Bright City Lights

Chapter 1

1

Anna

I never imagined moving to England would change my life so profoundly. I’d recently moved to London with my boyfriend James, and I was excited for our new adventure.

James, a native Londoner, had been homesick after a few years on assignment in Copenhagen. That’s where we met and where we lived together for four years.

We were both writers, though James earned a living as a freelance editor and travel writer. He’d never been published, but I was a fulltime author. Lately, it had been a source of frustration for him. Sympathetic, I hoped and wished that our move would be just the thing to inspire him to write something so sensational that no one could turn him down.

I could write anywhere in the world and I’d always loved London so why not try something new? After the release of my book Chance Encounter in England, it would make good sense to go there to promote it. It was the first book of mine to be an international success and I was giddy with excitement.

It had even been optioned to be turned into a film! I was the luckiest woman in the world, floating all the way to our new flat on cloud nine.

The move was also an excellent escape from all the questions coming from all angles about when James and I would make babies and settle down and be a real family.

To be fair, I was twenty-nine and James thirty and all of our friends were shooting babies out left and right. At the rate they were going, they would have a football team in no time if you combined all their babies. They were cute as hell, and I loved being an auntie to all of them, just as much as I loved returning them afterwards.

I’d always pictured myself having children someday, and I loved James, but something in me balked at the idea. The thought made it a little harder to breathe. Whenever someone mentioned it, something enormous suddenly caught in my throat, constricting the passage of air to my lungs. Every time it happened I’d sit there and smile till I was blue in the face, hoping my grin would mask my silent suffocating. I didn’t know why I reacted this way, I hadn’t told anybody, not even James. It made me feel stupid every time it happened. Everyone else seemed to think having a baby was the most wonderful thing to do, so why did every bone in my body resist the notion?

The move to London came as a perfect excuse because any good responsible adult thinking of having children would know to have their life in order first. We were making ends meet with two unsteady paychecks and living in a small one-bedroom flat filled with moving boxes and fumes of new pale yellow paint. Meaning we were both working on novels right now with no money coming in from freelancing jobs. Not ideal for raising a child, right?

Everyone seemed to agree and backed off for a while.

The flat and its current state of disarray, with moving boxes in every corner and paint cans on top of the dining table, had not proved to be inspiration for much more than heated arguments about where the box with underwear or important papers had gone. Instead, I’d discovered a nice café a couple of streets away where I would go every day, order a big latte and open my computer, hoping to be inspired.

I’d found the perfect spot in the back of the room, up against a bare red brick wall, where I would watch who came and went through the door. It had proved a good little nook for hiding out and spying. I had a perfect view of life passing by the big window overlooking a small street filled with nannies hurrying off to the parks with toddlers in strollers every morning. A steady stream of business men and women came in for their coffees to go before hurrying off to catch the Tube. Mid-morning all the Yummy Mommies would dash off to spa appointments and training sessions at overpriced gyms.

There were lots of young hip boys and girls hanging around as there was a school nearby. Their sole interests in life at the present moment involved their looks and making out. I loved watching all the action and imagining what their lives must be like. As a now-regular customer I made friends with the staff, and we’d share jokes, travel tales, and celebrity gossip whenever we needed a break.

Rob Masters was a daily gossip topic; he was always in every magazine, and the hottest young heartthrob du jour. I’d had a secret crush on him since seeing his first blockbuster film five years ago, and now gobbled up every film he starred in like it was blood offered to a starving vampire.

Rob Masters had gone from a little-known British actor in small films to Hollywood heartthrob in just a few years. Mostly it was tweens and teens that lusted after him, but I knew several “older” ladies, such as myself, that didn’t mind spending two hours in a dark room drooling over him. He was only five years younger than me, anyway. Nothing cougar-ish about it!

Sometimes being the only one over seventeen in the seats made me feel like one though. He was a great actor, but it didn’t hurt he had the world’s most wonderful blue-gray eyes, the most sensual lips that looked so soft and kissable, and those arms... sinewy and muscular. They looked like a piece of art.

Secretly, I’d used him as an inspiration for many a romantic hero in my books, but no one knew except me and my childhood friend, Nina. She was into him too, despite being pregnant (again!) with her own real-life romantic hero.

The day I met Rob was like every other day since coming to London four weeks ago. I’d gotten into a fight with James that morning about something ridiculous—again.

“Have you seen my Nikes?” James yelled from the bedroom, his voice muffled. I stuck my head in to see him head-deep in a brown box.

“Where are they? Have you unpacked any of my boxes?” He sounded deeply frustrated. I was getting my things ready to go to the café.

“No, I haven’t touched your boxes.”

“Well, now I can’t find them!”

“Sorry,” I said. It had become my automatic response, to keep things calm.

“Are you off?” he asked in an accusatory tone.

“Yeah, I’m going to try and see if I can get in a couple of hours at the café. I really want to get this chapter moving.” Or just started, I thought to myself as I put my computer in its sleeve. His brown eyes darkened and he tossed the box aside, grabbing the one next to it, and began rummaging for his shoes again.

