
What?
”

“You said you want the kind of love you write about,” he began. “So you think you should be with a sheik who captured you for his harem and forsakes his four hundred other wives for you? Or that you’re the emotional and physical salvation of some sea captain whose dark personal secrets have condemned him to a life of solitude at sea?”

Scowling, Khela marched back out to the dining area and grabbed the bottle of wine and Carter’s empty glass.

“You ignorance is showing,” she muttered as she poured wine into the glass. “Those aren’t even plots to any of my books.”

“The plots don’t matter!” Carter exclaimed, joining her at the tableside. “The boy gets the girl in every one of those books. It’s the details that make the difference between them. You’ve managed to capitalize on the simple formula of boy-meets-girl and eventually lives happily ever after. You take yourself too seriously.”

Khela slammed down the wine glass, splashing wine onto the dark, polished surface of the dining table. “Do you take your tinkering seriously? Don’t insult what I do. It might not save lives, but it can definitely make life easier to bear. Reading is one of the oldest, most personal forms of entertainment and leisure, and—”

“Romance novels are just soft porn for women,” Carter stated flatly.

“—romance is the ultimate escape,” Khela continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Men are perfectly happy with sex. Women want romance.”

“And sex,” Carter put in.

“And tenderness.”

“And sex.”

“They want honesty and bare emotion!”

“And…sex?”

“Serious romance authors are some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet. We do more than entertain. We do our best to bring our stories to life by loaning our own very real experiences to our fictional characters! Do you know how much research goes into a romance novel, especially a historical romance? We take our readers directly to times and places they would never otherwise experience.” Khela stopped, but only to breathe, fueling her next volley. “January Rose writes romantic ethnic westerns that blur the line between commercial and literary fiction. Her books are sharp and brilliant in detail. She’s Harper Lee, Louis L’Amour and Nora Roberts in a single African-American skin.”

“Who’s Nora Roberts?”

Rolling her eyes, Khela went on. “If I set a book in ancient Rome, you’ll come away knowing how the Romans dressed, ate, fought, worked, played and—”

“Had sex.”

“You would smell the dust kicked up by a centurion in the midst of battle, and you’d taste the wine and honey on the pouty lips of an emperor’s handmaiden.”

“So you distill important lessons in Western civilization through cheap paperbacks,” Carter reasoned.

“Why do you have such contempt for me?”

“Why are you so scared of me?”

Khela scoffed. “Scared doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. Annoyed would be a more apt description of how you make me feel.”

“How do I annoy you?”

She stared at him for a moment, torn between the truth and a diversion. The truth burst from her. “You make me feel things that I know I can’t follow up on,” she blurted. “You give me an itch that I just can’t scratch.”

“I don’t think itch means what you seem to think it means,” Carter said, choosing his words deliberately. “Lust would be a more apt description of what I make you feel.”

Grunting in frustration, Khela balled up her fist and punched Carter in the stomach. It was like striking the side of a cliff, and she hugged her aching hand to her chest.

“Love and lust combined is what makes women hungry for sex,” she said, allowing Carter to take her hand. “You men are too stupid to realize that, and women are tired of explaining it to you over and over. The best thing any man could do for the woman in his life is to read a romance novel with an open mind and pen and paper in hand to take notes.”

Carter gently massaged her aching knuckles. “Are you willing to at least consider the possibility that in your books, you’ve created the kinds of men who intrigue you personally?”

Dropping her eyes to their clasped hands, she murmured, “If I fall in love with my hero, then so will my readers.”

“With your books, you’re God. You build a man from scratch, making him exactly what you want him to be. You can’t do that in real life, so no man will ever be as good as the studs in your books. You need a man who’ll show you that the real thing is better than the sterile neatness of what you put in your fiction.”

“Are you talking about sex scenes?”

“I most definitely am,” he responded defiantly. “Sex is raw and slippery and sticky and—”

“Not in my books.”

“Then you ain’t doin’ it right.”

“Have you ever read any of my books?” she demanded.

He offered a sheepish smile.

“Then shut up,” she snapped, snatching her hand back. “You don’t know what my men are like, and you don’t have the first clue as to the kind of man I need!”

“What you like and what you need are right here, honey.” Carter pressed her hand to his chest and took her about the waist, pulling her against him. She stiffened and would have protested had Carter not sealed her complaint with a kiss. Her lips parted against his, to welcome rather than disagree with him. Her arms went around his neck, her fingers into his hair. He backed her onto the table, shoving up her skirt to give her legs the freedom to wrap about his hips.

