Just Her Type (23 page)

Chapter 29

Later, Kendra admired
Dominic’s strong cheekbones and full lips as he slept beside her. Her gaze
lowered to his sculpted pecs and broad shoulders. Her hand dallied over the
mussed waves on his head, the scruff on his chin, and then skimmed the hair on
his chest. She could check off another box. Dominic had been amazing in bed.
The perfect lover for her, by turns, passionate and tender. And best of all,
frisky and downright fun.
And oh man, did
he know how to improvise
. That mouth trick he’d done to her cha-cha with
the maraschino cherries from her fridge… And he made her his human road map
with that skillful tongue tracing hot paths from tattoo to tattoo.
Wow.
Could she drop hints to Alyssa
about it all for an upcoming Steele Everheart bedroom escapade without
revealing the source of inspiration?

How many people could say they laughed during sex?
Well, laughed for the
right
reasons?
Images of her body entangled with Dominic’s flashed through her mind, warming
her from the inside out. They’d reveled in one another. Nice and slow with
whispered endearments.
 
Hard and
fast with naughty demands. He’d taken the lead. She’d taken the lead.
 
They’d catnapped and then started again,
working their way around her bedroom and to various pieces of furniture. Who
knew that rickety old papasan chair would prove so sturdy!
 
Ha!

 
Still,
she found her rapidly growing emotional attachment to him unnerving.

It was just
sex.

As much as she wanted it to be
just great sex
, all attempts to minimize
what it meant didn’t ring true. She’d had good sex with the former
fiancés, but this felt different.

 
Okay, so he put it on me better than the
others did. Keep the
Cupid4You.com
account and all options open.

With that deliberation done, Kendra kissed Dominic
on the cheek and climbed out of bed for a drink of water. She pulled on an
over-sized T-shirt and padded to the kitchen. She’d planned to return to the
bedroom and maybe awaken Dominic for another round, but not before checking
voicemail and text messages. It had been hours since the last time she’d
glanced at her cell phone. What if Aunt Jackie had called? She fished the phone
out of her purse and listened to chirpy check-in messages from Alyssa, Selena,
and her aunt. Nothing that couldn’t wait a little longer. She’d hoped for a
message from Vanessa, but there wasn’t one.
 
Brody, whom she’d given her personal cell
number, had left the fourth message. He reminded her that the thirty-day wait
to complete the termination of his contract with Impact had ended, as if she
didn’t know. She’d been counting the days, too.
 
He was free and wanted to set up a
face-to-face meeting so they could freely discuss representation, expectations,
and working styles.
Yes!

Again, Kendra, excited and anxious about taking on
Brody as a client, had to believe that Dominic and their friendship would
survive it. After all, it was just business. She’d done nothing deceitful by
delaying the news until Brody was contractually free of his agreement with
Dominic.

As soon as Kendra had a signed agent/client
agreement and the go-ahead from Brody, she would broach the topic of her role
as Brody’s new literary representative. As she considered the various ways in
which she’d approach this, it also occurred to her that she had yet to receive
a progress report from Corinne on those requested revisions.

Though Kendra had been eager to contact her the last
few weeks, she hadn’t wanted to push. Agreeing to make the changes had not been
an easy concession for Corinne. Kendra skimmed the headings of a few hundred
emails looking for something from Corinne.
Nothing.
However, she did have about a dozen emails from her client Blake Spencer,
fresh from a writers’ conference, where authors tended to belly up to the bar,
get bombed, and then spill their flipping guts. Judging by the dates and times,
all emails had been written within ten minutes:

Why did
Dreya Carlson get splashy cardboard displays, front-table positioning, and
shelf talkers inside all Brooks & Nimrod bookstores across the country when
I had only
 
patchy distribution at
best, and one or two copies of each book in my series buried on the back shelves,
spine-out? Why did Paul Davis get a full-page ad in the New York Gazette?
 
I had postage-stamp-sized ads and stock
advance-reading-copy mailings to low-traffic blogs and low- circulation
dead-tree publications?

