I shifted in my seat. “Oh, Tabitha didn’t tell you? She never leaves Maine. I think she lives on an island or something. It sounds nice—I wouldn’t ever want to leave, either. I hear Maine’s pretty.”
“It is! I grew up there,” he replied. “Saw many a moose. They’re huge.”
Are you sure you aren’t half moose yourself?my traitorous brain said, and I winced because that wasverywrong andverybad. “I guess they prepared you for the rats in New York.”
He laughed again, this time surprising himself, and he had a glorious white smile, too. It reached is eyes, turning brown to a melting ocher. “Nothing could prepare me for those. Have you seen the ones down in Union Square? I swear one had ajockeyon him.”
“Oh, you didn’t know? There’s some great rat races down at the Eighteenth Street Station.”
“Do you go often?”
“Absolutely, there’s even a squeak-easy.”
“Wow, you’re a real mice-stro of puns.”
I snorted a laugh and looked away—anywhere other than at him. Because I liked his charm, and I definitely didn’t want to, and I hated disappointing people, and—
He cleared his throat and said, “Well, Miss Day, I think we need to talk about Ann’s upcoming novel...”
I gripped the cactus in my lap tighter. My eyes jumped from barren wall to barren wall. There was nothing in the office to lookat. It used to be full of things—fake flowers and photos and book covers on the walls—but now the only thing on the walls was a framed master’s degree in fiction—
“Does it have to be a romance?” I blurted.
Surprised, he cocked his head. “This... is a romance imprint.”
“I—I know, but like—you know how Nicholas Sparks writes depressing books and John Green writes melodramatic sick-lit, do you think I—I meanMrs. Nichols—could do something in that vein instead?”
He was quiet for a moment. “You mean a tragedy.”
“Oh, no. It’d still be a love story! Obviously. But a love story where things don’t end up—‘happily ever after’—perfect.”
“We’re in the business of happily ever afters,” he said slowly, picking his words.
“And it’s a lie, isn’t it?”
He pursed his lips.
“Romance is dead, and this—all of this—feels like a con.” I found myself saying it before my brain approved, and as soon as Irealized I’d voiced it aloud, I winced. “I didn’t mean—that isn’t Ann’s stance, that’s just what I think—”
“Are you her assistant or her editor?”
The words were like a slap in the face. I quickly snapped my gaze back to him, and went very still. His eyes had lost their warm ocher, the laugh lines having sunk back into a smooth, emotionless mask.
I gripped the cactus tighter. It had suddenly become my buddy in war. So he didn’t know that I was Ann’s ghostwriter. Tabitha didn’t tell him, or she forgot to—slipped her mind, whoops! And I needed to tell him.
He was my editor, after all.
But a bitter, embarrassed part of me didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to see how much of my life I didn’t have together because, as Ann’s ghostwriter, shouldn’t I? Have it together?
Shouldn’t I be better thanthis?
When I was growing up, my mother read Ann Nichols’s books, and because of that, I did, too. When I was twelve, I would sneak into the romance section in the library and quietly readThe Forest of Dreamsbetween the stacks. I knew her catalog back and forth like a well-played discography of my favorite band.
And then I became her pen.
While Ann’s name was on the cover, I wroteThe Probability of LoveandA Rake’s Guide to Getting the GirlandThe Kiss at the Midnight Matinee. For the last five years, Ann Nichols had sent me a check to write the book in question, and then I did, and the words in those books—my words—had been praised from theNew York Times Book ReviewtoVogue. Those books sat on shelves beside Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks and Julia Quinn, andthey were mine.
I wrote for one of romance’s greats—a job anyone woulddieto have—and I... I was failing.