Mr. Fix-It (3 page)

The president paused for a round of polite applause. “Khela has made us laugh, cry, think and wonder, but most importantly, she has made us believe in the power and possibility of true love,” she continued. “Tonight, we honor one of the best among us. Without further ado,” the president said proudly, “I’d like to present our guest of honor, Ms. Khela Halliday, with the Torchbearer Award for Excellence in Romance Fiction. Congratulations, Khela!”

The banquet hall exploded with applause, startling Khela into Carter’s arms. Her ears ringing and on fire, she allowed Carter to escort her back into the room and up to the stage.

The moment took on a dream-like quality, as though she’d been swept into a fairy tale, or worse, one of her own over-the-top romances. The skirt of her diaphanous gown tickled her ankles as she climbed the three short steps, assisted by Carter, who handed her off to the ECWA president. The gilded chandeliers, the marbled floor, the women in jewels and ball gowns, the men in dapper tuxedos and cutaway coats—it was too awesome to be imagined.

At a table in the middle of the room, Daphne led a standing ovation. Her fiery mane of waist-length curls lashed her tablemates as she waved her arms and beat her hands together like a trained seal.

Her date, a bonafide Latin stud named Russ, Rex or Raphael, loitered at the open bar, flirting with an unimpressed blonde barmaid. Daphne had a knack for finding men who were completely wrong for her. But at least she found guys. Unlike Khela, the fraud. The night was a lie, right down to Carter, the handsome prince who slowly backed away from the stage, softly applauding, the golden stage light giving his eyes warmth and depth that Khela could have basked in all night.

Carter was the biggest lie of all.

Tears burned Khela’s eyes as she crossed the stage. She cast a last look at her last-resort date, and he blew her a kiss with the debonair ease of a modern Cary Grant. Applause erupted anew, and, as she accepted a handshake, a kiss on the cheek, and the heavy Torchbearer statue from the association president, Khela burst into tears. She forced a smile, and it hurt her face so much that her tears intensified. She struck them away, and again found Carter. With his pinkies hooked in the corners of his mouth, he let loose a stadium whistle that made the table of black-clad mystery writers next to him clap their hands to their ears.

Instead of being glad that he was finally impressed, Khela fought the urge to upchuck. She was no champion of romance. She was a big fat liar, and as she stood on stage, her back bowing under the weight of the Torchbearer teardrop, she felt as though guilt would roast her alive from the inside out.

Carter’s smile faded as he studied her face. Her tablemates were clapping, but each of them—save January Rose—had a lean, hungry look aimed not at Khela but at the award clutched in her arms.

Carter suddenly realized that there wasn’t a romance author in the room who wouldn’t trade places with Khela right there on the spot, and he wasn’t fooled by her empty smile, or her tears.

Those aren’t tears of humble joy or happiness,
he thought.
They’re tears of misery.

He caught her eye once more, and wrinkling his brow, he mutely conveyed his curiosity and concern.

Khela looked right into the blinding stage light, hoping that he hadn’t read the horrible thought stuck on a continuous loop in her mind:
I’m a phony, and you’re nothing more than a prop.

* * *

Khela’s eyes still stung from the tears she’d shed onstage as she walked through her complimentary suite. Someone at the East Coast Writing Association had either a diabolical sense of humor or a complete misunderstanding of what romance writers were really like.

I’m here for business
, she grumbled to herself, scanning the room,
not a honeymoon.

Champagne chilled in silver buckets propped on one end of the full bar in the living room and an ornamental stand next to the dining table. Plump, fresh strawberries heaped around a tiny gold chafing dish full of glossy dark chocolate formed a centerpiece on the cocktail table between two long sofas set before the dazzling view of Boston Harbor.

Khela walked through the office section of the suite and into the master bedroom to change, where she was assaulted by the sight of a beautiful Chippendale four-poster abundantly sprinkled with blood-red rose petals.

She grabbed her suitcase in both hands and hauled it onto the bed, crushing rose petals and releasing their delicious fragrance. She tried to ignore it as she selected pale-grey yoga pants, white cotton bikini briefs and a matching camisole, and then slammed the suitcase shut.

