“Taylor,” Brandy’s voice says softly. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say, surprised to hear from the office assistant. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted you to know they published it,” she whispers.
“What?” I ask.
“I mean, you bought it,” she says. “What else were they supposed to do?”
“So it’s out?” I ask. “Or it’s going to be?”
“Ebook,” she says. “And a limited paperback run. It’s out there now if you want a copy.”
She probably thinks I wouldn’t want a souvenir of my darkest moment, but I would actually love a copy.
“Thank you, Brandy,” I tell her. “It means a lot that you called.”
“Sure,” she says. “Hey… good luck.”
She hangs up before I can thank her again and I wander back to the table, tapping out a search for the book on my phone.
Sure enough, it pops up right away.
Terrible cover, no big author blurbs or editorial reviews, but it’s there, up on the web for all to see.
“My book,” I say, mesmerized.
“You wrote a book?” he asks, putting down his chopsticks.
“No,” I say. “No, no. I found one—one I really believed in…”
But I’m having a hard time going on because if I tell him what happened, he’s not going to respect me anymore. And that might mean the end of the precious, precarious little world I’ve built for myself in this shop with this man and his daughter.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, sitting back.
“I do though,” I hear myself say. “It’s the reason I’m here.”
He leans forward, clearly interested.
With those kind blue eyes locked to mine, I’m not sure I can go on. But I know now that I have to. If I want any kind of future with this man, he has to know about my most embarrassing moment.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to discover great stories,” I tell him. “When I was a kid and I found out publishing was a job, I knew it was what I was made for. I used to spend all my time in the library, reading like wild. The idea that I could read all day as my actual job, searching the world for an amazing book, was incredible to me.”
“That does sound like fun,” Roan says. “But the books aren’t all good, right?”
“Most of them have something good in them,” I say firmly. “But only a very few havemagicin them.”
“You’re not talking about wizards,” he guesses.
“No,” I laugh. “I mean the kind of magic that hooks you in the minute you open the first page and keeps you on the edge of your seat until you’ve read the whole thing, and then you hug it to your chest and wish you could read it for the first time all over again.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that made me feel like that,” he admits. “Does that make me uncultured?”
“It just means you haven’t been reading the right books for you, that’s all,” I tell him. “If we talk about the best ones you’ve read so far, and what kind of movies and TV shows you like, I’ll bet we could find you a book that would knock your socks off.”
“Okay,” he says, looking sort of excited. “But I want to know what happened in New York first.”
“I got a job right out of college at a tiny publishing company as an intern,” I tell him, pride filling my chest at the memory. “And I worked my way up, pretty quickly actually, because I really loved it. I came in early, worked late, and basically lived and breathed books.”
