How Sweet It Is Read online

  “Oh, please. That’s all garbage that the press likes to trot out to sell stories. Drake is a regular-ish guy.”

  “Regular-ish?” Kate asked. “What’s the ‘ish’ part?”

  “You know—he’s got quirks, but he isn’t a creeper or anything. Besides, he’s hot.”

  Imani was right about that. Drake Matthews’s handsome face had been plastered all over every tabloid and news show in existence a few years ago over some scandal that Kate couldn’t recall. She doubted whether anyone actually read the gossip about him. Most women were too distracted by the man’s mesmerizing amber eyes to care about any scandals.

  “His looks aren’t the point,” she said. “There are no bubbles, pumpkin carriages, or a single happily-ever-after ending in any of his books. I’m not sure Sweet Events is the right fit for this job.”

  “Quit stressing! You can totally handle this. Our previous point person did most of the heavy lifting already, pulling permits to renovate an old barn in the author’s hometown into a haunted house for his tenth book, a soon-to-be bestseller called Halloween Hacker. All you’ve got to do is make it epic! Instead of an ‘Aww’ factor, just make it an ‘AAAAAHH’ factor!”

  Kate laughed at her best friend’s theatric shriek. “Fine. I’ll figure out something to do with this haunted house. I’ve never read his books, but I don’t live under a rock. Even the commercial for the movie adaptation of his Dark Dolls novel gave me nightmares. I know he’s got quite a cult following out there. How many are we expecting at this launch?”

  “Two hundred-ish.”

  Kate scowled. “There’s that half-word again. ‘Ish’ isn’t going to cut it. I need exact numbers if I’m going to pull off feeding and entertaining this crowd on Halloween.”

  The garbled sound of a loudspeaker came through in the background of the call.

  “My flight’s leaving. I almost forgot to tell you the other cool thing—the launch is in Western New York in the village of Wellsville, the same small town my grandma Gigi lives in, so we’ll have a local contact. I’ll email the address and our flight details to you in a second so you can start working on securing your travel plans to Buffalo. We’ll need to pitch it to him on Monday, which I know doesn’t give you a ton of time.”

  “Today’s Saturday! That’s exactly no time, Imani!”

  “I’m sure whatever you come up with will be…spook-tacular! And don’t worry—I’ll be there with you on Monday when we make the pitch to Drake in person.” Imani paused, and the phone cut out, as if there was another call coming in. “I’ve got to go. Um, just to let you know, we’re meeting him at his house.”

  “At that creepy Victorian?” Kate shuddered, recalling the pictures online of the house Drake Matthews lived in—an old red Victorian mansion surrounded by a wrought-iron fence fashioned to look like an intricate spiderweb connected by bats at the entrance gates. “Shall I carry a wooden stake, or do you think wearing a necklace of garlic should be enough?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Imani said, her phone cutting in and out as she spoke, giving her voice an eerie quality. “Oh, I forgot to tell you…be careful…terrifying! Watch out for—”

  The call went fuzzy with static.

  “Watch out for what?” Kate yelled. “What’s terrifying?”

  But the call had disconnected.

  With an exasperated sigh, Kate ripped the earpiece from her ear and stowed it in her coat pocket. Whatever her best friend had tried to warn her about would be a mystery until she saw her tomorrow at the airport.

  She shrugged her shoulders. Imani was right. After working with overwrought mothers, fainting grooms, and jittery Bridezillas, how bad could one writer be?

  It was almost midnight when Kate finally returned to her Long Island studio apartment. Since she’d taken over the wedding portfolio of Maya Evert’s company five years ago just before her mentor succumbed to cancer, Kate’s life had become almost nomadic. She often stayed on-site during pre-wedding events, and this summer’s wedding season had been like a full-on sprint. And fall wasn’t looking to slow down much. She’d barely been home since April, and the place smelled stale and lifeless.

  Her eyes immediately went to the only living thing she owned, and she gasped.

  Her succulent was dead.

  Imani had gotten it for her as an apartment-warming gift when Kate moved out of Imani’s pad in Queens to Oyster Bay, presumably to make it easier for Kate to meet with her clients, who were mostly located in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. Yet while the commute to various vendors and brides-to-be was a little shorter, the trade-off was a studio that seemed to take the new, gray-toned “it” color to a whole other level.

