4 Days to Release Day!
Having had mixed results with Luc’s interview, I decided to move on to Katie.
Katie McCabe, as you may or may not know, is the heroine of my book, HOLD ME. I met Katie at a small diner in New Jersey a couple of blocks from the office building where she now works. I got there first, so I was watching for her when she walked in. Oh, it was so good to see her again! She looked beautiful with her exuberant wine-red hair curling all over the place in the humidity.
She saw me, ran over, and we hugged. Her purse swung around and hit me in the back. The bruise is fading now.
After a moment, we slid into opposite sides of the booth. The waitress came, we placed our orders, and then smiled at each other.
“You look great,” I told her. It was true. She looked happy.
“Nah.” She blushed a little, and her blue eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “I’m just normal. Plus it’s humid.” She tugged at her hair, and I laughed.
“Tell me about it.” I tugged at my own hair. “So how’s everything going?”
“Wonderful.” She smiled, and her eyes went a little dreamy. I laughed at her again.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“I can’t. It’s attached to my body.” Now she giggled. “But everything is…very nice.”
“Good.” The waitress brought our coffee, so we paused while she placed the mugs on the table. “Thanks for letting me interview you,” I said.
She shrugged. “Sure. Besides, you’re buying lunch.”
“Like I told Luc, I want to try to keep this out of spoiler territory.”
“Oh, yeah.” Her expression was mischievous. “How’d the big Luc interview go?”
“He’s a dumbass,” I muttered, pouring cream into my coffee. “And a jerkwad.” I stirred with more force than was strictly necessary.
Katie nodded. “That he is. But then again, you wrote him.”
“Do you know that he wants chickens?” I demanded. “Chickens! What is he thinking!”
“Hey, that’s your fault. You’re the one who put out the story about him finding Spot and reminded him of his unrequited chicken love.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think he’d actually do anything about it.”
“And that is the only reason I’m still talking to you.” She looked at me sternly. “Just who do you think is going to be stuck playing chicken wrangler? You know as well as I do that as soon as he gets the bloody things he’ll be too busy to take care of them.”
“Sorry.” I sighed. “I’ll try to talk him out of it.”
“Please do.” Katie sounded fervent. She sipped her coffee. “So, what are we going to talk about that’s not a spoiler?”
“I don’t know. It’s the same problem I had with Luc. Do you know that he accused me of shooting him?”
“Well, um, you kind of did.”
“I did not!” I had expected understanding from Katie. “The only thing I did was–”
She waved her hands in my face. “I think you want to stop now. Spoilers, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” I took a deep breath and tried to get myself back under control.
“Um, maybe you shouldn’t have interviewed us until after the book was out?”
“Oh, shut up.” I was feeling a little cranky. “I didn’t think about it, okay?”
She just laughed at me.
“Do you like your new job?” I asked, because it was a safe topic, and because I wanted to know.
“Oh, yeah.” Her face lit up. “David Allen told me about the opening. Sometimes I think that man knows everyone.”
I shook my head fondly. “He’s just like his mother.”
“He’s getting there, but Mama Allen is the goddess of networking. Do you know that she and Mr. Allen went to Boston for a vacation and she saw three people she knew? The woman’s amazing.”
“I bet she gets along great with your mother,” I said. “How is Maureen anyway?”
Katie held up a finger. “Spoiler territory.”
“Oh, yeah.”
We stared at each other for a moment.
“I really can’t think of anything to ask you that won’t be some kind of a spoiler,” I admitted.
“We could just eat lunch…”
“That won’t make a very interesting blog post.”
“True.” She shoved her glasses up her nose. I shoved my glasses up my nose. We stared at each other some more.
“Um, how’s Melanie?” I asked.
“Spoiler.”
“Your father?”
“Spoiler.”
“Brenna?”
“Brenna’s great.” Katie grinned. “She thinks she doesn’t have any pheromones.”
“I think that might be a spoiler for a future book.”
“Well how the heck should I know? You don’t have them plotted out yet.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“So, I guess this interview is over?” Katie asked finally.
“I do have one question,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“Is your name still “Katie McCabe”?”
Katie smiled, and it looked almost feline. I half expected to hear her purr.
“Spoiler,” she said.
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