Page 33 of Romantic Hero
‘Wait!’ I call, as he starts to quickly stride across the room towards the door. ‘I need to warn you. This crowd. Jim’s friends. Henry. They’re, well … they’re very, um,brainy. And mostly quite posh.’
‘Posh?’
‘You knowFour Weddings and a Funeral? OrNotting Hill? Or basically any Richard Curtis film?’
‘No.’
‘What? You don’t knowNotting Hill, the blockbuster movie? Julia Roberts? The guy on the front doorstep in his Y-fronts?’
‘I said no, didn’t I?’
‘Well …Bridget Jones’s Diarythen?’
He smiles a little. ‘Everyone knowsBridget Jones’s Diary.’
‘Okay, great, well, these people are a lot like that. But … sometimes, somehow,more. So be prepared. And could you just, uh … can you tone down the … nottone downas such – that’s rude – but, maybe, like … you know …’
River yanks open the hotel room door. ‘I hear you. No belching at the dinner table in front of the hoity-toity English folk. Not that I would ever do that, no matter the company. I was raised right.’
‘Of course. Sorry. Okay, yes. Great. Thanks. They’re not judgy or anything like that. I’m saying it as much for you as for them. You might be a shock to each other’s systems is all.’
As we walk down the plush hotel corridor, I catch sight of myself in a gilt-framed hall mirror. Not bad. The undone buttons were a good call. Maybe Henrywilllike it. Maybe River is right and he’ll realise what he’s been missing – somehigh-quality skin.
‘They better be serving food at this thing,’ River says absent-mindedly as we turn the corner towards the stairs. ‘I’m so hungry I could chew the balls off a charging bull.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We hear the sounds of jolly good British merriment before we see it – clinking glasses, low rumblings of gregarious conversation, a tinkling piano playing a jaunty jazz standard because Jim is a total Duke Ellington fanboy. River takes hold of my hand, his big strong one encasing my average-sized one completely. I immediately yank it away in case Henry sees, before remembering that this is the entire point of us being here. Henry needs to see someone else holding my hand, realise he simply cannot bear it and declare that the break is over and he’s coming home. So when River reaches for my hand again, I let him take it. He gives it a quick squeeze of encouragement.
‘You’ve got this,’ he says plainly. I look up at him, surprised at the vote of confidence, and together we walk into the hotel bar.
I needn’t have worried about River feeling intimidated by a group of well-to-do British writers – he strides in like he owns the place, cowboy boots clomping heavily on the polished wooden floors. He has to duck a little beneath the old-fashioned beams and his pure stature and presence means he immediately draws attention from everyone in the vicinity. Well, that and the fact that he tips his Stetson andbooms ‘Howdy, y’all,’ in the deepest, grumbliest, almost hammiest impression of himself.
I shuffle in alongside him, scanning the room, specifically the large table in a twinkle-lit alcove where Jim and the other party guests sit, now staring slack-jawed at River. The pianist, to his credit, only misses a single note at the unexpected entrance.
I vaguely remember Henry telling me about the guest list. I try to place everyone so as not to make any faux pas – I’ve learned since becoming an author myself that writers are excellent at holding grudges at any perceived slight.
There’s Jim, of course, wearing a jacquard waistcoat over his crisp white shirt with a big red badge pinned to it that says,Birthday Boy!
Next to him and wearing the most beautiful citrus-coloured halter-neck dress is Marisol Keats, whose debut poetry collection sold in an eight-way auction last month. She’s both stunningly attractive and self-possessed. Her Instagram – where she shares pictures of her poems, the renovations on her Mayfair mews and her insanely fluffy Persian cat Bella – has a following of 800,000 devotees, of which I am one. She flicks her shiny dark hair over her shoulder and gives me a slightly stiff smile.
And there’s Sir Otto Derberville, who looks like if young Barack Obama had gone off the deep end in a Harris Tweed factory. Sir Otto owns Derberville & Falcon a hugely well-respected independent bookshop chain in the UK. I’ve only met him once, at a Booker Prize longlist party for Henry. He was absolutely lovely, but seemed slightly befuddled whenI explained to him what my books were about. I got the impression he’d never read a romance novel in his life, which seems an awful shame for him.
And then there is Henry, situated right at the head of the table, holding a pint of his beloved pale ale. Beautiful, poised Henry, looking delectable in a white linen shirt, sleeves pushed up to reveal those gorgeous sinewy forearms I used to tell him were so hot they could get me to do anything. After that he’d jokily hold them up in front of me whenever he asked for something. Wave his bare forearms in the air and ask for a cup of tea or a blow job as if he was trying to hypnotise me. He smiles affectionately as we lock eyes. When he gives me a private little wink, it immediately sends a lump right to my throat. It takes every ounce of my willpower to refrain from running over to him and burying myself in his shoulder. That would be too pathetic, even for me, and River says that I should act like I am doing just fine and dandy without him. It’s funny, I’ve had many boyfriends, pretty much consistently since I was fourteen, and have been dumped a lot, for reasons as diverse as ‘I’m moving back to Canada’, to ‘I need to focus on my career at the bank’, and once, ‘I accidentally overheard you weeing and it gave me the ick’. But the knowledge of those relationships being definitively over was far easier to deal with than this ‘break’. I feel like I’m standing on a clifftop, not sure if my destiny is to be rescued from the edge or pushed over it.
A short, friendly-looking woman with long pink and purple curls waves us over to the table. She pats the bench, indicating that I should sit beside her.
‘Hi everyone,’ I say, my heart thudding nervously as I head over to sit next to the pink-haired woman, who introduces herself as Jim’s assistant Zo.
‘Gertie!’ Jim chirrups delightedly as if he didn’t just see me a couple of hours ago in the car park. ‘You all know Gertie, right?’ he asks the other guests, most of whom nod politely. ‘A wonderful romance novelist and a delightful human indeed.’
‘This is my, uh, this is River,’ I return in response to their various greetings. ‘He’s a, um, from Texas. A Texas boy, yes …’
God. My decorum is already failing me.
‘River Oakley,’ River rumbles, reaching out to pump everyone’s hand one by one. ‘Pleasure’s mine. Happy to be shenaninganning with y’all. Nice to see you again, Henry.’
‘Your name isRiver Oakley?’ Henry almost sputters out his drink. ‘Like … your Bedlam Creek book character, Gert?’