  The apartment had a charcoal-gray couch that turned into a full-size bed, a teeny, lighter gray bar, and two gleaming steel barstools that sat on the end of the triangular-shaped, gray-and-white efficiency kitchen. While the locale, nudged up to Long Island’s Gold Coast, was perfect for her business, if Kate was being honest, she preferred Imani’s overstuffed place with its mishmash of styles and comfy chairs and colorful throw blankets folded on every available surface.

  Imani’s place felt like living inside a hug.

  This place felt like living inside a gynecologist’s office.

  “Oh, no. You can’t die,” Kate groaned, dumping the rest of her water bottle into the drooping, sad plant. The liquid disappeared into the parched dirt so fast, you could hear the water bubble as it settled into the planter. “Imani said this plant would help me grow roots…now that’s all that’s left.”

  She stared at the dead succulent as she emptied her travel suitcase. It was a fitting metaphor for this apartment. After almost three years here, she hadn’t hung a single picture—the only “art” was a wall-sized, two-years-at-a-glance calendar, filled with events written in color-coded dry-erase markers. It was to this calendar that she went, opening the windows flanking it to let in the brisk September night, erasing the Montague wedding and writing in careful print “Drake Matthews’s Book Launch.” She bit her lip as she circled the day of the event, wincing at how little time she had to prepare.

  Kate powered up her laptop and had barely begun researching haunted houses when her cell phone buzzed. Hoping it was Imani calling back about the terrifying warning, she hit the button to answer before registering that the readout read Mom and Dad.

  “Honey, I’m so glad I caught you,” her mom began. “We need to talk about the Sweet Surgery Center’s grand opening. Oh, and your father just heard from the dean at Cornell’s med school, and she said you lack only four classes and an MCAT score to be considered for admission. That’s twelve credits, including labs. Isn’t that great?”

  “Mom, we’ve had this discussion,” Kate said, massaging the bridge of her nose. “I don’t want to be a doctor. Or a physician assistant, a surgery tech, or the receptionist of your future office. I majored in hospitality, got an internship after college with the hottest event planner on the East Coast, and inherited much of her massive client base because I’m good at what I do. I love my job, Mom.”

  “I know you do.” Her mother’s voice had that patient tone Kate had come to hate since sophomore year when she’d renounced medicine as a career. “But I hate to see you throwing away your talent, honey. You have what it takes to make such a difference in this world! You completed your bio electives before you changed your major, so all you’d have to take is your organic chemistry courses. I’m sure you could fit four classes in between your…parties. Then, you could study for the—”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Kate cut her off, her teeth gritted in a losing bid to keep her temper. “I just got in and I’ve got a big client meeting to prepare for on Monday. I’ve got to go.”

  “I thought with the Montagues canceling their wedding, you’d have some time to at least enroll in one class over winter break,” her mother said, undeterred by her daughter’s deteriorating tone. “Besides, your father and I want to meet with you about the Sweet Surgery Center
.”

  Kate rolled her eyes at how fast the news traveled in her parents’ exclusive Lloyd Harbor social circle about the wedding plans of Nicholas Montague and his former fiancée crashing and burning.

  “Actually, thanks to Imani, I filled the Montague spot—”

  “Oh, how’s she doing? I haven’t seen that girl in ages!” Her mom interrupted with the most enthusiasm she’d mustered since the conversation started. “I’m so thrilled she got into Cerulean Books—it’s quite a coup, how fast she’s climbing the ladder. I know she’s not my own, but she did live with us for over a year, so I feel…invested.”

  Kate stared at the ceiling, wondering if her mother heard the same irony Kate did in the investment she’d mentally made in Kate’s best friend, but not her own daughter.

  Probably not. Irony wasn’t one of the things tested on MCAT exams.

