Mister O

Ergo, I’m one hundred percent available, I’m absolutely interested in the woman sitting across from me, but no way can I have her.

I take a drink of my coffee, and she reaches for her hot chocolate. Since I can’t spend the entire time staring at her lips on the mug, I look around. The shelves at the counter are full of fantastic-looking cakes, and a chalkboard menu lists mouth-watering flavors alongside the standard coffee options. Peace of Cake is packed. The wooden tables are nearly overflowing with your Upper West Side potpourri of people—moms, dads, and young kids, along with twenty-somethings and couples.

“So how many was it?” Harper nods in the direction of the bookstore.

“How many what? Books sold?”

She shakes her head. “How many times did you get hit on in there?”

I laugh, but don’t answer her.

“C’mon,” she presses, tapping the table. “A good-looking guy like you. The center of attention. It must have been, what . . . every other fan?”

My ears perk up at her description. Other parts do, too. But see, it’s not like she says good-looking guy in this come-on way. She says it like it’s some known fact. Which is why I can’t figure her out. I have no clue if her mind swerved out of Friendshipville and into Naughty Thought Town that day in the park, too. “No, not every other fan,” I say.

“But every other other fan?” she asks, and I laugh again at her word choice, as if every other other is now a thing.

“All I’m going to say is you were an excellent shield when I needed you.” I snap my fingers. “Hey, I have an idea. I have this event in a couple days.” I give her the details that Serena shared with me and fill her in on my boss’s weird jealousy issues. “But Gino still wants me to go, so you should come with me.”

“As a shield? So women won’t hit on you?” she asks, taking another bite of the cake.

“They generally don’t if you’re there with a friend.”

She gestures with her fork from her to me and back. “Am I supposed to pretend it’s a date?” She says this like it’s the craziest notion in the world, which tells me I need to stop entertaining any thoughts of Harper Holiday running her hands down my chest ever again. It’s not like she needs to know I drew a picture of her O face a few weeks ago. What? Was that so wrong? It’s what I do for a living. It’s not that weird. Besides, I deleted the file. I was just messing around on the computer, I swear.

“Like Spencer and Charlotte pretended?” she adds, as if I could forget their ruse, especially since it worked out in its own way—their wedding is in two weeks.

“No, that’d be lame if we did the same thing,” I say, digging into the chocolate for another bite. “That would be like if a romance writer used the same trope in the very next novel.”

That skeptical eyebrow of hers pops back up. “How do you know about tropes?”

“I write a show.” Draw and write, but you get the idea.

“Yours is an animated spoof of a dirty superhero. And yet you’re that familiar with tropes in romance novels?”

“I dated a romance writer a few months ago.”

“What was that like?”

“Um, it was like dating,” I deadpan.

She rolls her eyes. “No. Did she want to practice with you?”

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?”