The Accidental Bestseller (10 page)

Except for that damned blinking cursor.

Every once in a while she stopped between games long enough to make a trip to the pantry or check e-mail or click back to Word—where that damned cursor blinked back.

She both wanted and needed to write. If for no other reason than to blot out Cal’s defection, she craved the oblivion of words and imagined images, but no matter how many times she curved her fingers over the keyboard, she couldn’t find the right words with which to begin.

Graham-cracker crumbs littered her keyboard and gathered in the lap of her robe. Her notes lay strewn across her desk, but she didn’t have the will to decipher them. Her face felt sticky from junk food mixed with tears. It desperately needed to be washed—just like the rest of her. She considered taking a shower but was oddly reluctant to go upstairs where she’d have to see how much Calvin had taken with him.

Just past noon a strange car drove up the drive. From her office window, which fronted the street, Kendall watched what turned out to be a bright red Jaguar pull to a stop. The driver-side door opened and she got a flash of a magnetic Realtor’s sign, though she couldn’t read the name of the firm. A long shapely leg poked out of the car and a tall, willowy blonde emerged.

Feeling slightly ridiculous, but unwilling to be spotted by anyone who looked that put together, Kendall eased carefully out of her desk chair and onto the floor so that she couldn’t be seen through the triple window under which her desk was centered.

She crouched there as the tap of high heels on the brick walkway announced the blonde’s approach. Kendall held her breath even as she berated herself for being such a wuss. It was her house, her prerogative how she dressed and what she did in it. She didn’t have to hide. If she wanted to she could meet the woman’s gaze through her office window and simply choose not to answer the door.

Instead she crouched beneath her desk like some modern-day Lucy Ricardo waiting for the woman to go away.

The doorbell rang, the multitoned chime echoing loudly through the empty house. Kendall waited, barely breathing, for the stranger to go away, but after a couple seconds’ wait the bell rang again. It rang a third time.

And then, unbelievably, a key turned in the lock and the front door of her home swung open.

“Hello?” The woman stepped all the way into the foyer and looked right through the open French doors into Kendall’s office. Her gaze slid down to Kendall, who was still crouched on the floor.

Kendall’s mind, which had been moving incredibly slowly up to that point, began to race through possible options.

The phone was on the opposite end of her desk, too far away to reach, and it seemed unlikely the intruder was going to stand idly by while Kendall lunged for it and dialed 911.

Their gazes met—the intruder’s a clear and very startled blue, Kendall’s undoubtedly wild and unfocused. An empty marshmallow bag, left over from last Thanksgiving’s sweet potato casserole, blew off the desk and landed on the carpet beside her.

A strange woman had just walked into her home and found her cowering beneath her desk. After a few agonizing heartbeats and an unadulterated adrenaline rush, the most salient fact sank in: The strange woman had a
key
.

Kendall straightened with all the dignity she could muster and cinched the belt of her robe tighter around her waist. “Who are you?” She looked the woman up and down, trying to understand what was happening. “And what are you doing in my house?”

The woman took a step forward, pocketed the key, and offered her empty hand, which Kendall ignored.

“Cal,” the blonde began then stopped. “Mr. Aims told me you were considering putting the house on the market. I’m Laura Wiles. I’m with Harvey Regis Realty.” She flashed a brilliant smile. “I’m a ten-million-dollar seller.”

Putting the house on the market?

There was a whooshing sound in Kendall’s ears that threatened to drown out the rest of the woman’s words. Surely she’d misheard. Or misunderstood. She and Calvin had moved into this house as young marrieds and raised Melissa and Jeffrey here.

She swallowed purposefully, like she did on a plane to compensate for changing altitude, in an effort to clear her ears.

“Anyway, Cal, um, Mr. Aims gave me the key so that I could take a look around and start working on the listing. I rang the bell first like I always do. I’m really sorry for barging in on you. I didn’t realize anyone was home.”

