The Accidental Bestseller (31 page)

Today she sat in what she now thought of as Mallory’s spot on the deck while she worked on chapter eight and her character’s flight to her haven in the mountains. When she was satisfied with the scene, she stood and stretched. Leaning against the deck railing, she stared up into a cloud of claret-colored leaves and allowed her thoughts to wander to the second bathroom, where she’d decided to install bead board.

Inside she showered and dressed then took final measurements of the bathroom. She was pretty sure James would be working this afternoon and though she didn’t allow herself to think about the correlation, she spent more time than usual on her hair and makeup.

Highway 78, which was a winding two-lane affair, was choked with cars bearing Georgia license plates. It was prime leaf season and it seemed that half of the Atlanta area’s four million inhabitants had driven up to gawk at the scenery. She called Mallory from the car, expecting an admonition or irritation when she admitted where she was headed, but Mallory sounded very un-Mallory like when she came on the line.

“Are you all right?” Kendall asked, when Mallory didn’t raise a single objection to the bead board project or the trip to Home Depot. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I’m fine,” Mallory said. There was a hesitation. “I’m just trying to figure a few things out.”

“Do you want to brainstorm?” Kendall asked. “I’ve got a good twenty-five minutes in the car.”

There was another weighty pause. “Well, it’s not actually a plotting issue. Miranda’s scenes in
Sticks and Stones
seem to be pretty much writing themselves.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kendall replied, afraid to push for more. Mallory was notoriously closemouthed about her personal life. But after all the help Mallory had given her, Kendall wanted to return the favor. “How’s Chris?”

The silence was so profound that for a few moments Kendall thought the call had been dropped—not an unusual occurrence up here where the mountains and their towering treetops played havoc with cell reception. But a glance at the face of her cell phone indicated that she and Mallory were still connected.

“Has something happened?” Kendall asked.

“Not really.” Mallory’s voice carried none of its usual certainty.

“So, something’s sort of happened?”

“Chris has been on a project in Phoenix for the last three weeks. And it just feels a little strange here without him.” The admission was grudging.

“Oh. So he’s just home on the weekends?”

“Um, no. Not exactly.” Another pause. “He hasn’t been home at all.”

Kendall wanted to offer sympathy, but she knew Mallory would hate that. “When will the project be over?”

“That’s a bit unclear,” Mallory said. “The project appears to be remarkably . . . open-ended.”

“Awww, Mallory.” Kendall took the shortcut that would allow her to avoid Dillard’s Main Street where she knew the tourists would be barely chugging along in the mountain version of rush hour.

“No ‘awwwing,’ Kendall. He’s just upset that I haven’t made enough time for us. And now that I have made the time, he’s upset that he wasn’t the reason I made it.” She sighed. “And they call women irrational!”

Kendall cut back onto 441 just past the garbage and recycling center and headed south toward Clayton. “Well, I’m here if you need me. And you’re welcome to come back and write with me anytime. The Mallory St. James Memorial Bedroom stands ready and waiting. I just finished repainting it and the floors are all buffed up and shiny. Pretty soon the bathroom will have beadboard and molding.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to control yourself without me.” Kendall was relieved to hear a teasing note in Mallory’s voice.

“You’d be proud of me, Mal. I haven’t exactly kicked the habit, but the pages do come first. When it gets really hard, I stop and ask myself, ‘What would Mallory do?’ And the compulsion usually passes.”

Mallory laughed, which Kendall took as a personal victory. “I’m glad to hear I’m hanging over your head even when I’m not there.”

“Believe me,” Kendall said. “You’re almost as big a pain in the ass long distance as you are in person.”

“Good.” There was another pause, but not as weighty. “Tell James I said hello. And don’t let him sell you any more power tools.”

“Will do,” Kendall said as she signed off. “Though I can’t imagine what makes you think I expect to see James there.”

James’s face eased into a smile when he spotted her. “There’s my best customer!” he said as he came up to greet her. “What perfect timing. We just got in those pneumatic power nailers I was telling you about. I put one aside for you.”

He led her over to the information desk and stepped behind it to hunt on a bottom shelf. “Take a look at this beauty.”

He pulled out the power nailer, which Kendall had to admit was gorgeous. Reverently she reached out to take it from him and their hands brushed. Both of them pulled back at the same time.

When she looked up, he was studying her out of those faded blue eyes that had intrigued her from the beginning. They made her think of old blue jeans that had been washed a million times and the sky on those perfect summer days at the beach. Her writer’s mind had already created a thousand backstories to explain the things those eyes had seen.

“You must know I’ve been wanting to ask you out since the first day I met you,” he said.

Kendall nodded tentatively, her hand still tingling from the unexpected contact.

“So I was wondering.” He paused for a moment as if to gather himself. “Would you like to have dinner with me one night this week?”

Her sharp intake of breath surprised both of them.

“We could just make it coffee.” He looked into her eyes, trying to gauge her reaction. She wished him luck, because she didn’t fully understand it herself. “In a public place,” he added.

