The Accidental Bestseller (30 page)

Mallory returned to New York full of apologies and eager to deliver them, only to find the intended recipient gone and the brownstone empty.

Chris’s note, which she found propped against the toaster, was short and to the point; a client had asked him to supervise a project in Phoenix personally, and he had accepted. Perhaps some time apart for reflection would be good for both of them.

Now as Mallory roamed the silent rooms of their home, she saw his hand everywhere: in the gloss of the hardwood floors that he’d refinished himself; in the dark sheen of the dining room wainscoting that he’d rescued from a nearby demolition and artfully installed; in the window seat in her office underneath which he’d carved a bookcase for her favorite oversized tomes. Everything he’d designed and/or installed was both functional and beautiful in a subtle and undemand ing way, very much like Chris.

In her study, Mallory dropped onto the velvet-covered window seat and stared out at the walled garden, yet another of Chris’s creations. The house settled around her, the silence so profound that she could count the number of cubes disgorged by the automatic ice maker. The muted sounds of traffic from Sixth Avenue were much too distant to include her. Chris’s absence carried an accusing silence all its own.

The great irony of course was that the words, and her command of them, which had deserted her so capriciously, had returned. Each time she sat to write Miranda Jameson’s part in Kendall’s story, they gushed out of her and onto the screen in a steady, eager stream. She had not yet found the courage to go back to her own work in progress, but the fact that she was writing at all was a relief she desperately wanted to share. With Chris.

Moving to the computer, Mallory held her breath while she scrolled through her inbox. There were numerous entries from her agent and her editor, which she could tell from the subject lines she didn’t want to open. She also saw updates from Faye, Tanya, and Kendall, which she’d look at shortly. The head of her fan club, her publicist, and her masseuse had all sent her e-mails. But there wasn’t a single missive from her husband.

Mallory picked up the phone and debated whether to call him. But she’d already apologized to Chris via voice mail, e-mail, and text message. It didn’t look like she was going to get to do it in person.

After another fruitless, pathetic turn through the house, Mallory stopped in the kitchen, where she spent several minutes contemplating the blank stainless-steel face of her refrigerator. A load of ice landed in the bin and she counted four cubes. A new number flashed into the minutes’ column on the digital clock above the microwave.

The last time she’d felt this alone had been the day after her high school graduation, the day her mother, who had hated being poor even more than being without Mallory’s father, had chosen to follow him into the hereafter.

Somehow she’d clabbered together a series of student loans to get her undergraduate degree at Boston College. Her graduation gift to herself was a new name and a new city.

Her first job in New York had been as a receptionist for a brokerage firm, which had exposed her to a series of “high-net-worth individuals” who reminded her of her father—none of whom wanted to leave his wife for her, but all of whom helped her enjoy a lifestyle well beyond her means.

A decade and a half out of school she had nothing but a co-op she couldn’t afford and a salary that never made it to the end of the month. The clients who’d panted after her began to pant after younger women. The specter of poverty loomed, calling to mind her father’s demise and striking fear in her heart.

And how did she deal with it?

She read novels. One book after another, sometimes at the rate of one a day, for a solid year. An acceptable form of escape that didn’t leave a hangover. She read every author she could get her hands on who wrote a strong female protagonist who triumphed in the end. Patricia Cornwell, Nora Roberts, Terry McMillan, Sue Grafton, Sandra Brown, Olivia Goldsmith; she read them all and more, haunting the library and the used book stores until the day she realized that what she really wanted to do was
write
a novel. And what set her apart is that she actually did.

She was thirty-six when she started her first manuscript; thirty-seven when she met Chris and finished the book; thirty-eight when they got married.

She’d been almost forty and desperate to make something happen when she attended the WINC conference where she met Faye, Tanya, and Kendall. And during her agent appointment, on the strength of the one book she’d actually written, she somehow landed Patricia Gilmore as her agent. The rest, as they say, was history.

By the time she hit the
New York Times
list she was an obsessive write-aholic afraid to let up lest she lose all that she’d managed to accumulate and be forced to return to the lonely, poor little girl she’d been and hated.

She had created a brand and real wealth, which she was determined to hold on to. Chris had given her his love and support. In many ways he’d built their life with his own two capable hands. And she had been too busy writing, and too afraid to stop, to thank him for it.

“Get out now,” she said as she caught herself counting the ticks of the digital clock. “Get out of this house before you end up out in the garden watching the grass grow.”

Without further internal debate, Mallory grabbed a wind-breaker, her cell phone, and a set of house keys and let herself out of the brownstone. With no destination in mind, she took a left, then a right, deciding to follow the sidewalk wherever it wanted to take her.

Things were quiet in the Liberty Laundromat that afternoon, for which Tanya was grateful. Her editor at Masque, Darby Hanover, had just called to tell her that her last book had come in first in sales for the month, which Darby saw as a win for her team. Then she told Tanya that she’d put her name up for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with two bigger-name authors. The very possibility made Tanya vibrate with excitement.