Kendall swallowed again and willed the whooshing sound to recede as she considered the woman in front of her. Laura Wiles was somewhere in her midthirties, a good ten years younger than Kendall. Her hair, which was salon cut and artfully highlighted, hung past her shoulders. She wore a light pink summer-weight suit over a lacy white camisole. Her dainty feet were encased in pointy-toed three-inch heels. Diamond studs sparkled at her ears and her lipstick matched her suit exactly.

More importantly, she was on a first-name basis with Kendall’s husband. And Calvin had given her a key.

Kendall dropped her gaze and was confronted with twin chocolate stains on the lapels of her robe. The hands that she smoothed down her sides encountered frayed patches of ter rycloth and other unidentifiable sticky spots.

Her tongue moved over her dry lips and she got a taste of cheddar cheese from the stale Cheetos she’d uncovered at some point that morning. What she looked like began to sink in and she could tell by the Realtor’s face that her disheveled state had not gone unnoticed.

“I see I’ve caught you at a bad time. I’m so sorry for intruding. I’ll, um, just let myself out and come back another—”

“Give me the key.” Kendall held out her hand, palm up.

Laura Wiles, whose name was now branded in Kendall’s head for all eternity, took another step back. But her chin went up and her eyes telegraphed a warning. If there’d been any doubt, Kendall now knew this was not some uninvolved Realtor who happened to call Kendall’s husband by his first name. This was
her
, the woman Calvin was getting ready to jettison his old life for.

And he thought he could give
her
the listing on the house Kendall hadn’t agreed to sell.

Kendall stood stock still with her hand extended while adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream and her mind raced. Their gazes were locked and Kendall had this bizarre image of them standing there all day in some sort of Mexican standoff until Calvin finally came home and . . . what? Kendall’s brain adamantly refused to go there.

“I suggest you give me the key now,” Kendall said. “You may have my husband for the moment, but you will never get the listing to my house.” The younger woman blanched and Kendall felt a small surge of victory. “I will personally burn this house down over my head before I’ll let you list it or live in it. Do you understand?”

Kendall watched as the other woman considered her options. Kendall’s hand had begun to tremble from being stuck out there for so long, but Kendall didn’t pull it back.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” The Realtor reached in her pocket and pulled out the key. “Look at you.” She shook her head, the professional mask gone, allowing the disgust to show on her face. “No wonder he doesn’t want you anymore.” She wrinkled her nose and dropped the key in Kendall’s outstretched palm with her French-tipped fingernails.

“Frankly I couldn’t care less about the house,” Laura Wiles said succinctly. “It would be a hard sell anyway. And I certainly have no interest in living in it.”

She settled her Coach bag firmly on her shoulder and stared Kendall in the eye like a gunslinger fingering the ivory handles of her Colt .45. “But I’m going to keep your husband,
Mrs
. Aims. That much you can be sure of.”

Kendall watched the blonde leave. She relocked the front door behind her then stood in the foyer for a long time trying to absorb what had just happened.

There really was another woman. Calvin had already moved on and her little tussle with his girlfriend had accomplished absolutely nothing. The small flush of victory she’d felt when demanding the return of her key had all but faded. Life as she knew it was now over.

Kendall walked into her office and stared down at the desk she’d tried to hide under and knew one thing for sure. She couldn’t write—or even think—here. She couldn’t
be
here. She would not stay in this house one more minute than she had to.

Moving now at a speed she hadn’t come close to all week, Kendall practically flew up the stairs where she dumped her conference clothes out of the suitcase that still sat on the bedroom floor, then ran hot water for a shower. While she washed her hair and rubbed soap into her poor food-caked body, she realized there was only one place she could go.

Letting her hair dry on its own, she dressed, threw jeans and T-shirts into the suitcase, and raced back downstairs where she gathered her notes and a yellow pad and stuffed them into the case with her laptop. On her way to the garage, which she hadn’t set foot in all week, she raided the pantry one last time for the fuel she would need to get her where she was going.