We’d never bickered much back in Copenhagen, and I wasn’t sure whose fault it was that we did now. I could never remember what we argued over or why, but I had this feeling that coming to London had transformed my once sweet attentive boyfriend into an egotistical broody person I didn’t know, and I feared it would ever end. I told myself it was because we were still in a transition phase. That once we got more settled and James reacquainted with his old city, and I got used to being in another country, all would be back to normal. I hoped it would. Not that James was my only reason for being here, but he was a huge part of it.

So, I was annoyed that morning, and just sat and stared at people coming and going, trying to find inspiration somewhere, in someone. I was already on my second latte and the blank screen stared back at me as if to say, “What? No writing today?”

I’d resorted to scrolling through f*******: to see what people were up to back home when I heard someone ask me if he could use the empty chair at my table. I answered him yes, somewhat inattentive while answering Nina on Messenger, about how London was (wonderful and frustrating at the same time). I glanced up and gave a polite smile, just to be nice, when my eyes met his.

“Oh!” I said.

What I almost said was, “Oh it’s you, from all my steamy daydreams which I’ve made my living writing about!”

Luckily, I didn’t. His blue-gray eyes lit up, and he smiled politely back at me. He pulled the chair to the table next to me where a group of guys, all mid-twenties and all dressed similarly in T-shirts, hoodies, and jeans, were seated. I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of how it reminded me of teenage girls who dress alike. I fell into that trap as a teenager, when Nina and I would be spotted wearing matching Doc Martens boots and oversized shirts over slouchy, faded jeans, complete with a torn knee. Yup, and Bon Jovi was the name of my tween crush!

I looked up at Susan, who loitered behind the bar miming the words Oh My God! behind Rob’s back.

Susan was my first new friend in London. A funny loudmouth who wasn’t afraid to tell it how it was, according to her. She was a huge Rob Masters fan, repeatedly pointing him out in every magazine, and asking me a gazillion questions about how I liked his face, his films, his clothes, or even just his cheekbones (I liked it all very much, thank you).

I wrote to Nina about Rob being next to me and occasionally dared a glimpse in his direction. She went into overdrive, not that I could blame her, and demanded to know everything from how he looked in real life to how he had voiced his question about the chair. His group was having a good time, bantering and laughing loudly. The sound made it hard for me to keep my eyes on the screen, where Nina was posting heart emoticons and love gifs.

After a while, the group split up. Rob was the last one at the table. He ordered a coffee and whipped out a book, then, with a very serious expression, reclined in his chair to read. I made a mental note to create a literary and culturally distinguished “Rob-hero” in this book I would eventually write. I could totally see him with nerdy glasses, a gray cardigan, and maybe a glass of red wine, sitting in a dusty old library somewhere reading poems by... some old guy famous for writing things like that.

That’s when I saw it! He was reading Chance Encounter. My book! At first, I couldn’t stop staring, which caused Rob to look up and smile at me. I stared down at my computer, for fear of making him think I was a crazy stalker fan. Even though me not being a teenage girl made me somewhat unfit for this category, I think.

But then I wondered, why was he reading my book? I gave him bonus points for having an open mind, but even I, the author, didn’t get offended when my work was classified as chick-lit, because it was. Simple as that. Rob didn’t fit the target audience for chick-lit.

I leaned over and asked him, “So, what do you think of the book?” I was sure my face turned the same color as a double-decker bus. What on Earth had possessed me to ask him such a thing?

“Actually, I don’t quite know what to think of it yet, I mean… um... it’s not the type of book I usually read.” He smiled at me. Okay, so he didn’t bolt out of here, fearing I might be a diehard Rob Masters fan, only sitting here hoping to run into him. Which gave me the courage to continue asking him about the book, while crossing my fingers under the table, hoping he wouldn’t see the black-and-white photo of me on the back cover.

“So, why are you reading it?” I asked.

“Um, it’s research.” He shifted in the seat, glancing up at me with hooded eyes (late night last night?) and running one hand through his hair, which made it messier than it already was. My heart threatened to jump out of my chest while I struggled with the most basic act of breathing. This time it had nothing to do with babies. No, this was a different kind of not breathing. Rob Masters would be in a film based on a book I’d written! And I didn’t know about this until now! Why else would he be reading my book as research?

I wanted to give him some kind of response, but in between wrapping my mind around this news, struggling for air, and my phone going off, I never got around to it. I answered the phone too late; it was my literary agent Maria. Probably to tell me something I’d already found out by myself just now.

One: The film was now a reality. And two: That Mr. Rob f*****g Fabric Of Every Daydream I Had These Days Masters would play the hero Martin!

I quickly gathered my stuff and threw a “Nice to meet you, good luck reading your book, gotta go!” explanation and dashed out of there. I ran all the way home with my laptop, my jacket, my phone, my keys, and my pen in my arms. When I got home, I realized three things:

1. I’d met Rob Masters, and he was ever so much more dreamy and sexy in real life than on screen.

2. My scarf was nowhere, meaning I’d probably left it on the chair in the café or dropped it on my way home, which was a bummer as it was my favorite one.

3. I didn’t pay for my lattes! But I’m sure Susan would forgive me when I told her why.