The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob Read online

  Not at my favorite steak place.

  But I don’t actually care.

  I stick my hand out. “Hi. I’m Levi.”

  “Oh my god, you are,” the woman whispers.

  “I need a yodeling pickle.” Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “Do you have a website?” Giselle asks.

  I shoot her a look. Do I have a website? Did she hit her head?

  “Yes,” the woman says. “Yes. Website. We ship anywhere.”

  I’m still sitting here with my hand out like a dumbass, thinking Giselle is talking about my website when she’s trying to help me get out of here but still support a small local bookstore.

  “I can get you a card,” the woman adds. “Just…hold tight.”

  She bolts to her feet, and yeah, I watch her hips swing in her jeans as she goes. She has a streak of dirt across one round cheek, and there’s something blue on the back of her thigh.

  “Levi. We need to go,” Giselle says quietly. “What’s going on?”

  I rise, getting a little head rush from all the squatting, but I’m still watching the bookstore lady. “Inspiration.”

  “So make an after-hours appointment to come back. Storytime’s breaking up. We need to go.”

  I peer around the shop. The shelves are a few inches shorter than me, so I can see they go another four rows deep. Wooden signs hang from the ceiling, all of them hand-written and decorated with charming little accents, identifying an Escapism Fiction section, an Oh, the Places You Should Go section, a For the Adorable Anklebiters section, a Cozy Reading Accessories section, and a Honey, These Ladies Have Been There Too section.

  There’s also an Elixir of Life section, but the arrow pointing up on the back wall suggests it’s upstairs.

  The coffee. There’s coffee.

  This isn’t just a bookstore. It’s more.

  No wonder it’s inspiring.

  Funny thing about inspiration—it used to be with me all the time. But the more I travel, the more I explore, the more people I meet and stories I hear, the more everything looks the same.

  Nothing’s new anymore. I’ve seen the world. Met all the people. Written all the songs.

  So this place? This woman?

  I’m supposed to be here. There’s something waiting for me here. It’s new.

  It’s what I’ve been looking for.

  “Hi.” A small boy—I’d guess roughly my nephew’s age—grins at me from around the edge of the bookshelf. His light hair is buzzed so tight I can see a birthmark shaped like a pear near his crown, his eyes are bright hazel, and his smile is full of a familiar mischief that matches his That’s Trouble with a Capital T sweatshirt. “Can I help you?”

  “Levi.” Giselle’s voice has a familiar edge that says if I wanted to get lost and dawdle, I should’ve brought a three-person-deep security crew with me. “It’s time to go.”

  Sounds like elephants are tromping down the stairs, and the distant voices in the shop are getting closer.

  Storytime was upstairs.

  The woman getting a card is bent behind the checkout counter, and I can’t see her. It’s like she was a ghost, and when she stands up, she won’t be who I think she is.

  “My nose glows in the dark.” The little boy lifts his face and points at his nose, and—

  “Oh, shi—shoot, little dude. Where’s your mom?” I drop to a knee. Been here before. At least, on the periphery. “Can you blow out your nose?”

  He blows a big gust of Goldfish breath out his mouth.

  Probably because his nostrils are each sporting marbles that indeed are the milky white-green color of glow in the dark, and he can’t blow out his nose.

  “Turn around and face the far wall,” Giselle orders. “Chuck’s on the way.”

  I’m gonna owe her a massive gift card to her favorite vegan restaurant in SoHo for this.

  And even though I have to quit shooting looks at the woman behind the counter, still rooting around for a card, I obey orders, shifting the little boy as I go. “Try again, kiddo. Blow out your nose. Like this.”

  I wrinkle my nose and blow.

  He blows through his mouth again.

  “Hudson Andrew Scott!”

  He shoots a guilty look up at the woman, and yeah, I’m turning around to look too.

  The bookshop lady’s lips are twisted, her cheeks going pink, and her eyes—soft brown and wide a minute ago—are now defeated and tired as she twists around the display table and navigates through a small stream of women pushing strollers in the main aisle to head our way.

