Page 60 of Daydreamer
“Er, okay,” Lucy muttered, her gaze still fixed on the other side of the room.
I got up from the table and steered Madeline out of hearing distance.
“I’m not having Luce overwhelmed,” I said. “The crowd needs to be controlled properly.”
Madeline huffed. “Calm down, Casanova. It’ll be fine.”
My eyebrows went up. “There arethousandsof people coming today. What percentage are going to want to see Lucy? How many books are each of them going to bring? Can you see her turning anyone away or refusing to sign anything?”
“Listen, Felix?—”
“It’ll kill her to disappoint any of her fans,” I said. “Trust me, I know her. She’ll be devastated. We need more assistants. We need better barriers, and we need aticket system.”
Madeline sighed. “You’re a pain in the arse, you know that?”
Of course, I was right. I’m always right.
Lucy’s table was a bun fight. A massive queue formed within minutes of the doors to the signing opening. She was like a deer in the headlights. Fortunately, due to me throwing my weight around, there were barriers set up to manage the hordes of people and a ticketing system had been hastily added, together with two more queue assistants.
I hate to say it, but when it came to actual assisting, I was… total crap. The tables had well and truly turned. NowIwas the worst assistant. In fact, one of the signing organisers had to step in to take over the contactless payments and dish out books (that was until we ran out of books). I was relegated to being the bad guy who told people Lucy was only signing a maximum of two items.ThatI was good at. After all, I’d perfected my arsehole persona for many years. Lucy was so nervous at first that I was worried she’d shut down. After the first twenty minutes and when Lucy had started stuttering to such a degree that people were starting to look at her with concern, I told everyone we needed tea break.
“But, Felix,” Lucy hissed as I led her to the empty room next door that was allocated for the authors to have their lunch together later, “we can’t just leave. All those people…”
She trailed off and bit her lip, wrapping her arms around her body in a defensive gesture. I needed to get her out of herhead. Needed to shock her into life. It might have been too soon, and I still wanted to take things slowly, but I really couldn’t see an alternative. That’s why I moved into her space, cupped her face with my hands, and kissed her. Her mouth parted as she gasped in shock, allowing me to deepen the kiss as I pulled her stiff body into mine. I knew the moment that the world fell away for her. She melted into me, her arms uncrossed to slide around my back as I slid one of my hands into her hair and the other around her until I was lifting her up. I placed her on the tabletop behind us and carried on kissing her, stepping between her legs and leaning her back against my arm. When I finally managed to pull my lips away, I rested my forehead against hers and studied her glazed expression.
“Keep going guys.” We both flinched at the voice and turned our heads to see a woman sitting two tables over. She had a cheese sandwich halfway to her mouth and a huge grin on her face.
“Oh my God,” whispered Lucy and my arms gave her a squeeze.
“Don’t be embarrassed, hun,” said the woman, waving her sandwich at us. “This is perfect fodder for my next book. You two ever thought of being cover models?”
“No,” we both said together.
“Shame,” she muttered, standing from her chair to leave the room. “Anyhoo, continue. Don’t mind me.”
“She’s one of the most famous romance authors on the planet,” whispered Lucy, a blush creeping over her cheeks. “Omigod. She spoke to us. She saw us kissing.”
I smiled down at Lucy. “I don’t think she minded.”
Lucy frowned up at me but, I noted, did not do anything to extract herself from my arms. “Why are you kissing me?”
“Well, number one, you’re very kissable.”
“Felix,” she said, swatting my arm which I was also veryglad about. I was getting somewhere if Lucy was comfortable enough with me to be swatting my arm.
“And number two, I wanted to break through and get your attention.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Get my attention? Aren’t there easier ways to do that rather than dragging me off and snogging me in front of famous romance authors who just want to eat a cheese sandwich in peace?”
“No, not really. This was the easiest way.”
Lucy snorted.
“Listen, baby,” I said, and she swallowed, her expression softening. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve no right to kiss you, but I just wanted to get you out of your head. All these people, they’re here to see you, because of the words you’ve written. All they want to do is talk about your stories. Just imagine it’s me. Think of all the times you’ve told me about your stories, about the characters. They’re on your side. They love the world you’ve built.”
That was the turning point. Lucy came alive after that. There were some maps spread out on her table and she poured over them with the fans (until I did my bad guy routine and moved them along). Madeline even took me aside and asked me if I had “fixed Lucy with my magic dick?”. She was nothing if not direct.
I did have a very satisfying moment with Harry the twat when I turned him away and told him to queue like everyone else. I felt a bit bad for his heavily pregnant wife who seemed like a decent human so I had her skip up to the front (there was also the fact I still wanted her to agree to be our architect on the Hyde Park project). But Harry could fuck off.
