Page 35 of The Encore Effect

“You can’t just buy everything.”

“Pretty sure I can.”

She sighed, shaking her head and turning away again. “There probably won’t even be anyone here,” she said, but the words died in her throat as the car turned a corner.

A line of women standing in small groups stretched down the sidewalk the full length of the city block, some wearing Midnight Storm t-shirts, others clutching copies of Kat’s books. Her breath caught in her chest as their car continued down the street, the line wrapping around the block and disappearing into the open doors of a quaint storefront, forest green woodwork and gold lettering spelling out the name of the bookstore.

Beckett’s hand fell heavy on her knee, his thumb stroking a soothing arc over the seam of her jeans, and his mouth turned up in a smug grin as the car rolled to a stop in front of the shop.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

The car door beside her was pulled open, Gideon’s solid presence standing guard, but she couldn’t get herself to move. Her body was frozen in place, stunned. Kat had done plenty of book signings before—at the bookstore near her parents’ house in Vermont and a small romance novel convention just outside of Philadelphia—but at each of those events she’d been one of many authors, just another name on a roster. Most of the readers she encountered there had never heard of her or read any of her books.

ut these women… so many of them held copies of her paperbacks, the covers she knew so well staring back at her, the ones she’d agonized over, spent hours debating font choices and requesting minor changes to shadows and scale from her ever-patient designer.

Beckett’s heat at her back pulled her from the brink of panic, his fingers curling over her hip and the familiar scratch of his stubble against her cheek as he whispered, “Show time, Luna.”

She rocketed out of the car, needing to put distance between herself and the painful comfort of Beckett’s body against hers more than she needed time to prepare for the crowd waiting for them. When her feet hit the pavement, curious stares turned her way. Murmurs ran through the crowd like a wave, a rolling tide of excitement that swelled in a collective inhale when Beckett emerged from the car after her and broke with a seismic crash as his hand landed on her lower back. The gentle pressure of his touch anchored her at the eye of the storm.

With his free hand, he waved to the crowd, the picture of the perfect pop star. The press of his palm on her back guided her forward, down the clear path to the front door of the shop and the waiting bookseller who looked as stunned as Kat felt. Gideon fell in line behind them and closed the glass doors once they were safely inside, assuming his post at the entrance.

“Katerina, Beckett, welcome to The Steam Factory!” the young woman said, throwing her arms wide.

It was a fairly small space, narrow but deep, with rows of shelves and tables packed with brightly colored covers. Here historical romance, there shifters and vampires; beneath a mural of a woman in a flowing red dress riding a dragon, a table full of hard cover fantasy romances; shelves of mafia and sports romances, small towns and cowboys. Neon signs hung intermittently from the drop ceiling proclaiming ‘hot girls read’ and ‘your book boyfriend would never’ and ‘he’s a ten but he’s fictional.’

The woman led them to the back of the shop where a small, raised platform held two chairs behind a table stacked with Kat’s books, microphones positioned in front of each chair. She listened as the bookseller talked them through the setup for the signing, how the crowd would be let in until they reached capacity, the brief Q and A the bookseller would moderate before inviting readers up to get their books signed. Kat was the image of calm, a smile plastered on her face, while sweat rolled down her spine and her heart beat wildly against her ribs.

When the bookseller left them alone to start admitting the crowd, Kat turned panicked eyes towards Beckett. “I can’t do this.”

“You can.”

“I can’t,” she insisted. “They’re going to know.”

“Know what?”

“That this isn’t real,” she hissed, her gaze darting around the shop in search of the nearest exit. “That I’m a fraud. That we’re just pretending.”

His jaw set in a determined clench, and he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up to him so she had no choice but to look at him. “You are not a fraud, Katerina Luna. Those books are real. Those people lined up outside to see you are real. That ring on your finger is real. There is no pretending here.”

And, of course, in the most literal sense of the word, he was right, but they were pretending. Ring or no, they were hardly a real couple. And those people would hardly have shown up in such numbers if they didn’t think she was engaged to one of the world’s biggest pop stars. But if she was going to get through this without spiraling into a full-on panic attack, she needed to believe him. Just for now. Just for the next hour.

The first few questions were softballs—did she still write while she was on tour with the band? Would the hero’s little brother from her last book ever get his own story? How did she balance working for one of the biggest bands in the country and writing her books?

Then it happened. She saw it coming in slow motion, the way the woman’s eyes darted between Kat and Beckett, the almost-embarrassed smile as she approached the microphone. “Are any of your characters inspired by Beckett?”

Kat’s smile froze, and she recited the script Jo had helped her craft. “All of my characters share elements of people I know in real life, but no character is truly inspired by any one real person.”

“Not even Brent in Restless Hearts?” the woman prodded.

Kat’s stomach dropped, her mouth opening and closing uselessly. Beckett shifted in his seat beside her, his knee pressing against hers as he leaned closer to the microphone mounted on the table in front of them. “Glad I’m not the only one who noticed the similarities,” he said with a smirk that had the woman immediately blushing.

Wait. Had he just said—

“What?” Kat asked.

His eyes sparkled when they met hers, a question and a challenge posed in their gray-blue depths, as if he was asking, ‘are we really doing this?’

“The glasses,” the woman in the audience offered.