She went into the bathroom and found that her presumptuous hosts had also corrupted that room by drawing a pearly milk bath decorated with fresh violets and lilac spray roses, the water kept warm by temperature controls set to a comfy 88 degrees. Khela scowled at yet another bottle of chilled Dom Perignon and the two champagne flutes accompanying it. She plunged her arm into the bath and flipped the drain lever, and with satisfaction, she spent a moment watching the water start its journey to the Atlantic.

She quickly changed, leaving her ball gown in a heap on the floor, and brushed her hair into a ponytail before stomping barefoot into the living room. She drew up short when she spotted Carter, still in his tux, idly standing at the window with a half-full tumbler in his hand.

Chapter 3

“Men like him should come with a warning label.”

—from
Hazardous to Your Heart
by Khela Halliday

She’d forgotten that he had his own cardkey to the suite, so she certainly hadn’t expected to find him standing at the windowed wall, framed by the harbor nightscape. The rugged, rough-edged maintenance stud she’d invited to the convention was so convincing in his costume that, for a moment, she believed him to be what she’d wanted him to be: the perfect romance hero sprung from the pages of one of her books.

Resenting his flawless performance, Khela scowled at him. “Didn’t you have enough to drink downstairs?” She plopped herself on the sofa and reached past the strawberries and chocolate for the slender black remote control. With one press of a button, the doors of a tall entertainment center slid open, revealing a big flat-screen television and sound system. Khela rested her feet near the strawberries and tuned in to her favorite home-shopping channel. Her least favorite segment was on.

“Nice,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. “If you buy the thirty-inch machete, you can get a set of six steak knives.” She turned to Carter. “What the hell does anyone need with a 65-piece knife set that includes a machete?”

He looked at her, his brow furrowed, swirling the liquid in his glass. “For the record, boss, this is water, not booze. What’s going on here, Khela?”

Uncomfortable under his scrutiny, she fixed her eyes on the knife show.

Carter took a seat across from her, on the opposite sofa. “All night I’ve been trying to piece things together, and the only thing that doesn’t make sense is you.”

She stared at the television, but paid little attention to the new item up for sale—twin samurai swords with acid-etched blades.

“You lost me,” she mumbled.

“I didn’t know you were a hotshot romance novelist.”

“I like to keep my business my business.” She stubbornly crossed her arms over her chest. “More people should try it. It’s fun.”

“Those people down there really respect and admire you and your work. I never knew that romance was so big. Kitty Kincaid said that almost half of all paperbacks sold in the United States are romance fiction. Garland Kenny told me that romance fiction is a billion-dollar industry here in the U.S. alone.”

“Yep,” she snapped. “That’s all romance is. Just one big ol’ industry.”

Carter drew a five by eight-inch program from his inner breast pocket. He opened it and read: “The Torchbearer Award is given once every ten years to the author whose books best honor and promote the spirit of true romance.” He slid the program onto the table. It stopped near Khela’s feet. “Martine Kendall said that you’re the first author ever to win it in her first year of eligibility and that writers, readers, editors and booksellers voted for you in a landslide. She also said you were the first African-American author to take home a Torchbearer.”

Khela finally turned to face him. “Oh. You’re still talking.”

He tipped his chin toward the door of the suite. “Why is your Torchbearer Award buried in a canvas tote bag full of bookmarks, ballpoint pens, nameplates and promotional copies of new Cameo releases?”

“Why do you care?”

He braced his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. “Call me interested.”

She gave him a toothy, artificial smile. “Hello, Interested. I’m Minding My Own Business. Pleased to meet you.” She crossed one leg over the other and turned one shoulder into the back of the sofa to fully face the television.

Carter skirted around the cocktail table to join her on her sofa and fill her view. “I think it’s odd that a woman who’s written a string of best-selling romance novels doesn’t seem to have one romantic twitch in her entire body.”

Khela screwed her mouth into a tight pout before she attacked. “You’re supposed to be scenery, not a commentator. My books, my twitches and my body don’t have a doggone thing to do with
you.
”

She grudgingly admired the way he sat there, taking the force of her temper without shrinking back, but she was a bit taken aback when he calmly set his tumbler on the cocktail table and stood. “I think I’ll shower and change now.”

