As I've mentioned before, this was my second choice, after a real doozy of a story struck me about two rather odd characters who fall in love at a Star Trek convention. But I felt that one might have seemed too much like science fiction, so midweek, my Muse hit me over the head with this idea.
I know I should be grateful for so much inspiration, but the bruises on my noggin are making my doctor suspicious.
Kissed By Pen And Ink
Synopsis:
Love can be the most difficult element in the Universe to discover, even when you’re a master at describing it for the rest of the world. But when it arrives a little too perfectly and a little too handsomely, even the most perceptive recipient may forget to exercise due caution.
• • •
She was on her fourth permanent marker, the mountain of hardbound copies had dwindled to a modest plateau, and still the members of the Passaic Branch of the M.L. Wolfe Fan Club stretched out the door of the “Hard Pressed” book store and part-way around the block. Most authors would have been ecstatic, and would’ve easily accepted the requisite writer’s cramp as an even trade for such success. But Melinda Nell Wolfe, known to her adoring readers as M.N., wanted only to gather up the remaining copies of her latest best seller, “Leather-Clad Alibi,” pile them in the middle of the overcrowded and overpriced bookstore, set fire to them, and cavort around the ensuing bonfire while screaming “To hell with the lot of you!”
She didn’t set fire to them. She knew her agent standing nearby would have tackled her had she approached the stack with anything other than a pen. She merely signed her traditional inscription, “From M.N., to You and only You,” smiled her traditional smile and accepted the insipid praise from another besotted fan in her traditional manner: “Thanks. Really, thanks. It’s always great to meet another fan. You’re the reason why I write.”
It wasn’t true, of course. Mel, as she thought of herself, wrote for two reasons: for the exorbitant checks her publisher routinely mailed her, and to scratch “the itch.” Most writers were familiar with their own personal itch, that burning need to put on paper the words that threatened to burst Alien-like from inside their head. Many prolific authors claimed they’d have written just as much even if they hadn’t been paid, just to get the words out.
But as Mel signed what seemed like the ten thousandth book that morning, and accepted the ten thousandth “You’re the best mystery writer ever!” from another adoring fan, Mel admitted to herself once again why she wrote: because of Him.
Nearly twenty years ago, Mel had taken a community college course called “The Great American Mystery” as the losing end of a bet with her best friend. To her surprise, she got an A with a short story about a murder at a Mexican resort, “Acapulco Cold.” It wasn’t her writing style that earned her the grade, nor the flirtatious way she batted her eyes at the teacher (Mel had just started wearing contacts, and the prescription wasn’t quite right). It wasn’t the way she described the exotic locale; she’d never traveled south of the Ohio River, and picked up all the descriptions she needed from travel brochures and her aunt’s Britannica.
The element that moved the instructor was her main character, the mysterious Alan Moody, tall, elegant and brilliant, part private detective, part male model, part Jeopardy champion. Of course, Alan Moody was a figment of Mel’s desire, and as such, was atypical of all the men she’d ever met. Strong yet gentlemanly, intelligent yet sensitive, determined yet flexible — and oh, so flexible. Instead of James Bond beating up villains, Alan Moody out-thought them. Instead of bedding and abandoning woman after woman, Mel’s hero wined and dined them, and kissed them once — and only once — on the very last page, while the actual lovemaking that followed was left completely to the imagination.
Mel expanded the story into a novel, which instantly found favor with a female audience hungry for a man with more depth than deltoids. She always left the reader wondering just which of the many available women he’d kiss on the last page of her mysteries. Since Alan Moody only kissed a woman he was falling in love with, and he only fell in love after 300 soul-searching pages, just which of the female characters would be the lucky target of his affections commanded the attention of her readers as much as uncovering the identity of the criminal and actually solving the crime.
At first, the reviewers savaged Mel’s books, calling them “grating reminders of why we need compulsory education.” But after being picked up by Brooke Treadway, the most influential TV talk show host, for her trendsetting segment, “Brooke’s Books,” sales skyrocketed. Brooke noticed something that none of the reviewers had commented on: Alan Moody had no definite race. He was tall and attractive, well-spoken, sharp and intuitive, but he was completely anonymous: he could be any man for any woman. And the women that devoured Mel’s ground-breaking second novel, “Corpse For a Day,” intuitively saw him as their perfect soulmate.
