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Hot on His Heels
by Margo Bond Collins

Copyright © 2016 by Margo Bond Collins. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
 

Chapter One

“You realize this is stalking, right?” Despite her quelling words, Amelia leaned in until her chin almost rested on Sadie’s shoulder.

Sadie shrugged, ducking away from her best friend and turning to survey the room. “It’s notstalking. Jocelyn Dellarivier tweeted that she was here”—she glanced down at the screen on her phone—“two minutes ago.” After several months of emailing the elusive editor with no response, Sadie had been thrilled when the woman finally created a Twitter account.

Grabbing Amelia by the hand, Sadie tugged her out of the entryway and into the auditorium. She scanned the room, holding up her phone and comparing her view to the picture. “Come on. She was standing somewhere over there.” She pointed toward the middle of an aisle about twenty rows closer to the stage.

With a resigned sigh, Amelia followed behind her, but Sadie knew her friend wouldn’t abandon her. Not now. Not when she was so close to tracking down romance novel editor Jocelyn Dellarivier, the final person she needed to interview for her first academic book.

“There must be five hundred people here,” Amelia complained. “You don’t even know what this woman looks like. How are you going to find her?”

Unfortunately, the Twitter profile picture for the woman was one of the best-selling books Jocelyn had edited.

“First, I’m going to figure out where she was when she took that picture.” Another glance showed her that they were in almost the right spot. “Maybe down that aisle a bit?”

“You think that will be enough to tell you who she is? Magically impart some special locating ability to you?” Despite her complaints, Amelia followed her friend.

The lines to a poem ran through Sadie’s mind, and she muttered them aloud. “‘If I should meet thee / After long years, / How should I greet thee?— / With silence and tears.’”

“I heard that,” Amelia said. “It’s Byron.”

Sadie and Amelia had started the game as new graduate students in a literature Ph.D program because one of their professors was a stickler for requiring students to recite quotes on tests. Initially, they teamed up to study together, taking turns memorizing and identifying passages. Sadie had been surprised to discover that beneath Amelia’s flighty and carefree attitude was a razor-sharp mind, and the two of them had become fast friends. It had been years, and what began as a game had become a habit—but Sadie had yet to stump her friend.

“Anyway, you will not be greeting anyone with silence and tears,” Amelia continued. “This conference is going to be fun.”

Sadie ignored the running commentary, again pulling her friend along as they made their way down an aisle to a row of seats. “There are two seats there,” she said. “It’s almost the exact same view as in the picture Jocelyn took. She’s got to be sitting somewhere nearby.”

“Because she couldn’t possibly have used the zoom function on her camera,” Amelia muttered, but she followed Sadie toward the two empty spots anyway.

“Oh, no,” Sadie gasped, stopping in front of a heavyset woman in her fifties who had pulled her knees to the side to let the two younger women pass. “I didn’t consider that.” Her stomach dropped. Had she completely miscalculated? What if they weren’t anywhere near Jocelyn?

Amelia shook her head, waving Sadie on. “We can discuss it after we sit down. You have to keep going.”

“Yes, please,” said the older woman she bumped on her quest to get to the empty seats.

A blush crawled up Sadie’s neck. There she was again, paying more attention to her goals than to the people around her. It was a bad habit she had tried to break, but she spent so much time in her own head that she often forgot to think about actual humans.

Sweat gathered at the top of her spine, as it often did when she grew anxious. The extra moisture brought out the incipient curl in her hair, even in the dry Las Vegas air.

Incipient curl. That’s what her mother had called it.

A nicer way to say frizz.

With a slight stumble, she pushed forward, this time remembering to excuse herself to the people she passed, many of whom stood to let her through.

Pausing again, she checked the image on her screen against the view in front of her.

“Look.” She pointed at the picture, and Amelia leaned in to see. “This is almost exactly where she was sitting. There’s that woman in the pink suit—”

“I think you mean that horrific Pepto-Bismol dress suit,” Amelia noted.

Sadie waved her hand to dismiss the comment. “Fine. Whatever. Jocelyn would have had to be near here to take the picture.” She peered around her, trying to read the conference name tags hanging from the necks of the women around her to see if she could find anyone who might be the reclusive and mysterious Jocelyn Dellarivier.

“Don’t get distracted,” Amelia said, giving Sadie a gentle push to get her moving again.

Still craning her neck to examine the rows of conference attendees behind her, Sadie tripped over yet another woman’s feet. Her ankle twisted under her, and her arms pinwheeled out to either side. All around her, conference-goers ducked out of the way.

At the last minute she managed to spin around as she made a grab for Amelia, but it was too late to stop herself from landing ass-first in the closest seat.

Unfortunately for her, the chair wasn’t empty, as evidenced by the whoosh of air she knocked out of its inhabitant when she landed on his lap.

Her face scrunched up in embarrassment, she turned a sheepish look toward her not-quite-savior.

And froze.

The man had to be one of the cover models. He was that gorgeous. Dark, silky hair, deep brown eyes, a sensuous mouth curving up in a smirk that suggested he knew exactly the effect he had on women.

He also looked oddly familiar.

Where had she seen him before?

Maybe on one of the covers of the many novels she read while writing first her dissertation, and now this book.

That had to be it. She’d certainly remember if she’d met him in real life.

Beautiful men left her tongue-tied. The brilliant ones she could handle. She knew how to meet them on their own terms, even if their specialties were different from hers. Her last boyfriend had been a professor like her, but with a specialization in biology.

She’d known how to talk to him. That was what mattered, after all—how well they communicated. Physical attraction could develop from intellectual intimacy. It was better that way.

The gorgeous ones were so far out of her realm of experience that she could never figure out what to say. They made her nervous, uncomfortable.

