“Roland Townsend,” he said to me, offering his surprisingly delicate hand. I took it, and he pumped my arm. “Good to meet you.”
I was about to remind the moist little man that we had met before; but when I opened my mouth, Nina shot me the kind of narrow-eyed, eyebrows-down look that reminded me that behind her MAC Pure Pink pucker was a set of fangs.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
Harley slapped his hands together. “Shall we go? We’ve got an early reservation at Ruth’s Chris.”
“The steak house?” I said, eyebrows up.
Roland rubbed his bulbous belly proudly. “I pulled some strings to get us a last-minute reservation.”
“Lovely,” I said, shooting Nina a glance that, I hope, said there would be no filet mignon shoved in my purse tonight.
“That sounds wonderful,” Nina purred, completely avoiding my gaze.
Harley reached out for Nina’s hand, and hers delicately slipped into his. His eyes darkened. “Oh, sweetie. Your hands are as cold as ice.”
Nina flashed me a frantic look and I dipped back into the apartment, yanking out two coats. “Our heat has been on the fritz lately,” I said, handing Nina a coat. “The place is an ice box.”
Harley and Nina shared nauseating sweetheart looks as he helped her slip into her coat.
“Let me help you with that,” Roland said, taking his cue from Harley.
“I really think I can—”
But Roland’s girlish hands were on the neck of my coat, yanking it up to my earlobes.
I gritted my teeth. “Thanks so much.”
“Oh, what’s this?”
Will was in the doorway of his apartment, door flung wide open displaying his impressive lawn furniture couture. He was shirtless, shoeless, and balancing a bowl of what looked like Cocoa Pebbles in one hand and a spoon in the other.
Ruth’s Chris be damned—I would kill for those Cocoa Pebbles right now.
Nina wound her arm into Harley’s and batted her big eyes as she said, “Will, you remember Harley Cavanaugh, the writer, and Roland Townsend ...”
“Agent,” Roland said. Then he offered his hand to Will, a business card tucked expertly into his palm. Will shook tentatively, retrieving the business card with his spoon hand. He glanced at it. “And there it is right there. ‘Roland Townsend, Agent.’” Will looked up at me with a Cocoa Pebbled grin while I implored him—silently—to tell me that Roland was a fallen angel who needed immediate pummeling.
“Well, you kids have a nice time tonight,” he said, shoving a heaping spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to avoid gaping at Will’s chiseled chest while dodging the beads of sweat Roland mopped up with his yellowing handkerchief. “We were just leaving.”
I stomped down the hall, pausing only when I heard Roland’s raspy breath as his stumpy little legs worked to keep up.
The drive to Ruth’s Chris was mercifully silent, or it would have been, if the gods of dating hadn’t forsaken me. As we inched through the Friday-night traffic, I had to hear about Roland’s meteoric rise to literary agent superstardom—from his humble beginnings floundering and ultimately failing out of junior college in Hollis, Queens, to the brilliant business opportunity that brought him and Harley together. Namely, the fifteen-year high-school reunion of the Hudson High Cougars.
As the ma?tre d’ led us to our table, I tried to get Nina’s attention, but she was too lovestruck to pay any attention to me. She floated gracefully into the chair that Harley pulled out for her, and Roland landed with a wheezing thud in the chair the ma?tre d’ had pulled out for me. I sat down and inched as close to Nina as I could.
“This is a disaster,” I hissed to Nina as Roland handed the tuxedoed ma?tre d’ a folded-up bill.
“So, Sophie,” Roland started, his tongue darting over his bottom lip in a way that made me think of salting slugs. “What makes Sophie Lawson tick?”
I grabbed Nina’s hand under the table and dug my nails into her palm; then I cursed myself when I remembered that vampires can’t feel pain. She took a second away from batting her eyelashes at Harley to bat her eyelashes at me.
“Oh, Sophie likes lots of things,” Nina piped in. “Sometimes she just gets shy.” Nina dug a finger into my ribs and commanded me to “be polite.”
I scanned the menu for any item that might come on a wooden stake.
“I hope you’re hungry, honey bear,” Harley said with a lovesick drawl that brought bile to my throat.
“I haven’t eaten a thing all day,” Nina said truthfully. “I called to see if you wanted to have lunch, but you didn’t answer.”
Harley and Roland exchanged a fleeting look, which anyone not counting the minutes would have missed.
“We were doing a round of interviews,” Roland said. He snaked his clammy hand around my arm, thumping his chair hard on the floor as he bounced it closer. “It would have been nice to meet you a little earlier.”