“Wait, what? Are you hanging out with Emma Grant?”
Hanging out would be fudging it. I mean, Emily had glared at me like I was a fly she couldn’t wait to get rid of. But something about her really got to me. Maybe it was her smile. Her I’m not letting you get away with shit attitude. Whatever it was, she made me curious, hot and interested. Emotions I hadn’t felt since my last breakup a year ago. “Yup. Just so happens she’s the next-door neighbor Grandma liked so much. Remember Emily?”
Mir let out a shriek loud enough to pop my eardrum. I pulled the phone away to save my hearing and career. “Oh my God! Grandma’s Emily is Emma Grant? Oh my… Holy shit!” She started panting.
“Breathe, Mir, breathe. Don’t want you fainting and hitting your head. Concussions hurt.” The intensity of Mir’s fangirling was weird. Emily was wasn’t a secret pop star, was she? Or a minor Instagram celebrity? Were authors famous enough to get this kind of reaction?
“Fine, fine. But oh my God. Emma fucking Grant!” Mir let out more shrieks. “Can you ask her to autograph a book for me? Wait. I’m going to order a copy of each of her books off Amazon right now and have them shipped to Kingstree. When they get there, have them autographed. Tell her to make them out to Miriam. Oh, and let her know I am her biggest fan! Oh my God. If I show up, you think she’ll autograph my boobs with a Sharpie?”
I shook my head at the way my sister was going on. Boob autograph, really? Mir was acting like she was about to get a hug from Captain America.
A naked Captain America.
“I don’t know. She’ll probably think you’re a psycho stalker if I tell her about this interaction. Hell, she might flee the country. Who wants a Kathy Bates type coming after them?
“Ha ha, very amusing. I’m a normal, sane fan, thank you very much, although I wouldn’t mind her spending all her time writing, since food and sleep are overrated. Besides, do you think your fans are insane when they scream your name? When they start crying because you looked at them at a concert?”
“That’s different. None of them ever tried to kidnap me and imprison me in a basement. And honestly, you know, I’m flattered that they love my music, but it makes me uncomfortable that they react that way to somebody they don’t even know.” It was something that’d always bothered me. “Anyway, I gotta go. Don’t send any books. She has tons of them lying around. I’ll just buy a copy of each and send them to you for your birthday.” That would take care of birthday gifts for Mir. She was a hard person to buy stuff for.
“You’re the best.”
I laughed, warmth filling me at her bright happiness. As annoying as my baby sister could be, I loved her and liked to do things for her. “I know. Now unless you have something really important to tell me, I want to finish this book.”
“Okay. What little gossip I have can wait. I can’t believe you even answered my call in the first place. I don’t when I’m reading her books.” Mir hung up.
I flipped the book open and read the rest. Emily’s characters were over-the-top funny. Reading the book was an ab workout all by itself.
I wiped the tears beading in the corners of my eyes. I had no idea Emily had such a killer sense of humor. And the three sex scenes were hot as hell, too. I was sad she hadn’t written another one in an epilogue. Every fictional couple deserved to have more sex, especially if I got to read it in explicit detail.
My annoyance with Billy’s Plumbing and All Things Water had completely vanished. I had discovered a new side of my adorably irascible neighbor and scored a free Hop Hop Hooray beer.
I flipped some more pages until I hit her bio. From McLean, Virginia. Graduated from the University of Virginia. Held a corporate job until she went off to Harvard to get an MBA. Upon graduation, she started writing romance. At the end was her website and a list of her social media sites.
Normally, I’d put the book down the second I got to the end of the story. I’d never read beyond the last page of a boring English lit book in high school, that was for sure. But I wanted more. Emily fascinated me. Her sharp tongue, her take-no-prisoners attitude, her I don’t care what you think sense of fashion and behavior.
I still couldn’t quite believe she had no clue who I was. She claimed she didn’t at the supermarket, but I’d eventually decided she only said that to take the ice cream. But when I was drumming, she’d glared at me like she wanted to put a bullet between my eyebrows. And earlier today, she’d been more annoyed than fangirling when I showed up on her doorstep in nothing but a towel.
I’d never had a woman behave that way around me. Even before I’d become famous—much less after—women tended to smile dreamily and let me do whatever I wanted. What would Emily do when she found out who I was?
My gut said, Don’t count on her squealing and fawning all over you.
I picked up my phone and checked out her social media accounts. There were quotes from her books. Several selfies. I squinted. Those couldn’t be her, even though they’d been tagged with her pen name. Where was the messy mane? The glasses? The bare face and annoyed scowl?
Her face was flawlessly made up in the selfies, her hair lying sleek and tidy around it. The eyelashes framing her wide eyes were so curled and thick that I knew they had to be from mascara. Emily had gorgeous green eyes that reminded me of a summer forest, but her lashes weren’t as long as in the picture. And whatever she’d done to her lips made them look fuller, although I liked her nude lips better. That way they’d only taste like her, not lipstick.
And her clothes actually looked nice, like something Mir would wear to work or a nice restaurant. So weird to see Emily with such a public façade.
As put together as she was in these photos, I liked her better all private and casually disheveled
. She would’ve never forgotten a bra when she was dressed to face the world. And she was cuter when she wasn’t wearing makeup. More real. Bet she smelled like herself rather than perfume and cosmetics. I should probably check. Just to establish the truth, not because I harbored an unhealthy fixation with my neighbor who didn’t know who I was and hated my drumming.
I scrolled down. There were more pictures of Emily at some signing event. She still looked virtually unrecognizable in the photos. Too polished. Too dressed up.
Something about them reminded me of my ex, Caitlyn Shaw. Caitlyn wasn’t a writer. She was a social media influencer with half a million followers worldwide. She both recognized me and treated me well…unlike Emily. But everything else had been a lie, a carefully cultivated image and brand. The real Caitlyn was nothing like social media Caitlyn, and I’d been fooled. I’d thought she cared about me and wanted to be with me. But she only wanted what being with me could do for her career.
I’d been such an idiot. Devlin had told me that shit like that happened all the time. Said it’d get better. But even now, the memory of that shit-tastic relationship embarrassed me and pissed me off. Made me more cautious and standoffish because I didn’t want to repeat the experience, even though I knew not every woman in the world was like Caitlyn.
The more photos I saw of Emily as Emma Grant, the more a bitter taste filled my mouth—the same taste as when I’d found out Caitlyn was livestreaming our dinner. My manager had texted me to let me know because he wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted.