Page 3 of Unexpected You
Eloise stared at me for a second and then sighed. “Go ahead.”
I’d missed something. “Go ahead with what?”
She pressed her lips together. “Get the shock out of your system. Tell me how much your mother, grandmother, sister, friend loves my books, ask me for an autograph, ask me what my next book is about, ask me if I can give you feedback on your manuscript, or get cast in the next movie, etc.”
She waved an elegant hand as she spoke. This was a speech she’d given many, many times before.
“Oh,” I said, flummoxed for a second. “My mom does like your books. I haven’t read them. Sorry.” I winced and realized I should have at least pretended that I had.
Eloise Roth’s lips twitched for a second. “No need to apologize. Anything else you need to get out of the way?”
I shook my head, wiping my sweaty hands on my pants.
“No, I’d like to start the interview, if we could,” I said. There. That was professional-ish. Sort of.
Eloise nodded, and then the interview started, and I wish I could scroll back to the beginning. Her questions were standard, but they were said with that clipped tone that did something to me. I didn’t want her to think I was completely incompetent, and not just because of the job. I would never survive having Eloise Roth meeting me once and me making an absolute fool of myself.
There was no question that I wasn’t getting the job. I had no idea what I was even saying half the time, as if my brain had disconnected from my mouth. I was giving her answers, but were they any good? Who the hell knew.
“Now, there is just the small matter of signing an NDA, should you move forward and be offered this position,” Eloise said, pulling some documents out of her bag and sliding them over to me.
“Understood,” I said, taking the paper and trying to figure out how to get it into my very small bag without folding or rolling it up like a commoner.
Eloise watched me struggle for a few seconds. “I can send you an electronic copy, if that would be better.”
Feeling my entire face (including my ears) go red, I set the papers back on the table. “That would be great.”
She nodded and sat back in her chair, studying me again. I had no choice but to let her. No doubt she was doing the math and realizing that I had wasted her time. I was about to thank her for her time when she spoke.
“What was the best book you read recently?” she asked, completely throwing me off.
“Oh,” I said, my brain freezing for a second and then refusing to give me a single title. Answering questions like this under extreme pressure wasn’t one of my skills. “Give me two seconds and I’ll tell you.”
I got out my phone and navigated to the reading app that I used to keep track of everything, and as a backup in case I forgot to charge my ereader, which happened a lot.
“That’s right. It was the first book in this alien romance series that my friend Reid recommended. And by recommended, she basically forced me to read. So these women have been kidnapped from earth by aliens, but they end up crashing on this planet covered in ice and it just so happens there are a bunch of these big hot alien dudes with blue skin that need help repopulating the planet and you can imagine where things go from there,” I said, realizing I’d done that thing where I said too much, too fast and now I was definitely not getting this job.
Eloise opened her mouth and then closed it. “Blue aliens?”
“Yeah, they’re blue, but they’re all ripped, of course, and they’re really into pleasing the women, so after the initial shock, they end up falling in love. Oh, and there’s parasites involved that match them up.”
Eloise blinked those beautiful eyes at me.
“It was really compelling,” I added, wishing that I could pull a rope and fall through an escape hatch to get out of this situation. At least I hadn’t mentioned the unusual blue alien anatomy.
She shocked the hell out of me by pulling a pen and a little notebook out of her bag and asking, “what was the title and author?”
Shocked as hell, I told her and watched her write it down and then snap the notebook closed and set it on the table.
“I’m sorry I’ve never read your books,” I said again. “I don’t tend to read non-queer romance. With the exception of the alien books. Those were an experiment that paid off.”
Why? Why was my brain doing this to me?
“I’m not offended that you haven’t read my books, Cadence,” she said, and it was a good thing I was sitting down because the way she said my full name? Yeah, that worked for me. I closed my eyes for a second.
“That’s good to know. And thank you for your time. I really hope you find someone who meets your needs.” It was time to extricate myself from this interview and go and find Hunter so I could tell her all about my celebrity encounter and make her buy me something sweet.
Eloise nodded. “Of course. I’ll send over the NDA for you to look over. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be in touch about the position.”