Out of Her Dreams

by Fran Lee

She reached for her water glass and took a desperately needed sip, before flexing her fingers and reaching out to take the next book dangling in front of her from it's new owner's hands. Her fingers collided head on with warm skin, and she winced. “Sorry!”

She could just read the tabloid headlines now:

'Author of lurid romance books attacks and wounds customer at book-signing!'

Boy. She needed a break, and soon! She was tired as hell, and her wrist and hand ached. But this was just another part of the job. You wrote books, you helped sell them at book signing parties. No time to rest. For the past two years there had been no time to rest. It felt as if she'd been sitting here for five days instead of five hours. After checking her nails for possible blood from her customer, she pasted on another big smile as she opened the book to its pristine flyleaf and asked, “What's your name?”

“You tell me, Miss Hastings.”

The voice was husky - deep enough to send some pretty gnarly tingles along every nerve she possessed. She blinked at the lean, masculine hand resting on the table, and she bit the corner of her lower lip. Her eyes moved appreciatively upward toward the face of the person whose book she was about to sign - and her mouth went suddenly dry.

Her eyes had to travel a considerable distance up the front of a massive, tall frame, over a powerful, Armani-clad chest that would have been hell to stretch a shirt across, to the face she had seen in her dreams for so many years - the same face, with the same night dark eyes and high cheekbones and chiseled mouth. The very same crookedly sexy smile with the exact same amazingly white, beautiful teeth that flashed as he slowly smiled down at her. Oh – my – God!

She was hallucinating here. She had to be.

Nope. No giant, intensely sexy hallucination, that! The fingers that had collided with hers were warm – warm and very solid. She felt a shot of primal heat reverberate though her belly. She couldn't quite get her breath. Her head felt oddly light, and she realized numbly that everyone was looking from her white, shocked face to the giant of a man who stood before her, intently waiting for her to speak. “It's him!” a voice squeaked somewhere to one side, and Sam swallowed hard.

“My God, that's GOT to be him!” another voice gasped. An excited murmur arose all through the store, and she was dazedly aware of people pressing closer. Of bodies straining closer from all directions.

It was suddenly claustrophobic. Mingled perfumes from a hundred female pulse points almost overwhelmed her senses, but not quite enough to cut out the hot, clean scent of man – the tangy, heady essence that lightly tickled her nostrils and tongue as fantasies of licking that massive chest danced through her wildly heated thoughts. Memories of dreams left unfinished – needs left unsated – and fantasies left unfulfilled stormed her mind and left her body in absolute turmoil. And in the middle of her search for something – anything – to say, one of the pressing bodies lifted an open book to the apparition, and squealed excitedly as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

“Can we have your autograph too, Chance?” another woman to the left of the table suddenly held her book up to the man as well, but his eyes never left Sam's white face. Obsidian eyes. Hot, hungry eyes that burned into her and made her breathlessly aware of the heat pooling between her legs, and the odd little fluttery threads of lust unfurling inside her belly as she sat glued to her chair. The tips of her fingers still tingled from his brief touch as he had handed her the book. Every sense was heightened. Every thought was sizzlingy unrepeatable. And she realized with a start that he was reading those x-rated thoughts loud and clear when his gaze dropped to her mouth as she wet her lips nervously.

With a superhuman effort, Sam attempted to clear her suddenly-tight throat, and scrambled to gather her thoughts, as she placed the tip of the sharpie on the flyleaf and quickly wrote,

“To the man of my dreams - Samantha Hastings”.

She handed him back the book, then rose stiffly from her seat and excused herself numbly, unable to believe she had just written that! Run, Sam - run!

“Sam, what's wrong?” her publisher, Phyllis Sharples, asked with a worried look as she brushed past her to hurry wordlessly to the stock room where she could try to catch her breath and check her sanity! She could feel Phyllis' confused gaze on her back as she retreated.

What's wrong? What's wrong??? There was really a man out there who looked exactly like the hero in her series of best-selling romance novels - that's what was wrong!