Sugar on the Edge (Last Call #3)(3)
Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s full of shit. Who knows, but here I am.
Lindie is a power hitter in the world of traditional publishing and snapped me up quickly when my last book, Killing the Tides, hit number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list. I had self-published it, having spent four years being turned down by every agency and publisher in the United Kingdom and the United States. My brand of dark, paranormal thrillers with a heavy dose of erotica was not something anyone was willing to take a chance on. But apparently, the readers knew something that the big publishers didn’t, and my book stayed on all the major best-seller lists for weeks and weeks.
Just four months after its release, I was represented by Lindie. Three months after that, and I had one of the big five offering me a huge, eight-figure deal for another two books. Even though I was drunk and high as hell when Lindie pitched the deal to me, I recognized it as the money train I had always been waiting for in recognition of my work as a writer. I’m pretty sure I was stoned out of my mind when I signed the contract. In fact, I was pretty tanked when Lindie flew to London to confront me, telling me that I needed to get my shit together, get away from the sordid lifestyle I was living, and move away from the UK so I could concentrate on saving my fledgling career. I agreed to all of those life changes without really having any good lucidity whatsoever.
And, so here I am, in a new country, a new home, with a manuscript that is just about forty-thousand words shy of completion and only two weeks left to finish it.
Staring at the bottle of Scotch before me, I know I’m going to have to set it aside starting tomorrow.
I hope I can set it aside.
I don’t want to, but I need to.
“About time you got home,” Casey says as I step inside the door to the small beach house that we share. It’s almost nine o’clock in the evening, and I’m pooped. No… beyond pooped. I’m utterly exhausted, as I’ve been working since seven this morning.
“I know,” I say, my voice laced with fatigue. “The photo shoot went much longer than I anticipated.”
“And just exactly how much of that time was spent trying to avoid the douche bag’s cheesy come-ons and lame innuendos?”
“A good thirty minutes, at least,” I answer her with a wry grin, but then I give a tiny shudder. I do some contract work with a local portrait photographer and he’s an absolute slime ball, constantly hitting on me in the most inappropriate ways. Unfortunately, I need the job desperately, having just been laid off at the newspaper where I was the staff photographer. The paper couldn’t afford me full time, thus the layoff. At least they promised to contract certain projects to me, but it’s microscopic peanuts compared the regular ones they were paying me.
Heading into the kitchen, I drop my purse on the kitchen table with a thud. Opening the refrigerator, I peruse the contents, but I’m too tired to make anything substantial to eat. So I pull out a bag of carrots and an apple. When I turn back around, Casey is leaning up against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest.
She’s so beautiful that I feel dowdy next to her, but Casey is never one to flaunt herself… at least not around other women. Sure, she’s the biggest flirt when it comes to men, and her motto has always been “love ’em and leave ’em,” but she’s one of the nicest, most down-to-earth women I’ve ever known. I’m so glad we became roommates, because without her added help with the rent, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to stay here.
“What did he do this time?” Casey asks, her eyes narrowing at me.
“The same… casual brush ups against me, dirty comments,” I tell her wearily. “You’d think he’d come up with something original, right?”
“Well, your luck is about to change, girlie,” she tells me with a grin, dropping her hands to rest on the counter at her hips. “I found another house for you to clean… it’s huge and the guy that owns it is super rich. With that, you can leave the douche bag forever.”
I take a bite of a carrot and, with my mouth full, demand, “Tell me more.”
“His name is Gavin Cooke, and he’s kind of weird… well, he’s kind of an *. He’s some big-time, British author that moved here to finish writing a book. He needs someone to clean his house a few times a week, and he told me to have you call him.”
Munching and then swallowing the carrot, I consider this. Between the contract work at the newspaper, the part-time work with the douche bag photographer, and the two other houses I clean, it will mean even longer hours for me. I’m barely functioning as it is, and this will mean less sleep and sorer muscles.
Unfortunately, I really don’t have a choice. Between my student loans, living expenses, and the brand new transmission I had to put in my car last month, I barely make enough money to feed myself much more than carrots and apples. On top of that, cleaning houses and hauling camera equipment provides me with too much of a workout for the very few calories I’m able to consume each day, and I’ve lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose.
Still, the alternative isn’t appealing either. If I can’t make it here on my own, my only other choice is to move back home to Clearview, Indiana, and become that weird twenty-five-year-old woman that still lives with her parents. And while my parents are the nicest, sweetest, Midwest couple you can find, my life will absolutely stagnate back home. I worked hard to get out of our little town, so I could travel the world and take photographs of all the wonders I would behold. Granted, I haven’t made it any further than the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but that is practically a world away from my humble upbringing.