Page 10 of A Billion Dollar Romance
Peter took a sip of his iced tea. Unsweetened. How he managed to function on salad and tea and not sugar and espresso like the rest of us I did not know, but it worked for him. He was a fantastic editor, and the kind of person who was friends with everyone in every department, who always had a lunch buddy. Maybe that was why he was so cheerful about eating salad. “Did you hear about the ghost thing?”
“Mmm, no,” Margaret mumbled through a mouthful of her wrap.
“Sorry,” I said, “what? Aghostthing?”
“Ghostwriter,” he clarified. “Apparently they’re looking at the in-house staff, trying to find someone they can launch under their own name.”
“Why?” Margaret asked. “What for?”
“Is that something that happens often?” I asked, and they both shook their heads.
“No, never,” Margaret said. “At least, I’ve never heard of it. We get our authors the normal way: through their agencies. We don’t…recruit from withinlike that. It’s…”
“It’s weird, right?” Peter said. “And I heard they’re specifically looking for romance talent.” He shrugged.
Margaret sipped her coffee, brows furrowed. “I wonder if this has something to do with Rebecca leaving.”
Rebecca.I smiled to myself. I was sitting at lunch, eating french fries, with a woman who referred to Rebecca Rourke–one of only a few household names in romance–by her first name. Somehow, it felt almost as if I had made it.
“I’m sure it does,” said Peter, raising his eyebrow. “Michael in Accounting told me the department’s been suffering since she left.”
“Is the company not doing well?” I asked. Had I finally landed a job only to be a violinist on a sinking ship?If Verity sinks and I get fired, at least I’d have a lot of time to write my book,I thought. Then again, I needed money to take time off.
“It’s doing fine,” Margaret scoffed. “It’s still worth a billion dollars. But…”
”Publishing is different now than it was when James Martin’s grandparents founded the company,” Peter said. “Verity keeps all their talent in-house–I mean, we have a full staff of ghostwriters,no onehas that anymore. At the bigger houses, they’re all independent contractors, or whatever. Here they have benefits. Health insurance, whatever. It’s how the first Mr. Martin used to do it.”
I smiled. “That’s almost sweet.”
Margaret scoffed. “I think he just can’t be bothered to change it. He’s not abusinessman, right? And besides, he’s too busy with his…girlfriends.”
I took a gulp of my ice water. Would the cold staunch the furious blush that tinged my cheeks? Margaret noticed anyway.
“Too racy for you, Edie?” she laughed, and I spluttered, shaking my head. “You obviously haven’t been proofing any steamy stuff this morning. I’ve been doing a first pass of a sex scene andoh my god…”
The two more experienced editors’ conversation carried us back to the office and up to the fourth floor. Margaret’s trip to the break room for a coffee brought on another round of Peter’s chastisement, and I returned to my desk with a smile at the both of them and a thank you for my invitation to lunch.
“Please. Don’t ever think you’re imposing. You probably imagined going it on your own in a cabin in the woods, debuting as the next Great American Novelist, just like the rest of us, but seriously,” Margaret nodded her head at my computer screen, giving me a look. “You and I both know that’s not what comes out of this place. All we have are our celebrity memoirs and each other, Edie.” She winked. “Now. Adequately caffeinated?”
I nodded grimly.
“Good, back to work.”
You probably imagined debuting as the next Great American Novelist, just like the rest of us.I had to re-proof several pages after realizing I’d been thinking more about what Margaret had said than the words on the page. Was that true? Did Margaret, too, have a dozen half-completed manuscripts on a dusty external hard drive in her closet? Dideveryonehere?
Everyone except James. Hehadbeen lauded as the next big thing, gotten the six-figure debut and the seven-figure sophomore success. No movie deal, but only because he wasn’t writingthatkind of book. The kind of book that Verity dealt in, if I were being honest.
I sighed, reining in my wandering thoughts and turning back to my work.
* * *
“Tell me everything,” Flora said, tucking her feet up under her on the couch, one hand curled possessively around a plastic container of Pad Thai, the other poking a fork in my direction. “How was it?”
“My first week was great, thanks,” I said, not meeting her eye. I ate a huge spoonful of green curry.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Flora said. She was my best and oldest friend–we’d met on the first day of our freshman English seminar and spent the next four years passing favorite paperbacks back and forth–but it unfortunately meant that she also readmelike a book.
It was the best sex of my life. I’m ruined for anyone else.