He crossed the room, going past the bar area to the second bedroom. Khela watched him disappear, her heart sinking with each step he took. He left the door open, and beneath the carnival barking of the knife show host, she heard the zipper of Carter’s duffel bag, the opening of another door, and then a muffled blast of water.

Sighing heavily, she ran her fingers through her ponytail. He hadn’t sounded angry and he had spoken without rancor. He had a point, which is what had infuriated her so. Listening to the water, she paced the living room, impatient for him to finish.

After ten minutes, her patience had completely run out. “How dirty can he be?” she wondered aloud as she entered his bedroom.

She noticed how ordinary the room looked with its double bed, television console, nightstand and phone. The only flowers in the room were the ones printed on the duvet. Clearly, her ECWA handlers had thought the room would go unused. Making a mental note to make up the bed and remove all evidence of Carter from the room before housekeeping arrived the next morning, Khela barged into the bathroom.

Like the bedroom, his bathroom was much smaller than hers, the shower stall little wider than a standard closet. Carter had managed to fog the glass door completely, revealing little more than a bit of bicep, a section of chest and a glimpse of a hip.

Khela began to itch. It wasn’t her usual uncomfortable, nagging itch. This was a yearning variety that required deeper, more physical relief. She cleared her throat.

Startled, Carter shook water from his eyes and spat a stream of water from his lips.

“Why do you take such long showers?” she asked.

“I have to clear my bathing schedule with you this weekend, too?” She was the reason he’d decided to take a shower. She might have chosen her outfit based on comfort, but all he’d seen was the way her breathable cottons had clung to the long, elegant lines of her thighs and defined the perfect shape of her bosom. Her camisole wasn’t quite transparent, but it was certainly sheer enough to reveal the darkness of her breasts and the darker caps tipping them.

The initial blast of cold water had done what it was supposed to, but with Khela standing on the other side of the glass, the fine hairs framing her face curling and her camisole becoming more sheer in the steamy humidity, Carter’s flesh sprang painfully to life.

“Your body is so simple.” Khela crossed her arms over her chest, to Carter’s disappointment. “You don’t have to shave anything, you don’t have to condition your hair. Get wet, soap up, rinse off and get out. Five minutes is the longest you need to be in here.”

“There’s another bathroom, Khela, and I’m sure the hotel has plenty of hot water. What do you care how long I shower?”

“I don’t.” Her eyes were drawn to his chest, where the water beat upon his defined pectorals as he smoothed his hands over them, rinsing away the last of the woodsy-scented soap he was using. “I was waiting for you to come out so I could apologize for what I said out there. About that scenery crack.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m flattered.” He flexed his biceps, then his triceps, exaggerating the poses until Khela gave him a reluctant smile. “I’ve never been the pretty thing on a successful professional’s arm.”

Khela tried to wish away the condensation hiding him from her as she leaned against the sink counter and bowed her head. “I have an image to maintain, Carter. I couldn’t walk into that banquet alone or with an ordinary man.”

“I’m ordinary.” He turned off the water and beckoned for a towel.

“There’s nothing ordinary about the way you look, Carter.” Khela took a step toward the shelf above the toilet and drew forth one of the fluffy white bath towels. She tossed it over the stall door. “If Brad Pitt and Chris Cuomo were in a sauna on Mercury, they still wouldn’t be as hot as you. You’re a damn stud. You can’t not know how handsome you are.”

Unsure how to respond to her unabashed compliment, he wrapped the towel around his hips and exited the shower. Nothing but the towel stood between Khela and his dripping nakedness in the tiny bathroom. “Thank you,” he finally said.

Khela watched droplets of water trace paths through the dark hair on his chest. If it were possible for a man to have perfect chest hair, Carter’s was. It wasn’t too sparse, as though the hair was nothing more than a hormonal afterthought, and it wasn’t dense as though he were part Sasquatch. It was just right, and so inviting that she wanted to lean forward and rub her cheek against it.

“My fans expect me to live the romance I write about,” she explained, transfixed by the movement of his chest and arm muscles as he began drying himself with one end of the big towel. “They expect me to be my work. My sales would plummet if readers found out that I’m a complete fraud.”

“You make it sound like you’re stealing from them.” Carter had dried the same spot on his shoulder for so long, he had to check to make sure he hadn’t rubbed the skin off. Khela stood within arm’s reach, and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to lasso her in with the damp towel and draw her closer.

