The Ghostwriter(16)

I don’t know why she’s insistent on coming here. To make things worse, I can feel Kate’s certainty that Marka won’t agree to the terms. It’s a legitimate possibility, one that I am afraid to consider. Hell, if Marka had reached out six months ago with a similar request, I’d have laughed at her. I would have taken perverse pleasure in turning her down, my email maliciously worded with the full intent to stab her when she was down. I would have been the biggest bitch on the planet about it.

And that’s the main reason I’d initially refused her request for a face-to-face. The most likely scenario is that she is flying here for no reason other to embarrass me to my face. She will curl up that pouty mouth and laugh at my book proposition, at my timeline, and at my life. She will judge my uneven features and stringy hair. She will be just like the popular girls from seventh grade, only this time I will care, it will matter.

I need her.

But I’m also terrified of her.

With less than twenty-four hours until our meeting, I feel a wave of nausea and stumble for a chair.





When he meets my mother, it’s like butter on hot toast, a melding of souls—an effortless union that I am merely a spectator to. I feel betrayed, seeing her laugh at his jokes, seeing him hold the door open for her, and his compliment on her work.

I prepared him for her stiff disapproval, for her judgmental stares, for her psychoanalysis. I didn’t prepare myself for them to get along, for my mother to beam at me, for the two of them to unite.

Later, it will be war—but on that cool Sunday afternoon, it is just irritating. I—





The doorbell rings, and my fingers pause above the keyboard, the paragraph half-finished on the screen before me. My eyes move to the clock, worried for a moment that I have lost track of time, and that Marka is already here. But it is a quarter ‘til four, fifteen minutes before our appointment. I can’t picture Marka as an early arrival. If anything, I expect her to be fashionably late.

The doorbell rings a second time and I stand from the desk, saving my work and moving to the door, taking the steps as quickly as I can manage, suddenly filled with an urgent need to get to the door before a third chime of the bell.

I make it to the door and jerk it open, caught off guard by the man who stands there. I immediately toss the idea that he is Ron Pilar, Marka’s agent. This man, his face ruddy, hair wild, clothes crumpled—is not an agent, and is certainly not from New York. There isn’t a polished bone inside his loose khaki shirt, one with an unnecessary number of pockets, a fish stitched onto the front breast. No salesmanship in his comfortable stance, one hand tucked in a pocket, the other lifting from the doorbell in greeting. I watch his hand move, noting the calluses on the palm, the cracks in the skin, the gold band on his left ring finger. If I look closely, there’ll probably be dirt under his nails. I hope he isn’t the driver that Kate found, showing up a day early. There’s no way I’m letting a man like this take me anywhere.

“Helena?” The drawl of my name is deep and masculine, and I’ve described voices like it a hundred times, the rough kind that makes weak females swoon against fence posts. I will not be swooning. I will be kicking him off this porch, immediately, before Marka Vantly and her brigade pull in. I eye his vehicle, a white Ford truck that squats in the middle of my driveway.

“I have a sign.” I tap it. “No ringing the doorbell. No parking on the driveway. And no soliciting.”

“Ah.” He smiles. “And I thought those rules were put up just for me.”

I stare at him blankly, the response making no sense. Even worse, he is still here, his boots on my Go Away mat, precious minutes clicking by. I should be clearing my mind and composing myself. This distraction… I don’t have time for this. “You need to leave.”

“I’m a little early.” His smile is still in place, and it is an amused one, his personal joke too freaking fascinating to share. “Would you like me to wait in the truck ’til four?”

I am a little early. Would you like me to wait ’til four? The words slowly click into place, and I blink, processing the possibilities, my next question a desperate attempt to buy time. “The truck in my driveway?”

He chuckles, and I’m glad this is so much fun for him. “Yes.”

“Are you Ron Pilar?” He can’t be, not unless Ron Pilar negotiates book contracts on fence rails before wrangling cattle.

“That prick?” He coughs out a laugh. “No.” His mouth twitches as if he is holding something in.

So he knows Ron Pilar. Or he’s crazy and bent on driving me to a similar mental state. Either way, this guessing game has gotten old. “I don’t have time for this,” I say sharply, my social graces drained. “Tell me who you are, or get the hell off my porch.”

“I’m sorry,” the man says, and he doesn’t sound the slightest bit sincere. He extends a hand into my personal space, his stubble-framed smile splitting wide across that rough face. “I’m Mark Fortune. Better known as Marka Vantly.”

Marka Vantly.

I’m Mark Fortune. Better known as Marka Vantly.

In the air, there is the hint of dusk, a softening of heat, the faint scent of honeysuckle on the breeze. In his eyes, there is amusement, a knowing gleam that scrapes a sharp knife along my heart.