Chapter Three
Jess
Well, this is unexpected.
Behind the door is not only Jess’s potential fairy godmother, albeit with no wand, sparkly or otherwise, but also … the hottie from earlier. Alex. She swallows hard. She’d pinch herself, if there was a way to do so surreptitiously and not look like a clichéd character in a badly written novel.
‘Hello,’ she says, levelly, waiting to be introduced.
Nathan stands to his feet and extends his hand. ‘Very nice to finally meet in person,’ he says, shaking her hand firmly but not aggressively. His grip is the trustworthy type. The ‘you’re in good hands’ type of grip. She couldn’t tell you what kind of grip Alex has, though. She only knows that something like electricity is flowing through it. What is the universe playing at, exactly? Has she, in fact, hit her head and woken up in a romcom, like in the plot of that Rebel Wilson film?
‘This is Alex Maxwell,’ she vaguely hears Nathan saying. ‘One of my superstar authors.’
‘Lovely to put a name to a face,’ she says, smiling.
Alex remains impassive, as though he’s never seen her before. Is it possible he has a twin, who is somehow also called Alex? Or that the door to Nathan’s office is in fact a portal to another universe, and Jess has landed in one in which she and Alex have never met before? In this moment, it feels as plausible as any other explanation.
She waits for all to become clear.
Nathan gestures to an armchair, and she does as she’s told and sits down.
‘I wanted to invite you here today because I have a proposition for you. An invitation, really, more than a proposition.’
Jess looks to Alex. There is nothing to read on his face at all.
‘As you know, Jess, my marketing team speak very highly of you. They love the humour in your book reviews and enjoy the way you write about the bookshops you visit around the world. I also happen to know that you can write dialogue in a way that really sparkles. And rumour has it that you’d be interested in trying your hand at your own novel.’
Jess’s heart, which had begun to pound in her ears, increases its volume. Between that and the choir of angels, she is having a lot of trouble hearing Nathan, never mind processing what he says next. Sparkling dialogue? Is he talking about her fanfic? Has hereadher fanfic?
‘I can’t offer you your own novel, not yet. But what I can offer you is the chance to work with this great writer.’
‘You mean,’ Alex chimes in, the wordsgreat writerhaving seemingly summoned him into the conversation, ‘as a mentor? I’d be honoured. Though I’m a little busy at the moment—’
But Nathan interrupts him with a shake of his head. ‘No, not exactly. Jess would be a kind of editorial consultant.’
Jess watches Alex’s mouth fly open in shock. Then notices herself noticing his mouth, and scolds herself internally. Then realises her own mouth is open, and promptly closes it.
‘What exactly did you have in mind?’ Alex asks.
‘Well,’ Nathan begins. ‘Jess is witty. She has a lightness of touch even with serious book reviews. She writes brilliantly in the voices of characters she hasn’t created herself.’ So hehasread her fan fiction. Or at least somebody on his team has. Should she be embarrassed? Worried about Alex judging her even more than he already is?Focus, she tells herself. ‘And, if her social media is to be believed, she reads 150 books a year, and writes about many of them, too. She has a great instinct for what the next big thing is going to be, and she has a good sense of what works well in fiction and what readers want.’
Alex narrows his eyes at Nathan. He does not look at Jess. ‘What kind of books?’ When Nathan doesn’t respond immediately, he repeats himself. ‘What kind of books does she read?’
Jess doesn’t love being talked about as if she isn’t there. She also doesn’t love where it feels like this is going. ‘I read all kinds of books,’ she says. ‘I read litfic, and non-fiction, and YA, and fantasy, and thrillers. And yes, I read romance.’
She forces herself to look straight at him when she saysromance. Not in a flirtatious way, but in a I-refuse-to-be-shamed-about-this way. It is ridiculous in this day and age that being shamed for reading any genre of novel is still something that she – that anyone – needs to fight against. ‘Romance powers the publishing industry,’ she says, her argument long ready and long rehearsed for precisely this kind of situation. ‘It’s the sales of writers like Emily Henry and Jasmine Guillory that fund the publishing of obscure lit-fic novels about white men walking around Hampstead Heath thinking deep thoughts.’
She sees a smile playing on Nathan’s lips, and buoyed by this, she continues her spiel. ‘And there’s a special kind of skill involved in following a template in genre fiction but making it your own. Whether that’s when somebody is murdered, and we have to find the killer, or these people are in love – can they make it. The reader knows what the ending is – in fact, they pick the book up precisely because they know the ending, but they want to see what new twist on the journey the author is going to provide for them on the way there. And on top of that, lots of romance writers are funny. Which, let’s be honest, is something we all need from the world right now – a bit of laughter.’
She leaves a pause. ‘But I read all kinds of books.’
Alex finally looks at her full in the face for the first time since the bookshop. ‘You feel passionately about romance, though, by the sound of it.’
The wordpassiondoes something to her insides that she wishes it wouldn’t in this particular context. Sheispassionate about romance, as it happens. But sheis also defensive of it, and she knows that defensiveness is not a good look – not for herself, and not for the genre.
‘I think it deserves respect.’
‘And would you say it’s your favourite genre?’
