Page 14 of Willow in the Wind

“I’ll make sure she’s all right,” James promised.

A few minutes passed. Nancy got her coloring back. James took her mind off Taylor and asked about her wedding, her banker husband, and her redecoration plans for the apartment. They weren’t topics that interested James, but he wanted to calm her down.

Eventually, Nancy said, “Taylor tells me you’re seeing someone.”

James laughed with surprise. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not serious?”

“Not especially.” James shook his head.

Nancy raised her eyebrows. A moment of silence passed between them.

“What?” James asked. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him.

“It’s just that nothing is ever serious with you,” she said. “We had a child together, and I still don’t know if it was ever serious between us.”

“We got married,” he reminded her.

“Still. I don’t know. It was like you were always somewhere else,” Nancy offered.

James’s false smile fell. He sipped his wine and wondered,Has every woman I’ve ever dated felt that way?

But he knew the answer was no.

He knew one woman in the world might have said he was completely present and that they were in love.

I was lucky enough to have it. But it’s over.

Chapter Five

January 2023

The woman who appeared on the screen of Stella’s computer that foggy afternoon smiled at Stella with an expectation Stella couldn’t fathom. Stella was jittery, wearing a loose sweater her mother had knitted for her, touching her hair too often.

This was Gwen Cottrill, the literary agent.

This was the woman who’d read Stella’s book.

“Hi, Stella! Can you hear me okay?” Gwen Cottrill asked.

“Hi! Yes, I can. How are you?” Stella asked. She hated how her voice wavered.

“Great.” Gwen spread her fingers out and took a deep breath. “I want to tell you.Brief Greek Lovefloored me. I read it all in one sitting, and then I went back to read it again. My heart broke. I cried and cried..”

Stella’s heart fluttered. “Thank you for saying that.” She thought she might float away.

“Seriously. This book has everything,” Gwen gushed. “It has romance. It has intrigue. It has a road trip. It has Europeantravel. It has questions that plague every single human on the planet.” Gwen sighed again. “I would like to offer to represent you as we get this book into shipshape and send it to editors. How do you feel about that?”

Tears stung Stella’s eyes. She wanted to say,Yes! A million times, yes!But she’d also read on the internet—through her extensive research in the seven months since she’d begun sending this book out to literary agents—that you weren’t supposed to agree to an offer without telling the other literary agents you’d received one. That way, agents could fight over you. They could tell you just how well they would champion your book.

However, in the past seven months, Stella had received more than seventy rejections. Those rejections had taken their toll on her heart. She’d begun to think,Why did I ever write a book in the first place? Nobody wants it.

She’d begun to think,Maybe I’m bad at this.

“I appreciate that,” Stella breathed. “I’ll take the requisite couple of weeks to think about it, if that’s okay?”

Gwen was unflappable. She was a professional. “That’s fine by me. I can’t wait to hear your final decision.”

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