Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs Read online

  Geek Romance:

  Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs

  Kristine Grayson

  Copyright Information

  Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs

  Copyright © 2012 Kristine Grayson

  First published in 2011 by WMG Publishing

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2012 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Benis Arapovic/Dreamstime

  “The Charming Way” by Kristine Grayson first published by WMG Publishing as a standalone e-book in 2010.

  “Geeks Bearing Gifts” by Kristine Grayson was first published in The Trouble With Heroes, edited by Denise Little, Daw Books, November, 2009.

  “Name-Calling” by Kristine Grayson was first published as an Amazon Short on Amazon.com in 2005.

  “Knowing Jack” by Kristine Grayson first published by WMG Publishing as a standalone e-book in 2010.

  “Artistic Photographs” by Kristine Grayson first published by WMG Publishing as a standalone e-book in 2010.

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

  and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  The Charming Way

  Geeks Bearing Gifts

  Name-Calling

  Knowing Jack

  Artistic Photographs

  Copyright Information

  About the Author

  Introduction

  My mind does not work like other people’s. I’ve known that all of my life, mostly because when I make a comment, everyone else looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy. I haven’t “gone” crazy. I was born that way.

  Case in point: I write romance novels. But so far, my heroes have included an accountant, a nerdy Prince Charming (a real Prince Charming, not some wannabe), and a man who looks like a garden gnome (really—think the Roaming Gnome from those Travelocity commercials). All right, so the accountant is somewhat normal. Until you discover that he’s an accountant because he can magically manipulate numbers and…oh, never mind.

  My twisted mind is in evidence in this collection. Two stories are “traditional” romance, if you count Prince Charming falling in love with the Evil Stepmother traditional. If you don’t, only one story is traditional. That would be “Name-Calling,” which is about decisions that women make these days before getting married. And even that’s not really traditional, given that our hero makes an appearance only toward the end of the story. He’s—I’m sorry to say it—an afterthought.

  The first story in the volume, “The Charming Way,” started as an assignment to write about star-crossed lovers. I figured Prince Charming and the Evil Stepmother are star-crossed; the editor of the anthology didn’t agree with me, which was lucky for me. Because this short story became the basis for my novel Wickedly Charming. I wouldn’t have turned the story into a novel if I hadn’t decided to prove how star-crossed these lovers could actually be.

  “Geeks Bearing Gifts” has a happily-ever-after ending, but not a romance ending. You’ll see the difference, after you meet Ray Greco. He’s probably the only non-Geek romantic interest in the entire collection and I’ll say no more. You can see, however, where I fall on non-Geeks.

  I’m known for writing about magic and romance, but I’m not known for westerns…yet. “Knowing Jack” and “Artistic Photographs” were originally written for a friend at a publishing company that published two books before it went out of business. No one wanted short stories about the old West. But I fell in love with these characters, and I trust you will as well. Please, do yourself a favor, and read these two stories in order. “Knowing Jack” comes first.

  I’m busy writing more short fiction as well as novels about the Interim Fates, more Princes Charming, and a fairy tale mystery series. The new boom in electronic books has allowed me to stretch my short fiction muscles. I get to write romance short stories again. So smile and remember—anyone can be a romance hero, so long as he has a heart.

  —Kristine Grayson

  December 12, 2010

  The Charming Way

  Kristine Grayson

  Book Fair

  The very words of the sign filled Mellie with loathing. Book Fair indeed. More like Book Unfair.

  Every time someone wrote something down, they got it wrong. She’d learned that in her exceptionally long life.

  Not that she was old—not by any stretch. In fact, by the standards of her people, she was in early middle age. She’d been in early middle age, it seemed, for most of her adult life. Of course that wasn’t true. She’d only been in early middle age for her life in the public eye—two very different things.

  And now she was paying for it.

  She stood with her hands on her hips (which hadn’t expanded [much] since she was a beautiful young girl, who caught the eye of every man) and looked at the pavilion, with the banner strung across its multitude of doors.

  The Largest Book Fair in the World! the banner proclaimed in bright red letters. The largest book fair with the largest number of publishers, writers, readers and moguls—movie and gaming and every other type the entertainment industry had come up with.

  It probably should be called Mogul Fair (Mogul Unfair?). But they weren’t pitching Moguls (although someone probably should; it was her experience that anyone with a shred of power [present company included] should be pitched across a room [or down a staircase] every now and then); they were pitching books.

  This season’s books, next season’s books, books for every race, creed, and constituency, large books, small books and the all-important evergreen books which were not, as she once believed, books about evergreens, but books that never went out of style, like Little Women or anything by Jane Austen or, dammit, that villain Hans Christian Andersen.