Those Porter Agency A-list authors or best-selling
brand authors he compared himself to wrote romances and thrillers. Oftentimes
the people who least needed the extra push and co-op were the ones who received
it.

Blake, a fantasy novelist, had been solidly
midlist. Forever.
 
As hard as she’d
tried to get his publisher behind his work with something besides additional
middling contracts, his numbers hamstrung her efforts. He was just as gifted in
his chosen genre as the others, but the fairy dust and publisher promo bucks
had yet to rain on him. Often there was no obvious reason why one writer
succeeded over another.
 
No
one—particularly those who’d made it—liked to hear how much dumb
luck was involved. But Kendra hadn’t given up on Blake yet. She read his next
email.

Many authors were exceptionally supportive and
generous with knowledge. And while it was important for her clients to educate
themselves about the business and cultivate fellowship with other writers, too
much information often triggered vicious cycles of compare and despair. Kendra
knew all about those from personal experience. She tapped out a quick but
compassionate response, offering to discuss first thing Monday morning his
concerns in greater detail and brainstorm a new strategy to reach his goals. He
hadn’t mentioned an interest in indie publishing yet, but maybe it was time to
have that discussion after carefully revisiting his present contract. She’d
negotiated terms that provided leeway for shorter indie works in his genre and
longer works outside his current genre.

Kendra would also send Corinne one quick note to
inquire about her trip back to the mainland and whatever progress she’d made on
the manuscript since returning home. Then she’d mention how eager she was to
read the revised version when Corinne believed it was ready. She’d emphasize
that last part so Corinne wouldn’t feel pressured.

Kendra’s fingers hovered over the Internet search
icon on her cell phone with the intent of surfing over to
Just Vanessa
because she hadn’t heard from her in a while.
Don’t!
 
She’d moved to compose that email to
Corinne when she noticed a message from Dominic. The romantic note made her
eyes mist. “Dominic,” she said. “What are you doing to me?” The size of the
attachment brought a slow smile to her face. She hurried to her laptop to download
the document from her email account and print a copy. The cover page read
Sneak Easy
by Dominic Tobias. She
recited the first line. Riveted by the words on the page, she sat on her sofa.

That’s where Dominic found her with the printout
hours later.

Looking gloriously naked and muscled, he stood in
the doorframe between her living room and bedroom.
 
“Why are you up so early, or late, on a
weekend?” He raked his hands through his hair and glanced at the clock, 8:12
a.m. He plucked his briefs off the head of her wooden seahorse sculpture, where
they’d landed the night before.

“I left the bed around three a.m. But I couldn’t
go back to sleep,” Kendra said, feeling oddly energetic as she leapt to her
feet.
 
“Did my laughter wake you?”

“Your laughter?” He put on his briefs, the
waistband snapping against his taut bronzed skin.

“The condoms weren’t my only surprise.”

“Ahh, so you checked your email.”

“I did. And this is wonderful! So funny! Smart!
Sharply observed! I couldn’t stop reading! And I’m not just saying this to
spare your feelings as you spared mine with that atrocious sweater.”
 
Leaving the pages on the sofa, she went
to him, and he wrapped her in his strong arms. “I enjoyed what you’ve done
here. Why did you change your mind about letting me read it?”

“You have to ask?” he replied, looking deep into
her eyes. “I’m falling in love with you.”

 
Not
the answer she expected or wanted. Kendra blinked and found herself speechless
again for more than a beat. “Oh,” she replied with a shaky breath.

As Kendra struggled to find the appropriate
response, Dominic looked downcast. Her throat tightened.
 
“I’m touched and, um, humbled that…”
What the heck did that mean anyway?
Humbled in that context?
“I think you’re
so great. You’re one of a kind. I, mean, what you just said was…” Her words
trailed off a cliff.
 
She must’ve
sounded like Leighton Rothchild 2.0
after
that failed prom invite he’d told her about.

