Wickedly Charming (19 page)

“Oprah?” Mellie asked. Oprah was the holy grail. Oprah promoted books, but more importantly, Oprah promoted causes.

“And
The View
,” he said. “If you're a really good interview, they'd want you to spend a lot of time on
The View
. And none of that counts all the radio interviews. They also think the book would do well on the book club circuit, so they'd publish an edition with questions in the back specifically designed for book clubs.”

She scanned the document. All kinds of plans were laid out here, from the advertising budget (which was eye-popping) to the various promotion types, down to viral videos on YouTube.

“I showed this to Shelly,” Charming said, “and he warned me that you'd lose a month, maybe more, of your time, as you promoted this thing. But he said that he thought it would work, and it would make news. It would be something everyone would talk about for a nanosecond anyway, which is about all you can expect in this culture these days.”

“But would it change perceptions?” she asked, almost to herself as an aside. She was still staring at the numbers and the plans, and the exclamation points. All of the editors had used exclamation points to show their enthusiasm for this book. (
Tremendous! Fantastic! I'm so glad that someone realized that stepmothers could be heroines!
)

“It certainly did for the vampire,” he said. “They're sexy romance heroes now.”

“You've said that before, but what about other archetypes? Has anyone rebuilt, say, ghosts?”

“I don't know,” Charming said, “but werewolves are showing promise.”

Then he smiled. This smile was tentative, almost as if he was wondering if he dared hope that she might go for this project.

“What would you do?” she asked. “If this was your book.”

Then she took a sharp breath, realizing what she had said.

“I mean, it is your book, you wrote it, and—”

“It's not my book,” he said. “It's yours.”

She shook her head. “I can't write.”

“But you have a way with words,” he said. “That's what makes this live. Those speeches. See?”

He tapped another part of a different email:

What's most astonishing about this book are the diatribes. They shouldn't work. Instead they flow and convince and make us sad all over again for the life that this poor woman has led
.

“This poor woman,” Mellie said. “Is that what people are going to think of me?”

“They'll think you're a survivor,” he said. “And remember, if you do go out and do all those tours, it won't be about you. It'll be about a character in a book that you wrote.”

She took a deep breath. She'd have to work on keeping that separate.

“So,” she said again, “what would you do if it was just you?”

He sank into the chair across from her. “This is every writer's dream.”

“Touring?”

“Recognition,” he said. “Readership. You'll get people reading your book, discussing it,
thinking
about it. They might not agree with it, but they'll be talking about it, and what more could you want?”

It was what she had wanted all along. She wanted people talking about how unfair fairy tales were, how no one should believe in them, how harmful they could be.

And she would finally have a platform.

If she could stay calm—and remember that the book wasn't about her, it was fiction. If she could try not to rant. If she could present herself well.

She gathered up the papers. Of course she could do that. She had done it, with several local television stations in interviews that got cut to pieces or didn't air. But she hadn't talked about herself as a fairy-tale stepmother. She had talked about herself as a stepmother—which she was, in the Greater World as well as in the Kingdoms—and how hurtful it was to see stepmothers portrayed as something less than human.

“Could we change the name?” she asked.

“They like it,” he said. “They even have a marketing concept—a black cover with a beautiful apple in the center of it, and a bite taken out of it. One editor even suggested a subtitle.
Evil: The True Story of the Woman Who Raised Snow White
.”

“I didn't raise her,” Mellie said.

“I know,” he said, “but you see what they're trying to do.”

She nodded. She did see. She could imagine that cover everywhere. It was lovely, even in her imagination.

“We'd have to tell them you wrote it,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “You hired me to ghost. That's between us. Just thank me in the acknowledgements for help with the manuscript, and never say that you wrote every sentence while you're on television. That'll work.”

“But I don't know the novel as well as you do,” she said. “Shouldn't you do the interviews?”

“I wouldn't be as passionate as you,” he said. Then he sighed and rubbed his nose. “Hell, Mellie, honestly, the idea of doing all that publicity—it scares me to death.”

She studied him. He did seem nervous all over again.

“And you,” he said. “It's got you interested in the project, doesn't it?”

