By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(88)

Izzy laughed as she stood up to greet Priya. She’d missed her so much.

Twenty minutes later, Marta walked in and went straight to her office, staring at something on her phone. Izzy wasn’t sure if Marta hadn’t noticed she was there, or if she had just forgotten that Izzy had been gone. Either way, she forced herself to give Marta time to settle in for the day.

She’d made herself a list of talking points for this conversation with Marta, but were they good enough? Would Marta listen to her? Would Marta be furious at her for pushing back about this? After ten minutes, she couldn’t take it any longer and knocked on Marta’s open door.

Marta looked up from her phone. “Isabelle, you’re back. Excellent.”

Izzy took a step inside. “Thanks, Marta. There was something I—”

Marta waved her to a chair. “This whole thing with you in California worked far better than I thought it would. You managed to get an actual book out of Beau Towers, which I didn’t think was possible.”

Izzy took a deep breath. “I wanted to talk to you about—” Suddenly, she realized what Marta had just said. “Wait, what did you just say about Beau Towers?”

“Oh, I assumed you knew, since you were cc’d,” Marta said. “He sent in his manuscript this morning.”

He’d sent Marta the manuscript this morning? The whole manuscript?

“I started reading it on the subway on the way here,” Marta went on. “When he sent those pages a few weeks ago, I could tell it was going to be good, but this is far better than I expected.”

He’d sent Marta pages a few weeks ago? He hadn’t told her he was going to do that.

“Um—yes, he worked really hard on it. It blew my expectations out of the water as well.”

Marta looked very smug. “Sales is going to go bananas for this one. That was a great idea you had, to go talk to him.”

Great idea she had? Now Izzy was very confused.

“I…Thanks, Marta,” she said. “But I saw that piece yesterday, and I thought that TAOAT was planning to cancel the book?”

Marta gestured to her. “Shut the door.”

Izzy got up, shut the door, and sat back down.

“Don’t pay that piece any attention.” She could almost see Marta grind her teeth. “I don’t know who that source was, but when I find out…” Marta smiled. It was the scariest smile Izzy had ever seen. “I reached out to both Beau Towers and his agent as soon as I saw the article. They know it’s bullshit. We haven’t decided how to handle it publicly here yet—now that we have the manuscript, we might just let it stand until we have a cover, surprise the world some, that’s always a good splash. Ooh, or this might be fodder for a new chapter. Publicity will die at that promo material.”

Izzy had no idea what to say. She’d spent the last eighteen hours gearing herself up for this confrontation, but Marta already loved Beau’s book, TAOAT was on his side, and Marta had congratulated her?

“I give you a lot of credit for how good this book is,” Marta said. “Good job.”

As amazing as it felt for Marta to say that, she couldn’t take all the credit. “Thank you, but Beau is a great writer. I did a lot, yes, to help him figure out how to write a memoir, but the writing is all his.”

Marta waved that away. “Yes, yes, that’s what being an editor is. The writing is always all theirs, but that makes our work even more important. His proposal for this memoir was a nightmare. I could see there was a good writer in there, but I knew it would take a lot for me to pull a book out of him. You did a lot of that work for me already.”

Today was not at all turning out to be how she’d expected. Should she do something else that she hadn’t planned on? She didn’t stop to change her mind.

“Thank you, Marta. Actually, there’s something else I’d love to talk to you about. I’ve wanted to move up to assistant editor for a while, but it didn’t seem like that was possible for me here. But recently, Josephine Henry over at Maurice reached out about an assistant editor position. I had an interview over there yesterday.”

Marta nodded slowly. “Yes. That sounds like a great place for you.” Izzy’s mouth didn’t quite drop open, but only because she caught it in time. “I tried here, you know. Because of the budget cuts last year, we couldn’t add any new assistant editors, and I was worried that I might lose you. To be honest, I was waiting for you to ask about it.”

But Gavin said…

Gavin said her book was no good. Gavin said she didn’t have potential here. Gavin said Marta didn’t believe in her.

None of that was true.

Before Izzy could really absorb this, Marta spun to face her computer. “I have Josephine’s number. Let me give her a call about you now.”

Izzy just stared at her.

Marta glanced at her and laughed out loud. “I’m only going to tell her great things about you, not that there’s much else to tell.” She thought for a moment. “Well, you’re not very good at tooting your own horn. Work on that.”

Classic Marta: telling her one of her faults, ordering her to get better, not recognizing or thinking about all the reasons why it was difficult for her to acknowledge or brag about her accomplishments. Ahh, the world felt a little bit more normal now.