8

—GENE FOWLER

 

 

 

There is an unwritten rule of writing that the number of trips to the refrigerator a writer makes is in inverse proportion to how well a manuscript is going. When the fingers are flying over the keyboard and the brain is fully immersed in the scene being created, food is completely unimportant. But when the fingers slow and the focus blurs, or worse, when the writer sees nothing but the blank screen and the hypnotic blink of the cursor, food beckons. As does, oddly enough, a load of laundry, the flossing of one’s teeth, and the complete rearrangement of a kitchen pantry or walk-in closet.

When it comes to bailing out of a scene that is not working, even the most onerous—or fattening—of tasks will do.

Which would explain why Mallory was now on her fifth trip to the refrigerator, her fourth to the bathroom, and in the middle of her sixth game of Minesweeper. It was only 10:00 A.M.

“Shit!” She pulled her hair down from its crooked ponytail, raked it back up with both hands, and refastened the elastic band, thinking how shocked her readers would be to see what she really looked like when she worked. Or tried to.

Then she got up, yet again, to pace her office, stopping to stare out at the gnarled oak, the black wrought-iron fence that bound it, the taffy-pulled clouds strung through the blue sky.

With a groan she dropped back down into her chair and closed her eyes, desperate to see her characters and the airport lounge in which she’d placed them. But all she could see was how little she’d written and, when she let herself, Kendall’s stricken face.

Her mind began to race down dead-end paths as the panic closed in. Chris was out and the house was completely quiet, just as she normally liked it. But today the quiet felt both oppressive and judgmental.

How could you justify not producing when absolutely nothing stood in your way?

She breathed deeply, taking in great gulps of air in an effort to get enough oxygen to her brain to fend off the paralyzing images: blank pages that translated into no manuscript to turn in, her agent and editor turning their backs on her, a book signing to which no one came, the repo vans taking away her possessions.

She knew exactly what this felt like, this snatching away of a life, and there was no way in hell she was ever going to experience it again.

Mallory left her desk yet again and wandered into the kitchen. At the counter she poured herself another cup of coffee. Slowly, as slowly as was humanly possible, she stirred in the nonfat creamer, opened a packet of sweetener and mixed it in. Sipping the milky mixture, she moved to the pantry, where she opened the sliding louvered doors and carefully contemplated her choices—all of them way too fattening. She’d consumed the healthier choices hours ago.

If she didn’t find inspiration soon, she’d get too big to fit in her desk chair. Maybe she should go outside and take a walk, burn up a few calories. Get a little fresh air to clear her head.

But that smacked of procrastination, or worse, an admission of defeat. She could not even contemplate that the day’s twenty pages might not get written; like the dieter who skips just one trip to the gym and then never goes again, it could be the beginning of the end. The slip that led to the fatal slide.

The trips to the refrigerator, the computer games, surfing the Web in the guise of research, the load of laundry she’d started out of desperation—all of those time wasters had put her behind where she wanted to be. But as long as she didn’t leave the house, as long as she didn’t stray too far from the laptop or desktop on which her manuscript was stored, she could not avoid the need to do the pages. Leaving the house felt much too dangerous; she might not come back.

Mallory turned her back on the pantry. Her life, and its security, depended on the words she put onto the page. All she had to do was write them.

She walked back to her desk and put her butt in the chair, which as every writer knew was more than half the battle. If she stayed here and faced down the page, she would find the words she needed. She was a writer, ergo she would write. She just needed to clear her mind so that her characters could present themselves to her.

A flourish of music and the icon of a feathered quill announced an instant message from Faye.

Mallory knew she should ignore it. Normally she didn’t even have her sound up or her computer online while she wrote, but now she seemed to invite distraction at every opportunity. A click of the mouse and the IM screen appeared.

“I’m worried about Kendall,” Faye’s message read. “Haven’t been able to reach her. Have you?”

“No,” Mallory typed back. “She’s not returning my calls or e-mails. What about Tanya?”