“At least that would be more direct. What I do is worse.” She tipped her head back when he took a half step forward. He was so close now she could feel the heat of his damp skin.

“What is it that you do?” He stopped drying and held the ends of the towel together at his hip.

Khela’s eyes darted downward to steal a look at the bulge below his waist before returning her gaze to his face. “I deceive them. I make them believe in something that doesn’t exist.”

Sharing his air was making her lightheaded, so she sidestepped away from him to stand at the end of the counter, near the door.

“What’s that?” He tucked the ends of the towel in to keep it in place, and then took a toothbrush and a tiny tube of mint toothpaste from the shaving kit near the basin. He ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it from his face before he began scrubbing his teeth.

“Happy endings. Romance. Love.”

Carter worked up a good lather, spat and rinsed. “How are you any worse than the guys who wrote
Cinderella
or
Romeo and Juliet
? You’re spinning tales. That’s why it’s called fiction. Your readers know it isn’t real.” He turned sideways to move past her and into the bedroom.

“Most of them do, but a lot of them don’t.” She followed him, going to the single window while he went to the bed, where a pair of blue sweatpants lay. “I get hundreds of letters every year from women who tell me that they gave their boyfriends a second chance, or that they finally called the man they’ve been lusting after, or that they got married, all because of something I wrote. My books are fiction, but the words still have pow…
wow…
”

She’d turned from the window just in time to catch a glimpse of Carter’s bare backside as he pulled his sweatpants on.

“They have what?” Carter asked calmly. His baggy pants hung low his hips, revealing the full stack of his abdominal muscles. When he turned to rifle through his duffel bag, Khela touched her index finger to her mouth to make sure she wasn’t drooling.

“Power,” she finished. “Words have power. Apparently I quite convincingly write about things in which I don’t have a twitch of faith.”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right man.” Carter withdrew a faded, threadbare Atlanta Braves T-shirt and pulled it on. “It’s man, right?”

“No, my first choice for a date this weekend was Gabrielle Union, but her tuxedo was at the cleaners.”

“Oh, yeah? Then you and I have the same taste in women.” Carter padded out of the bedroom barefooted, but not before Khela caught his impish smile.

She dashed into the bathroom to gather his shaving kit and used towel. She plopped the items on top of his duffel bag then quickly scanned the room, to make sure Carter hadn’t left anything else in it. Satisfied that she had everything, she lugged the heavy duffel into the living room area.

“Kicking me out already?” Carter asked.

“If another writer or someone from RAAO comes by, I don’t want them to know that we’re not sharing a bedroom. It wouldn’t look right.”

“To who?”

“To me.”

“What do you care what other people think about—”

“When you buy something a celebrity recommends, you assume that they know the product, that they wouldn’t promote it if it wasn’t something they could stand behind. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose.”

“Well, the commodity I sell is romance. You’re part of the marketing of that commodity.”

“So to sell your product, you have to create the illusion that we’re—”

“Having lots and lots of sex,” she finished.

With a small shake of his head, Carter settled on the sofa with the remote in one hand and a strawberry in the other. “I didn’t mean anything by that man crack I made back there,” he called as he dunked the strawberry in the pool of chocolate. “I didn’t want to assume anything. And that could have been the reason you haven’t been happy with men.”

“Why do you assume that the problem lies with me?” she sniped, scurrying past him and stopping at the door to the master bedroom to heave the duffel bag in. “Men are the ones that make relationships so hard. Men are self-centered, inattentive, and worst of all, they take women for granted.” She sauntered toward the sofa, her arms held wide. “You know that
we’ll
call and
we’ll
choose the restaurant or movie, and
we’ll
be responsible for our own orgasms. Men think that the only thing they have to do is show up close to on time and change their underwear on a semi-regular basis.”

Carter grimaced. “Ew. What kind of men do you date?”

She sat down heavily on the sofa and tucked her legs under her. “The only kind out there—the wrong kind. Women love my heroes, and here’s why: I pick a man, any man that I know, and write down everything that he’s not. I end up with perfect romance heroes. They may be flawed, but they’re capable of learning and relating to a woman and loving her so much that they’re willing to—”