Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (10 page)

Another mental head shake. I had to
stop this. I was still distraught—dear god, I just thought the word
distraught! What was I, a prissy lawyer or accountant whining about
my problems to an overpriced therapist?

Sometimes I really wished I hadn’t had
a high school business English teacher for a mother. I had to be
able to type my term papers perfectly, without misspelled words or
grammatical errors, by the seventh grade.

Norma had insisted.

I took a breath and tried not to stare
too much as Bette clacked her feminine whiles across her driveway
and then up the front porch steps. Her hips swayed back and forth
as she ascended the steps.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hope
emerge from the back of the asshole’s house. She still looked
glazed over, but she looked less stressed—which didn’t make me any
happier.

She was carrying a plate with some sort
of loaf of bread on it, covered in plastic wrap.

Holy crap, the asshole had baked for
her! I knew her relationship to food, and if he could whip up food
for her…

Shit, shit, shiiit…

Hope loped up her front steps and into
the house, shutting the door with a muffled bang.

So there I was, sitting parked in front
of her house… well, her neighbor’s house, spying on her like a
stalker in a bad movie of the week, and Hope was traipsing over to
the new, too damn handsome for my liking, asshole neighbor’s house
for breakfast bread and probably coffee.

And probably a whole lot
more…

I bit down on the inside of my mouth. I
wasn’t going to think about that possibility.

Not that I wanted… or even had a
right…

It had only been the one night—and all
those mini dates. But I’d felt so much more than just some primal
attraction to her.

Hell, I’d had a crush on her since high
school. She’d been skinny and gawky, and smart—the artistic type.
And she hadn’t given me a second look. Not until she walked into
Wal-Mart with her dead Taurus and turned my world upside
down.

It was still depressing that she hadn’t
noticed me so thoroughly that she didn’t remember me from then at
all.

But what did it matter. I’d broken up
with her, hadn’t I?

Yeah, I did.

Did I?

Had the words “We’re through!” passed
my lips?

Or had I just stormed out when I’d
found out what she’d done?

And what had she done?

What had she done!?!? She betrayed me.
The crazy picture she somehow took of me when we were having sex…
remember?

Yeah…

But what did I care about some stupid
picture?

You don’t. You care that she did what
she did behind your back… like Janie. I’d really liked
Janie.

We’d married only because she was
pregnant… or at least that’s what she’d told me. A few weeks later
she’d dropped the bomb that she had been mistaken.

I’d never asked if she’d gone to the
doctor. She had only told me that she’d taken a home pregnancy test
and that she was pregnant. We’d used protection, but I knew even
the greatest condom on earth had its risks.

She’d gotten bored with me, and
disappeared not a week later. I only saw her one more time. That
was two months later when her parents strong armed her home to sign
the divorce papers.

A month later she was married again,
and I’ve only heard tales of her travels since then.

Placed side by side, I guess the two
instances didn’t come close in severity, or twisted
plotting.

But they both stung.

I cleared my thoughts, turned the key
in the little Escort and started to pull out from the curb. I
needed to get out of there, and back to work, and forget all about
Miss Hope Jones and her carnival of weird and crazy.

I hit the brakes not twenty feet later.
Standing on her porch, one hand pulling her sunglasses down to let
me know she was looking straight at me, and the other hand wagging
a finger at me in admonishment, was Bette.

Holy fucking shit! The woman didn’t
miss anything, did she? She was worse than the FBI, a tabloid
reporter, and a sleazy Private Investigator all rolled up in
one.

She smiled; she had one hell of pretty
smile, with cute little dimples. It suddenly hit me that she was a
young, redheaded version of Dolly Parton.

I gulped just thinking about the ample
bosom she had stretching the fabric of that little silk
blouse.

I closed my eyes for a beat, defeated
and humiliated and confused—and turned on… and then I gave her a
half-hearted wave and slowly rolled the little car away down the
street.

I had to stay away from this street,
Hope… and Bette. I just had to.

Chapter 10 :Hope

I was amped on adrenaline and
desperation. I took almost every spare shot I had on my laptop and
loaded it into my trusty GIMP program. I filtered, I brightened,
intensified contrast, colorized them in black and white, scarlet,
azure, jealous green, caramel, and added shading and wispy lines of
fuzziness. And then typed “Your Title” and “Your Name” in the
appropriate spots with color matching fonts.

All this so I’d have a nice little
slide show of unpublished covers to show off on one of the TV
screens they would no doubt have at the Hilton ballroom.

I collapsed on the photo shoot couch in
my studio and tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. In a
few days I was going to be neck deep in alligators… well,
bestselling authors, and I was going to trying to woo them to
Janine’s little ebook publishing empire.

I was going to be pitching
woo.

But how in the hell was I going to do
that?

Personal charm?

The radiance that is me in a dress?
(Shit! That reminds me I still have to find a dress)

Breathe. Breathe again. You have a few
days. You can do this.

No, the thing that was going to woo the
bestselling authors to Janine, and ultimately to me, was my work,
my covers.

But the best one of those, the Olivia
Lovelace cover, had been an accident—and a terrible
mistake.

That’s the reason everyone
is coming to judge you, and mock you, and laugh at you…

I really have to get myself a more
positive inner voice. This stupid bitch is killing me.

Hey!

But the stupid bitch was right. They
were all, in a way, coming to judge me. If they signed on with
Janine and Branded Publishing, then it probably had something to do
with me and my covers.

