Thank God no one was there to see.
Except for her.
As she walked away, she glanced at his drumming fingers and then smiled at him, a quick nervous smile, not a sexual invitation, not that his body knew the difference. Stupidly he stared—and of all the human foibles, Aaron hated stupidity most of all—but he couldn’t help himself. For a second her eyes widened, zeroing in on him, cataloging each and every one of his human foibles, probably so she could pen them in her journal in her chicken-scratch scrawl.
Aaron looked hastily away. One innocent smile, and in his mind, he’d kissed her, stripped her and had her whispering his name between frenzied moans.
After she left, he calmed his oversexed blood and his undersexed cock, leaning back in his chair, breathing in the florid scent of rose like smelling salts.
In a few minutes, Aaron returned to his normally disagreeable state, and he smiled with relief, almost happy that Didi was late.
It was over an hour later when Didi finally showed, not that he should be surprised. There were many words to describe Didi Ziegler, punctuality not among them. She peered at the world through her owlish round glasses in a flamboyant red. People whispered that it was undiagnosed dementia to wear red past seventy. But Didi, who had broken hearts for nearly half a century, ignored the whispers and went airily on her way. And Aaron, who knew gossip to be only the most perverted form of the truth, chose to ignore them, as well.
“You’re late,” groused Aaron, obediently holding up his head as she kissed the air somewhere next to his ear.
“I like to see you squirm, darling. What sort of agent would I be if I didn’t torture my client?”
“A humane one.”
“You don’t want a humane agent. You want a viper, and we both know it. Save the lies for your pages. Speaking of …” She raised her pencil-line brows until they disappeared into the silvery wisps of her crisply styled hair. “Do we have progress yet, or are you still twiddling your thumbs? I suppose twiddling is preferable to other, more colorful activities. But the isolation, the provincial wilderness … the mind assumes the worst.”
Didi always knew the exact way to restore him back to equilibrium, and he flashed her a grateful smile. “Before you start the interrogation, I’d like to eat first. After the plates are cleared, we’ll progress to pointless chitchat wherein you tell me all sorts of frothy drivel, and I’ll pretend to care. Then I can complain about the state of the world, and the melting of the ice caps and ponder the fates of little baby seals.”
She cocked back her head and laughed, a rich belly laugh that caused heads to turn, and Aaron’s mouth twitched in amusement. “One of these days I will fire your worthless, delectable ass.”
“I’m the client, Didi.”
“And you keep bringing that up. A convenient truth that only muddies the patent unhealthiness of our business relationship.”
“Bite me,” he said with not a trace of malice.
“It’s a good thing I don’t have a full set of teeth, instead of these giant moons they call veneers. Tell me, Aaron, what happened to natural teeth, and natural boobs, and natural wrinkles? Ugly is a dying art form,” she said, patting her beautifully coiffed hair slyly.
“You wear it well.”
“If you call me Broom Hilda, you will die.”
“You always look lovely.” It was true. In his eyes, Didi represented the very best of the female sex. Razor-sharp, loyal, but with a large heart that few would ever see.
“I am not lovely, merely eccentric and egotistical. In the past, the men fell for it in droves.”
“They still do,” he said, and she beamed with approval.
After they ordered, they ate, and she dished the latest in the publishing world. Some old names, many new, and Aaron was glad he was longer a part of it. Moving north, “fleeing” as Didi termed it, had been the best decision of his life. Too bad she didn’t see it that way.
“I saw your father.”
“So?” he asked easily, shaking pepper over his plate, not really caring how much he used or where it landed.
“It was the Scribner dinner. He asked about you. He’s getting old and scrawny, much like the rubber chicken you are condemning to your well-seasoned hell. He looked heartbroken, as well. I thought you would want to know.”
“That’s the Scotch.”
“I could give him a message, although it would be a horrendous waste of my time and talents because I am not some plodding delivery service, especially when you could do it so easily yourself. However, because I am an exceptional agent, dedicated to my clients needs, I would. But only this once.”
Aaron sawed at his chicken with excessive force. “Tell him the usual.”
“It always makes me happy to spew vulgar obscenities and watch his eyes narrow to toothpicks. Martin is waiting for the manuscript,” she added, daintily picking at her salad, turning from one unpleasant topic to another.
“I’m not ready to write again.”
“Yes. I know. You are too emotionally frozen, devoid of all feeling and heart, and even worse, unable to plot your way out of a paper bag. Blah, blah, blah. You are becoming tedious.”
He stared at her silently, as any self-respecting heartless, emotionally frozen man would do.
Unamused, she shot him a withering look.
“I need more time,” he lied. Actually there were ten completed manuscripts under his bed. In fiction, Aaron believed in total honesty. In life, not so much.
“I’ve been telling him that for eight years. Eventually he will grow old and possibly die, and you will have squandered your opportunity. Not that I care.”
Aaron shrugged, feeling the pecking bites of guilt, and he hated guilt. Guilt was usually directly followed by stupidity. “I’ll have something when I have something.” It was an empty promise, Didi knew it, and she moved aside the bud vase, the better to scowl at him.
“Show me what you have, Aaron. Give him a morsel, something to dangle in front of his greedy little eyes, and let them remember the vibrant talent that you are.”
Aaron fought the urge to put the vase back in place and hide the disappointment in her eyes. “When I’m ready. The perfect book takes time. It’s nearly impossible to do it twice in a lifetime.”
“You will never be ready if you spend all your time in this dreary little ghost town. You should be in the city.”
She spoke with all the arrogance of Aaron’s father, some acquired from her two short years as Cecil Barksdale’s mistress, but there was one important difference between the two—Didi actually looked at Aaron with affection. Aaron’s father only looked in the mirror with affection. In the end, it was the same reason that both Didi and Aaron had left him.
“Since hell has now frozen and your will has fossilized into something large and beastly usually found in museums, I have no choice. For the next week, I will be slumming here for a short respite.” She coughed, not so delicately. “If you feel a warm, relentless wind breathing down your neck, it will be me doing my job as I should be paid to do, if you were actually writing.”
As he considered the horrific idea of someone sitting there, waiting for him, expecting to actual read his words, Aaron’s fingers began to tap once again. His father had always said true genius could never be forced. There were few things that Aaron and Cecil agreed on. That was pretty much it.
He considered the lethal determination in Didi’s face and knew that soon he would have to come clean. But not yet.
“Oh, you are the sly one,” she murmured, her mouth curved in