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I’ve never met an author before and I would have never guessed if I passed her in the street that she writes fiction for a living. It caught me off guard when she told me last night.
“Good. I’m glad my beating on the solar panels on the roof didn’t distract you.”
“No, actually. I was relieved to hear you up there and know that you were close by if I needed something,” she says and then pauses for a second like she's giving too much information. "I uh… I get a little uneasy in storms. I grew up in Oklahoma, and we had a bad tornado one year. It's not like I'm not used to the storm warnings or having to run for a shelter—I grew up doing that, but this one was different. Stuck in that damp cement shelter, we could feel the rumbling of the earth and the walls shake as it came close. Small pieces of the ceiling above us cracked and people screamed until they lost their voices. I didn't think we would make it out alive.”
She doesn't look at me as she tells the story.
This isn’t something she wants to talk about, but for some reason, she’s telling me anyway.
“Did anyone get hurt?” I ask, hoping to God that she didn’t lose a family member or a close friend.
“There were a lot of injuries. The ER was full for weeks but no fatalities—we got lucky. Storms like these bring back bad memories and flashbacks of being stuck in our building without knowing whether we would survive or not. It seemed like we were stuck down there for days, not hours."
She turns away to grab a plate for herself.
I decide to change the subject. What she just told me was personal, and I can see in her body language that she feels weird about what she just told me.
“You said you write romance. What kind of romance do you write?” I ask.
“Most of my currently published books are of historical type romance, but after five years, I want a little change, and my publisher is giving me some freedom. Now I'm writing a new series in contemporary romance about a billionaire family who all have to marry to receive their inheritances.”
“How the hell do you write a billionaire romance series?” I say, forgetting not to be a dick.
I didn’t mean anything by my comment, but I really have no clue what any of that means.
She laughs like she already knew I was going to have a reaction to it.
“You write it just like any other romance book. It's not that different from what I wrote about before. My Regency-era heroes are earls, dukes, and counts. In the modern day of my new series, my male leads will be billionaires. It's kind of similar in that way. The biggest changes are the societal rules between that time period and now."
“And let me guess. All the men you write about are jacked and good-looking, too?"
She lets out a little giggle and covers her full lips as she flips her quesadilla.
“Well, of course. I'm building the ultimate fantasy with spicy scenes. These men have to be gorgeous. Haven’t you had a girlfriend that reads romance books?”
“What, girlfriend?” I say out loud, though I didn’t mean to.
She looks over at me with an inquisitive brow.
“You're a professional athlete… I'm sure you've had plenty of girlfriends. Or are you the typical player type,” she says, a subtle annoyance in her voice to the latter of the two.
Does she have something against me being a hockey player?
That’s rarely been an issue with women I meet.
It's usually the reason most of them want to talk to me in the first place.
“I don't date, and I wouldn't consider myself a player by any stretch."
"That's exactly what a player would say."
I think for a second that she's serious but then I see a glint in her eye.
Her quesadilla is finished, and she scoops it up with her spatula and flops it onto the plate.
“Okay, so you write billionaire romance with spicy scenes. What are spicy scenes?” I ask, taking my next bite.
“Spicy scenes are basically open-door romance scenes.”