That ability of Alan Moody to fulfill the dreams and desires of her female audience catapulted M.S. Wolfe into stardom, and a perpetual spot atop the New York Times bestseller list. And though it brought fame and a sizeable fortune, it never brought Mel the one thing she desired most: a man to share that fortune with.
Oh, she’d tried, Mel reminded herself, as she tossed aside the fourth marker and reached for number five. Colin the rising young politician, Roger the European auto champion, Zaroyant the five-star chef, Peter the award-winning filmmaker: each of them was handsome, successful, self-assured and fatally self-absorbed, a trait Mel wished she could remove as easily as she deleted a bad paragraph in one of her novels.
Her agent, Serena McKay, told her to keep on trying, always spoken with the same enthusiasm that she used when urging Mel to create the next best-seller.
Mel was just beginning another “For You and only You,” when a deep voice behind her coughed. As she nodded to the expected praise from the soccer mom before her, part of her brain made a note of how rare it was to get a man to appear at one of her fan clubs, since her readers were almost exclusively women. Another part of her brain expected the man behind her was one of the numerous hovering “Hard Pressed” employees, no doubt interrupting with a request from another local TV crew or radio interviewer.
She sighed as she continued writing, and shot over her shoulder, “Tell them I’ll be taking a break in ten minutes. They can get their redundant sound bites then.”
The fellow behind her leaned down and whispered into her ear, “Excuse me, Miss, but I’m Moody.”
Mel managed to get off a few more letters of her inscription before the fact that someone was quoting her hero’s iconic introduction, as famous an opening as “Bond, James Bond,” reached her consciousness. It took a few moments longer, as she finished her signature with an uncharacteristically emotional flourish, before she could work up the proper level of indignation to chastise whoever he was on impersonating a character he had no hopes of ever equaling in real life, not in style nor wits nor, all the sadder for him, in physical prowess.
She turned half-way around in her chair, ready to brand the unlucky fellow with a few well-chosen barbs, when a barely detectable scent entered her nostrils: the telltale musk of male passion, one of her hero’s unforgettable trademarks, a feature more alluring than a shaken martini and far more intoxicating to her intended audience.
She shook her head to clear her mind, trying to regain her anger. “Listen, mister, just because you bathe in expensive cologne doesn’t mean —“
Mel raised her head, only to be trapped by a pair of hypnotic eyes with pupils so dark that they might well have been carved out of a block of pure ebony, then compressed to diamond-like hardness to create a pair of inescapable black holes. She blinked in surprise, then attempted to mount her attack once more. “Now, see here, you —“
The man rested his strong, manicured hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Miss Wolfe. But if you have a free moment away from your... attendants, perhaps you’d allow me to buy you dinner?”
A spark like a dozen tasers shot from his fingertips down her shoulder, traveled instantly to her toes and back and found refuge ultimately in her gut, while her eyes almost teared over at the staggering effect it had on her heart. She stumbled over her words as she pulled her eyes away from his to try and take in the masterpiece of his body.
Comfortably over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a trim waist outlined perfectly by a leather bomber jacket, he could have passed for an NFL quarterback or a professional rodeo rider. His face boasted strong cheekbones, sharp and well-defined, parted like the Red Sea by an aquiline nose that reminded her for some strange reason of a wild falcon, all of it resting on the solid foundation of a chiseled chin that would have made Brad Pitt jealous. His hair, longer than most stockbrokers but shorter than many college professors, seemed combed without effort, tousled by the wind like the gentle caress of a familiar lover.
But his smile! His smile held all the comfort of a favorite armchair, lips for which you’d gladly suffer through the worst of days, just to be able at the end of it all to sink down into them, to curl up and spend an eternity in their embrace.
She didn’t know how long she’d been staring into his face, but it was long enough that the next four women in line were beginning to harrumph audibly, though whether from being ignored by their favorite author or from their own desire for the hunk who’d stolen away her attention was less clear.
“Sorry, I... Sorry. I drifted away there, Mister...?”
He removed his hand while trailing his fingers down her arm in an unmistakably suggestive manner, and smiled his enticing yet reassuring smile. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and turned for the door.