Kendra felt her resolve give way, but her
pragmatic side took hold. It had been only weeks since they’d had their first
conversation on the plane. It had taken longer to get her passport renewed.

Dominic did not loosen his embrace. “Hey, it’s
okay,” he said softly.

“I, um,” Kendra stuttered, before pressing her
lips against his. If
she
were going to be true to herself and
Dominic, she couldn’t return anything close to those words yet, though what she
felt for him was strong.
 
She did
not trust her flip-flopping emotions anymore. The next time she declared
something more than “like” for a man, she had to first rule out infatuation and
lust.
 
There would be no echo to
stave off awkwardness. No donning love goggles that failed to detect fatal
flaws sure to tank a relationship. No crushing disappointment destined to
follow.

But still, Kendra questioned herself.
 
Was she over correcting? Too risk
averse? Just because everything between her and Dominic had happened quickly,
did that make it any less
real
? It
was exhilarating for sure, and why couldn’t she go with that feeling? One more
time?
 
What if her fearful, buzzkill
side was malfunctioning, overanalyzing, and choking all the romance out of
something wonderful?

Then there was Brody.

What if after learning Kendra was Brody’s new rep,
Dominic revealed that side Selena and others had warned her about?
 
Even if the two managed to move past the
Brody situation, sharing an occupation would test them. What if intense
competition and jealousy became frequent issues?

After the kiss, they stood, holding each other in
an extended embrace.

“I can’t move close enough to you.”
 
Kendra gave him another squeeze and
buried her face against his bare chest. “You always smell so good. It’s
unreal!”

“I just want to melt into you, too,” he replied,
placing soft kisses on her forehead.

“It’s scary, no?”

“Not to me.” Dominic cradled her face and his
thumbs stroked her cheeks. “What are you afraid of?”

“I’m no good at it.” Kendra stopped short of
revealing all about Graham, Colin, and Rand. The embarrassing multiple
engagements.

“Do you want love?” he asked with such
compassionate simplicity her heart squeezed.

“Yes, I suppose.” Kendra looked down.

“You suppose? What kind of answer is that?” He
used a crooked finger to tip up her chin. “Look at me when you answer that.”

“Yes, I do. I want it. And all that comes with it
someday,
but
without losing myself in
it all. I don’t want to get too caught up in emotions. The newness of it all.
Know what I’m saying?”

“I think I do.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and
then fingered the colored lock of her hair that never failed to fascinate him.

“And I’m big on independence and maintaining a
strong sense of self. Some men can’t handle that. Can’t handle
me,
because I don’t want to be
handled.
” And what went unsaid,
Even if they accept my terms,
I run.

“In other words, there were
two
alphas in those relationships? Becoming a couple means change.
Adaptation and compromise are necessary for the sake of the bond. But I’ll
always want Kendra to be Kendra.” He cradled her face again. “So far, you’ve
let Dominic be Dominic, bad jokes and all.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“And you didn’t call me out for referring to
myself in third person,” he said. “It doesn’t get better than that.”

Looking into his eyes, Kendra nodded. But who was
the real Dominic? And he hadn’t seen all of her so-called facets, either.
Things that only more time and trials, especially trials, would reveal. Things
that surfaced after a relationship had racked up loads of miles and had lost
its “new car” smell.

“So, you liked my manuscript, huh?” he asked,
sounding and looking endearingly bashful.

“I loved it! And other people will, too!” Kendra
danced on her toes. “It hits all the right notes as humorous crime fiction.
It’s whip-smart with a great quirky plot and lots of deliciously idiosyncratic
characters! Punchy dialogue! And it’s edgy, but it has depth, poignancy in
parts. Heart. Your protagonist, Shecky Lamar, is a hoot! I can see him carrying
a series! Wait. Is this part of a series?”

“Yes. It’s the first of seven.”

“Man, you’ve got to shop this!” Kendra flitted
back to the manuscript on the sofa.

Dominic replied with a screeching brakes sound.