Page 2 of The Healing Touch

“Funny, Rebecca, funny. I’m serious, though. I didn’t know the thing kicks off two days from now. I’m not prepared. I can’t do this. We need to cancel.”

Cancel? He was out of his ever-loving mind if he thought he could cancel on event coordinators two days before an event. She got up and turned on the bedside lamp.

“You can’t cancel, Dimitri. Not this close to Southern Book Bash’s author event. It took me three months to wheedle a spot for you. They are booked solid. Sheila will never offer you another table. It’s a huge event. They’ve sold something like five hundred tickets, and some of those tickets are people who are coming specifically to meet you. They’ve advertised you as coming. You can’t back out.”

“I can’t, Becca. I…” He sighed, and she caught a hint of panic behind the words. What was going on with him?

“What is it? Why can’t you go?” She was already scrambling to figure out a way to cancel on Sheila without pissing the woman off.

He didn’t speak for several long moments, and she patiently waited, all her earlier irritation forgotten. It wasn’t often she’d seen him in full-on panic mode.

“I can’t go. That’s all there is to it.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Dimitri Sean Kincaid. Not after all the trouble and begging I did to get you into those venues.”

“I think my mouth is rubbing off on you.” He let out another one of those sexy as sin laughs. “When did you start cussing so much?”

“When my boss started waking me up at four in the morning.”

“I didn’t think.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“You already said that, and apology accepted, but you’re still not getting out of this signing.”

“Aren’t you my PA?” he asked. “Don’t you have to do what I tell you to?”

“Only when it makes sense and won’t put my ass in the frying pan with people I respect. You’re going, Dimitri, and that’s that.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“You sound like a three-year-old who’s sulking.”

“I’m allowed. I’m an author.”

“I call bullshit.”

“Bullshit this, Rebecca Joyce Rhodes. If you’re going to make me go to this damn thing, then you’re coming with me.”

“Absolutely not.” The words came out in a whoosh of air. He did not just demand she leave the comfort of her apartment to go out, where she had to talk to people. Nope, not going. Not for anything.

“Look, I’ll pay for the plane ticket and your room. Hell, I’ll cover food too. I just need someone…”

“No.” She stopped him before he could get started. “I’m your PA, Dimitri. I do all the book stuff you don’t have time for. I do the Facebook group postings, and I do all your promo designs. I handle email, your fan club, setting things up when you’re out partying your ass off. I work, and I work hard. But I do it from the comfort of my own home. I am not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are.” His voice took on a stubborn lilt. “If you’re going to make me suffer, then so will you. Either come with me or you’re fired.”

The phone disconnected, and she pulled it back and stared at it, dumbfounded, once again. He did not just threaten to fire her if she didn’t go with him to this signing, did he? And then hang up on her?

Could she go with him? Her breath caught, and she couldn’t breathe thinking about it. She stumbled to the window and threw it open, trying to get air. Thinking of all the crowds at the airport, sitting next to people she didn’t know on the plane, and all the people at the hotel sucked air from her lungs. Then there was the signing. People who would expect her to talk to them. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Black spots started blinking in front of her, and she desperately fought to calm down so she could breathe. Panic struck hard and fast. She couldn’t go.

Even if that meant quitting her job.

She picked up her cell and texted him.

I quit.

Chapter Two

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