Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (4 page)

Chapter 7

Once Gina had gone I did what I usually did after the Smut Slinger Support Group, as I'd come to think of it, finished up for the week.

I went shopping.

Gina had given me a lot to think about, but I didn't think I'd be getting any words down on paper for the day.

Not yet, at least. Besides, I was still a little buzzed from the Long Island Ice Teas I'd had over lunch, which meant that I had to get some fresh air and maybe some Mrs. Fields cookies and a few other choice items from a couple of stores before I was safe to drive home.

That's what I told myself, and myself was very ready to believe it...

Some people can look at a mall like the one I walked into and be sickened by the pure capitalist, materialistic megalomania of it all. I had a few friends like that, who gasped in awe at the amount I spent, and who swore under their breath when they looked at the price tags of the stuff they thought looked 'cute'.

I felt bad for them. I did. They told me up and down they didn't need the stuff I bought, which was just their way of reassuring themselves that they weren't missing out by no having it.

Which was a lie, of course. When I went to a spa with them and came out four hours later feeling refreshed, I didn't bitch and moan that the stuff I'd just 'bought', the strong hands that had removed the knots and the oils that had been rubbed into my skin, were transitory. I mean, after all, after a couple of days my skin didn't feel like silk anymore, and after a week or so the knots came back, especially if I'd been pounding the keyboard long into the night.

Which of us was wasting money? At least when I bought stuff, it was still in my closet a couple of months later.

I might not wear it, since it was probably out of season, or whatever, but it was still there...

Anyway, I shopped. At first it didn't help much. After all, I hadn't been lying to David when I'd asked for an earlier advance then we'd agreed on. I needed the money. The house wasn't cheap, and the credit card bills were piling up.

After I bought a couple of dresses that I convinced myself I'd wear to book signings in an effort to write them off as necessary, and perhaps even tax deductible, I was feeling a little better. Once I'd grabbed a new pair of the jeans that actually made my ass look like something a guy may want to grab I felt even better than I had after the dresses, and once I made the most of Mrs. Fields four cookies for the price of six deal by getting twelve double chocolate ones and only having to fork over the money for nine of them, I was pretty pleased with myself.

Things could be worse, Beth
, I scolded myself.
Sometimes you forget how good you have it.

Which was true. Here I was, the middle of the day, walking off the last off the effects of a working lunch, my head full of free ideas, any one of which I had the feeling I could run with once I got home. I had a roof over my head and eleven, no ten cookies now in a bag clutched in my hot little hand.

Life was good.

I was going to be okay.

I'd write this book and fulfill my obligations to Wellspring and then see where the cards fell after that. Maybe I'd sell up and move. I'd been telling myself for years that I wanted to see the world, and if the next book did well I'd be able to get rid of the house, payoff all of the bills and live abroad for a couple of years.

There was so much of the world to see, and I'd seen so little of it.

Suddenly, right there in Long Beach Plaza I stopped in my tracks. I was still holding the bags containing the dresses and the pair of jeans. There was still a bite of Mrs. Field's cookie in my mouth. It wasn't crowded, since it was still early in the afternoon, but even so I felt the people that walked by me staring.

Because I was crying. Not just a tear or two, either. Weeping. Sobbing. Tears were running down my face, and I could feel them hitting my shirt in the sort of big, wet drops that fell when the sky was just about ready to open up and drench you in an unexpected downpour.

Which is exactly what this was. An unexpected downpour of emotion.

I knew I should have been grateful, but the truth was I couldn't be.

Because I was a fraud. A liar. The worst kind of saleswoman, because I didn't believe for one instant in my product. For years I'd held my readers in contempt, thought of them as silly or naive or stupid, told myself that it was easy to give them what they wanted, because they all wanted the same thing.

Except what
they
wanted was what I wanted too.

Love.

And I didn't for an instant believe that there was such a thing. Oh, sure, I'd been told by guys they loved me, but that hadn't lasted. I hadn't been able to tell them I loved them too, partially because I didn't know if I did and partially because I didn't know what love was anyway.

So there I stood, mascara running down my face, on the edge of what felt like a cliff at least as sheer and dangerous as the fantastically beautiful couple on the cover of
Love Eternal
.

Only I didn't have anyone to hold on to me. I had no male lead, and without him I wondered if this was as all there was. Not everyone found their soulmate, even if such a person existed. I knew people who were alone, and I didn't want to be one of them.

It was one thing to tell my friends I didn't need a man, but it was a very different beast to find, one afternoon, that all I wanted was for just about everything to change.

I wiped at my eyes with the back of one hand and sighed, dragging my bags back to the car. It was hot outside now, and the walk across the parking lot burnt away the last of whatever shopping euphoria I would normally have been feeling. Brushing up against the edge of a complete mental breakdown certainly hadn't helped, and when I looked at the stuff I'd bought as it spilled from the bag when I threw it in the front seat I suddenly wanted nothing more than to return it. All of it.

And then I wanted to go home and box up all the shit I'd spent far too long acquiring and return that too. That, or donate it to someone who may find a use for it that I never could.

Maybe someone else could find joy in the things I had, but I'd been shopping at all the right places, buying things that were patently guaranteed to give me happiness.

Or so I'd thought.

Instead, all I wanted was for the book to be done, the advance to be mine and the readers to get exactly what they wanted.

If they wanted a hunk, they'd get a hunk. And I'd give myself a chance to get what I wanted out of life along the way, even if all that turned out to be a new life somewhere else...

Chapter 8

That night, I felt like I was going to war.