I shook my head. Covers were great.
Covers were the first thing that a reader saw, came into contact
with. They were your book’s first impression. And if that first
impression wasn’t good and didn’t hook the reader to click the
little thumbnail link to your ebook, then the cover failed. The
cover has to draw the potential reader in, to get them to read the
product description, to glance or read the hopefully positive
reviews, to click on the even bigger version of the book cover to
read a free sample of the book.

Nope, no pressure there…

I took one big, clean breath and slowly
let it out, leaning back against the couch, letting my back,
shoulders, and neck relax. Isn’t that what I’ve already been
doing?

I got up and walked over to my laptop.
I clicked on the special file that held all the ebook covers I’d
done for Janine, in order of their creation. They loaded up and
started a not so little slideshow. There were literally dozens of
them, in many different styles, different models, different levels
of heat.

I sat there watching, seeing how I’d
improved, how each new cover got better and better, richer, sexier,
more intense. They were all pretty damn good. They had helped
almost all of Janine’s ebook authors to sell enough books to get
them on Amazon Bestseller lists, USA Bestseller lists, and even a
few to the New York Times Bestseller list.

I was no slouch; I had shot all these
covers.

The cover with Darla and Drew came to
glorious color on the screen—so damn good. But it had been
rejected, and even though Janine had already used that image on
another author’s book, it still stung.

My whole body tightened up on me,
anticipation like a waterfall of angst. The image of Jake appeared,
glowing, luminous—the best cover I’d ever shot, the most
passionate, the most artistic—it really was a work of
art.

And I’d had almost nothing at all to do
with capturing it.

But then the newest cover, the one of
Billy as the Big Bad Wolf, loaded up. I cocked my head and really
looked at it.

Damn, if that wasn’t a great shot. And
it wasn’t just Billy’s primal predatory pout—wow, say that three
times real fast!—it was the whole thing. From set, to texture,
style and composition; all the way down to the color I’d tinted it
and the font I’d used.

Just looking at the damn thing made
something deep inside me stir, some base instinct, a hunger: it was
a piece of art too, and I had taken that picture, no one
else.

Just little old me.

Okay, that dilemma solved (for the time
being) I needed to get back to my to-do list.

Item number two: find a sexy
dress.

My inner calm and confidence just blew
right out the window—and hell, I had central air, so my windows
were closed… but still.

Breathe. I shuddered at the thought of
going out on my own to dress hunt. I’d get lost in the racks of
unflattering, cruelly constructed garments, freak out and either
run from the building like it was on fire or panic-buy the closest
thing I could reach for, whether it was the right size or what it
looked like.

That was a really, really bad
idea.

Bette?

Okay, Bette dressed a little over the
top… well, she had her own kind of elegance, but it still smacked
of show business glitter and glam.

I’d hated the results of the makeover
she’d given me a couple weeks back. I looked like unholy hell with
too much makeup and hair that was way too big.

Raphael’s sisters?

They seemed nice, and they had been
dressed nicely enough that they could have been from any social
class—even though they were highly paid professionals.

Just one very big problem: I didn’t
have his phone number. I’d have to go back over to Raphael’s place
again.

I bit my lip, my choices sloshing
around inside my skull like the wash cycle of my front loader
washing machine.

I picked up the phone and hit speed
dial.

Bette picked up on the first ring.
“What’s up, buttercup?”

“
I need help.”

“
Help with what,
sweetie?”

Okay, here it goes. “I’ve gotta find an
elegant, sexy dress—” Like how I emphasized elegant? “And I only
have three days to find it.”

I heard her breathe in, a satisfied
sigh escaping her lips. “A shopping challenge… how exciting. I’ll
be over to collect you in ten minutes.”

She hung up.

I sat there, holding the phone to my
ear, stupefied.

Ten minutes.

Crap!

But what had I expected? I needed the
dress and soon, and Bette was not the type to sit around and
schedule things. Just look at what she’d done when Darla came over
to “practice driving.” She’d taken over, commandeered the
afternoon, and not only taught Darla to drive like a deranged
demon, but to actually pass her driver’s test—which she finagled so
she could take it that day.

I ran a brush through my unruly hair,
and pulled it back into my trademark ponytail again, checked my
face for grease or blemishes, and then made sure my clothes didn’t
have any stains from breakfast on them.

Slipping into my trusty sneakers, I
grabbed my pair of heels—I knew enough to know I needed to see what
the dress would look like with heels on.

Purse slung over my shoulder, bulging
with my high heels, I rushed out onto my front porch and saw Bette
coming out of her house as well. She was wearing a silky blouse
that accented her ample bosom, a tight, not so short skirt that
hugged her deliciously curvy hips and bubble butt, and heels so
high I felt vertigo just looking at them.

She looked prim and sexy all at the
same time. Maybe this would work out after all.

Thunder roared from down the street,
and I looked up to find not a cloud in my Texas sky. The thunder
sounded angry, and became louder and louder every passing
second.

I walked down my step and over to
Bette’s Cadillac and stood next to her, my gaze following hers to
the end of the street.

Drew’s big white monster of a truck
lurched around the corner and rocketed towards us, leaving a trail
of burnt rubber in its wake.

The great metal beast came to a
screeching stop in front of Bette’s house, and not at all
shockingly Darla popped out of the driver’s seat—that was after she
left Drew with a minute and thirty seconds kiss goodbye that would
have steamed up the windows in the truck if it hadn’t been so
blazing hot out.