“I'm not vain,” she snapped. She hated that accusation. It came from the Disney film too.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all?
Like someone would actually care about that.

He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “I didn't say you were. But you're a lot more extroverted than me. You like the idea of this publicity. Me, I just want to go into my office and hide.”

He said it with such sincerity, such force, that she actually laughed. He probably did want to go hide.

“You'd want to come with me on this, though, right?” she asked, and tried to keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

He shook his head. “I can't,” he said quickly, as if he had already thought about it. “I have my girls.”

“The girls could come,” she said, and realized she sounded just a bit desperate.

He smiled—the third smile of the afternoon, this one altogether different from the others. This one had no finesse, no regret, just a bit of amusement, as if he understood how uncertain she was.

“No,” he said. “They're just getting used to being here. And they're finally enjoying school. I can't uproot them.”

She nodded. She understood. She really did. She just didn't want to.

“Of course,” she said.

She stood up and looked out over the garden, just like he had. It was a lovely view, with that soft, flowery perfume in the air, the green, the reds and yellows and pinks, the overgrown vegetation. A person could get used to this place.

She
could get used to this place.

But she wasn't going to.

She was going to accept one of those offers.

“You'll take half the money, right?” she asked.

“That's in our agreement,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Then let's figure out which of these offers we want to accept.”

Mellie had no idea how long it took to publish a book. Nor had she any idea how many steps were involved. She had expected to go out on tour within a month of signing the contract—only it took three months just to get the contract, and that was after two weeks of intensive negotiation, with the help of an agent that Charming's friend Sheldon McArthur helped them hire.

But even then, the book wasn't tour-ready. Charming had to explain to Mellie that there were other steps involved. He knew some of them, but not all of them.

There were revisions—which scared her, since the editor called and wanted to discuss them before sending them and the very idea just confused Mellie, who finally decided to be agreeable, take copious notes, and let Charming handle them. Then there were things called copyedits, where someone wrote all over the manuscript and sent it to her for approval—(“What am I supposed to do?” she asked Charming. “Tell them that the words look better with little pencil marks?” “I'll handle it,” he said.)

Then they got “proofs” of the cover—several iterations of the cover. Someone decided that the black and red apple cover was too
Twilight
. So then there was an evil stepmother cover that was too Disney (“I think the suits are afraid of a lawsuit,” the editor, whose name was Mary Linda McIntosh said, as if that explained everything). The final cover was simple—just the title and the subtitle, and Mellie's name, embossed over a tasteful and shiny emerald green background.

If anyone had told her before she saw that cover that she would be able to use the words “tasteful” and “emerald green” in the same sentence without sarcasm, she would have been shocked.

But she liked it, and Charming liked it, and Mary Linda the editor liked it, and more importantly, according to Mary Linda, the sales force liked it, and the buyers for the superstores liked it. Everyone thought the book had possibilities, and everyone in the publishing house was reading it and passing it around.

(“It's our word-of-mouth book this year,” Mary Linda said, “and I can't tell you how good that is.”)

Mellie gave a lot of things to him—and those were the only times she dealt with him. She would show up at his house with the latest thing from the publisher, and he'd invite her into the garden, and they'd talk about the publishing process, and he would stay distant, and she would think about kissing him or telling him how gorgeous he was or how much she liked him, and then she would remember that he was
Prince Charming
.

Every woman he ever met told him how spectacular he was. How nice, how charming, how handsome. His other name, of course, was the Handsome Prince and he lived up to that as well.

She wanted to kiss him, to caress him, to touch him, but she didn't. Because they were in his home, and his girls might come home. He'd been very clear about his girls. He wanted them to adapt to life in the Greater World.

More than that, he wanted them to adapt to a life without their mother.

Mellie understood that. She
respected
that. And sometimes (most of the time), she wished she wasn't so damn sympathetic.

Ironically, she never saw his girls, always showing up during the middle of the school day, although one afternoon she noticed photographs on the wall, school photographs of stunning young beauties with the kind of golden hair that usually didn't make it outside of the Kingdoms. His daughters, clearly. Beautiful, intelligent, and of course, the center of his attention.