  “Imani’s great. Busy. And lucky for me, she just hooked me up with one of her—”

  This time, Kate interrupted herself. If she told her mom it was an author, she’d insist on knowing who it was, and Kate would never hear the end of it. As it was, her parents still told their colleagues that while their youngest daughter was in medical school, their oldest was taking some “gap years” before committing to medicine. Better to keep the fact she’d be working with the Knight of Nightmares to herself—at least until she won the EVPLEX for it. Then she’d tell everyone.

  “—one of her friends, and I’m doing an event for him,” she amended smoothly. “It’s only a few weeks away, and I’m meeting with the client on Monday, so I really have to run. Kiss Dad for me, and tell Kiersten that just because she’s in med school now doesn’t mean she’s too fancy to return my texts. I love you guys, and I’ll see you in a couple of months for Thanksgiving. I’m bringing the pumpkin pie, right?”

  “Well, yes, but we wanted to—”

  “Oops—got a call coming in. I’ve got to let you go. Kisses to you all!” Kate quickly disconnected before her mom could finish her sentence. Maybe by the time Thanksgiving came around, she’d have gotten enough kudos to announce that she’d be a contender for the biggest prize in her business? And maybe that would allay her family’s constant need to try to bail her out of this job?

  Kate snorted. Not likely. But it was worth a shot.

  She shook her head and pulled up a promotional YouTube video of the elusive Drake Matthews. He had what Kate thought of as a quintessential writer’s look—short, wavy brown hair, a strong jawline, and behind a pair of dark glasses, golden eyes that peered out at the world in an I’m-a-serious-writer sort of way. The video advertised Halloween Hacker, and after a few seconds of listening to the plot about a computer hacker who is slowly driven insane, Kate shuddered, clicking on the next video.

  Immediately, she knew this was no promotional piece. The jerky camera movements hinted it was being captured by an amateur with a cell phone. The footage began with a man—she assumed it was Drake Matthews—signing a book, in front of a crowd of people, his back to the camera. Kate noticed the wrought-iron spiderweb gates behind him, and there was a blur of a brick-red house in the background—she guessed the video was taken right outside the Victorian mansion he owned.

  Drake finished signing and turned toward the person shooting the video.

  Kate caught her breath as she took in the black tuxedo the writer wore so effortlessly. The man could have easily had a second career as a formal-wear model.

  “Sorry, we’ve got dinner reservations. No more autographs,” he said, his hair perfectly askew, his amber eyes startled as they darted to the guy with the camera phone and the dozens of begging fans all around, jabbing pens at his face as if they were trying to skewer him.

  An off-camera male voice asked, “Can you sign this book for my brother, Mr. Matthews? He’s in the Navy aboard the USS Lincoln right now, and I think it’ll cheer him up.”

  Drake hesitated. He turned to his left, offering someone an apologetic smile, then faced the owner of the camera phone, looking a little harried.

  “Just this last one, then, for your brother. I’ve got two of my own who served overseas.” Drake took the proffered Sharpie to sign.

  The video image jiggled as the guy switched his cell phone to the other hand, offering a view of the sky, the ground, and then a brunette in a black formal dress standing off to the side.

  “Drake, we’re never going to make it to Ambrose’s in time,” came the high-pitched voice of the twenty-something woman whose beautiful gown plunged so low on her curvy figure, only a fraction of a centimeter—and probably some heavy-duty body tape—kept it from being a complete nipple reveal. She rolled her eyes, pulling out her phone. She gazed at it for a minute, then heaved a sigh as she popped it back into a matching clutch. “It’s always about you and your books. I’m so tired of always coming in second.”

  The impromptu videographer managed to get the phone transferred to the other hand, and the camera faced Drake once more.

  Kate winced at the writer’s wounded expression, which he quickly covered with a grim smile, handing over the signed book to his fan. “Okay, Rachel’s right. The show’s over. We’ve got to get to our car.”

  Although the camera wasn’t angled to catch the woman’s expression, Kate heard her—Rachel—snort in derision when it was clear the fans were not dispersing. The horror writer was cornered, pens jabbing at him from every angle.

  Suddenly, Drake spun back to the fence, put his fingers to his lips, and gave a piercing whistle.