  I don’t know if she’s the same woman who changed my life eight years ago, but I believe in nothing if not paying it back, forward, and sideways.

  Whoever she is, she’s not in this alone today.

  Also, I’m not leaving here until I know her name.

  Two

  Ingrid Scott, aka a single mom whose tombstone will one day read “She would’ve had her life together if she’d had just one more day. No, really. Okay, probably not. But her intentions were good and she only wanted to stab people occasionally, mostly because she was too tired to want to stab them all the time.”

  One day. I would like to go one single day without someone in my orbit making a poor life decision.

  “Stop squirming,” I order my four-year-old son, who should be at preschool, but who’s been banished for the week because of lice.

  Yep.

  Lice.

  Heaven forbid we have one issue at a time.

  Adding to my list of issues? Being that mom who can’t get her shit together while Levi Flipping Wilson is watching. And not only watching, but actively engaging in trying to help. “Hey, bud, I bet I can hold still longer than you can. Wanna see?”

  I know my agenda on any given day will include interruption for something my children do that I never would’ve expected in a million years, but that’s a lot easier to deal with when I don’t have an audience.

  Especially an audience made up of one famous man whose songs get me through the day—and night—when I don’t have enough free focus to read or listen to an audiobook, and who keeps stealing glances at me like he’s trying to figure out what kind of rabid creature I am. Normally, customers aren’t allowed back in the stockroom with me, which is where I dragged Hudson when I realized what he’d done to his nose, but leaving Levi out there with the customers who’d figured out who he was seemed like a bad idea.

  Especially when his date skewered me with a look that clearly said get him out of here or I’ll burn this place down.

  It’s a bookstore.

  Highly flammable.

  Not taking chances.

  Especially if there was a reason they were looking at maternity and early childhood development books. His date doesn’t look pregnant, but god knows that’s when pregnancy is hardest.

  Hudson finally stills, and I manage to smear a little more Vaseline gently around his nostril. “How did you get a marble in your nose?”

  “I pushed hard.” He beams. “I gots stars in there too.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and count to two, because I know if I get as high as three, he’ll find a way to suck the marbles deeper into his sinus cavities, and I don’t know how a doctor will get that out without having to cut his nose open, and oh my god, he’s four and he’s about to be disfigured for life because I thought he’d actually sit still and listen to Yasmin reading books for neighborhood storytime while I re-stocked a few shelves.

  “How many stars?” I inquire through clenched teeth.

  “Four. Or maybe seven. Or maybe one. I forgets.”

  “You are so lucky you’re cute.”

  “Do you have a vacuum?” Levi asks.

  I twist my head to gape at him.

  He shoots a help? look at his date, then shrugs at me. “If he won’t blow it out, maybe you can suck it out. Like with one of those sucky tools the dentist uses.”

  “That’s…possibly not a terrible idea.”

  “Hap
pens on occasion.” He grins, which makes my heart basically stop because he’s stupidly gorgeous.

  I could stare at him all day, but I have a preschooler with marbles up his nose to attend to.

  “Mama,” Hudson says, “look.”

  He scrunches his nose, which makes his nostrils swell, closes his mouth, and blows, and one shoots out and lands on Levi’s shoe.

  My son has just snotted my favorite musician’s Italian leather loafers.

  “I win! I holded still!” He breaks into his preschool dance routine, but the poor kid got his moves from me, which means to a casual observer, he probably looks like he’s having a seizure while choking on a piece of gum and tripping over barbed wire.

  Levi Wilson, however, is not fazed. He squats down to Hudson’s level. “Rematch.”

  And my four-year-old son meets his gaze head-on. “Let’s put some money on it.”

  Next mental note: Find out what his older sisters have been watching on their tablets, and then drink lots and lots and lots of wine. I grip his shoulder. “Little boys who shove marbles up their noses don’t get to put money on anything. Hold still and look up, please.”

