Daydreamer

Felix

“Are you warm enough?” I laid both my hands over Lucy’s on the table. Whilst they weren’t ice-cold, they weren’t quite the temperature level I liked them to be. I pulled them into my lap, holding both of them in mine. Lucy glanced down at her hands and then back up at me, a blush sweeping up over her cheeks. Yes, I was getting somewhere with her, but I wasn’t going to push things too early. However, I was not above using the chemistry between us and how attracted she was to me to my advantage. “Maybe I should talk to the organiser about whacking the heat up.”

“Felix,” Lucy said. “It must be over twenty degrees in here. Everyone else will melt if they put the heating up anymore. I’m the only person I can see in a jumper.” Lucy was wearing a cashmere jumper dress, thermal leggings and fur-lined boots. I’d become quite the expert in the warmest women’s clothing out there.

Once I knew Lucy’s sizes, I just started having everything delivered to the cottage. Lucy had been so deep in the writing zone that at first she barely noticed. But since I’d told her I was assisting her, she’d started to emerge from the writing shed more and clocked all the bags and boxes stacking up in her bedroom. Last week she’d stomped down into the kitchen where I was having a cup of tea with Hetty, a furious expression on her face – well, at least on the part of her face I could see above the pile of coats she was struggling to carry.

“Felix,” she snapped before dumping about twenty coats onto my lap. I just about managed to save my tea. When I looked back at Lucy she was standing with her legs braced apart and her hands on her hips. Smiling probably wasn’t my best plan, but an angry Lucy was just too adorable, and I was so pleased to be evoking some sort of reaction from her that I didn’t care too much if I pissed her off. “Don’t you smirk at me.” Her eyes narrowed on my face, and I tried to flatten my smile but didn’t quite pull it off. “Do you know how many coats I now have in my bedroom?”

I grabbed some of the coats that had fallen to the floor and lifted them all up and onto the chair next to me. “Well, I⁠—”

“This isn’t even half of them, Felix!” she snapped. “You’re obsessed with buying me clothing.”

“Listen, I know you’re busy, and I thought that if I did a spot of shopping it would save you time.”

“I don’t need all this stuff. Nobody needs twenty-five coats.”

“Er,” Hetty put in. “Twenty-four.” I glanced at her and then down to Legolas, who was munching on the specialist heated puffa I bought Lucy last week.

“Legolas,” I snapped. “That’s one of the ones for minus twenty degrees, you bastard.”

Legolas gave me a guilty look but continued munching through the lining.

“This is exactly what I mean,” Lucy said. “When am I going to ever need to go somewhere that’s minus twenty?”

“Luce, you need to be maintained at a certain temperature. And that means that⁠—”

“Ugh, I’m not a tropical fish, Felix. You can’t just…” she blinked, and her head tilted to the side, the attitude in her stance fading for a moment. “Did you say you went shopping?”

I shrugged. “Most of it I ordered online, but for some of it I had to go to specialist outdoor stores and⁠—”

“You bought it? Not Tabitha? B–but you don’t have time to go shopping. You’ve never shopped in your life.”

“I didn’t really trust it to anyone else.”

“Oh.” The fight went out of Lucy as she sat down heavily on the chair next to mine. Hetty put a cup of tea in front of her which she took a sip of as she absently stroked one of the thermally insulated cashmere coats lying on the table next to her. “I–I don’t… why would you…?”

I dipped my head down so her eyes were level with mine and smiled at her.

“I just want you to be warm, love,” I said softly. Her mouth fell open slightly, and her eyes went unfocused.

“Lucy, you say, ‘Thank you, Felix, for buying me lots of warm clothes. That was very kind and generous of you’,” Hetty told her.

“Right,” Lucy muttered. “Uh, thanks.” She blinked down at her tea for a moment, then her gaze snapped back to mine and her eyes narrowed again. “No more coats though. I’d need two lifetimes to wear all the ones you’ve already bought.”

I’d shrugged and smiled again when I thought about the delivery that was scheduled for that afternoon.

“I don’t care about the other people here,” I said, still keeping hold of Lucy’s hands. “They can take off a layer if they’re hot.”

“They’ll be down to their underwear if they take off any more layers,” Lucy said, the blush still on her cheeks as she looked down at her hands in mine. “And this space is going to fill up with readers soon. It’ll be unbearable for people if the heating’s any higher.”

“Hey, kids,” Madeline strutted up the stand. “So, Lucy, you ready?”

Lucy tugged her hands away from mine and sat up straighter in her chair, her nervous expression returning. Her hand shook slightly as she unnecessarily straightened the bookmarks in front of her.

“Have they sorted out the ticketing system for her?” I asked Madeline, and she rolled her eyes.

“Felix, like I told you already, they don’t feel it’s needed.”

I huffed. “Those guys have a ticketing system,” I said, pointing to the larger tables at the head of the room. “Why not Lucy?”

“Felix,” Lucy said. “I’m not a big enough of a deal for that.”

My eyebrows went up. “Luce, you’re way up with those guys.”

Her eyes went wide as she glanced over to the big names that I knew she was a little awed to even be in the same room as.

“Yes, love, you are,” I said softly. “Listen, I’ll be back in a sec, okay?”

“Er, okay,” Lucy muttered, her gaze still fixed on the other side of the room.

I got up from the table and steered Madeline out of hearing distance.

“I’m not having Luce overwhelmed,” I said. “The crowd needs to be controlled properly.”