  Not that he started it all. He didn’t. It was those Grimm brothers, two better named individuals she had never met.

  It didn’t matter that Mellie had set them straight. By then, their “tales” were already on the market, poisoning the well, so to speak. (Or the apple. Those boys did love their poisons. It would have been so much better for all concerned if they had turned their attention to crime fiction. They could have invented the entire category. But noooo. They had to focus on what they called “fairies” as misnamed as their little “tales.”) She made herself breathe. Even alone with her own thoughts, she couldn’t help going on a bit of a rant about those creepy little men.

  She made herself turn away from the pavilion and walk to the back of her minivan. With the push of a button, the hatchback unlocked (now that was magic) and she pulled the thing open.

  Fifty signs and placards leaned haphazardly against each other. Last time, she’d only needed twenty. She hoped she would use all fifty this time.

  She glanced at her watch. One hour until the Book Unfair opened.

  Half an hour until her group showed up.

  Mellie turned her attention to the pavilion again. Impossible to tell where she’d get the most media exposure. Certainly not at those doors, with the handicapped ramp blocking access along one side.

  Once someone else arrived to help her hand out the placards, she could leave for a few minutes and reconnoiter.

  She wanted the maximum am
ount of airtime for the minimum amount of exposure. She’d learned long ago that if you gave the media too much time in the beginning, they’d distort everything you said.

  Better to parcel out information bit by bit.

  The Book Unfair was only her first salvo.

  But, she knew, it would be the most important.

  ***

  He parked his silver Mercedes at the far end of the massive parking lot. He did it not so that he wouldn’t be recognized—he wouldn’t anyway—but because he’d learned long ago that if he parked his Mercedes anywhere near the front, the car would either end up with door dings, key scratches, or would go missing.

  He reached into the glove box and removed his prized purple bookseller’s badge. He had worked two years to acquire that thing. Not that he minded. It still amazed him that no one at the palace had thought of opening a bookstore on the grounds.

  He could still hear his father’s initial objection: We are not shopkeepers! he’d said in that tone that meant shopkeepers were lower than scullery maids. In fact, shopkeepers had become his father’s favorite epithet in the past few decades, scullery maid being both politically and familially incorrect.

  It took some convincing—the resident scholars had to prove to his father’s satisfaction that true shopkeepers made a living at what they did, and in no way would a bookstore on the palace grounds provide anyone’s living—but the bookstore finally happened.

  With it came a myriad of book catalogues and discounts and advanced reading copies and a little bit of bookish swag.

  He’d been in heaven. Particularly when he realized he could attend every single book fair in the Greater World and get free books.

  Not that he couldn’t pay for his own books—he could, as well as books for each person in the entire kingdom (which he did last year, to much complaint: it seemed everyone thought they would be tested on the contents of said gift book. Not everyone loved reading as much as he did, more’s the pity).

  Books had been his retreat since boyhood. He loved hiding in imaginary worlds. Back then, books were harder to come by, often hidden in monasteries (and going to those had caused some consternation for his parents until they realized he was reading, not practicing for his future profession). Once the printing press caught on, he bought his own books—he now devoted the entire winter palace to his collection—but it still wasn’t enough.

  If he could, he would read every single book ever written—or at least scan them, trying to get a sense of them. Even with the unusually long life granted to people of the Third Kingdom especially when compared with people in the Greater World (the world that had provided his Mercedes and this quite exciting book fair), he would never achieve it. There were simply too many existing books in too many languages, with too many more being written all the time.

  He felt overwhelmed when he thought of all the books he hadn’t read, all the books he wanted to read, and all the books he would want to read. Not to mention all the books that he hadn’t heard of.

  Those dismayed him the most.

  Hence, the book fair.

  He was told to come early. There was a breakfast for booksellers—coffee and donuts, the website said, free of charge. He loved this idea of free as an enticement. He wondered if he could use it for anything back home.

  The morning was clear with the promise of great heat. A smog bank had started to form over the city, and he couldn’t see the ocean, although the brochures assured him it was somewhere nearby. The parking lot looked like a city all by itself. It went on for blocks, delineated only by signs that labeled the rows with double letters.

  The only other car in this part of the lot wasn’t a car at all but one of those minivans built so that families could take their possessions and their entertainment systems with them.

  The attractive black-haired woman unloading a passel of signs from the van looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember where he had seen her before.

  He wasn’t about to go ask her either. His divorce had left him feeling very insecure, especially around women. Whenever he saw a pretty woman, the words of his ex-wife rose in his head.

