“Thrillers aren’t really your thing, are they?” Lysandra asks.
“No. I like happy stories.”
“Like yours and hers,” Lysandra says, pointing to the fantasy author’s table. She’s seated there now, her spectacles on her pretty nose and a neat row of quills beside her books.
“I can’t wait for the author tea afterward. I’m definitely getting her autograph.” I might be an author, but I’m still a reader, and a voracious one at that.
“How are things at the inn?” Lysandra asks. “I meant to ask yesterday after your, um, incident.”
Yesterday, the inn tripped me on my way over the threshold, my knee hit the doorframe. I shouted a colorful string of curses that I’m pretty certain the entire town heard.
I laugh and roll my eyes at myself. “Good, actually. The inn was clearly annoyed about how many paintings I nailed into the walls, but it heated my teapot for me this morning, so I think we’re friends now.”
“Very good sign, yes.”
I want to pick Lysandra’s brain about the former owners of the inn and how they had lived in harmony, but the chapel bell begins to toll.
Lysandra startles, utters something unintelligible, and I hustle to my table. The scent of the iced cookies fills my nose. The tables are arranged around the sweets display with my spot and the no-show vampire’s set up on the far side. Hmm, I probably require a cookie to prepare for the readers headed my way.
I stand close to the display, eyeing the treats. I like the red ones best, but I pick up a white-iced one because I don’t want my mouth dyed for this important day. Iwant to do my best for my publisher and for Lysandra. I lift the cookie and take a bite. The sweet treat crumbles perfectly in my mouth, and I moan with pleasure.
Just then, a dark-haired male with very fair skin walks out from behind the bookshop and aims toward the cookies—toward me. The morning light washes across his sharply cut cheekbones, the chain and piercings on his pointed ear, and the fang that shows as he greets Lysandra with a small, wicked-looking half smile. He’s in head-to-toe black, from boots to cloak hood. The wind blows and pulls his hood from his raven-black hair, and he scowls at the air like the wind somehow insulted him. It’s the vampire author, Archer Darkheart. Has to be.
Then his red-brown eyes lock onto me. My heart gives a great jolt.
He is suddenly right across from me, leaning over the sloping edge of the stacked cookies. I can’t stop staring into his bewitching eyes. My head is light, like I’ve had a pint without a bite of food.
Blessed Stones of the Veil, Archer Darkheart is going to kiss me.
Everything moves slowly. I find myself bending toward him.
He suddenly launches forward, his elbow catching the table of cookies, and then grabs me. Ilook up, and the short distance from his mouth to mine feels wrong. I rise up on my toes.
And I kiss him.
A delicious shiver dances down my body, but then he’s pulling away, eyes wide. The cookie display completely topples to the ground. Icing and crumbs everywhere. The crowd faces us, eyes wide. My face blazes hot, and I stutter, backing away. Even the Snowlight singers have gone silent.
“I, I’m so sorry,” I stammer.
The crowd erupts in applause.
The vampire looks like he’s turned to stone.
“How romantic!” one woman says.
“A perfect Snowlight season moment,” an orc male says, swooning and grinning around large tusks.
Finally, Archer seems to wake up. He runs a hand roughly through his shoulder-length hair. His skin is even paler, which is saying a lot considering how white he already was. He looks from me to the crowd and back again.
“I am sorry,” he says. “I tripped.” He points to the cobblestones at his feet. “Just there.”
Of course, he didn’t intend to hold me, to let me kiss him. I’m an idiot! My face is roughly the temperatureof the sun. I find my tongue and bend to gather cookies while the crowd moves on to the Snowlight tree to hook their creations to the branches.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I am so embarrassed. Seriously, how can I make it up to you?”
Because I’m the one who kissed him. He was just reacting. I can’t look up and see his expression. I am too flustered. He’s surely agape, shocked, appalled that I smashed my face into his like some lovestruck youth instead of the thirty-year-old woman I am. Or worse, he thinks I’m a criminally aggressive person. I want the cobblestones to rise and cover me. I can’t face this.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Archer also attempting to tidy the mess. He isn’t saying a word. I have to smooth this over. Finally, I stop and gaze at him. The crowd is still laughing merrily and talking about us in happy tones. I can hear my name and his too. They think this is incredibly romantic.