After a moment’s hesitation, Mel leapt to follow.
It took quite a bit of explaining on her agent’s part to convince the indignant fan club that M.S. Wolfe was suddenly feeling a bit ill, and that she needed a short break from all her wonderful, understanding readers. The handful of women that witnessed the brief exchange between Mel and the handsome stranger doubted the excuse, though they were too well acquainted with such scenes of unexpected passion to bother complaining aloud.
None of them, however, had heard the whispered introduction, nor could any of them have felt the pounding of Mel’s heart as she raced out of the bookstore, down the sidewalk away from the line of astounded fans, and after Alan Moody.
Dinner for Mel was a whirlwind of emotions and expectations. She barely touched her meal, wanting only to taste those lips, feel Alan’s skin on hers, melt under those muscles, drift away with that voice whispering in her ear.
But her agent, Serena, wasn’t completely without skills of her own. After trying nearly a dozen nearby restaurants, she had finally found her star client in a secluded rear booth at an elegant but relatively unknown little café, and tried to warn her about being taken in by a complete stranger.
“How can he be a stranger?” Mel whispered, as Alan checked the wine bottle’s label and sniffed the cork like an expert. “I’ve known him forever!”
“Correction, honey: you’ve known your character forever. This guy, he could be a serial killer for all you know.”
Mel looked again at the dreamy dark eyes and shook her head. “Sorry, Serena, but you’ll have to trust me on this one. I know him as well as I know my own heart.”
Alan glanced over and seemed to read the doubt on the agent’s face. Without a pause, he rose from his chair, took Serena gently but firmly by the arm and steered her towards the door. “You’ll have to excuse us, Miss McCoy, but Melinda and I have a bit of catching up to do.”
Serena was about to protest again, when Alan did the unthinkable: he bent down and kissed her on the cheek.
It was meant simply to be a reassuring touch, but as Mel watched horrified, she could feel all her dreams shattering like a million glass mirrors.
Mollified by Alan’s promise to have her back at the fan club within a few minutes, and swearing she’d keep the front and back doors to the café under her watchful eye, Serena grudgingly left. But as Alan strode back to their booth, it seemed like something in Mel had already left.
“What’s the matter, dear?” he said, his eyes showing genuine concern.
She flushed, a crimson visible even in the dimly lit restaurant. “You — I mean, I should have no reason to expect you to, but — in all my stories, you always — I mean, Alan always — oh, I don’t know what the hell I mean!”
She reached for her wine glass, intending to drain it in a single gulp, when his strong hand took hold of hers. It had the effect of bringing her back down to earth, and gave her a moment to stare once more into his hypnotic eyes.
“Ahh,” he said softly, discerning immediately what had troubled her. “You’re bothered by the kiss.” He laughed, not one of humor or even of surprise, but a tender laugh that only two people who had known each other all of their lives could share. “That was no kiss, Melinda. That was a peck.”
He slid down into the chair beside her, slipped an arm around her back and pulled her close to his chest. “This,” he said, bringing his face, his angelic chiseled face, down close to hers, “this is a kiss.”
Their lips touched, their tongues danced, and the spark she’d felt when he first touched her shoulders seemed like nothing compared to the lightning that engulfed her lips, her tongue, her mouth, her whole body. She tried desperately to keep her eyes open, but the wildly suffusing energy made her nearly faint. Her eyes closed tight as her head swam.
Their kiss broke some minutes later, though to Mel it seemed like days. Alan tossed two fifties on the table without waiting for the bill, swept her to her feet and drew his own leather coat on over her shoulders.
He seemed to know instinctively that the effect of the kiss would wear off soon, and decided to leave her with one affirmation before she returned to her senses. “Don’t worry about me being identical in every way to the character in your book. You’re a gifted writer, Melinda, and the Alan in your stories is a wonderful character. But sometimes, sometimes...”
His voice trailed off as she found the two of them outside by the curb, and he hailed a cab. She willingly allowed him to guide her into the back seat, but Alan remained standing on the sidewalk as he held the door.
He leaned down, smiled that wonderful smile one last time and said, “Sometimes, even the best sculptor has to stop hammering.”
• • •
All comments and honest criticisms are welcome, as always.
