Get There: (Originally Published in the Print Anthology a RED HOT VALENTINE'S DAY) Read online

  Get There

  Megan Hart

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  Dedication

  To Superman, for being such a good sport. To JRA and JTP, for being such good inspiration—yes, it IS because you are so awesome. To the Bootsquad and my fellow Mavericks for the crit: I can’t ever do this without you all.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Get There

  An Excerpt from “Nothing Else Matters”

  About the Author

  Also by Megan Hart

  An Excerpt from Seduced by the Gladiator by Lauren Hawkeye

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Get There

  I could get there by bus. Watch the country go by in ribbons of brown and green as we pass by towns the names of which don’t matter, because they’re not yours. The clatter-clack will lull me to sleep and I’ll dream of you. The mountains will become your breasts, the hills the slope of your hips, and the valleys . . . the valleys will turn into that sweet valley between your thighs, and I’ll wake with an erection hard enough to bore tunnels. And then, when I get there, all I’ll have to do is lay you down and fill you up with all of me.

  Because you’ve already filled me with all of you.

  Edie Darowish folded the note card closed and pressed it to her smile for a second before putting it aside in the “keep” pile. That one was twice the size of the “toss” pile, but she couldn’t bear to throw away even one of Ty’s letters. It didn’t matter that in just a couple weeks they’d be together again, this time for good. Having Ty in person would be infinitely better than having only his words, but these letters were important, too.

  He always said his strength was with drawing and not prose. He sent her lots of sketches, sometimes cute and funny cartoons and other times breath-stealing sensual line drawings, so the rarity of his written communication was doubly precious. Not to mention sexy as all get-out. Ty might claim he was better with pictures than with words, but reading over what he’d written to her just a few months ago, Edie disagreed.

  The file box in front of her was still half full as she sifted through the memorabilia she’d collected over the past two years. She pulled out a handful of receipts from restaurants and hotels, places they’d gone on vacation. Each was a memory and a story all its own, but she tossed most of them in the trash. There really was only so much she could take with her all the way from California to Pennsylvania, and living with Ty would mean she didn’t have to keep every scrap any more.

  Edie worked until her joints ached from sitting cross-legged on the floor, but when she was done, she ended up with a bulging manila envelope of letters and drawings and a garbage bag stuffed with the rest. Not bad for a few hours’ work. She got up, stretching, and looked around at the stacks of file boxes she’d seal with tape and ship to the new house.

  She’d already sold her furniture except for the Art Deco Waterfall armoire, dresser, and vanity that had been hers since childhood and had already been shipped off along with most everything else. The rest hadn’t been worth much. She’d lived in this apartment for seven years and hadn’t ever bothered to do more than make it a place to sleep and eat and work. She had a truck from the local thrift store scheduled the day before her flight to come for all that was left and an appointment at the car dealership to sell her car, too. She’d buy a new one in Pennsylvania. Ty planned on driving a moving truck, his car towed behind, from Maine. They were going to get there on Valentine’s Day.

  Edie’s stretch turned into a little dance as she thought of it. They’d been officially a couple for two years but had never managed to spend a Valentine’s Day together. Christmas and New Year’s, yes, and once a memorable Fourth of July, but February was a bad time for both of them to get away. Not this year, though. This year she’d be with him, and no matter what they did, it was going to be romantic because they were together.

  She’d stripped her apartment down to bare walls and floors, but she hadn’t yet dismantled her office. She’d gotten rid of the desk and boxed up most of her paperwork and binders, but she wouldn’t be able to completely pack up her laptop and her current projects until she was ready to move. A glance at the clock told her it was time to talk to Ty.

  A scan of her instant messenger friends’ list showed her he hadn’t yet logged on, so she checked through her e-mail and visited the Runner message board just to keep herself updated. As usual, the new threads had accumulated during the day while old ones got bumped to the next page. Edie didn’t read all the messages, most of which were squeals about the show’s longtime star, Justin Ross, and this season’s new costar, Tristan Winsam. The boys got most of the attention at the board with only a handful of threads dedicated to the show’s other aspects, but one header caught her eye.

  Runner Wedding, did you hear?

  Her cursor hovered over the thread, but Edie hesitated before clicking. She liked checking in to keep up with what the fans were saying, but she ignored most of the board’s messages because reading about how stupid her plotlines were when they didn’t involve Justin taking off his shirt, or how much fans hated the episodes she’d written solo wasn’t exactly great inspiration. Finding the threads that praised her and her work on the show’s long-running mythology, or the fact she was the one to introduce the love story into the plot, were a thrill, but she’d been burned a few too many times to risk wading through the less-than-complimentary reviews just to find a nugget of squee.

  Curiosity won out, and she clicked.

  And laughed.

  And blushed.

  The facts weren’t exactly spot-on, but that was all right. She didn’t really want the Runner fan community knowing exactly where she and Ty were moving or when they were getting married. She might not be as popular as Ross and Winsam, but she’d learned her lesson about the lengths fans would go in order to get close to their idols. Some of them wouldn’t hesitate at trying to get close to one of the show’s writers in hopes of getting an introduction to the stars.

  The comments following the initial post were full of congratulations and speculation, but one thing stood out. All the posters knew that Edie, one of Runner’s senior writers, and Tynan Murphy, illustrator of the first three Runner graphic tie-in novels, had met on this very message board during a promotional discussion about the novels before they were released. Which of course led to the inevitable rumors that Ross and Winsam actually read and posted on the message board and had even asked one of the fans out on a date last year.

  When she got that far into the conversation, Edie, who knew for a fact neither of the boys bothered reading the boards, logged off. She’d never thought she and Ty would make gossip headlines, but it just proved again how rabid the show’s fan base was, that they’d grab up and tear apart any scrap of Runner-related information. Not that she really minded, in the long run. The show had been her bread and butter for four years, after all. And it had introduced her to Ty.

  See the latest? Ty’s message window popped up with a familiar doink sound. We’re big news on the board.

  I saw. I didn’t know we were getting married on set, or that Justin and Tristan were going to be your dual best men. When did you plan to tell me that?

  Ty’s smiley face emoticon could never replace the sound of his laugh, but seeing it, Edie smiled, too. Typing couldn’t replace the sound of his voice, either, but they’d agreed daily instant message sessions were better than expensive long-distance phone bills or staticky cell-phone calls. Maintaining a long-dista