  A massive, barrel-chested Doberman sprang at the fence. Paws as big as a man’s fist bashed, chest-high, against the spiderwebbed iron barrier, as the beast lunged forward barking and snapping at the people just outside of his reach. Everyone except the person with the camera phone scattered like rabbits.

  “Good boy,” Drake said, reaching one arm through the barrier to ruffle the dog’s head. Then, as if sensing he was still on camera, the writer turned, his expression annoyed. He threw his arms out in a “What now?” gesture. His move excited the Doberman, whose deep-throated, vicious-sounding snarls picked up tempo. “Listen, man, the freak show’s over—”

  Abruptly, the video ended. Scanning the comments underneath, Kate wasn’t surprised to see his fans argue that with the books he wrote, Drake Matthews didn’t need a rabid Doberman to guard his house. Living in that spooky Victorian, penning terror all day—the Knight of Nightmares was a deterrent, all by himself.

  Kate shuddered. More videos of book trailers popped up, but she’d seen enough. She was just about to close out of her search when she spotted a photograph of the writer on a beach. She clicked on it, gasped, and enlarged the screen to fill her laptop. The image was of Drake in a pair of turquoise board shorts…and nothing else.

  “Wow. Who’d have thought the guy would be so buff?” Kate wondered aloud, her eyes moving over every play of light and shadow. If his tanned chest and muscular arms weren’t enough, his abs appeared to have been sculpted in bronze.

  After staring at him for a minute, Kate clicked off, giving herself a shake.

  “The only six-packs writers have come from a convenience store,” she muttered, banishing thoughts of his tanned, chiseled form from her mind. “It must be Photoshopped.”

  Pulling up her project plan, she went to work.

  She was about to give Drake Matthews the best book launch of his nightmarish dreams.

  Chapter 2

  Monday morning, Kate stood waiting for a cab under the awning of the only downtown hotel in a bitty little village called Wellsville, New York, trying not to break a tooth as her jaw chattered, shaking with the cold. She’d flown to Buffalo yesterday, and the plan had been to meet Imani at the airport and rent a car together to take them the two hours to Drake Matthews’s hometown. But when she’d landed, Kate discovered a brief text from her best friend.

  Imani: Flight had to change. Mtg w/a client. Meet u @ Drake’s at 10. ☺

  And with that, her best friend had gone dark, which was why Ka
te was waiting for a ride to meet the Knight of Nightmares…alone.

  The wind gusted, spattering her with a little of the sleety rain coming down outside the overhang. Kate shivered, wishing she’d chosen another outfit. She brushed the droplets off her slightly tight black pencil skirt, curling her lip at the suit she’d picked out specifically for the meeting. She’d read online how Drake loved to wear black—her least favorite color. While everyone in her business—hell, everyone in New York City—considered it a staple, Kate wasn’t one of them. Most redheads took on an ethereal, otherworldly glow in a black suit, but Kate usually spent the day reassuring people she wasn’t sick. She’d bought this outfit back before she became best friends with navy blue, chocolate brown, and almost every shade of green. Back when she was about ten pounds lighter and a cup size smaller.

  Now, here she was, dressed in a suit that squished her in too many places to name, made her look anemic, and whose skirt sported a walking slit that felt as though it was cut a bit too high up the back, especially for this weather. Every gust of wind flapped it open, and she was constantly smoothing the fabric down, worried she’d accidentally flash someone.

  Kate sniffed, wishing she’d thought to bring tissues. Was her nose running, or was it just numb? She fumbled in her pocket for her phone and reversed the angle on her cell’s camera to check herself out one last time as the cab pulled up to the small hotel lobby’s covered entrance.

  No snot running down her face, but that was the best she could say about the ghostly reflection gazing back. Her green eyes were wider than normal, despite the heavy black liner and smoky shadow she’d chosen in an effort to reflect her newest client’s gothic vibe and downplay the dark bags under her eyes. At first, she’d put her auburn hair up in the same chignon she always wore when working, then changed her mind, letting it tumble long and wild down her shoulders, figuring that was as close to edgy as she’d get. Now, with her hair askew from the wind, her face pasty-pale, and her nose bright red from the cold, she sensed she’d missed the mark. Instead of “edgy,” she looked more “on edge.”