The Accidental Bestseller (56 page)

She saw regret and something else she was afraid to identify in his eyes. And suddenly she didn’t think she could face knowing it was over. Not here. Not now.

Mallory pushed back her seat and prepared to stand. “You don’t have to make a decision right now.” She drew a deep breath and stood, wondering if this would be it. “Your ticket is open ended. I hope your heart still is. Because if I have to, I’ll spend those three weeks waiting for you to join me.”

He stood, too, but he didn’t rush around the table to stop her. Or sweep her up into his arms. She just kept telling herself that whatever he said, she’d live with it. She was strong enough to survive if she had to.

“I’m really sorry, Mal,” Chris said, and her heart plummeted.

Mallory held her breath while she braced for his brush-off. She would not cry or make a scene. She wouldn’t make this harder on either of them. It was his ending to write. And she wouldn’t be given the opportunity to edit or revise.

“I just don’t have an answer,” he said. “I don’t know if I have the energy to try again.” He shook his head, his smile tinged with regret.

“But you’ll keep the ticket,” she said. “And think about using it.”

“Yes,” he said as she picked the ticket up off the table and placed it gently in his hands. “I’ll think about it. I will.”

She felt his eyes follow her as she turned and walked out of the restaurant. And as she walked down the sidewalk to where her car was waiting, she told herself there was still hope.

Chris hadn’t said no, he’d simply ended this chapter with a cliffhanger. In Mallory’s mind, that meant “to be continued.” She smiled as she played with the metaphor. With the possibility of a sequel.

The story wasn’t over until somebody typed, “THE END.”

More than a month after the Kristen Calder debacle, Kendall’s life remained in flux. All around her in the mountains, spring gave way to summer and Kendall took delight in the deep pinks and whites of the flowering rhododendron and dogwood, cheek to jowl with the mountain laurel and azaleas that bloomed down the mountainsides and through the woods where she walked.

Sticks and Stones
was still on the shelves despite the constant rumblings about its being pulled. One call from Sylvia Hardcastle had warned that Kendall was going to be asked to repay her advance. The next she’d been told how well the book was still selling and that there’d been an approach about movie rights. Sylvia advised her to hold tight. Each change of direction served as yet another testament to the vagaries of publishing.

Today’s call caught Kendall replacing a toilet with a low-flow model and raised a subject Kendall had been too conflicted about to broach.

“Kendall,” Sylvia said. “Have you done anything more about the sequel to
Sticks and Stones
?”

“Um, no,” Kendall admitted, though that hardly covered her feelings about the project. She felt a pull to write, an urge to express herself that she hadn’t felt since Mia, her original editor, had left to have her baby and left Kendall in Jane Jensen’s hostile hands.

But she no longer trusted that urge or her ability to fulfill it. Because no matter how she wanted to whitewash it, the truth was that she hadn’t hit the
New York Times
list or been noticed by Kristen Calder because of her own talent. Her only major success had come because her friends had helped her write
Sticks and Stones
.

Like an obese person who loses a hundred pounds but still sees a fat person reflected in the mirror, Kendall was deathly afraid that Jane Jensen’s assessment of Kendall’s talent—or lack thereof—was correct and that she’d only ceased being a mediocre midlist author because her friends had stepped in to save her. “Why?”

“I’m asking because I just found your proposal,” Sylvia said. “I’d set it aside until we were forced to discuss your option book with them. And with all the hoopla we’ve been dealing with, I didn’t read it until yesterday.”

Kendall felt a shimmer of apprehension. She’d been so jazzed when she’d finished her part in
Sticks and Stones
that the proposal for its sequel,
Names Will Never Hurt Me,
had flowed out of her, the synopsis and first three chapters practically putting themselves on the page.

She didn’t think she could bear to hear Sylvia tell her, even gently, that it sucked. What would she do then? Pick another room to remodel? Build a workshop to house all her power tools?

“Did you write this yourself?” Sylvia asked.

“What?” Kendall had been picturing the workshop. Found herself imagining where she’d hang her tool belt.

“Did you write the proposal for
Names Will Never Hurt Me
alone?”

Kendall sighed. “That bad, huh?” She told herself it would be OK. She’d find something else to do. Lots of people gave up writing. It was hard to stand up to the pressures of the business. She wouldn’t be the first to stop writing for good. “Yep,” she admitted. “It’s all mine. Nobody else to blame it on but me.”

“Well I’m relieved to hear that,” Sylvia said, and Kendall braced for the blow. So what if she’d wanted to write since she was a child. Surely she must have some other talents. Maybe James, who had called after her
Kristen Calder
appearance and talked her into that first cup of coffee, would find her a job at Home Depot. Clayton had a Walmart, too. Did they already have a greeter?

“Because it’s fabulous. With even bigger potential than
Sticks and Stones
.”

Kendall held her breath, afraid to exhale lest she erase what she thought she’d just heard. “You liked it?”

“Liked it?” Sylvia asked. “I loved it!”

Kendall clung to Sylvia’s enthusiasm. Her agent was smart, straightforward, and generally positive, but she was not a flatterer.

“And if we can get this whole
Sticks and Stones
mess cleared up, it really should go to Scarsdale. Now that Jane Jensen’s gone, they should have the most interest.”