  She had screamed them at him in that very last fight, the horrible unforgettable fight when she took the glass slipper—the thing that defined all that was good and pure in their relationship—and heaved it against the wall above his head.

  Not so charming now, are you, asshole? Nope, not charming at all.

  He had to concede she had a point—although he never would have conceded it to her. Still, those formerly dulcet tones echoed in his brain whenever he looked in the mirror and saw not the square-jawed hero who saved her from a life of poverty, but a balding, paunchy middle-aged man who would never achieve his full potential—not without killing his father, and that was a different story entirely.

  Charming squared his shoulders and pinned his precious name badge to his shirt. The name badge did not use his real name. It used his nom de plum—which sounded a lot more romantic than The Name He Used Because His Real Name Was Stupid.

  He called himself Dave. Dave Encanto, for those who required last names. His family didn’t even have a last name—that’s how long they’d been around—and even though he knew Prince was now considered a last name, he couldn’t bring himself to use it.

  He couldn’t bring himself to use any name, really. He still thought of himself as Charming even though he knew his ex was right—he wasn’t “charming” any more. Not that he didn’t try. It was just that charming used to come easily to him, when he had a head full of black black hair, and an unwrinkled face, and the squarest of square jaws.

  Prince Charming was a young man’s name, in truth, and then only the name of an arrogant young man. To use that name now would seem like wish fulfillment or a really bad joke. He couldn’t go with P.C. because the initials had been usurped, and people would catch the double irony of a prince trying to be p.c. with his own name change.

  And as for Prince—that name was overused. In addition to the musician, princes abounded. People named their horses Prince, for heaven’s sake, and their dogs, and their surrogate children. In other words, only the nutty named a human being Prince these days, and much as Charming resented his father, he couldn’t put either of his parents in the nutty category.

  So he told people to call him Dave, which was emphatically not a family name. Too many family names had been co-opted as well—Edward, George, Louis, Philippe, even Harry not just by another prince, but by some potter’s kid as well.

  Dave, not David, a man who could go anywhere incognito any time he liked. Gone were the days when people would do a double-take, and some would say, Aren’t you…? or You know you look just like that prince—whatsisname?—Charming.

  Now they nodded and looked past him, hoping to see someone more important. Which was why he preferred the Greater World to the Third Kingdom. In the Greater World, they knew he wasn’t the Prince Charming. To them, the Prince Charming was a man in a fairy tale, a creature of unattainable perfection, or—more accurately (he believed) a cartoon character, an animated hero.

  He was none of those things. True, he had a longer than usual life, but that caused longer than usual problems—like waiting for his father, who also had a longer than usual life, to kick the proverbial bucket (which in the Third Kingdom, wasn’t as proverbial as you might think).

  But as for magical powers, Charming had none. Besides that all-encompassing charm, which Ella had told him in no uncertain terms was gone now. Ella, who got his estates, half of his money, and custody of their two daughters because—true to form—his father wouldn’t let him contest the divorce over girls.

  He sighed and started across the monstrous parking lot. Several other cars were pouring into the first entrance, way up front, near the doors. The parking there, he knew from the e-mails he had gotten, was reserved for booksellers and the disabled—or the differently abled, as he had been bidden to say. The e-mails claimed he would need the close-in parking for the hundred
s of pounds of books he would lug back to his car at regular intervals. But he had lugged chain mail and two injured companions over a hundred miles. He figured he could handle a few books.

  The attractive woman had pulled out the last sign. He saw the initials—PETA—and felt a surge of disappointment. He’d seen what those animal rights lovers had done to his mother’s favorite fur coat the one and only time he had taken her to the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. His mother had been horribly traumatized, although not so badly that she didn’t implore him to bring the entire cast of the Met to the Third Kingdom at the end of every opera season.

  He walked around the woman, and headed toward the pavilion, ready for coffee, donuts, and some insight into this season’s bestsellers.

  ***

  Mellie watched the well dressed man walk the length of the parking lot. He wore what was known as business casual—a long-sleeved shirt and dark pants (no suit coat, no tie) but he still looked elegant. Some of that was the clothing itself; there was nothing casual about it. It was tailored to fit—and fit it did, over a well-muscled back, broad shoulders, and a nice tight—

  She shook her head and looked away. If she really thought about it, she had to acknowledge that men were the source of her troubles. From her know-it-all first husband who had left her a young widow with two extremely young daughters to her beloved second husband who stupidly introduced her as a fait accompli to his own daughter starting a resentment that continued to this day, men had been the root cause of her dilemmas from the moment she hit the public eye.