CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT –
Chris POV
The next morning, my peace was shattered by someone pounding at my front door.
“Open up, you reclusive bastard!” Jake’s unmistakable bellow preceded another round of furious knocking.
Rolling my eyes, I set down my coffee mug and crossed the living room to wrench open the door mid-knock.
“Christ, keep your voice down before you wake the whole-”
“Have you seen this?” Jake barreled past me without preamble, thrusting his phone in my face.
Squinting against the harsh glow, my eyes refocused on a paparazzi snapshot clearly taken yesterday during my bookstore encounter with Megan.
It depicted us standing close together near the display windows – her gazing up at me with that damnable hint of a smile playing about her lips while my fingers hovered near her arm as if we’d just been touching.
“Incredible,” Jake breathed out in exaggerated reverence. “You two should just start dating and put us all out of our misery already.”
“Dude, what the hell?” I snapped the phone away from my face with a glare.
Jake simply shrugged unrepentantly, kicking off his boots to make himself at home on my couch.
“Don’t give me that look, man. If those photos don’t scream ‘undeniable romantic tension’ then I’m the damned Olsen twins.”
“We were just talking after bumping into each other-”
“While gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes and undressing with your stares?” Jake cackled, waggling his brows. “Sure, just a friendly lil’ heart-to-heart over the weather and Mid-Century Russian Lit between you two smoldering litterateurs.”
“Keep your goddamn voice down,” I growled through gritted teeth, agitating a hand through my disheveled hair.
Christ, this jackass and his overactive innuendo gland would be the death of me.
“I’m serious here, Jakey. There’s no clandestine romance brewing, no matter what sleazy clickbait you’re gorging on.”
“Wait, why the hell are you here early in the morning?”
My friend simply wagged his head in a caricature of sympathy. “Sure, if you say so, Champ. I’ll jot down that stirring denial in the ol’ canon for posterity.”
Before I could fire off another scorching retort, he redirected the topic with breezy indifference.
“So anything salacious happen during this totally innocuous I’m-Not-Boning-My-Bombshell-Client chitchat?”
Jake arched one brow exaggeratedly. “Maybe you two were debating Elliot’s scintillating use of Feline Imagery across her canon while petting that adorable little furball together?”
His lip curled in a lascivious grin. “Or was there more heavy-breathing over Megan’s apparent guilty-pleasure reading material instead?”
I exhaled heavily through my nostrils, refusing to be baited so easily. “First off, show some respect – that’s my client and creative collaborator you’re mocking.”
Jake rolled his eyes dramatically. “Oh beg pardon, good sirrah. Do continue regaling me with tales of thy pure-hearted literary liaison and its immaculate intentions then.”
Gritting my teeth, I proceeded to recount the innocent details of our chance meeting yesterday in clipped tones – from bonding over Smoky the rescue kitten to Megan’s amusing attempts to downplay procuring her friend’s scandalous novel purchase.
By the time I reached the part about discovering our shared affinity for analyzing the feminist subversiveness within Kemple’s erotic oeurve, Jake had doubled over wheezing out peals of raucous laughter.
“Oh, you two crazy rights!” he gasped out between ragged breaths, clutching a stitch in his side.
“So did you go swapping favorite passages from Naughty Nora’s latest rampant CP anthologies while dry humping in public across the ‘Literature and Theory’ aisle?”
I felt heat bloom in my cheeks despite myself at his ridiculous extrapolations. “I was just explaining… and it’s not her it’s her secretary. Some complex themes you’d miss with your typically crude mindset, asshole. Believe it or not, literary fiction can encompass polemical threads beyond mindless objectification.”
Jake waved a dismissive hand through the air, lips still twitching over my defensive retort about artistic integrity. “Sure, sure. I get it – you were psychoanalyzing the liberating illustrations of feminine desire and ecstasy as a vehicle for overarching social commentary.”
He leered exaggeratedly for emphasis. “Preferably while tracing some disrobed fantasy of nubile Nora characters bent over their masters’ writing desks in a state of quivering abandon… strictly in the name of erudition and craft, of course.”
My jaw clenched hard enough to grind molars into powder. “When you grow an actual soul and read something more challenging than Maxim for once, then you can criticize my conversation topics.”
“Fine, fine!” Jake held up his palms in mock surrender, ruddy cheeks still flushed from his howling fit. “So aside from those X-rated pedagogical debates over Nora’s titillating wordsmithery, anything else juicy spark between you the nerds and the champ that I should be jotting down?”
I was preparing an appropriately withering response when his phone buzzed with a text alert.
Jake arched a brow at the preview text visible before looking back up at me with reinvigorated curiosity.
“Weeeell, lookie here – seems the paparazzi rats managed to ID your mystery lady as something beyond ‘Boxing Champ’s New Fling’ at last…”
My pulse ratcheted up a few notches despite myself at his suggestive tone.
I scrutinized Jake carefully as he leaned back on my sofa cushions with a fresh grin teasing his lips.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, doofus,” I growled out at last, nerves zinging with presentiment. “What did they say this time?”
His next words detonated across the conversation like a smoke bomb.
“Megan Williams, the celebrity boxer seen in the library. Guess ber new boyfriend is not a celebrity this time.”
My stomach hollowed out in a nauseating plunge of pure vertigo as the bottom seemed to drop out from under my world with terminal velocity.
Oh no…
Jake was scrutinizing my blanched expression with entirely too much satisfaction. “That’s not all,” he continued in a tone dripping pseudo innocence. “Apparently her big literary debut dished scalding details over steaming up the sheets with some mysterious celebrity athlete ex who has to remain unnamed due to privacy protections…”
His eyes bored into mine, grin stretching into a full-throated leer. “So much so, they’re straight calling this a case we love t hear more about the two lovebirds.”
I opened and closed my mouth wordlessly, feeling all the moisture seemingly drain from my body and down into my white-knuckled fists.
“How’s she coping with all this” I muttered.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ…
Jake made a show of studying the screen before me with elaborately feigned curiosity. “Gotta wonder who this sordid unnamed celeb ex could be for this Megan Williams chick. Some pouty Hollywood beefcake with a meaty scepter to stir her inner poet’s fire?”
He flashed me another deliberately wolfish smile. “Hellz no, it says right here she prefers a rugged, sharply intelligent literary stereotype to get her creative juices flowing…”
My last coherent thought fizzled out in the stunned vacuum occupying my skull while Jake outright howled again at my obvious shock.
The sonofabitch practically gloating over this blindsiding bombshell about my client’s illicit publishing motives and our unwitting place at the epicenter of this unfolding tabloid firestorm.
“Poor Megan.”