A thought came to me, sharp and clear, like a voice in my head: He's the one who'd better barricade his room at night!
He had light hair, the kind of ash blond that hid gray hairs, and it was just long enough that it feathered at his temples. His hair was thick and his hairline came down low on his forehead, into a small widow's peak. His jaw was wide and square with a crease in his chin-the kind of handsome bone structure it would be a shame to hide under any more than a few days' stubble. His eyes were not the gray-blue you'd expect with his fair coloring, but a golden brown.
Did I know him? His face was familiar, as though he resembled a well-known actor, though I couldn't think of which one for the life of me.
He looked up from the grilling sandwich and smirked, seemingly aware I'd been checking him out. Being an author, he was probably good at observing people, plus he had life experience points on me. The crinkles around his eyes and the lines on his forehead would make him about forty or so. It was hard for me to guess his age, as I'd been hanging out with nobody but college students the last four years.
I wondered if all that life experience made him a better lover. We were to be working closely together for two weeks. I'd dismissed the idea of fraternizing with my boss, but now that I saw him, everything changed. He had no ring on his finger.
He was still looking at me, and smiling. Could he read my mind? I felt dirty and guilty, my cheeks growing hot as I blushed.
He flipped the sandwich, spanked it with the spatula, and said, "How fast are you?"
"Beg pardon?"
He nodded down at my hands, which I was wringing together nervously. "As a typist. How fast do you type?"
I spread out my fingers wide and stared at my hands, my prized tools. "One hundred words a minute, though my accuracy's better at about ninety."
He quirked up one eyebrow. "Sometimes a slow hand's good. Sometimes hard and fast is the way to go. Or a mix."
I held back my response for a second to think. The man was a bestselling novelist, who worked with words for a living. His double entendre was not an accident, not at all.
Oh, but I could give as good as I got. There was a reason my girlfriends got me to write their flirty emails and text messages for them, and why my nickname was Tori the Torrid.
I took a deep breath, leaned up against the counter so my cle**age showed at the top of my blouse, and said, "Some people would swear I'm ambidextrous. That's how good these hands of mine are."
He mouthed the word wow and spanked the grilled cheese sandwich a few more times.
I said, "Thanks for making lunch. I am ravenous. That hike and my oh-so-awkward meeting with the moose worked up my appetite."
He chuckled as he put the sandwiches on plates and led me over to the long dining table. After setting the plates down, he reached his right hand out to shake mine.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Smith Wittingham."
His hand was hot and firm, his eye contact unwavering. Those gold-brown eyes had a ring of green around the pupil.
"Smith?" I took my seat directly across from him. "I wonder if I've read any of your books. What's your most popular one? I've mostly been into textbooks the last four years, not a lot of time for fiction."
"That's too bad." There was a bowl of mixed greens on the table and he served us both some salad instead of answering my question.
He was so familiar, from his looks to his name.
A bird outside flew past one of the windows, and he turned to look. As I saw him in semi-profile, everything clicked into place. That was the pose he used in his author photo, and I had read his books.
As he turned back, he raised his eyebrows, his forehead furrowing.
"Everything okay?" he asked. "That was just a bird, not the killer moose coming back to finish you off."
Of course. His mocking tone. His I'm-so-wonderful attitude.
He was Smith Fucking Wittingham, author of the Smith Dunham detective series. He'd actually named the main character after himself, boldly owning up to the fact his character was his own disgusting fictional avatar. Smith Dunham bedded one or more ladies in every novel, sometimes at the same time. He made James Bond look monogamous. And people loved the books, of course.
My own mother read them and swooned over fictional Smith Dunham, discussing with her girlfriends what actor might play the detective if and when they made the inevitable movie or TV series.
I had read Smith Fucking Wittingham's books-while sitting on the toilet at my mother's house. The bathroom was where his books belonged.
And now I was stuck in the woods with him? For two weeks? The generous paycheck didn't seem at all adequate anymore.
"Moose do kill people," he said casually. "In Alaska, some say moose kill more people than bears. The death toll includes vehicle accidents, but a few deaths are by trampling." He paused, staring contemplatively at the antler chandelier above us. "What a novel way to kill someone and make it appear to be an accident. You wouldn't want to leave it to chance, of course, but find some implement that matches the hooves … perhaps through a taxidermist."