A dryer buzzed and she left the front desk to get the clothes and put them in a basket for folding. She was rolling it toward the front desk when the bell above the door jangled. Before she looked, Tanya knew that it was Brett. Apparently despite the amount of time she’d spent trying to stay away from him, she’d developed a sixth sense that tingled whenever he got within range.

Out of pure orneriness, she took her time getting back to the desk, schooling her thoughts and her features as she moved toward him. He didn’t need to know that her first response to his presence was a swift kick of excitement. Or that her heart actually sped up whenever he was near.

Her mouth was already open to offer some sort of glib comment when she noticed that he wasn’t carrying dirty laundry but copies of her latest Masque release,
The Rookie Gets Revved.

“Hey,” he said, his face creasing in a grin that could only be called shit-eating. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she said, though, in fact, what she felt was off balance. “What’s going on?”

“I brought these copies in to get them autographed.” He held up a stack of four triumphantly. “I tried to buy more, but all the stores are sold out. I practically had to duke it out with a white-haired woman in the aisles of the Tyrone Barnes and Noble to get its last copy.”

“But, why would you . . .”

“Do you remember when I told you my mother was a romance junkie?”

She nodded numbly. “Well, yeah, but . . .”

“When I told her I knew a real live Masque author, I swear you coulda heard her scream clear across the state.” He grinned, seeming to enjoy her confusion. “She couldn’t believe her no-account, good-for-nothing son knew a celebrity. My stock went up almost as high as it did the years when Valerie and Andi and Dani were born.”

Tanya smiled. “So I earned you some points with your mama?”

“Girl, she told me if I didn’t send her an autographed copy of one of your books pronto that I didn’t need to call again.”

Tanya laughed.

“Then she called me back and told me everybody in her book club wanted autographed copies, too.”

Tanya no longer cared how much of this might be BS. She was absolutely enjoying herself.

“So I went out and tried to corner the market on Tanya Mason novels, but it seems like a bunch of people beat me to it.”

“Yeah, my editor just called and told me I was the top seller this month.”

“Well that sure sounds like something to celebrate.”

“It’s pretty great,” Tanya admitted. “I may be invited to be a part of an anthology they’re planning. It’s a definite step-up.”

“You deserve it. I thought the book was great. It had lots more character development and more powerful emotion even than your earlier releases, but then I guess there’s room to build more of that in a Masque Xtraromance than a Masque Appeal.”

Her mouth dropped open at the realization that he not only knew the difference between the two Masque lines but had obviously read not only her current but earlier releases.

He set the books on the counter and pushed them toward her. Tanya felt a warm glow in her chest that she couldn’t seem to shove away. The fact that this man liked her children and put up with her mother was a good thing; the fact that he had not only read but understood her work—Tanya figured that was a flat-out miracle.

“Yep,” he said. “All this good news definitely calls for a dinner out. Some place with white tablecloths and fancy service.”

“Oh.” Tanya stopped glowing and remembered that her goal here was not to get drawn in. “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think . . .”

He whipped out a pen and started to direct the autographing. “OK, this one’s for my mother, LindaLee.” He spelled her name and waited while she signed the book. “And this one’s for her best friend, Lila.”

He talked her through the rest of the signatures and then asked where she thought he could get four more copies.

“I can check with the Borders at the mall,” she said. “I know the buyer there. But about the dinner . . .” She was flattered and deeply touched, but that didn’t mean getting involved was the right thing to do.

“Why don’t we plan on a Saturday night?” he said, not really asking. “I may need some time to get the right reservation.”

“Oh, I don’t think . . .”

“I can get Valerie to sit if that would help.”

“It’s not that, it’s just . . .”

“It’s settled then,” he said, as if they were in complete agreement. “Definitely a Saturday night. That way we won’t have to worry about what time we get in or how hard we party.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and her heart flip-flopped down into her stomach. “I’ll make sure that neither of us is on the schedule for that Sunday morning.”

25

—FREDERIC RAPHAEL

 

 

 

Kendall didn’t want to jinx anything by feeling too good, but the truth was that with each day that passed and each page she wrote, she felt a corresponding lightening of the dark cloud that had been hovering over her since the WINC conference in New York.

After months of being beaten down and stomped on, Kendall felt the universe conspiring to lift her up.

Her children were happy at college and blissfully unaware of their parents’ impending divorce, her attorney had taken over the onerous job of communicating with Calvin and his equally onerous attorney, and her friends continued to rally around her, sending scenes as they wrote them and calling often to discuss the book and check on her well-being.

Even from a distance she could feel their love and support and she fed on it hungrily, using it to keep her going as she wrote the book that had evolved from punishing task to welcome therapy.

With October well under way, the air turned crisper and sharper as the mountains exploded into color, drenching her in infinite shades of red and gold.