The first pages are always the worst. I could feel their blank faces glaring at me from the kitchen as I brewed the strongest coffee I could stand and did my best to mentally prepare myself for the task at hand.

One thousand words. That's all. I told myself that I could shut the laptop down after I'd done it and go to bed. Hell, I even told myself I'd be
proud
of to have accomplished that much, because at least it would be a start. At least I'd be headed in the right direction, and tomorrow when I looked over what I'd written I wouldn't be greeted with the cold, unfeeling eyes of that damn blank page.

I took a big sip of the coffee, promptly burning my tongue as I headed for the bedroom where the writing desk and the laptop were.

It only took a couple of seconds to boot up. I remember when computers used to take minutes to turn on, long enough to make coffee and daydream and maybe do a load of laundry, but the days of happily wasting time because of my technology's inability to be ready the instant I needed it were long gone.

So, I sat down.

I set my coffee aside.

I wrote a word.

He
.

"There we go, Beth," I said out loud in an attempt to encourage myself. "The start of a bestseller to be sure."

Now, I only had to do that a thousand more times and I was off the hook for the night...

I stared at the word for a couple of seconds, then dove in again. It was nine o'clock, which seemed as good a time as any to do what had to be done.

was everything the world needed him to be,
I wrote.
Strong, powerful, rigidly strict when it came to his own desires and how to embrace them. Logan Mercado wore cuff links that had the value of most people's cars and drove a car worth more than the houses they lived in, but he didn't let the wealth he'd built from nothing go to his head. No, he knew in an instant that everything could be gone. He'd seen it happen to others, and caused it to happen to those who'd crossed him more than once. His most important asset was his swift, perhaps overly ambitious mind, and he'd honed it to such a fine edge that he could walk into a business and, if the mood took him, walk out as the new owner with a twenty percent profit.

I nodded, practically humming along. My fingertips were buzzing, and I found myself smiling.

Was it good? I shrugged. It wasn't
bad
, that was for sure. I could make it better on later drafts, but I found myself already drawn to Logan Mercado, the man of thousand dollar cigars and billion dollar tastes. What's more, I knew if
I
was drawn to him, there was an even greater chance my readers would be too.

Even better, that was already one hundred and forty words written for the night. Almost fifteen percent of my admittedly small goal, and I wasn't feeling any of the frustration, fear or anger that had colored my emotions for so much of the last few weeks.

"Gina," I muttered, as I pounded away at the keyboard with wild abandon, "you may well turn out to be a gift from God."

His employees admired him, but only from a distance. He had too much to do and too little time in which to do it. Everyone who worked closely with him knew that they were in the presence of someone who would change the world, though if you'd have asked them whether the change would be for good or for ill opinion would have been split down the middle.

He was a catalyst, a bringer of change. When he strode into board meetings there was just as likely to be a visionary new direction announced as a major restructure, and when he had his secretary call you into his office you had better back your things.

You were either getting promoted into a corner office or you were about to be escorted down to street level by security.

It was that simple.

When word reached Logan that Mercado Holdings was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he didn't so much as bat an eye. It had happened before, after all, and would no doubt happen again. In fact, the day he wasn't prowling close enough to the edge of the rules that governed Wall Street was the day he knew he'd lost his touch.

When his secretary announced the investigator had arrived, Logan told her to show him in. A moment later a bookish redhead, her glasses sternly perched at the end of her ever so slightly aquiline nose, and Logan realized that it wasn't a 'him' at all who would be doing the investigating.

It was a 'her'.

He realized something else, a desire that was at once entirely familiar and completely alien. He'd had it when he'd taken over chains of luxury hotels, when he'd stripped entire industries bare and sold them for their more profitable parts. He'd felt like this when he initiated his first takeover, more than a decade ago.

He had to have her.

It was a pure, raw, animal need that answered to no amount of reason or logic. He needed to see this woman on her knees in front of him, his thick cock brushing across her full lips as she tilted her head back to accept him in her mouth.

He needed to make this woman his, and he didn't think he could simply stand by and pretend that wasn't the case.

And then something else happened. Logan grew afraid that it might not happen...

I stopped writing long enough to take another sip of coffee, swearing like a sailor when I burnt my mouth again. Shit! Why was I being so stupid?

I realized that there was no way the coffee should still be hot, though. Those words should have, at my old here-we-go-again-I-hate-my-job pace taken me almost twenty minutes to write. They hadn't, obviously, but they
should
have. I looked down at the computer's clock.

It was five minutes past nine.

I'd written five hundred and fifty words in five minutes. I didn't want to stop and look up world record typing speeds, but that sure sounded like the fastest I'd ever written anything, let alone something that I wanted to write more of.

And I
did
want to write more, because I wanted to find out what happened. No, I
needed
to.

I set the coffee aside and got back to work, letting my world fall away from me as the one I was creating rose up around me. Logan had money. He had power. But the one thing he didn't have, the one thing it seemed he may
never
have was one Miss Emma Fleet, lead investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission. She was inscrutable, desirable, and sexy as hell even if she didn't know it.

And she was completely out of reach. What was worse, the crimes she was investigating weren't crimes at all, so it wouldn't be long before she'd vanish from his life once and for all, moving on to projects that would turn up more dirt than Mercado Holdings ever would.

Unless...

I wrote until my eyes felt like they were going to burst into flame, and then I reluctantly crawled into bed. The last thing I remember thinking before I slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep was that I was happy. The book might work, and I was overjoyed.