  “There’s no marble nose fairy?” Levi asks.

  “Are you playing the hold-still game or not?”

  “Go!”

  Both of them freeze. Levi’s girlfriend sighs. She’s between the back door and a stack of book boxes that I need to go through today, watching us like she’s ready to leap in and explain to all of us how everything’s about to go down.

  Apparently she’s not a fan of dating a man-child.

  I, however, would date the hell out of said man-child.

  No, that’s not right.

  I’d fling with him. In my fantasies, that is. In reality, there’s no way a hot rich pop star walks into my bookstore and asks to take me out to the mountains for a weekend of nakey-nakey grown-up time.

  Why not, you ask?

  Not because he was looking at how-to-have-a-baby books with his girlfriend, but because I’m currently getting Vaseline fingerprints all over the flashlight I’m shining up my kid’s nose to figure out how many glow-in-the-dark stars he shoved up there. Sexy, I am not.

  Not like his girlfriend, who still has perky boobs, bagless eyes, a ponytail that looks styled rather than hastily pulled back, and who completes the total badass look with tight jeans, work boots, and a leather jacket.

  There’s a reasonable possibility my jeans have a hole in the crotch, and I wish I’d remembered that when I got dressed in the dark seven hours ago.

  I peer up Hudson’s nose and make another mental note, this one to remove the glow-in-the-dark star kits from the store’s inventory.

  They’re a little dated and don’t sell well anyway.

  “Congratulations, Hudson. You’ve just earned yourself an all-expenses paid trip to the emergency room. Let’s see if we can get that other marble out first though.”

  “When my niece shoves stuff up her nose, my brother makes her do this sinus rinse thing to get it out. I saw mashed potatoes come out once.”

  I shift a glance at Levi, who’s squinting at me in a way that makes my entire body flush. “You are really bad at the staying still game, aren’t you?”

  “That’ll be ten thousand quid,” Hudson says in his best British accent.

  “Hudson.”

  My kid grins.

  And Levi Wilson laughs, which makes goosebumps race across every inch of my flesh. Add in another side-glance from him, and I’m having a full-on sensory overload experience that comes complete with hallucinations.

  I swear it’s like he’s trying to figure me out, which makes zero sense.

  All you really need to know is that I’m doing the best I can, but most days, I’m a disaster whose only solace is that my kids know I love them. I only qualify as a hot mess in the sense that I’m closer to perimenopause and the hot flashes that’ll come with it than I am to my tight black dress, makeup, and nightclub days.

  Plus, he’s Levi Flipping Wilson.

  He might’ve grown up a normal kid in Copper Valley, just like I did, but since he and his friends left to tour the world first as the boy band Bro Code, and now him solo on his own career for so long that I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know his name, he’s dated actresses, models, athletes, and fellow musicians.

  A divorcee with a mom bod and the chaos that comes with three kids under ten is the last thing he’d be into.

  And again—he was looking at pregnancy books.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot to ask if you were looking for something specific. We’re usually much more helpful. Our maternity and baby section has the best books, and we’re very discreet, so—”

  His girlfriend launches into a coughing fit.

  “What? No, I—” He cuts himself off as his brilliant blue eyes connect with mine, and I’m suddenly holding my breath.

  Levi Wilson is holding me captive with a silent question that I don’t understand.

  But I want to.

  I want to know what he wants from me. I want to know why he’s here. I want to ask him for an autograph and not sound like a total goober, or tell him—

  “I was hiding,” he stammers. “Not—I didn’t—we don’t—Giselle’s my—”

  “He wanted a yodeling pickle,” Giselle interrupts.

  There’s a joke going on here, and I’m totally missing it, but Levi blinks again, his lips spread into a grin, and pure mischief dances in his eyes. “Yes. Definitely three or four yodeling pickles.”

  “For the record,” Giselle says, “I’m opposed to the pickle. I know what you’re planning to do with it.”

  Levi winks at me. “That’s why she’s my favorite bodyguard.”

