I could tell he was gritting his teeth behind his smile.
“Just because I drove all the way out here for you, don’t ask me to be pleasant about it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I ordered a soda and hamburger from the waitress, while Ben set his briefcase on the table and pulled out packets of paper. He needed my signature in approximately a million different places. On the plus side, the documents meant I was the beneficiary of several generous out-of-court settlements relating to the fiasco my trip to Washington, D.C., last fall had turned into. Who knew getting kidnapped and paraded on live TV could be so lucrative? I also got to sign depositions in a couple of criminal cases. That felt good.
“You’re getting twenty percent,” I said. “You ought to be glowing.”
“I’m still trying to decide if representing the world’s first werewolf celebrity is worth it. You get the strangest phone calls, you know that?”
“Why do you think I give people your number and not mine?”
He collected the packets from me, double-checked them, stacked them together, and put them back in his briefcase. “You’re lucky I’m such a nice guy.”
“My hero.” I rested my chin on my hands and batted my eyelashes at him. His snort of laughter told me how seriously he took me. That only made me grin wider.
“One other thing,” he said, still shuffling pages in his briefcase, avoiding looking at me. “Your editor called. Wants to know how the book is going.”
Technically, I had a contract. Technically, I had a deadline. I shouldn’t have had to worry about that sort of thing when I was trying to prove my self-reliance by living simply and getting back to nature.
“Going, going, gone,” I muttered.
He folded his hands in front of him. “Is it half done? A quarter done?”
I turned my gaze to a spot on the far wall and kept my mouth shut.
“Tell me it’s at least started.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m thinking about it, honest I am.”
“You know, it’s perfectly reasonable for someone in your position to hire a ghostwriter. Or at least find a co-author. People do it all the time.”
“No. I majored in English. I ought to be able to string a few sentences together.”
“Kitty—”
I closed my eyes and made a “talk to the hand” gesture. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
“I’ll work on it. I want to work on it. I’ll put something together to show them to make them happy.”
He pressed his lips together in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “Okay.”
I straightened and pretended like we hadn’t just been talking about the book I wasn’t writing. “Have you done anything about the sleazebag?”
He looked up from his food and glared. “There’s no basis for a lawsuit. No copyright infringement, no trademark infringement, nothing.”
“Come on, she stole my show!”
The sleazebag. She called herself “Ariel, Priestess of the Night,” and starting about three months ago she hosted a radio talk show about the supernatural. Just like me. Well, just like I used to.
“She stole the idea,” Ben said calmly. “That’s it. It happens all the time. You know when one network has a hit medical drama, and the next season every other network rolls out a medical drama because they think that’s what everyone wants? You can’t sue for that sort of thing. It was going to happen sooner or later.”
“But she’s awful. Her show, it’s a load of sensationalist garbage!”
“So do it better,” he said. “Go back on the air. Beat her in the ratings. It’s the only thing you can do.”
“I can’t. I need some time off.” I slumped against the back of the booth.