Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (7 page)

Chapter 13

My purse was buzzing. Again.

I'd been ignoring it for the last few minutes as I tried on one gorgeous, exorbitantly priced dress after another. Not having sales staff to pressure me into one item of clothing or another was such a change that I'd almost forgotten to correct Logan the last few times he'd called me 'Emma'.

But here I was, alone in the changing room for what may well be the last time, judging by how much I loved the dress I was wearing now. It was a black strapless number that somehow managed to both have sleeves and be sexy. I was in love with what it did to my body, and very much looking forward to what Logan would do to it soon.

May as well talk to David, if only to reassure him once more that he wasn't fired.

Maybe that would make him stop calling me long enough for the dashing Mr. Mercado to have his way with me on the floor of the lavishly appointed storefront.

"Hello?" I said as innocently as I could, pretending my smart phone's screen hadn't already told me who was on the other end of the line. I also saw that I had three missed called and a few text messages waiting for me to view them, all or most of them no doubtably from David.

"Beth? Is everything okay?"

It was him, of course. I sat down on the elegant little bench they'd dragged from some French painting of the pastoral countryside and plunked against the far wall of the changing room just for me. "I'm fine, David. Listen, I'm sorry about earlier. I just didn't want you to think I was really looking for someone else to represent me. You and I have always been a good team, and I think we've grown closer in the last year or so."

"I agree," he said, "which is why I'm still undecided as to whether this is some sort of bad joke or you've bumped your head. You don't sound drunk at least, so it's probably not that..."

"Joke? No, not at all. I was just worried that your people would get a call from his people, and... Well, just ignore it, okay?"

David sighed. I'd heard him make that sound with me more than once or twice. It meant that I was being particularly exasperating, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what I'd done.

"Are you there?" I asked, after the sigh was followed by a couple of seconds of silence.

"You know very well that I don't have 'people', Beth. And who's 'people' would be calling me?"

"Logan's."

"Who is Logan?"

I started to answer honestly. For the life of me, I truly did. My mouth was open, the shape of the first word on my lips. But what would I say?
I'm out on a date with a man I wrote into being?
"He's just some guy I met. He's kind of strange about me having a male editor, actually. He's got connections, I guess, and he said he was going to find me someone else to represent me. A woman."

"Oh," David said. "I see. You know, and correct me if I'm wrong because it isn't really my place, but when you say it out loud like that, doesn't he sound like a real asshole?"

I laughed, and the sound in that change room, a space as big as my first apartment had been devoted now for rich people and their human pets to try on dresses and gowns worth more than my college education, made me smile. "You know, it does."

"Good," he said, laughing too. "I'd be worried about you, except I know you can take care of yourself better than just about anyone I know. This one sounds like a prick though, Beth. You can do better."

"I know," I said. David was right, of course. Away from Logan's spell, all of the fake money and fake charm and fake romance novel good looks didn't mean anything, not compared with the advice of a friend.

"I know you've been lonely," David said, "but maybe being lonely is a lot better than being with the wrong guy."

"I know," I said again, this time the sadness in my own voice making my bottom lip tremble as I brought myself to the verge of tears. "Sometimes you can want something so badly, all of the bad stuff doesn't seem to count when you look at them, you know?"

"I know," he said, echoing me, his voice sounding every bit as lost and alone as mine did.

"I've got to go," I said, running my hand along the fabric of the black dress one last time. "But thanks for calling. I'm really glad I called you back."

"Me too."

"I needed to talk to you, I suppose," I told him.

"Me too. Take care, Beth."

"I will," I said, ending the call and putting the phone back into my purse.

He was right. Logan was an interesting fantasy, a fun thing to take out, play with for a while and then put away, but he wasn't much more than a guilty pleasure when you got down to it. There wasn't a long, loving relationship in the cards for the women that fell for the Logan Mercados of the world. Not unless they rolled the dice and won, having fought a long, uphill battle to get to their happily ever after.

No, if I wanted to write a story about
love
, I was going to have to catch a cab back home in my bathrobe and try again.

I took the dress off and put my robe back on. When I left the changing room, I wasn't surprised at all to find Logan and his limousine gone. The store was still empty, but when I let the front door swing shut behind me on my way out, I heard the lock click into place.

I used my phone to call for a taxi.

Somewhere out there in the big wide world, Gina Huxley was doing her thing. Maybe she was having lunch, my growling stomach suggested. Maybe not. But wherever she was, she had a note from me in her possession that had been truer than I'd ever have believed yesterday when I'd written it.

After having met her, I had a feeling my life would be changed forever.

Chapter 14

Once I got home, the first thing I did was put some clothes on.

The second thing I did was go to the laptop. The manuscript with Logan Mercado and the innocent-for-now Emma in it was still on the screen, and I hovered my mouse over the
Delete
button.

Should I?

I shook my head, saving them instead in a folder labelled
Scraps and Works in Progress
. Just because he wasn't the sort of guy who would make
my
world complete didn't mean he wasn't meant for someone else. I knew that there was every chance legions of readers would go head-over-heels for him, and perhaps rightly so. They didn't have to spend the rest of their lives with him, after all.

