Zach
“Oracle Lion, will you sign an autograph for me?” One of my fans pushed her breasts up against my arm and batted her eyelashes up at me.
“Sure, what’s your name, sweetie?”
“I already told you, it’s Joanie.” She pouted, and I chuckled as her name left my brain again. I waited for the bartender to bring over the three beers and it suddenly struck me that I hadn’t asked Piper what she wanted to drink. I looked toward the table to call her over to the bar, but the table was empty. I frowned and took a step forward to look around the bar. Maybe she’d changed tables. I still couldn’t see her, though. I walked over to the table we’d been sitting at but there was nothing there except her empty water glass.
“Oracle, what are you doing?” The three girls followed me back to the table, each one holding a beer in her hand. “Joanie just ordered us shots of whiskey.” They stopped next to me, but my attention was not on them at all. I looked around the bar, my heart racing, and tried to figure out where Piper had gone.
“The girl you were here with left, mate,” one of the guys that had been seated at the table next to us called out. “You showed up late and then left with three other women, I think she’s had enough.”
“Thanks.” I pursed my lips and sighed. Why had Piper just left? This was my life. I had to be nice to fans. Didn’t she understand that? Every other woman I’d gone out with had understood and known to just take care of themselves when situations like this happened. I pulled out my phone and was about to text Piper when I changed my mind and called her. This was a time when a call was needed over a text.
The phone rang and rang and went to voicemail and I let out a huge sigh as I hung up and rushed to the front of the bar and the street to see if I could find Piper outside. Maybe she’d just been trying to make a statement. She wouldn’t have actually left, would she?
“Want to come back to our hotel, Oracle?” One of the women had followed me and was now whispering in my ear, and I shook my head. “I’ve heard you’re a wild boy. Why don’t you show us?”
“Not tonight.” I dialed Piper’s number again and started pacing back and forth.
“Watch where you’re going, asshole!” a man shouted through a car window as he slowed down next to me. “I nearly ran over your foot.”
I looked up at him in surprise, not having realized I had walked into the road. “Sor—” I started to say, but he drove off before I could finish.
I walked back to the pavement and took a seat at one of the small round tables outside the pub. The woman who had whispered in my ear hovered near me but I just completely ignored her. I didn’t have time for this bullshit. How could Piper just leave? She hadn’t even said goodbye. I called her number again and clenched the phone tightly.
“Stop calling me!” she snapped.
I breathed a sigh of relief that at least she’d answered. There was no way I was leaving San Francisco without having a real conversation with her.
“You just left,” I said accusingly. “How could you do that?”
“Actually, I think you’re the one who just left,” she retorted. “We were sitting at a table chatting and you just got up and left me.”
“I was just trying to be nice to fans. That’s a part of my job.”
“That’s good for you, but you already disrespected my time when you showed up late. I wasn’t about to just sit there and wait for you to return to me when you were done flirting up a storm.”
“No one else I know has a problem with me being friendly to fans.”
“Don’t try and twist this, Zach, or should I say, Oracle Lion.” She took a deep breath. “Look, whatever. You have to do you, but I don’t have to stick around and be a witness to that. I have a life.”
“Don’t hang up, please,” I said, trying to process what she’d said.
Didn’t she know that I was the Oracle Lion? That I had duties to my fans? Why couldn’t she just accept that? No other woman had ever complained to me, let alone walked out. But for some strange reason that made me like her more.
“I didn’t intend to be rude. I’m sorry. I was lucky that you even agreed to meet up with me again, I know that.”
“Yeah, well, it seems like you don’t intend to be rude a lot. But almost every time I’ve met you, you’ve been rude as hell.”
“Not in the cupcake shop, though.”
“Yeah, maybe not there.” She sighed. “Look, I gotta go. I’m hungry, and I need to find something to eat.”
“Can I buy you dinner and we can talk about your historical romance book and what you’re working on now?”
“Why did you even read the book?” She sounded nonplussed. “Doesn’t seem your style.”
“Heaving bosoms are always my style.”
That got a small laugh out of her. “Zach, you’re a typical bro. Were you in a fraternity when you were in college?”
“Actually, yes, Delta Upsilon. I pledged with my two best friends.”
I froze. I’d nearly slipped up by talking about Radley and Jackson. I’d already forgotten the main reason for me coming to see her, forgotten as soon as I’d seen her beautiful face in the bar, waiting for me. It was strange how I felt when I saw her and talked to her. We bantered like we’d known each other for years, and when I touched her skin, I felt like I was a part of something real. It was hard to explain, even to myself, but being around Piper made me feel alive in a way I’d never felt before.
“Two best friends?” she asked lightly, but there was a slight change in her voice. “Jackson and who?”
“So can I see you?” I cut her off. “Please?”
“Maybe. It depends.” She hesitated and then continued. “I’ll meet up with you if you let me ask you a few questions.”
“A few questions?” My blood chilled. So she was writing a book about me. All of my hope and excitement dulled as I resigned myself to the fact that Piper was just another leech trying to drain me of something. I bet her leaving the pub had been a part of her game in trying to get me to come to her.
“Yeah, a few questions.” She sighed. “It’s not really for me, but it would mean a lot.”
“I’ll answer a few questions if you play a game with me.”
“What game?”
“Truth or dare.”
“Truth or dare?”
“I’ll always pick truth so that you can ask me your questions, but you have to always answer dare, and I will only answer as many questions as dares that you take and …”
“There’s more?” she interrupted me, sounding nervous.
“Yes, there’s more. One last caveat.” I paused for dramatic effect.
“And that is?”
“You have to go first.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested. “Why do I go first?”
“So I know you’re going to follow through with the dares if I answer the questions.” I grinned into the phone, thinking of all the things I was going to have her do. If she was going to play me, I might as well have a good time. “Don’t worry, we'll go back and forth. I’ll make sure that we make it fair. So what do you say, Piper, are you game?”
“Game on, Zach. The game is on. Where shall we meet?”
I decided to try and push my luck and see if she would bite. “I have a suite at the Hotel Fairmont, meet me there?”
“But what about dinner?”
“I’m your dinner,” I growled into the phone, and then because I didn’t want her to take me too seriously, I added, “We can order room service or eat in the restaurant.”
“I think I’ll choose the restaurant, thanks.”
“I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes?”
“Sure. And I’m warning you, there is no third chance. You screw this up and I’m out.”
“I won’t screw it up,” I said with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t screw you,” I said under my breath.
I wasn’t sure if she’d heard that last part because she’d already hung up. She sure did have a thing about getting off of the phone quickly, and that annoyed me. Normally, I couldn’t get a woman off of the phone fast enough, but that wasn’t the case with Piper. In fact, she hadn’t even asked me if I’d given her a burner number like most women did. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about calling from one of my pay-as-you-go phones. Maybe I’d been blinded by her smile and her wit, but Piper Meadows had very much gotten under my skin. If she wanted information from me, I was going to make her pay. I was going to make sure that by the end of the night, I was under her skin as well, and it wasn’t just going to be all about her questions. Oh no, I had other plans. Plans that were going to make her regret having ever tried to play me.