The last few meetings hadn't even take place at the house. They took place at his brand new bookstore in Westwood. He spent a lot of his portion of their advance buying a building there, renovating it, and making it the premiere bookstore in the entire area. Coffee bar, yes, and back stock, and an area for children, another for teenagers, and a place where adults could sit and talk and read, even if they didn't want to buy.

Mellie wasn't a book person, and she liked the store. From everything she heard, so did real book people.

Charming had a hit on his hands.

Not counting the book itself.

Which showed up in the form of an Advanced Reading Copy or ARC. It still wasn't done. It had all kinds of disclaimers on it—saying there were grammatical errors, and any final quotes should be compared to the final. It had publishing information along the back, release dates and ship dates, and the highlights of her proposed tour.

Which she had been discussing with the publicity department. They started her in the Midwest—three days of practice from Minneapolis to Fargo to Des Moines. Then the real tour began in Chicago, with two days there, two days to blitz Chicago media. From there she went east, D.C. to Philadelphia to Boston to New York, which was a three-day stint filled with media.

She would then fly to Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and she would end in Los Angeles more than a month after she started, with no days off (except fly days). She would be working from seven or eight in the morning (“Morning talk shows,” the publicist said. “Big business”) to nine or ten in the evening (“Night time signings are best,” the publicist said. “You get people after their workday is done.”)

Mellie would do blitz radio interviews from her hotel room, all on her cell phone “visiting” a dozen radio stations all over the country in a single morning. She would do some bookstore talks courtesy of Skype. She was supposed to blog about her travels—although she begged out of that, pleading possible exhaustion (not the real reason, which was an inability to write). Instead, the publicist offered to do it, because the publicist was coming along, to hustle Mellie from one location to the next.

Mellie was scared, she was excited, and she was thrilled.

Finally, she would get her message out.

Finally, people were going to listen to her.

Finally, she had a chance to change the world.

***

Charming thought it ironic that he actually had to beg Mellie's publicist to give him one of her final signings in Los Angeles. He wanted to do a big show at the store. He had to promise extra media coverage, and for that he had to call in yet another favor from Shelly, who knew how to promote bookstore events in Los Angeles, even though he hadn't owned a store there in more than five years.

Charming's store was wonderful, his dream business. It had a welcoming first floor filled with a coffee shop and areas for kids, a place for signings, and a small stage for bigger events. There was a great area for new arrivals and for titles he felt needed highlighting.

But that wasn't his favorite part of the store. His favorite part was the second and third floors. He built a windy, showcase staircase, one his architect argued against because it would take away shelf space. But Charming didn't care about shelf space. Instead, people would go up the grand staircase and see the entire first floor. They'd see the books on the upper shelves of the first floor, and then gradually, the books on the lowest shelves of the second floor.

This
was the kind of bookstore he'd always wanted.

And if his girls hadn't been with him, he would have considered adding an apartment onto the fourth floor (which was now storage space), and living right here, in the most perfect place on Earth.

All of Earth. Including the Kingdoms.

This was Charming heaven.

He was happy about it all, except for Mellie. He didn't know how to bring Mellie deeper into his life. She came to see him whenever she had a publishing question, and then she fled as if he frightened her.

Maybe he did. She was the one person he knew outside of his family whom he didn't try to charm. Maybe his baseline personality—the one not masked by charm magic—was frightening. Ella certainly hadn't enjoyed it.

But the girls weren't frightened of him, although they did (to his surprise) respect his fatherly authority. He was finding his rhythm with them too.

And they liked to come to the store in the evenings to see what new books arrived.

They couldn't take inventory out of the store, but they could read it here, and they both did.

To his eternal gratification, his daughters loved books as much as he did, and in the case of Grace, maybe even more.

He knew things were going well. In fact, he knew they were going too well, and he knew at some point, they would change.

So he wasn't surprised when Ella showed up at the bookstore one day. Although he was surprised by the feeling of foreboding that he got when he saw her.

He realized, at that very moment, that he saw Ella as a harbinger of bad things to come.

He just had no idea how bad those things could get.