Sam’s stomach flipped. “Okay.”
William slid into her side of the booth, close, and Sam inhaled his woodsy-sweet cologne, his warm skin. “There’s a pen in your braid,” he said in her ear, sending electric ripples down her neck.
“I always keep one there. You never know when you might need it.”
“Fair.” William tugged experimentally on the braid, and Sam gave a tiny gasp. He looked at her consideringly.
Then they were kissing, gentle at first and then not, Sam nipping William’s lower lip, William growling with recognition and holding Sam’s head so she couldn’t move it. Sam didn’t even care at this point if there was anything wrong with him. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like this? How long since a man’s mouth was the whole world?
Finally she pulled away. “We should stop—we’re middle-aged. And I think they want us to go.” The restaurant was empty, their bill on the table. Sam and William stared at each other, and then William slapped his credit card on the check and carried it over to the kitchen.
“I must away, my dear,” he said, returning to the side of the booth. He held out his hand to Sam and enfolded her in a hug, resting his chin on her head the way he’d done at the bookstore. Again she heard his heart beating.
“Godspeed, Simone Vetiver,” he said, and released her. “More anon, okay?”
Then he was gone, nipping through the door like the White Rabbit, so quickly she didn’t see him go. Sam stood feeling abruptly cold in the air-conditioning, her skin still damp from their passionate grappling. Had this whole evening actually happened? Sam touched her swollen lips, her cheeks abraded from William’s goatee. William was, like Anne Frank, a little bundle of contradictions. His out-of-the-blue email to her, the Darlings, his genre switching, the Virtuoso versus the vulnerable little boy in the booth. And that delicious alpha kissing. WhowasWilliam Corwyn? It might be a dangerous distraction at a time when she could least afford one, but Sam knew one thing: She sure as hell intended to find out.
The Rabbit
The café she takes him to after the reading is French, and on the way there it starts to rain, so by the time they get there they’re drenched and laughing and she’s squealing like a piglet and her white tank top is see-through. I mean, come on. Could Sam Vetiver BE more of a cliché? I thought writers were supposed to avoid clichés. I bet I won’t like her books, either.
Initially I’m worried I’ll have to follow them inside and get a table myself to learn anything, and from the menu I pull up online, the place is dear. Does anybody really need to pay $18 for a hamburger? These are definitely not Augusta prices. I’m resigning myself to spending my week’s food budget on a Caesar salad and glass of water, but then I get lucky: The hostess seats William and Sam Vetiver in front of the picture window. They’re on either side of a booth beneath a copper pendant light, their faces also lit from below by a candle, and from my vantage point in the bus shelter across the sidewalk, they look like a couple in a TV show.
I watch as they order and talk. He laughs a lot, which he does only when he really likes one of them, and at one point he reaches over and fixes a piece of hair that’s gotten loose from her stupid braid. He also does the long gaze thing. This is trouble. At least from his end. But I can’t quite tell how she feels about him. She plays with the tail of that braid, which I can’t help but think would make a good noose in a thriller—if the heroine were strangled by her own hair, who would ever suspect that as the murder weapon? She smiles at him and laughs herself, sometimes. She pays total attention to him when he speaks. At one point she gets up to go to theladies’ room—he stands, too, ever the gentleman—and returns with her mascara not quite so deranged-looking. But there is something about Sam Vetiver that indicates reserve; she’s not stroking her neck or licking her lips or stirring her drink with her straw before encircling it with her mouth or any of the things I’ve seen the others do that signify flirtation and sexual attraction. Sam Vetiver is a little withheld.
As at the bookstore, I start to relax a bit. Maybe he’s just taking the car for a test spin but won’t drive it off the lot.
I use the time while I’m waiting to peruse Sam Vetiver’s website. She’s legit; her publisher, Hercules House, is an imprint of the Big Five and the same as William’s—what are the odds of that? I don’t like it. It gives them more commonality. She writes historical fiction, a library of titles that are allthis man’s wife,that man’s daughter, as if women can’t have a story of their own. I pull up a gallery of search engine images to compare her online presence with the woman sitting in the window. Unlike some authors, she’s not too airbrushed. Her official photographer definitely scrubbed circles from beneath her eyes and evened her skin tone, and although even in her headshot she’s wearing her dumb Rapunzel braid, it somehow looks more artiste than princess. The power of black and white. But she’s smart, this Sam Vetiver, she’s not an author who’s had her photo touched up so much that when she shows up at readings, people say Who the hell is that ol’ lady? She looks like herself. And she looks pretty good, unfortunately, for a woman who, I learn from Wikipedia, is almost fifty. (Well, forty-seven.)
I’m just sending her friend requests from my alt-profiles on social media when I catch movement from within the window. William is sliding into Sam Vetiver’s side of the booth. Uh-oh. This is not good. She turns toward him, and he picks up the dumb braid—for a second I think he’s read my mind and is going to cinch it around her throat, but instead he uses it to pull her closer to him, and then they’re kissing. F*ck. This is definitely not good. This is not good at all. I realize I’ve half stood from my bus stop bench and make myself sit back down; I’m not directly beneath a streetlight, and I’m still wearing my baseball cap and wig, but if William looked out, if anyone did, I’d be visible. I pull back into the shadows.
William, however, is not looking. William is still kissing Sam Vetiver. Other customers leave the restaurant, the servers are clearing the tables, and they’re still making out like they’re going for the Guinness Book of World Records Longest Liplock. It’s embarrassing, really. Doesn’t he know how old he is? I wish I could look away.
Finally she’s the one who seems to stop it, Sam Vetiver. They separate. William picks up the bill. About time—everyone else is gone, and I bet the staff wants to kill them. Still, the damage is done, the die is cast. I can tell by the way she looks at him, by the way Sam Vetiver turns up her face to follow William as he stands from the booth, like a flower tracking the sun. She’s definitely hooked.
He hugs her and leaves alone, which is kind of a d*ck move, in my opinion—wouldn’t an actual gentleman walk her to her car, make sure she got there safe? Not our boy. He heads into the night, taking out his phone the instant he leaves the café, striding right past me in the dark without the slightest awareness there’s another human being a few feet away.
But even if he were inclined to think of Sam Vetiver, to wonder if she’d be all right getting to the parking lot, even if his surface chivalry were real, he wouldn’t have to worry. Sam won’t be going home by herself. I’ll be behind her, every step of the way.
Chapter 7
What If
From: William Corwyn
To: Sam Vetiver
Date: August 11
Time: 4:35 p.m.
Simone,
Salutations! Hello. Hello, lip-nipper. Hello, dining companion. Hello, genius. Hello.
Tour stats: 326 miles, seven events, one convenience store sandwich gobbled behind a bookstore dumpster and countless breakfast bars from the carton in my back seat.
I greet you now from my hotel room in—where am I? A quick look at hotel stationery says: Connecticut!, where in an hour I’ll be speaking at a swanky country club.