Madeline huffed. “Calm down, Casanova. It’ll be fine.”

My eyebrows went up. “There are thousands of people coming today. What percentage are going to want to see Lucy? How many books are each of them going to bring? Can you see her turning anyone away or refusing to sign anything?”

“Listen, Felix⁠—”

“It’ll kill her to disappoint any of her fans,” I said. “Trust me, I know her. She’ll be devastated. We need more assistants. We need better barriers, and we need a ticket system.”

Madeline sighed. “You’re a pain in the arse, you know that?”

Of course, I was right. I’m always right.

Lucy’s table was a bun fight. A massive queue formed within minutes of the doors to the signing opening. She was like a deer in the headlights. Fortunately, due to me throwing my weight around, there were barriers set up to manage the hordes of people and a ticketing system had been hastily added, together with two more queue assistants.

I hate to say it, but when it came to actual assisting, I was… total crap. The tables had well and truly turned. Now I was the worst assistant. In fact, one of the signing organisers had to step in to take over the contactless payments and dish out books (that was until we ran out of books). I was relegated to being the bad guy who told people Lucy was only signing a maximum of two items. That I was good at. After all, I’d perfected my arsehole persona for many years. Lucy was so nervous at first that I was worried she’d shut down. After the first twenty minutes and when Lucy had started stuttering to such a degree that people were starting to look at her with concern, I told everyone we needed tea break.

“But, Felix,” Lucy hissed as I led her to the empty room next door that was allocated for the authors to have their lunch together later, “we can’t just leave. All those people…”

She trailed off and bit her lip, wrapping her arms around her body in a defensive gesture. I needed to get her out of her head. Needed to shock her into life. It might have been too soon, and I still wanted to take things slowly, but I really couldn’t see an alternative. That’s why I moved into her space, cupped her face with my hands, and kissed her. Her mouth parted as she gasped in shock, allowing me to deepen the kiss as I pulled her stiff body into mine. I knew the moment that the world fell away for her. She melted into me, her arms uncrossed to slide around my back as I slid one of my hands into her hair and the other around her until I was lifting her up. I placed her on the tabletop behind us and carried on kissing her, stepping between her legs and leaning her back against my arm. When I finally managed to pull my lips away, I rested my forehead against hers and studied her glazed expression.

“Keep going guys.” We both flinched at the voice and turned our heads to see a woman sitting two tables over. She had a cheese sandwich halfway to her mouth and a huge grin on her face.

“Oh my God,” whispered Lucy and my arms gave her a squeeze.

“Don’t be embarrassed, hun,” said the woman, waving her sandwich at us. “This is perfect fodder for my next book. You two ever thought of being cover models?”

“No,” we both said together.

“Shame,” she muttered, standing from her chair to leave the room. “Anyhoo, continue. Don’t mind me.”

“She’s one of the most famous romance authors on the planet,” whispered Lucy, a blush creeping over her cheeks. “Omigod. She spoke to us. She saw us kissing.”

I smiled down at Lucy. “I don’t think she minded.”

Lucy frowned up at me but, I noted, did not do anything to extract herself from my arms. “Why are you kissing me?”

“Well, number one, you’re very kissable.”

“Felix,” she said, swatting my arm which I was also very glad about. I was getting somewhere if Lucy was comfortable enough with me to be swatting my arm.

“And number two, I wanted to break through and get your attention.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Get my attention? Aren’t there easier ways to do that rather than dragging me off and snogging me in front of famous romance authors who just want to eat a cheese sandwich in peace?”

“No, not really. This was the easiest way.”

Lucy snorted.

“Listen, baby,” I said, and she swallowed, her expression softening. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve no right to kiss you, but I just wanted to get you out of your head. All these people, they’re here to see you, because of the words you’ve written. All they want to do is talk about your stories. Just imagine it’s me. Think of all the times you’ve told me about your stories, about the characters. They’re on your side. They love the world you’ve built.”

That was the turning point. Lucy came alive after that. There were some maps spread out on her table and she poured over them with the fans (until I did my bad guy routine and moved them along). Madeline even took me aside and asked me if I had “fixed Lucy with my magic dick?”. She was nothing if not direct.

I did have a very satisfying moment with Harry the twat when I turned him away and told him to queue like everyone else. I felt a bit bad for his heavily pregnant wife who seemed like a decent human so I had her skip up to the front (there was also the fact I still wanted her to agree to be our architect on the Hyde Park project). But Harry could fuck off.

Unfortunately, that backfired spectacularly when Lucy realised what I’d done and invited the smug fuck to come and have dinner with us after the bloody signing. I tried to dismiss the plan, but Lucy got that look on her face – the one that said she was annoyed that I didn’t respect her and her ideas. And seeing as I was deep down the rabbit hole of trying to win her trust I agreed. Plus there was the fact that I had misjudged Harry. He hadn’t been passing any information to his client. Turned out that Will had decided to do that – playing both sides in case he didn’t make partner and needed to jump ship to their firm. The CEO of the company was only too happy to rat him out. If I’d have bothered asking around before accusing Lucy I could have found out easily enough and that was on me.

And well, okay, maybe Harry’s not that much of a twatface when you get to know him. And maybe having dinner with them wasn’t the worst idea in the world. And maybe I did learn something from the way Harry does business.

By the end of the day, three things were clear: I should always listen to Lucy; I’m a shit assistant; and I have a magic dick that can snap her out of a fug. That third fact I planned to use to my advantage, but only when the time was right.