Khela, sighing against the explorations of his mouth, let her head fall back to give him easier access to the sensitive terrain of her neck. His shirt bunched in her hands, Carter allowed her to draw the obtrusive knot of heat between his legs into the soft cradle between her own. The tips of her breasts rose to meet the pads of his thumbs through the thin fabric of her dress. With each movement of her skirt, her custom scent and the one organic to her rose to infuse his lungs. Every part of her fit his hands perfectly, fit his mouth exactly.

Instantly addicted to his kisses, Khela broke free of them only to gasp for air and, if need be, to beg him for still more.

Carter read her mind, mumbling between kisses to her earlobes. “What now, sweetheart?” he drawled, his voice low and as seductive as his kisses. “You gonna run from me again?”

“No,” she exhaled, cupping his backside and giving it a good squeeze.

“Tell me what you want.”

Everything!
was the answer that clanged in her head, but what she said was, “Two weeks.”

Carter raised his head from her bosom. “Come again?”

She grinned, a little, at his choice of words. “I want two weeks.”

His eyes searched hers, gauging whether she was joking. “You want to spend two weeks with me?”

“Yes. That’s all it usually takes.”

“For what?”

For your true color to appear, and it’ll probably be green,
she thought. “Two weeks,” she repeated. “Take it or leave it.”

He spent another long moment holding her flesh in his hands and studying her troubled gaze. “Starting when?” he finally asked, his hand inching toward the hot juncture of her thighs.

Khela moaned, the sound both throaty and silky, as his fingers found their moist mark. “Starting there…” she gasped, her legs falling wide.

Chapter 8

“It was love at first write.”

—from
Teacher’s Pet
by Khela Halliday

“I’m black, you know.”

Khela laughed so hard she would have fallen off Carter if he hadn’t tightened his grip on her waist. He flexed his abdominal muscles as he shifted a bit on the bed, his new position wedging him deeper. Khela’s thighs and belly quivered in response to yet another wave of pleasure cresting within her. Carter helped her reach its zenith by palming the weight of her breasts, kneading them and pinching their hard buds at exactly the right moment to force Khela to lock around him, wringing still more from him.

Their first coupling had occurred volcanically atop the dining table. Frenzied with hunger, they hadn’t bothered to fully undress, satisfied with mere shifts in panties, the unzipping of jeans. Their initial appetites appeased, they took their time the second time, with Carter fully savoring every inch of Khela as he peeled her dress and panties from her body. The third time, in Khela’s sizeable whirlpool bath, became a silly interlude that began with wine and leftover candy sushi and ended with Carter demonstrating all he could accomplish in the three minutes he could hold his breath underwater.

This, the fourth time, was simply showing off.

“Funny,” Khela gasped, covering him with her body to await the return of a normal heartbeat, “you don’t look black.”

“I got my honorary blackness in high school.” Carter lightly stroked her back with the pads of his fingertips, raising goosebumps along their path. “Detrick gave it to me.”

“Well, that was awfully generous of him,” Khela laughed. “Was it a birthday present? Christmas?”

“Nah, nothin’ like that,” Carter exhaled, Khela sinking and rising along with his torso. “Detrick and I came from the same place, which was no place compared to our classmates. We were two ’Bama country boys among Boston Brahmin babies and the imported sons of foreign oil magnates.”

“Did you come from the same school in Alabama?”

“Nah. I went to Speake High. Detrick’s outta Hubbard.”

“Would you two have been friends if you’d stayed in school down South?”

Carter shook his head, but then realized she couldn’t see him, not with her ear pressed to his heartbeat. “Probably not. Detrick is the best thing I got outta my two years at Dearborn. We hated each other when we first met, though.”

“Why?”

“I thought he was a cocky sumbitch who cared more about his personal stats than he did about the team.”

“Was that all?”

“What else would there be?”

“He’s black.”

Carter rolled onto his side and faced Khela. “You think I have a problem with black people?”

She grinned. “Not at the moment.”

“I’m serious, Khela. Do you think I would’ve disliked Detrick because he was black?”

She sat up, as did he. “No, I…” She rubbed her temple with two fingers. “I don’t think you’re a racist, but you were young then, and from the South, so—”

“I must’ve been a bass-ackwards, prejudiced cracker,” he finished for her.

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never thought that about you. You said that you hated Detrick when you first met him, so I just jumped to—”

“The wrong conclusion.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair. People make assumptions about me all the time, and I hate it. I shouldn’t have done that to you. Tell me how you and Detrick became friends. Go on with your story.”

Khela rearranged the pillows at her headboard and guided Carter to rest against them. With the top sheet covering her torso, she sat facing him. “What position did Detrick play on the Dearborn football team?”

