Free Falling Into Drew by Harriet Schultz

keep this up, Elizabeth Bradford, I’m going to take that coffee away from you and order a decaf.” Kate broke a small piece off the blueberry muffin they were sharing and popped it in her mouth.
    Liz reached across the table, grabbed Kate’s hands, and lowered her voice to a whisper, but one that was insistent. “Tell me everything, and I mean e-ver-y-thing!”
    Kate’s face had the enigmatic smile of someone with a delicious secret. She tilted her head and looked up at the ceiling, then tapped her chin with one finger as if deep in thought. “Let me see…where should I begin?"
    “If you don’t start talking right now I’m going to cause a scene and you know I can do it.” Liz was out of patience, but then the two of them dissolved into giggles.
    “Okay, okay, I’ll talk. No need for an Oscar-worthy performance,” Kate began. “About an hour after he left my office with his agent, Drew sent a text asking me out for a drink. I assumed that he wanted to talk about the book we’d discussed. I mean why else would he want to see me?” She lowered her eyes and gave her head a slight shake from side to side.
    “Come on, Kate. How many times do I have to tell you that you’re beautiful to get you to believe it?” Liz said, gently. “Then what happened?”
    “We met in the lobby of my office building and got into the limo…”
    Liz interrupted. “A limo?”
    “It belongs to his agent who evidently is a trust fund baby and too fancy for the subway. Anyway, Drew held my hand as we left the building. It felt amazing.” She sighed and slowly shook her head from side to side. “It also confused the hell out of me.”
    “Where did you go?”
    “We ended up at this dark dive bar downtown where no one bothers him and we talked and talked and talked.”
    “About what?” Liz leaned her elbows on the table and rested her face on her upturned palms. Her eyes never left Kate’s.
    “He didn’t want to talk about writing. Not even close. It ended up being mostly about the impossible to ignore chemistry between us.” Kate’s eyes sparkled with happiness and her lips formed a small, satisfied grin when she saw the mixture of excitement and surprise on Liz’s expressive face. “I still can’t believe he wanted me that way, but I tried to make us focus on the book, since getting naked with him would screw up our working relationship.”
    “Who cares about a stupid book when you can have Drew O’Connor? Get your priorities straight, woman!”
    “That’s sort of what he said. He also told me that he’d thought about me since the day we met at St. Patrick’s and never imagined he’d see me again.”
    “Shit, it’s a fucking fairy tale,” Liz sighed dreamily, then abruptly sat up straight. “The panties! Our bet! Did you show them to him?”
    Kate laughed. “I slept with him. What do you think?”
    Liz hooted, causing heads to turn in their direction again. “You’re not going to tell me all the details, are you? As curious as I am, that’s between you and him. But I need to know one thing. Well, maybe a few things.”
    “Such as?”
    “Was it wonderful? Did you see shooting stars? Did you spend the night? Are you seeing him again?
    “It was beyond wonderful. Shooting stars? Hell, I saw the entire universe! I left in the morning. About seeing him again? I’m not sure. He’s in Europe doing commentary on some major ski event and probably screwing fräulein s , so who knows?” She tried to sound like she didn’t care, but her friend wasn’t fooled.
    “Oh, Katie.” Liz’s eyes filled with concern. “I hope he doesn’t turn out to be the rat bastard the press makes him out to be. Even if he does, now that you’ve had a taste of a hot man you can branch out from the boring ones you’ve dated.”
    “Sure,” Kate sighed. Liz knew why she stuck with safe and boring. Those men were unlikely to break her heart since they had little to no chance of capturing it.
     
    An ocean and several time zones