  Bodyguard. Not his girlfriend.

  And I’m the dummy who couldn’t figure that out.

  Awesome.

  He probably thinks I’m an idiot.

  Like it matters. I have to take my kid to the emergency room, and I’ll be one more crazy fan he’s interacted with in his life.

  Not someone he’ll think about long after he gets his yodeling pickles. “I’ll let Yasmin know you’d like a few pickles. It was—it was really great to meet you.”

  “We haven’t actually met.”

  “Right. You weren’t here. Got it.”

  “No—I mean, I don’t know your name.” He holds out his hand. “Let’s try this again. Hi. I’m Levi.”

  This is the stuff of fantasies. Too good to be true. On some level, I know he’s just a guy. But I’ve listened to his music for years. It’s been my companion through good times and dark times and every time in between. He’s not just a guy.

  He’s a guy who makes my world brighter without even knowing who I am.

  My entire body is buzzing with suppressed energy as I make myself take his hand as non-dorkily as I possibly can.

  Our palms connect, and heat courses up my arms. His grip is firm, his fingers curling around my hand, and I feel like a starry-eyed teenager meeting my idol.

  For this feeling alone, I will probably quietly love this man until the day I die.

  In the midst of chaos, it’s the simple kindnesses that make all the difference.

  And I can honestly say I’d feel the same if he were a random accountant or teacher or fast-food worker.

  I untie my tongue and force it to work like I’m a rational adult. “Ingrid. Hi. It really is great to meet you. Your music—”

  “Mommy, I hafta go take a dump.”

  And that’s my life.

  Three

  Levi

  Ingrid. Her name is Ingrid.

  She has a kid. Probably a husband. Definitely a life.

  I should be happy for her, be grateful for the perspective she brought me at a time when my focus could’ve gone in a far worse direction, and move on with my own life.

  Instead, I’m phoning in a glad-to-be-here performance over poker in Beck’s penthouse living room, chasing a melancholy melody with fragmen
ted lyrics about the one who got away while my lifelong buddies talk weddings and babies.

  Melodramatic? Probably.

  Do I care?

  Nope.

  “Frosted Tips. You in?”

  Caught.

  Beck, Tripp, and Wyatt are watching me, all three of them with cigars chomped between their teeth that they won’t light, waiting for me to make a call so we can play this hand, using my old nickname from the years when I made poor hair choices.

  Also, huh. Ingrid starts with in.

  Is this a sign on how I should bet tonight?

  I do believe it is.

  My pile of chips goes into the center of the table. “I’m in.”

  “You gonna look at your cards first?” Ever the older brother, Tripp’s second guessing me again.

  Ever the younger brother, I smirk at him. “Don’t need to. I always win. Luck favors the young.”

  Wyatt, a military guy with a buzz cut longer than Ingrid’s kid, shoves his own set of chips into the center and trades his cigar for his whiskey. “Luck rarely favors the stupid.”

  “Hey, hey, he’s not stupid.” Beck tips his chair back and grins the grin that earned him an underwear endorsement deal after our boy band days. Of the five of us, he most defined tall, dark, and handsome—or so all the magazines have said for years. “Malnourished, probably. He missed lunch. Also a sign luck’s not with you today.”

  I found Ingrid today. Luck is definitely with me.

  If we ignore the part where I’m fantasizing about her like she’s a woman I’d like to have dinner with instead of as a random person in Copper Valley who recognized me and reminded me of a single moment in my life that changed me for the better.

  This isn’t usually a problem. As a general rule, I don’t daydream about fans. Experience has taught me it doesn’t end well. But she—or someone who reminds me a hell of a lot of her—lodged herself in my head with that sign eight years ago, and I can’t shake her.

  “I’ve got all the luck, suckers.” I peek at my cards and flinch.

  Wyatt, who’s the most straight-laced of all of us who grew up together in our old neighborhood, watches me and cracks up. “Keep telling yourself that.”