“Left out, for the most part,” Carter chuckled. “That was the problem. He was the best receiver on the team, but the coaches only played him if we were down. There were a lot of good players on the team whose parents were boosters. The coaches were more inclined to play fellas whose mommies and daddies paid for team buses, uniforms and vacations.”

“Vacations? Are you kidding?”

“Nope. One of the boosters sent us to Sanibel Island for spring break our junior year. They thought it would help the team bond.”

“Did it?”

“Nope. The rich kids hung with the rich kids, the climbers hung with the climbers and tried to hang with the rich kids, and Detrick and I sort of kept to ourselves—until the brawl.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“Quincy Latin was our biggest rival, and their football and baseball teams were in Daytona the same week we were,” Carter said. “Get a bunch of drunk, over-privileged, under-aged jocks from rival schools together, and you got yourself a recipe for hell.”

“Was there a girl involved?”

She had guessed right, surprising Carter. “How’d you know?”

“There’s always a girl involved.”

“Detrick was talking to some local girl, a little green-eyed blonde who worked in the surf shop on the beach. A couple of the Quincy guys didn’t like it, so…”

“Who threw the first punch?”

“Quincy. I jumped in when four of them went after Detrick.”

“You were the only one who came to his defense?”

Carter nodded.

“And you didn’t even like him?”

“It wasn’t a matter of like or dislike. He was my teammate and he was outnumbered. It wasn’t fair.”

“Who won the fight?”

“Quincy tore us up. That’s how I ended up with this lovely detour in the middle of my nose.” He tapped the barely noticeable bump on his nose. “There were six of them and only two of us.”

Khela put her hand over his, giving it a squeeze. “Your nose was broken?”

“Got one of my teeth knocked out, too,” he said. He curled his lip and tapped one of his upper canine teeth. “This is an implant.”

“I hope you gave the other guy as good as you got.”

He chuckled. “I never would have pegged you for the bloodthirsty type. But yeah, I got some good ones in. So did Detrick.”

“Was he hurt badly?”

“Detrick can take a punch better than any man I’ve ever known,” Carter said. “They couldn’t hurt him. Not on the outside, anyway. It’s what they said that got to him. He’d been called names like that before, but not by prep school kids who were supposed to be educated.”

“Ignorance is everywhere,” Khela sighed. “You know that.”

“Detrick and I have been friends ever since,” Carter smiled. “We became blood brothers the hard way.”

“Being blood brothers doesn’t make you black.”

“It was a gift,” Carter insisted. “Those Quincy frauds thought they’d dish out seconds the next night. Detrick and I were ready for them. You ain’t gonna whup two ’Bama country boys twice in a row. Me and Detrick and two rolls of quarters did the trick.”

“You threw quarters at them?”

Carter gave her the sort of grin one would bestow upon a charming idiot. “We put the quarters in our fists. Instant hammer hand. We didn’t have any more trouble from Quincy.”

“Did any of your other teammates help you guys out?”

Carter shook his head. “They weren’t going to risk their pretty faces for Detrick. Or me, for that matter. I wasn’t the only guy on the team who thought Detrick needed to come down a peg or two. See, Detrick was the best guy on the team and he knew it. Called himself Detrick ‘The Trick’ Francis. He was fast, he had power and he had an ego bigger than the Patriots’ defensive line. He wasn’t as bad after the Florida trip, though.”

“You still haven’t explained how you came to be black,” Khela reminded him.

“Right. It was after our first game, senior year. We played Quincy Latin—”

Khela whistled through her teeth. “I’ll bet that was some match up.”

“It was. We beat them, 56-10. Detrick rushed for three touchdowns. He met some girls after the game, and they invited him to a party in Jamaica Plain. He invited me along to be his wingman. When a Snoop Dogg song came on and I started dancing, Detrick said I fought, played ball and danced like a brother. He poured a beer over my head and said it was my baptism into official blackness. We’ve been best friends, brothers, ever since.”

After a long moment of silence, Khela looked at him and said, “That’s the goofiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Carter laughed and pulled her into his embrace. “I’m black and I’m proud, and right now, I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

“Why’s that?” Khela murmured against the warmth of his chest.

“Because I’ve got you in my arms,” he said. “I feel like I’ve waited a lifetime for this.”

Khela lightly took his chin and turned his face toward hers. “That’s very sweet.”

“I’ll bet you had all the boys chasin’ after you in high school.”

She barked a laugh of astonishment. “I was the invisible girl in high school. I was good in math and science, I was the editor for the school literary magazine and I didn’t have any friends. I hit the geek trifecta by the time I was a sophomore. I used to spend my summers reading and the school year writing weird short stories when I was supposed to be taking notes in class.”

