Bookish Read Free Page A

to work on some new material in case I ever fell in front of the hottest man in the world again.
    “I’ll leave you to her then,” he said and removed his arm. I felt suddenly alone, vulnerable and weak without his hand on me. His bodyguard handed me my Kindle and Chloe and I ducked back under the red velvet rope.
    He turned back once and winked at me, and he was gone. He moved graciously down the line of screaming women, smiling and talking to as many of them as he could.
    He eventually made it to his own table at the head of the event, far from us lowly bloggers who were stashed away in a back room.
    Chloe waited long enough to make sure I wasn’t going to fall, turned to me and said, “Did you see that?”
    “I know, right?”
    “The way he stared, that was intense!”
    “You noticed that?” I said, flattered that she caught on to the weird little moment of contact between Isaac and I.
    “Of course I did,” she exclaimed, “he couldn’t keep his eyes off me.”
    In typical Chloe fashion, she ditched me to get a Isaac James autograph. As I made my way back to my empty table, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even gotten him to sign my Kindle cover.
    I supposed it didn’t matter though, I could still feel his fingers burning hot on my skin. He marked me for life, whether the world could see it or not.
     

Chapter Three
     
    “Thanks for the swag, I love the bookmarks,” said one of the endless readers who paraded in front of my barren table. I had been cleaned out of my good stuff hours ago. All I had left were some lame hand made bookmarks and a few postcards from last year’s big bestseller list.
    I did okay with the blog, it wasn’t my day job but it offered me an escape into the kinds of books I loved and if I had a reason for doing it, I didn’t feel as guilty. They weren’t exactly great literature, but I didn’t feel like such a lame duck if I was reading them for a purpose.
    “You’re welcome, make sure to like us on Facebook and sign up for our mailing list,” I said to the girl’s retreating form.
    “You never told me what you thought about my review,” Chloe said, breaking into my train of thought. She was sitting next to me, bored after the highlight of her day. She’d come back about an hour after leaving me for Isaac James’ line up. She’d whipped open her shirt and showed her own boob autograph. Isaac’s writing was illegible, but Chloe claimed he’d written ‘only have eyes for you’ but I swore it looked more like ‘good luck on your book’. He probably thought she was an author.
    “I liked it,” I said, “it was pretty funny and I think I can use it.” Chloe had begged me for weeks to blog with me, and I’d finally given in when my ‘to be read’ list threatened to tumble over and crush me under its weight. She had surprised me and the review really wasn’t that bad. With some polishing and a little tweaking, it would be useable.
    “Oh good,” she replied and sipped at her double chocolate espresso cappuccino whatever the heck she was drinking and smiled at me. “It’s funny,” she went on in a tone that told me this was gonna be good, “I used to think you were such a nerd for having your face stuck in a book. In high school I had no idea what the hell you were talking about half the time, all you had was book learning. I was out on the street getting my education from real life.”
    “Uh huh,” I said in a non-committal tone. She was about as street as one of Auntie Abby’s cats. Chloe was raised in a nice neighbourhood with parents who loved her and spent money on her like it was the cure to some disease she had. She wasn’t exactly schooled in the university of hard knocks.
    “I remember when that Fifty Shades book came out, you were the first to read it. It was my official first book other than the shit they force you to read in English class. As you know, I was hooked, but I still didn’t get into it like you did.”
    “You didn’t really get