The Dead Romantics (4)

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 look at. 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 mean Mrs. 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 I realized 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 than this?

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 read The Forest of Dreams between 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 wrote The Probability of Love and A Rake’s Guide to Getting the Girl and The 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 the New York Times Book Review to Vogue. Those books sat on shelves beside Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks and Julia Quinn, and they were mine.

I wrote for one of romance’s greats—a job anyone would die to have—and I . . . I was failing.

Perhaps I’d already failed. I’d just asked for my last trump card—to write a book that was anything, everything, but a happily ever after—and he said no.

“Mr. Andor,” I began, my voice cracking, “the truth is—”

“Ann needs to deliver the manuscript by the deadline,” he interrupted in a cold, no-nonsense voice. The warmth it held a few minutes before was gone. I felt myself getting smaller by the moment, shrinking into the hard IKEA chair.

“That’s tomorrow,” I said softly.

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“And if—if she can’t?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line. He had a sort of wide mouth that dipped in the middle, expressing things that the rest of his face was too guarded to. “How much time does she need?”

A year. Ten years.

An eternity.

“Um—a—a month?” I asked hopefully.

His dark brows shot up. “Absolutely not.”

“These things take time!”

“I understand that,” he replied, and I flinched. He took off his black-rimmed glasses to look at me. “May I be frank with you?”

No, absolutely not. “Yes . . . ?” I ventured.

“Because Ann’s already asked for three deadline extensions, even if we get it tomorrow, we’d have to push it quickly through copyedits and pass pages—and that’s only if we get it tomorrow—to keep to our schedule. This is Ann’s big fall book. A romance, mind you, with a happily ever after. That’s her brand. That’s what we signed for. We already have promotions lined up. We might even have a full-page spread in the New York Times. We’re doing a lot for this book, so when I prodded Ann’s agent to speak with her, she connected me with you, her assistant.”

I knew that part. Molly Stein, Ann’s agent, wasn’t very happy to get a call about the book in question. She thought everything had been going smoothly. I hadn’t the heart to tell her otherwise. Molly had been pretty hands-off with my ghostwriting gig, mostly because the books were part of a four-book deal, this being the last one, and she trusted that I wouldn’t mess up.