She took a half step back.

“Have I made a mistake?” he asked quietly. “Have I been reading interest where none was intended?”

Still she didn’t speak and so he began to apologize. “If I’ve presumed, I’m sorry. I . . .”

“No, no.” Her mind was tiptoeing through the potential minefields his invitation seemed to carry. She had been attracted to him from the first and flattered by his attention. But was she ready to actually date someone right now?

“We can just pretend I never asked,” he said. “Really, it’s not . . .”

“Shhh,” she said. “Please don’t apologize.” She looked down for a moment and realized she was cradling the power nailer in her arms like a baby. She had to smile. “You’re completely right. I’ve been interested in you from the beginning, too. And you’ve fueled my fix-it mania, which, frankly, I think has helped to keep me sane.”

He waited while she spoke, his whole being calm and comfortable, just like his eyes. She had the sense that nothing would shake or surprise him and one day she wanted to know what had made him this way. But not today.

“It’s just that I’m going through a really difficult patch right now. I’m separated from my husband, and I’m on a book deadline, and . . .” She took a deep breath before plunging on with her disclaimer. “Anyway, it’s not at all about you. I mean you’re . . .”

She paused a moment to search for the right adjectives and this time he shushed her.

“It’s OK.” His quiet warmth seemed as far from Calvin’s bluster as it was possible to get. “I understand,” he said, and she could see in his eyes that he did. “It’s not a problem. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.” His smile was as gentle and as full of wisdom as his words.

“You just go on about your business. And when and if you feel ready to get better acquainted, you just let me know.”

Kendall felt a soft flush of gratitude along with a sharper pull she hadn’t felt in a long time. “Sounds good,” she said, still holding the power nailer in her arms. “I’ll be looking forward to that.” She set the power tool in an empty cart and pulled her list out of her purse to show him. “I’m thinking bead board for the second bathroom. And some kind of molding just above it. Do you have any of that in stock?”

Faye might have benefited from some do-it-yourself instruction. Or a power tool that could take the threads of her life that had begun to unravel and twine them back together.

As she drove toward Rainbow House, Faye reflected on the previous night’s conference call. It had gone well. They were all making good progress on their parts of
Sticks and Stones
and Faye had noticed that the love scenes written by her character, Faith, were now garnering more compliments than surprise.

Still she hated keeping yet another secret from Steve, though her involvement in
Sticks and Stones
was nothing compared to her secret career writing erotica, the weight of which seemed to grow heavier each day.

At the front desk, she signed in wondering, yet again, how Rainbow House would survive if she were ever exposed as Shannon LeSade.

As she passed through the administrative offices on her way to the day care center, the irony of the situation smote her. It was her earnings from the very thing she was now afraid to admit to that had brought Rainbow House and its myriad services into being. It was her continued monetary support, much of it derived from her secret career, that kept it growing and attracted other large donors.

Once Faye had believed that the source of the money was insignificant in comparison to the good it achieved, but the world was a different place today. And she’d come to realize that if the true source of Rainbow House’s funding were ever revealed, Rainbow House and those it served would suffer. As would her husband.

That was what she knew. What she didn’t know was what to do about it.

In the shiny new library a group of preschoolers sat in a semicircle around a Rainbow House volunteer. The children’s eyes shone with excitement as they listened to a spirited reading of Maurice Sendak’s
Where the Wild Things Are.
Faye watched for a few moments, breathing in the heady smell of new books and remembering when she’d first read the story to her children and then to her granddaughter, Becky.

After the story there’d be a snack and supervised play followed by nap time; for most of these kids this would be the closest to a normal life they’d ever gotten.

Faye shelved the books she and Becky had chosen and then checked “the closet” where new arrivals, who often fled their homes with little more than backpacks or belonging-stuffed pillowcases, were brought to “shop” for clothing and accessories.

Beside “the closet” was the computer center where women could formulate resumes and do class assignments. Those who wanted to improve their skills got on-site computer training.

How could she pull the plug on all that she’d worked so hard to create?

How could she not when every day the chance of exposure and scandal increased?

Her last stop was the office, where she met with the administrator and her assistant to go over the plans for a playground expansion. And then she was on her way to meet Steve for lunch, something they hadn’t been able to work into their schedules since she’d gotten back from Kendall’s last month.

As she waited for him at a favored table at Café Central, a small French restaurant near home, she realized how much she wished she could discuss her dilemma with her husband. In the past he’d been her most reliable sounding board and she had been his. But every time she imagined the relief she might feel in telling him the truth, that happy picture was wiped out by the vision of his shock and dismay.

A stir near the doorway halted her internal debate. Faye glanced up to see her husband striding toward her.

“You look . . . elsewhere,” he observed as he leaned down to kiss her cheek then took the seat opposite her. In one smooth motion, he unfolded his napkin and placed it in his lap. “Is everything OK?”

As opportunities went, Faye thought, it didn’t get much better than this. All she had to do was open her mouth, explain the situation, and ask for his input. Simple. Clear. Like they’d always done.