Page 21 of The Perfect Rom-Com

Jack, meanwhile, is oblivious to it all as he swivels me around outside the door. “Are we done? Are you proud of yourself?”

“Mildly.”

“Now you’re going to be all over the news.”

“Right.” I cross the book over my chest protectively. “The group that said she was ‘a generational role model’ after she went over her morning makeup routine is really going to put two and two together. They’d blindly follow her off a cliff.”

“Hence why you two are the perfect team.” Jack grins down at me while I stand there frowning at him, clutching the half-torn international bestseller that’s actually quite meaningful and has been on the bestseller list for twenty-three weeks and running. “She’s got the magnetic personality—a certain . . .” He pauses, thinking of words. “Merry cultlike air, if you will, and you are very”—he halts—“smart.”

My frown deepens.

“And spritely.”

My frown deepens even more.

“But mostly very, very smart. A woman of wits. The trendsetter of our literary time.”

It’s targeted flattery. A shallow pass for forgiveness. But still, this mollifies me. As he knew it would. As it always does. Not entirely. Not even 50 percent of the way. But enough that my shoulders defrost enough for him to take a step forward.

“There we go,” he says, patting me on the head. “That’s a girl. So. We’ll just cross the signing off our to-do list. Terrific job collaborating; you really gave it a C-minus, D-plus effort. And now it’s off to dinner.”

He slips his arm behind my back and redirects us toward the car waiting at the curb. “Now, what’ll it be? Cibo e Vino or that little shack of yours with all the box televisions and questionably sourced meat?”

“Gok-Oguz,” I reply promptly.

“Of course it is,” he says, not missing a beat. He holds the door open for me. “Hop in. Bob, take us to Florence, please.”

“I want to talk about my email.” I slip into my seat.

“And I want to talk about mine.” He waits at the open door.

“I mean it,” I say with a serious expression.

“Back at you. Now move.” He unceremoniously nudges me over.

I glance at the glowing little bookshop as the car begins to move.

The deep green one-story brick building with greenery bordering its doors is nestled between towering complexes, even more festive given the great multitude visible through the glowing windows for the sold-out event. People are milling around the sidewalk, craning their necks to look around the rows of window stickers announcing Amelia’s new book. Phones out. Cameras snapping.

One person keeps pacing around a life-size foam board of Amelia Benedict, looking like she’s going to make a break for it.

This is what Amelia’s events do to perfectly normal citizens. Turn them into fanatics who stand outside sold-out bookshop events, trying to steal foam posters.

This, for the record, is what my life has become saturated with the past two years. My whole life. One massive conversation around one single name: Amelia Benedict.

Day and night. Amelia. Benedict.

It started with leaving that writer’s conference and taking a mostly euphoric six-hour flight with Jack as the reality of representation for my book sank in. I was indeed going to be a writer. I was indeed going to have the book that took my heart and soul and give it the wings to fly. Jack Sterling of The Foundry Literary Agency was going to represent me and my book and take it places so that I could use the profits and awareness via publication to save my struggling workplace and my grandmother’s greatest legacy—on that one condition, of course.

That I rewrite that sham of a book for Amelia.

So I settled in and hunkered down for six months of a rewrite of somebody else’s novel. Which surprised everyone by blowing up beyond anything they’d ever seen.

Which turned into my writing a quick book called Smuggler’s Paradise after the other ghostwriters couldn’t keep up the hype.

And by the time of that release, I was already three chapters into A Room for Rose.

I was a workhorse, and somewhere in there, the conversation shifted away from Water Under the Bridge to whatever Amelia’s book should be next.