Mister O(7)

I laugh, loving her boldness in asking. “You mean the scenes, Harper?”

She nods as she takes another drink.

I nod, too. “She did.”

“Did you?” she asks, curiosity dripping from her tone as she sets down her mug.

“Yeah.”

“Wow. When you read her book was it like seeing your life exposed?”

“That one hasn’t come out yet. It’s next, I think.”

“What happened to her?”

“It ended,” I say with a shrug. I’m not upset about it. We had a good time for the few months we were together.

“Why?”

Because it was fun, nothing more. And because J. Cameron—that’s her pen name—is obsessed with her work. Fiction is her world. That, and she took off for Italy. “She went to Florence. I think her next book is set there,” I tell Harper.

“And I’ll be looking forward to reading the one that you”—she sketches air quotes—“helped her research.”

“Maybe I’ll never tell you her pen name.”

“I’ll get it out of you,” she says, as I take a drink of my coffee. “Does she write those cheesy sex scenes where the guy tells the girl he loves her while he’s inside her, or right after?”

I nearly spit out my drink from laughing. “Gee. I really don’t know how cheesy the scenes get. I don’t read romance novels.”

“Maybe you should. Some are pretty hot,” she says with a knowing glint in her eyes, before she steers back to the matter at hand. “So the event. Let me get this straight. You want me to be your wing-woman to help you with your boss, who’s such a douche he can’t handle that you’re manlier than he is, and because you attract the ladies like a tomcat does the *cats in heat?”

Ah hell, I wish she wouldn’t use that word in such close proximity to the factory of dirty thoughts inside my skull. “I wouldn’t say that’s true.”

Harper points in the direction of the store. “Judging from how badly that woman at the store wanted to Hop on Pop, I’m guessing you get hit on all the time,” she says, and I would sound like a completely cocky bastard if I told the truth. Yes. It does happen a f*ck-ton, but it wasn’t always like today. With success comes more interest from women, and more interest not just in me, but in my assets. I’m referring to the green ones, not the ones made of flesh and bone, but they like those, too.

I give a one-shouldered shrug by way of an answer.

She smiles. “I’ll go, Nick. And then when I need something, I’ll call in a favor from you. Deal?”

“Works for me.”

She reaches for the cake, dips her finger in the frosting, and brings it to her mouth, licking it off. Oh God. Oh hell. Why does she torture me like this? Thank f*ck I’m sitting down. She does not need to know she is one half of the ingredients in my instant hard-on mix these days—just add an unintentional sexy-vixen comment that I don’t know how to read, and it’s like a pop-up shop.

“Look! It’s Anna the Amazing!”

Harper snaps her head in the direction of the young voice calling out her stage name. She doesn’t use her real name with the kids’ parties she does. To them, she’s Anna the Amazing Magician. She says it’s easier to maintain a Facebook profile with her college friends if she doesn’t tie her work to it.

A huge smile spreads across her face, and she jumps out of her chair, bends down, and says hello to a girl with wild brown hair and a spray of freckles across her nose. Harper places her index finger on her lips and whispers, “Close your eyes.”

The little girl does as asked, and when Harper tells her to open her eyes two seconds later, she removes a carefully folded up dollar bill from behind the kid’s ear. Her jaw drops. Spoiler alert: Harper took the bill from her pocket when the girl’s eyes were closed. “But wait,” Harper says, in her magician’s voice, and then her left hand sweeps behind the girl’s other ear, and she’s got another bill, this one folded like a paper airplane.

Okay, I have no clue how she pulled off that one.

“You’re amazing,” the kid says in awe then looks up at her dad, and Harper’s eyes follow suit. The dad is tall and sturdy, and I have a suspicion that if he’s single, which the lack of a ring says he might be, he’s scoring regularly. No, I don’t find him attractive, because I don’t find dudes attractive. You can just tell someone is good-looking when he’s a ringer for Chris Hemsworth. Harper stands, and wobbles. She reaches out her hand, steadying herself at our table.

“Haaa . . . huuu . . . hooo . . .”

What the—?

I sit up straighter, my curiosity piqued, as Harper attempts to speak a new language.

Oh wait, she’s just failing at saying hi.

“Hi, Anna,” the guy says, then lowers his voice and whispers like her real name is their special secret, “Harper.”

And it sure sounds as if he enjoys saying her name. Shit. The Hemsworth ringer likes her.

Harper opens her mouth again. Something that sounds like Hiiiyyyyyaaaaa, Simon comes out of those pretty lips.

“How are you? This place is great, isn’t it?” he asks.

I think, but I can’t be certain, that she says yes. Or it could be yesh, given her sudden fit of I-can’t-remember-a-f*cking-word-of-the-English-language.