Still, he was the way he was because I'd written him that way. I had no right to condemn him to the recycle bin simply for being a dominating, sometimes pompous ass. He was doing what I'd told him to do, no more and no less.

I'd tossed my purse on the bed, and I dug through it now for the notebook I'd been using yesterday at the cafe when I'd been taking notes on what Gina had been saying. After all, just because the first idea I'd tried hadn't worked out for my next book didn't mean that there wasn't merit in anything else that she'd said.

Macho Werebear
, I'd written.
Far North. Loner.

And beneath it, Gina's third pitch.
Badass Biker looking for Redemption
.

"Let's go with the bear," I said out loud. The biker was much too close to reality, and I was hoping that if I wrote something paranormal there'd be less chance of me conjuring him up for real. Werebears don't actually exist, or so I like to tell myself. Making a billionaire appear out of nowhere was one thing, but making a Bear Shifter into real flesh and fur was
totally
different.

It was bullshit. I knew that. But if I had to be afraid of everything I ever wrote turning into reality for the rest of my life, I was going to have to find a different profession. The sad fact was that I was only good at being an author. Every other job I'd ever had, every career path I'd ever reluctantly trod had turned to ashes before me.

No, it was this or nothing.

So I sat down and wrote. The blank page slowed me down for a second, but, just like last time, once I got rolling it was as if the world got out of the way and the voices in my head, the critical ones that usually yelled
This is shit!
and
That's not good enough! w
ere silent.

He needed a name, this Shifter of mine. I could already picture him in the frozen North, Alaska or the Yukon, maybe. He was massive, and he kept to himself. Hunters were wise enough to stay out of his way, and on the very very rare chance that he needed something from an outpost or trading post up there, he walked out of a blizzard, human for the first time in a long time. People who met him didn't
know
what he was, but there were rumors.

Keller. That was his name. He'd been there a long time, protecting his cave from the Wolf Shifters that prowled the edges of his territory, keeping a safe place in the snow like the rest of his clan had done in the years when they had been plentiful.

For what, though? What was he waiting for? My romance instincts didn't make me wait for an answer to that particular question for very long, though. What was every male lead waiting for, whether or not he knew it?

His long lost love.

I typed in the name 'Lacey' and liked the way it looked on the screen. Keller and Lacey. If ever star-crossed lovers had existed, these two were them. I got down to work, enjoying the details. I'd never written a Paranormal Romance before, but both Charlotte and Hank from the Smut Slingers had, and I found the experience to be everything that they'd described.

There was an odd type of joy to be had, making a world for Keller and Lacey to love in. There were rules to think up, magics to make, back stories to fill in.

Keller was the last of his clan, holding a place of solace in the Frozen North, unknowingly providing a home for Lacey to retreat to. And retreat there she did, fleeing from her home in Seattle to Alaska. She'd grown up there, but her memories of the place were few and far between. She knew her Grandfather had built a log cabin with his bare hands, and she remembered that her father and his brothers and
their
families had spent time up there, when she was young.

I wiped at my forehead, my face flushed with the effort of creation. It had been warm outside before, and thank God, since I'd been running around in just a bathrobe for the better part of the day. But the sun was starting to slide behind the ocean now, and that should have meant that the heat of the day was lessening...

Only it wasn't. I wiped away a drop of sweat and felt another slide down the back of my neck.

"Told you not to wipe it away," a deep, gruff voice I knew to be Keller's said from behind me. "The visions won't come if you're concerned about something as stupid as sweat."

"Oh," I said, wiping my hand off on my jeans. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he said. "Sorry's no good to me."

I shrugged, turning around in my chair to look at him.

He was exactly the way I'd pictured him in my mind. There he sat, begrudgingly in human for the sake of my readers not having to listen to a talking Bear. His massive, muscled frame made my bed sorry it had done whatever I was punishing it for by allowing him to sit on it, and his square jaw and bold, sharp eyes as blue as glacial ice made me want nothing more than his protection.

Here was a man who knew what it meant to stand against the world.

Here was a man who would stand beside me until the stars dimmed and finally sputtered out, one by one.

"Keller," I asked, happy to be on a first name basis with him. "What exactly are these visions going to show me?"

Now it was his turn to shrug, and he did it in such a bear-like manner, his ears coming up around his shoulders, that I had to risk his wrath and pretend to wipe away sweat from my nose in order to hide my smile from him. He ignored the fact that I hadn't listened to him, clearly too annoyed by my question to comment on the motion. "If I knew what you were going to see after the ceremony of sweat, there'd be little to no point in putting you through it, would there?"

I nodded. He was right, of course. I got the feeling that he was going to often be right, but that was his role. In this story, I was the fish out of water and he was the one who knew all of the new rules I had to learn. Maybe I'd be able to twist them, to use them to my advantage in a way that someone as regimental and structured as he hadn't been able to, but that wouldn't be until well past the halfway point of the plot...

"So what do we do now?" I asked.

He frowned. "Put another log on the fire and wait. And stop talking."

I looked around, expecting a roaring blaze to appear. When it didn't, I got up and cranked the thermostat over even further. "Sounds good," I said.

"Good sounds would be no sounds," Keller reminded me.