LITMIR.BIZ

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and a dozen hands shot up. Not from the man in the back, though, she noted, in spite of the fact that he continued to study her with even more intensity than before. In fact, his intensity seemed to have turned into something akin to anger, because those amazing blue eyes narrowed now when he looked at her, and that full, luscious mouth turned down at the corners. She had no idea why he would react in such a way to a talk she’d thought was pretty danged insightful, so she turned her attention to the woman sitting next to him, an owner of one of the hands in the air.

      “You there,” she said with a smile as she pointed to the white-haired, apple-cheeked woman in her seventies or eighties.

      The woman smiled as she stood, the sort of smile that made Violet feel warm and wistful inside, because she looked like the grandmother Violet had always fantasized about having when she was a child. Someone who would bake cookies and darn socks and say, “Oh, my stars,” and wear sweaters with horse appliqués.

      “Is it true,” the woman said in a sweet, gentle voice, “that you’re the one who invented the sexual position called the ‘centerfold spread?’”

      Oh, my stars, Violet thought, struggling to keep a straight face. Clearly the woman’s years were so advanced that she’d confused Violet-Raven as the heroine of the book, not its author.

      “Um, no,” she said. “That wasn’t me. It was my book’s protagonist, Roxanne.”

      Nana’s eyebrows knit in a sign of clear confusion. “But I thought you were Roxanne.”

      “No, ma’am,” Violet told her. “I’m, uh, Raven.”

      “But didn’t you write the book?”

      “Yes, but—”

      “And the book is a memoir about a call girl.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “Then you’re the one who invented the position.”

      “No, I—”

      “What I’d like to know,” a woman with dark hair who was hipping a baby interrupted, “is exactly how the crème de menthe thing works. Now, did you drink that before performing oral sex on your customers, or was it meant for external use only?”

      Violet was vaguely horrified by the personal pronoun used in the question. She’d read about the crème de menthe thing in a magazine. She’d never actually tried it. Why did the young woman assume otherwise?

      “Actually, I never—”

      But before she could even complete her reply, another woman, this one a college-aged blonde with little black glasses, stood and said, “My boyfriend and I are going to be spending the summer in Italy. Could you talk more about that sex club Francesco took you to in Milan?”

      Violet opened her mouth to reply to that, but not a single word emerged. She was beginning to sense a pattern here. Everyone who had asked a question thought she was her fictional character Roxanne. They didn’t seem to realize the book was fiction. Even though the story read like a memoir, the blurb on the cover flap made clear the work was a novel. The reviews had all been in the fiction section of whatever periodical was doing the reviewing. Not to mention the fact that Roxanne’s adventures were so over-the-top, no one could possibly believe they had actually happened to anyone.

      Could they?

      The sex club/Francesco query evidently reminded a lot of people of questions they wanted to ask, because in the scant moment of Violet’s silence, the crowd erupted into what felt like hundreds of questions. Did Violet really have sex with Sebastian on the roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm? What was her real reason for not doing that porno Kevin wanted her to do? Where did she purchase those crotchless panties with the whistle sewn on them that Terrence had liked so much?

      On and on it went until the crowd bordered on chaotic. That was when the young woman from the bookstore stepped in and, in a very effective crowd control voice, indicated that the question-and-answer segment had now concluded, and Ms. French would be happy to sign her book, and would everyone please line up in an orderly fashion who wished to have their copy of High Heels and Champagne and Sex, Oh, My! autographed.

      Not everyone who had attended the signing got in line, but many did. And although most of those wanted to chat with Violet for a few moments about the book, the bookstore clerk thankfully kept the line moving so that Violet was spared having to hear too many more questions about Roxanne’s exploits being her own. By the time she signed the last available copy—and my, but the fragrance of the roses was mingling with the wisteria at the sight of the empty table—she was battling writer’s cramp and on the verge of exhaustion.

      Unfortunately, as she was capping her Sharpie and envisioning her return to her apartment to don her grubbiest jeans and T-shirt and pop in a DVD of Casablanca, someone slammed another copy of the book down on the table in front of her. Hard. Startled, Violet glanced up and found herself gazing into incredible, nearly translucent blue eyes. Blue eyes that had now traveled miles beyond intense, and kilometers beyond anger, to debark at fury central.

      “Um, hello,” she managed to say. “I, ah … I’m sorry. I didn’t see you standing there.”

      The fact that she had overlooked him—as impossible as that seemed even to her—made him narrow his eyes even more angrily. But he said nothing, only shoved the book across the table toward her. Hard.

      Somehow she tore her gaze away from his and forced it to the book, which, she told herself, should have way more importance to her anyway. But her attention fell instead on the hand that had splayed open atop it, obscuring the cover art of black patent stilettos, champagne effervescing in a slender flute and red lace panties and bra tossed carelessly between them. It was a large, masculine hand whose thumb, by its placement, seemed to caress the red lace of the lingerie. A very large and masculine hand, in spite of the elegantly wrought ring that wrapped its third finger, gold inlaid with onyx, that might or might not be a wedding band, since the hand happened to be his left one. But the hand didn’t move from the book, making it impossible for Violet to sign it, so she looked at him again. He stared at her with unmistakable hostility, and her confusion mounted.

      She tried to remember if she’d met him somewhere before and unwittingly done something to generate such a reaction. Had she accidentally botched his reservations at Chez Alain or overlooked a smudge in his bathtub at the Ambassador Hotel? Had she messed up the hem of his trousers when she’d been a seamstress at Essex Tailors or sent home the wrong cuff links from the tony men’s shop where she’d been a salesclerk? Absolutely not, she immediately decided. Not only had she never made such mistakes at her previous jobs, but she would definitely remember eyes like those and a man like him.

      Since he evidently didn’t want his book signed, she asked, as politely as she could, “Did, um, did you have a question?”

      For a moment, he said nothing, but his expression changed, easing up infinitesimally. He looked at Violet almost as if he were the one trying to remember if he’d ever met her before, and what he might have unwittingly done to her. Which she found laughable in the extreme, since a man like him never did anything unwittingly.

      Finally, he dropped his gaze to the book and removed his hand from its cover so that he could flip it open. He turned to a page toward the back that he had marked with a strip of what looked like paisley silk ripped brutally from some unsuspecting garment. Then he shoved the book toward Violet and thrust his finger at the heading.

      “Chapter twenty-eight,” he said.

      That was it. No question, no observation, just the number of the final chapter of the book, the one headed “Ethan.” Which of all the male characters Violet had written about in High Heels, was the one her readers had responded to most. He was the one who was cited in all the reviews the book had received so far, the one who was whispered breathlessly about by talk show hosts who had hyped the book on TV. He was the culmination of all things strong, masculine, confident and rich. When he moved in his worlds of business and society, he was ruthless, arrogant and overbearing.

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