Like now, as they stared at one another.

There’s a reason it’s called being “stunning.”

She definitely felt stunned. “‘Not handsome enough to tempt me,’” she muttered.

“Pride and Prejudice,” Amelia said as she leaned around Sadie to smile at Mr. Beautiful. “Hi. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to push her quite so hard.”

“No problem.” His voice was smooth, sliding across Sadie’s skin like a caress. It wasn’t fair. No one should be that attractive and also sound like an audiobook narrator.

I wonder how he tastes.

With a tiny shake of her head, she dispelled the thought. It wasn’t like her at all. When Sadie fantasized, it was usually about tenure, not sex.

Quit it, Sadie. You’re here to do a job, not to fantasize about random romance-novel cover models.

And definitely not sit in their laps.

At that thought, she sprang into motion, scrambling off him and into the empty chair two down from him, leaving the one next to the stunning man open.

Sadie slumped into her seat and tried not to die of embarrassment, even as sweat rolled down her back and her mouse-brown hair frizzed out of the scrunchie she had used to subdue it that morning.

Let Amelia chat up the stranger sitting beside them.

Sadie needed to find Jocelyn Dellarivier and convince her to do an interview. Then Sadie could finish the book her own academic editor had called “almost, but not quite, groundbreaking.”

If she could talk to Jocelyn, get the inside scoop from the most sought-after editor in the business, she knew she could push her book right over into cutting-edge territory.

Then she’d be guaranteed tenure at the small liberal arts college in northern Louisiana where she currently taught.

Tenure would make everything in her life right.

She was sure of it.

Tapping on Amelia’s hand, she said, “You have to help me find her.”

…

Jake Blaine had watched the pair make their way down the row not long after he’d leaned over to snap the shot of the rapidly filling auditorium and posted it.

The brunette’s face had been down, so all he’d seen was a wild pile of hair barely contained in a ponytail and a red flush along her neck. That, along with the stick-thin figure enveloped in a long skirt and an oversize granny sweater, had almost convinced him to dismiss her from his attention.

Then she had plunked herself down into his lap. Her landing might have knocked some of the breath out of him, but she took it away entirely when her gaze met his.

It had been all he could do to keep his cool.

Bright blue eyes shone from a perfectly heart-shaped face with the most beautiful, porcelain skin he had ever seen. From the way she fit perfectly in his lap, the outsized clothes covered up an equally delicate and lovely body.

The friend, a curvy blonde, had spoken to him, but he had barely noticed—he wasn’t sure if he had responded at all.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He found himself flicking glances her direction every few moments.

Now they were discussing him.

Or rather, his alter ego, Jocelyn Dellarivier.

“Maybe she left and that’s why these seats are empty,” the blonde said.

“But the tweet says she’s here for the opening presentation,” the tiny brunette responded. “I have to find her.”

Good frickin’ luck.

He tamped down the chuckle that threatened to escape from his mouth. The last thing he needed was to bring attention to himself.

These women must be hard-core fans if they were so intent on meeting Jocelyn. Most readers flocked to the authors, ignoring the editors completely. But Jocelyn had her own following. With a reputation for bringing out the very best in erotic stories, she’d made a name with readers that rivaled the authors.

Jocelyn also had a reputation for being the most reclusive editor in the business.

Unfortunately, Kamille Stone, his boss and the publisher of Intertwined, had made him promise to tweet throughout the conference.

“I’m going incognito,” he said when Kamille first brought it up.

“You always go incognito.” She shoved a long, reddish-blond lock of hair back behind one ear. “That doesn’t mean you can’t participate in social media.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into signing up for that damned account,” he grumbled. “Someone is bound to catch on to our little scam eventually, and you know I can’t afford that.”

“You mean your brother can’t afford it.” Kamille’s glance was pointed.

He shrugged. “Same thing, really. Family’s everything. You know that. I promised Ian I’d keep my job secret. Having a brother who edits erotica could potentially sink his campaign.”

“It’s the twenty-first century. Who cares about that kind of thing anymore?” Holding her hands up, she warded off his next comment. “No, no. I get it. Your brother’s a neoconservative with a campaign that teeters on the brink of extinction and could be wiped out if his constituents found out he knows about sex.”

With a shake of his head and a rueful grin, Jake stood up from his seat in the conference room. “As long as we keep who I really am a secret, I don’t care what you think about Ian’s politics.”

“If you keep up the amazing job you’re doing with our authors, you know I’ll take your secret to the grave.” She paused, then flashed a smile at him. “We’ll do our usual while we’re at the conference next week—you pose as my assistant and hang around in the background while you scope out the new talent. As long as you keep up a running stream of commentary on your Jocelyn Twitter feed while we’re there.”

He’d been right, too. His very first tweet, and already some crazy fans had tracked him down.

Glancing over at the two women next to him, he peered at their name tags. Amelia Lockhart and Sadie Quinn.

Sadie Quinn. The name was familiar, somehow.

It had been a mistake to include a picture in the tweet. Even if it was only a shot of the auditorium.

Anyway, since when did editors have fans?

He sighed. Ever since Janie Gooding’s The Bedroom Bargain had shot to the top of the erotica charts, bringing Intertwined Press to the public’s attention as the latest up-and-coming romance publisher. That’s when. Everyone involved in the project had gotten more attention than they’d ever expected. Including him, though he’d managed to hide from the public eye by maintaining his editorial pen name.

And he would keep his cover, too. He had let down his family once before. It wouldn’t happen again.

That meant he was going to have to steer clear of the tiny woman in front of him.

Even if he suspected there might be an angel under those hideous clothes.

Four days. That’s how long he would be in Vegas.

He could avoid one gorgeous miniature stalker for four days.

Right?