Spanish Disco

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Book Group Questions

1

“H ello, Buttercup.”

Most people panic that a jangling phone at 4:09 in the morning is a death call—the one in which a cop is about to tell you he’s found your sibling or mother or father plastered like a bloody possum on the pavement of I-95. Instead, I uttered his name like a curse: “Michael!”

“Yes, darling, it’s me.”

I reached in vain for the lamp.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you know what time it is.”

“What would David have for breakfast?”

“Breakfast?”

“Because I think eggs indicates a surprising lack of concern about his health. After all, his wife has been nagging him for years about his cholesterol. His smoking. And this could be his lone act of defiance. His way of telling the world to fuck off, as you, my dear, would so eloquently put it.”

“Or he could merely like sunny-side up and a side of bacon, Michael. Is it that important what your character eats for breakfast?”

My fingers found the little pull-chain on my bedside lamp. I squinted and reached for the glass of warm bourbon and water I keep on my nightstand for conversations precisely like this one.

“Vitally.”

“Michael, you know I am not at my best until a good, solid six hours from now. And that only after a pot of coffee. Can’t this wait?”

“Be a love,” he said, his English accent trying to charm me through the phone line. “Greet the dawn with me.”

“Greet the dawn? Michael, I don’t want to greet the dawn with you. I don’t want to greet noon with you.”

“Impossible! You don’t want to enjoy the splendor outside your balcony with me? Your favorite author?”

“Favorite is not—most definitely not—the word that comes to mind right now.” I sighed. “Those acknowledgments better drip with praise.”

“To my dream editor, the love of my life, Cassie Hayes, without whom this book would not be possible and without whom I would curl into a fetal position and remain there. For life without the beautiful and witty Miss Hayes would, in fact, be life not worth living at all.”

“That’s a start.”

“And she has a remarkable sense of the sublime and a true command of all dangling participles.”

“And?”

“And she’s simply charming before the dawn.”

Stretching, I sighed. “All right. Let me grab my robe and start a pot of coffee.”

“Are you naked, Cassie?”

Michael Pearton was, quite possibly, the best writer I had ever worked with or read. He was also faintly mysterious. His back cover head shots showed a man with black curly hair and a crooked smile offset by a long, ragged scar on his decidedly square chin. He was both movie-star handsome and bar-fight dangerous. We’d never met but indulged in flirtation bordering on phone sex. Because I wasn’t getting any other kind of sex, I tolerated his predawn ramblings.

“Why, yes, Michael, I am,” I murmured. “Stark, raving naked. My nipples are hard because you know I keep my house colder than a meat locker regardless of what the weather is outside. And I am now shoving said nipples into my robe and shuffling in my bare feet to the kitchen where I will start a pot of coffee.”

I rested the portable phone on my shoulder, talking in my pre-coffee rasp as I tied my green silk kimono, a gift from another author’s trip to Singapore.

“I do so love it when you talk dirty, Cassie.”

“I do so love it when you call me in the middle of the day.”

“So nasty when you haven’t had that cup. You know you should switch to tea, love. Do you ever use the set I shipped you?”

I flicked on the kitchen light, shielding my eyes from the brightness as it reflected on my Florida-white tile and cabinets, and stared at the sterling tea set perched, never used, on my breakfast bar. He had bought it at a flea market of some sort and shipped it over to the States. It was tarnished, but the elaborate handle on the teapot was ornately baroque, and though it matched nothing in my condominium, I adored it.

“Yes. It’s gorgeous.”

“You’re a horrible liar. But I know it probably looks lovely wherever you have it.”

“Michael, why does inspiration only strike you in the middle of my night?”

My Mr. Coffee machine started making noises, and I willed it to brew faster.

“It’s very odd really. I go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night absolutely certain of what must happen next. Oh…and showers. I get inspiration in the shower. And now, everyone else in London is getting ready for lunch, and I just have to finish this scene. It’s sad, really. I have a twenty-thousand-dollar antique cherrywood desk good enough for the queen herself, and I never write a damn word sitting at it.”

I knew he was sitting stark, raving naked in his bed, with his laptop and a hard-on for companionship.

“So your inspiration is that David is worrying about breakfast?”