Page 31 of All Yours

She grinned. “Do you think we’ll still be in our fake relationship by then?”

Chapter Eleven

Sloane

“If you don’t turn in a manuscript, Sloane, you won’t have a book released next fall. And your schedule for four books a year will be out the window. Just think of how disappointed your fans will be. You’ll lose readers staying gone that long.” Andrea berated me when I finally answered the phone. My editor had given up trying to reach me and told on me to my agent.

“Maybe they’ll realize I’m a human being and not a story generating robot,” I replied, watching the coffee drip from the maker into the pot. It was way too early to listen to ranting. How did she have that much energy before 8 am?

“No, they will buy another writer’s book,” she snapped.

“It’s difficult to write under all this stress,” I sighed. My date with Jonah had given me ideas for another story. The fat load of good that did me with the one my agent chewed my ass over.

“Your readers know you as JoAnne Abernathy, and she has no problems. Your stories take them out of their lives and make them forget their problems,” she said.

“And I love doing that. However, I’m not putting out something that I don’t think is good quality. It matters to me. And I’ll get it completed, but I can’t force it. And besides, there’s still three books coming out in the year.”

Andrea exhaled in my ear. “Then you will not have another until the following year. It’s your career, but I’m warning you not to stay gone too long.”

The gate buzzer sounded.

“Hang on,” I said into the phone. I pressed the control panel button. “Yes?”

“Delivery from Lion Publishing.”

Sebastian’s book. I contemplated going to the gate to get it myself. But didn’t want to go out into the cold to retrieve this piece of crap.

“Please bring it to the house,” I said, depressing the open button. “Take the gravel road until it ends.”

“Who is that?” Andrea said in my ear. “Are you shopping other publishers without me?”

“I can’t even write for the one that I have. I don’t want another one.”

“Shopping a nonfiction title?”

“No, don’t start.”

“A memoir could fetch some big money, and if you can’t write fiction right now…”

“I don’t want to do that. We’ve been through this.”

“You were cranking out the fiction then.”

Yeah, I had been prolific when I started this new career and moved out here alone in my cabin in the woods. The words, stories, and characters poured from my brain through my fingers and materialized on the laptop screen. In the last few weeks, my mind has turned into an empty desert with a lone tumbleweed rolling by.

“No memoir,” I said. My parents would hate me unless I sugarcoated and lied through the whole thing. We had little contact over the years since I quit tennis and went into hiding. I’d let them down. But for me, after having fame and then nothing, I’d taking nothing any day of the week.

Without convincing me to write a memoir or goading me into producing the next book, Andrea told me she’d check on me the following week and our conversation was over.

The doorbell sounded, and I opened to a young man bundled in a parka and holding out a brown cardboard box.

“Julia Simmons?” he asked.

Christ. They addressed it to my old name. Jen should have had it sent to my PO box. But that would have been problematic too. Sebastian was such a jerk for dragging my name back up after all these years. Instead of just letting me live the rest of my life in anonymity, he felt the need to exploit it one last time for his fame.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the box without confirming or denying the name. I closed the door and hoped he made his way back down the gravel drive to the street and would never breathe a word of this. The small box was heavy for its size, dashing the hopes I had of the book being a sparse read.

I dropped the package to the table with a thud and returned to the coffee maker. Part of me wanted to take the whole thing, box and all, outside, and toss it in the fire pit. And light it up without ever even opening it. But the rational side needed to know what Sebastian had written about me, and about our time together. How did he describe the constant photographers, the questions, the pressure to win? Would he take responsibility for the infidelities?

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