Kendall’s heart squeezed in happiness, something that hadn’t happened in much longer than she cared to remember. The details of Sylvia’s plans to present it, her suggestions for who she’d submit to if Hannah Sutcliff passed on it, flew right over her head. Her agent thought the proposal she’d written was even better than
Sticks and Stones
! Right now that was Christmas and the Easter Bunny all rolled up together.

Kendall hung up in a haze of happiness that softened everything she looked at from the sparkle of sunlight off a distant mountain peak to the grace with which the branches of a nearby pine tree swayed in the breeze.

She was a writer and she had a new project under way. At the moment she didn’t care where it ended up; she only cared that she would get to write it.

A burst of positive energy welled up inside her. She needed to set her life in order so that she would be free to write. Without waffling or her usual internal debate, she placed a call to both her children and this time when she got their voice mail, she calmly and succinctly read them the parental riot act. Their mother and father loved them, they simply didn’t love each other. There would be no more groveling and apologizing. She was more sorry than she could ever say that they’d been hurt. But it was time to move forward.

When she hung up she felt immeasurably better, but there was still one dark cloud skulking across her horizon.

While it was imperative to know that she
could
write without the support of her “peeps,” and she was embarrassingly grateful that Sylvia had confirmed that she could, that didn’t mean she wanted to.

On the deck the breeze that had set the branches to swaying teased at her hair. The afternoon sun was warm and gentle on her face.

She wished her friends were here with her now to celebrate her newfound confidence; she could never have found it without them.

So some of them had kept secrets; so everyone’s good intentions had gone awry and they’d all been damaged in the process. The one thing she couldn’t envision was a future that didn’t include Mallory and Faye and Tanya.

She picked up the phone, wishing she could simply call all three of them, read them the riot act, and demand that they all forgive each other. But they weren’t her children. And they were all facing their own demons right now.

She clutched the phone to her chest, trying to figure out what she might do to help make things right. She couldn’t sit idly by without trying to do something.

As she listened to the stir of the leaves Kendall began to formulate the outline of a plan. Afraid that if she waited she’d talk herself out of it, Kendall punched in the New York number and asked to speak to Lacy Samuels. Perhaps the “plucky young assistant,” who had bucked her boss to save
Sticks and Stones,
would consider tilting at a few more publishing wind-mills. Or would at least know someone who could.

45

—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

 

 

 

Kendall Aims met Sylvia Hardcastle in the marbled, if not hallowed, lobby of Scarsdale Publishing on a late June afternoon, just shy of a year after she’d failed to win the Zelda at the national conference of Wordsmiths Incorporated.

As they waited for Lacy Samuels to escort them to the conference room, Kendall reflected on all that had transpired over the last twelve months. She’d bottomed out and scaled the heights, been humiliated on national television and written off a husband, but she’d also reclaimed her mountain home and regained her children. She’d lost her faith in her talent and then found it again. And according to Sylvia, an offer had been made for
Names Will Never Hurt Me,
of which she’d completed seven full chapters.

And then there was her surprising affinity for power tools and her uncontrollable urge to fix things, which she now recognized as a physical attempt to repair her broken life. Not to mention James, who was sweet and understanding and willing to let her set their pace.

In the yin and yang of loss and redemption the only things that still hung in the balance were the fate of
Sticks and Stones
and the friendships that had created it.

The clack of heels sounded on marble and Kendall looked up to see Lacy walking toward them. She was still tall and leggy but with a new air of confidence that Kendall suspected came from working under Hannah Sutcliff instead of Jane Jensen as well as her new position as an assistant editor.

When she reached them, Lacy smiled and hugged Kendall warmly then shook Sylvia’s hand.

“Everyone else is already here,” Lacy said as she led them past security to the bank of elevators. “There are an awful lot of lawyers in that room. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”

Neither did Kendall, though in truth she was more nervous about seeing her coauthors than she was about exactly what kind of deal might be struck. Sylvia, however, had that gleam that stole into her eyes right before any hint of negotiation, so Kendall kept that heretical thought to herself.

Kendall spotted Mallory and Faye and Tanya the moment she entered the conference room. Each of them was flanked by an agent or an attorney or both. Even Tanya had a red-tied blue suit-wearer on one side and a woman clad in New York black on the other.

Harold Kemp, Brenda Tinsley, and Hannah Sutcliff were also there as were others Kendall assumed to be in-house counsel or accountants. She’d been told that the most combative meetings had already taken place and that today’s little get-together was intended to present the suggested settlement to the four of them. Theoretically their agents could have sought their clients’ approvals and gotten the pertinent paperwork signed. Yet all four of them were here.

Kendall decided to take that as a good sign.

At first their four gazes skittered over each other as if they were afraid to offend by looking too closely.

Kendall offered a tentative smile and found herself assessing and cataloguing what the last months had done to the others. Faye looked more relaxed than Kendall had ever seen her, more centered. Tanya still looked like she belonged in a country music video, but her cornflower blue eyes were sharper than ever.

Mallory sat on the opposite side of the conference table, next to Patricia Gilmore. She still held herself in a way that testified to her star power, but Kendall sensed something softer, more vulnerable, underneath.

With real alarm Kendall realized that if no one took charge they might reach an agreement and walk out better off financially, but with no need to see each other again. If she hoped to engineer a reconciliation, she was going to have to make her move soon.

She was trying to decide what to do when Harold Kemp, Scarsdale’s publisher-in-chief, began his opening comments, then proceeded to bring them all up to speed on the rerelease with its new cover listing all four authors that was planned.