“So you’ve always been a writer?”

She nodded. “I was a little bit of a handful when I first went to live with Grandma Belle and Grandpa Neal.”

“You spent a few years in the child welfare system before you were adopted, right?” Carter stroked her arm. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. It’s none of—”

“It’s okay,” she said, clasping his hand. “I never talk about it. That was my problem when I was really little. I couldn’t articulate how I was feeling, so I acted out. I’d fight anybody, break things, cry, yell at everyone, and then not speak for days. I was a little mess when I got adopted. One day, after I’d torn my pretty pink room to shreds—again—Grandma Belle gave me a blank notebook and a box of crayons. She told me to draw pictures of what I was feeling the next time I wanted to have a fit. It helped. I eventually started putting my thoughts and feelings into words. I started writing stories, and I’ve been writing ever since.”

“What became of your parents?”

She looked him in the eye and said, “My mother died of an overdose and my father is incarcerated. They were both out of my life by the time I was two.” Khela didn’t blink, determined not to miss any part of his reaction.

“What did he do?” Carter asked softly.

“He was involved in an armed robbery where the victim was killed. He didn’t pull the trigger, but he was there, so he was charged with first-degree murder.”

“How long did he get?”

Khela swallowed hard. “Life.”

“You got a rough draw. You should be proud of how you far you’ve come.”

“I’m just another black girl with a drug-addict mother and a daddy in jail,” Khela said bleakly. “I could win a Nobel Prize and I’d still be the daughter of a druggie and a jailbird.”

“What did your Grandma Belle and your Grandpa Neal do for a living?” Carter asked.

“Grandma Belle was a nurse and Grandpa Neal was the custodian at the high school my father attended, until they retired. They went to the same church as my father’s parents,” Khela said. “Grandpa Neal had always liked my father. My father was in detention a lot, and he very often had to help Grandpa Neal with some of the school maintenance. When my mother died and my father was sent up, none of my real grandparents or aunts or uncles wanted me. I guess they thought I’d turn out like my parents. When Belle and Neal found out that no one else wanted me, they went out and found me. And the rest…is my history.”

“Sounds to me like you had amazing parents,” Carter said. “You got the short straw at the start, but you finished up very well. Belle and Neal get the credit for that, not the pair who made you.”

“I know.” Her lower lip quivered, but she kept her tears at bay. “I was so lucky.”

Carter lay a warm, heavy hand on her thigh and asked, “Do you ever see your daddy?”

Khela squirmed a little, but Carter’s comforting hand settled her. “From what I’ve been told, he left while my mother was still pregnant with me. He never wanted me, and he never wanted to see me when Grandma Belle and Grandpa Neal would take me to the prison in Jefferson City. I refused to go anymore when I was ten. I went on my own when I was twenty-two, right before my second book was released. I’d done an interview with a women’s magazine, and when the reporter asked me about my parents, I told her that they were both dead. I felt so guilty. Grandma Belle and Grandpa Neal had passed, so I wasn’t lying entirely, but I knew the reporter wasn’t asking about them.”

“It was nobody’s business but yours,” Carter said.

“It was unfinished business. That’s why I went to see him. It was so hard,” she admitted, her voice breaking. “He knew who I was immediately. His first words to me were, ‘You look just like your mama.’ ”

“Your mother must have been very beautiful,” Carter remarked tenderly.

“I don’t know if she was or not,” Khela said. “I don’t remember anything about her.”

“What else happened with your daddy?”

She gave him a forlorn shrug. “Nothing. He asked me if I came there because I needed money, and I said no. I told him that I just wanted to see him. He said, ‘You seen me. Now what?’ There were so many things I wanted to ask him, so many things I wanted to know. He was all I had left, and after meeting him, I realized I had nothing. I immersed myself in my writing. I’m never lonely when I’m working on a book.”

“You got something now, baby,” Carter assured her. “You got Daphne, you got me and you got thousands of readers who look forward to reading your books.”

When she continued to stare at him, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears, Carter gently stroked the back of her hand and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

“You really are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Inside and out.”

In a move both quick and inelegant, Carter rolled her onto her back, pressing his weight upon her as he parted her legs with his knee. He pressed hard kisses to her neck and clenched his fists in her hair. His abdominal muscles bunched as he positioned himself for their union, and still he avoided eye contact with her. Her trust in him meant so much that he felt he couldn’t look at or speak to her without shedding his own tears. In a language they both understood, one without words, without inhibition and without hesitation, Carter thanked her for her trust, and Khela thanked him for his acceptance.