Chapter 7

Eloise

It was Noah’s birthday weekend, and of course I was there to celebrate, but also to help Camille not lose her mind. He’d asked for a superhero party and Camille had somehow managed to find a company that sent people in costume to parties that also had at least one actor who was fluent in ASL. Then there was booking and receiving the bounce house and making sure it got set up and the food and cleaning the house and then Camille was at the end of her rope. John did his best to help carry the load, but Camille was so bad at delegating and then refusing to allow anyone to help when she got frazzled.

“My love. I’m going to need you to take a breath,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and squeezing. One of her eyes was twitching in a concerning way.

“But—” she started to say. I dug my fingers in until she actually focused on my face.

“Everything is going to be fine. Noah’s party is going to be perfect. Even if the cupcakes are wrong and it might drizzle a little bit. It’s going to be perfect,” I said and waited for her to start breathing normally again.

At last Camille nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

The party was perfect. Noah was over the moon to sign with his favorite superhero, and the bounce house didn’t deflate, and the rain held off, and there was no blood and very few tears.

Once the last kid had gone home and the grandparents had agreed to take the three kids for the night to give Camille and John a break, the three of us sat on the back porch with drinks and leftover lasagna.

“I’m never doing this again,” Camille said, slumped over in her chair.

“Cam, you say that every year,” John pointed out. Camille glared at him.

“You do say it every year,” I said.

“I hate it when you two gang up on me,” she said with a groan. “I don’t know if I can get up from this chair, I’m so worn out.”

John put his drink down and stood up. “That’s what you have me for.”

Like the prince he was, he picked her up in his arms.

I laughed and said, “That’s my cue.”

They insisted that I could stay, but I wanted to sleep in my own bed.

Since I’d been drinking, I went ahead and walked home, hoping that no wildlife would see me as easy prey. This was a pretty safe neighborhood, but you never knew when a rogue skunk was going to crash out of the bushes and see you as a problem.

I made it home without incident and it was still early enough that I didn’t want to go to bed just yet.

I went to my office and realized that Cadence had left her headphones here. I pulled out my phone to send her a message about two seconds before realizing that it was late, and she didn’t need to be hearing from me on the weekend. Surely she was out with her friends doing whatever the hell twenty-six-year-olds did.

If she contacted me, I’d tell her they were here, but I wasn’t going to reach out to her.

Shockingly, she’d done well this week. Better than expected. I’d truly thought she was going to crash and burn. I hadn’t been nice or taken it easy on her because you should start as you mean to go on and I wasn’t going to treat her with kid gloves and then have her flip out when reality set in later.

And she’d had a good idea about showcasing the fanart on my site. I was almost angry that I nor anyone on my team had thought of it first.

Social media wasn’t new, but the way that my fans interacted with me on certain sites was, and I still struggled to get a handle on it. My website was one thing, but those pages were like the wild west and you never knew what was going to happen. One person could make an outrageous comment and before you knew it there were hundreds pouring in all talking about something completely off-topic that had nothing to do with the post. There was a need to say the most clever or meanest thing and I didn’t care for a lot of it.

Alas, I had no choice in the matter and if I wanted to reach fans both new and old, I had to find a way to make it work for me.

Cadence seemed to have a good sense, so if this worked out, I was going to lean on her more in that department. I didn’t like the idea of doing that, but I knew where my weaknesses were, and I knew how to utilize my resources.

Leaving the headphones on the desk, I closed my office door and went to my library to see if I wanted to find a book to read. After twenty minutes of picking titles and then putting them back, I went to my phone and looked up the alien books that Cadence had told me about. The first ebook was free, so what did I have to lose?

I clicked download before I could think better of it and grabbed my ereader from the charger, curled myself into my favorite reading chair in the library and settled in with a small cheese plate and a cup of tea.

I didn’t know what the hell I was getting into. Most of my reading was concentrated on colleagues’ books, non-fiction, and the odd random romance that I picked up or that Camille recommended. I didn’t have nearly as much time to read as I wished I did.

* * *

Around two a.m.,I realized that I needed to go to bed, but I didn’t want to. I was absolutely engrossed in this strange tale of humans and blue aliens with spectacular anatomy. It shouldn’t make sense, but the writing was snappy, funny, and kept me turning the pages. A complete surprise. Sylvia had been right. Cadence had been right.

Somehow I stumbled to bed and slept like the dead until my eyes opened the next morning and I was struggling for coffee. It was Sunday, which was normally my chore day. I’d go to the grocery store, strip the bed and wash the sheets and towels, and prepare for the cleaners to come on Tuesday morning during my Pilates class.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to do any of those things. Well, I wanted to do them, but there was something else I wanted to do more. Read.

I made myself a quick breakfast and parked myself in my reading chair until I had devoured the last page of the ebook and went ahead and bought the next five volumes. There were dozens of them, I found out, and I had no idea if I’d make it through that many, but I had to read more.

Audiobooks I usually reserved for travel, but I went ahead and got those too and wore my earbuds for all my errands, something I hadn’t done before. I almost completely forgot my grocery list and it took me forever to get through the store because I had to keep stopping and listening.

By the time I’d gotten everything done that I wanted to get done, I had switched back to ebooks and was well on my way to finishing the second volume.

For a moment, I considered sending Cadence a message that I’d started the books and was enjoying them, but why would I do that when I was going to see her tomorrow? Cadence was my employee, not my friend. Mary had been both, but that was after years of us being together. For now, I needed to keep a distance between me and Cadence. Strictly professional.

* * *

She was late on Monday,and she arrived with coffee on her pants and her hair frizzing around her head.

“I’m so sorry. There was traffic and then they didn’t make my order so they had to make it again and then I tripped.” She was babbling and I wanted to put my hands on her shoulders like I did with Camille and tell her to breathe.

“I don’t tolerate lateness, as a rule, because it shows disrespect for my time, but this is the first, and it sounds like it was out of your control. Just be sure to manage your time and build in a buffer for accidents next time.”

Her face went red and she looked down at her feet as if she was a child who was being scolded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and I really hoped she wasn’t going to cry. I couldn’t handle someone who cried anytime I had a criticism or comment.

But then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and handed me my coffee. She had a bag with her, and I knew there would be some kind of pastry inside. Every day she brought me something different and tried to convince me to eat it. I’d turned her down every single day.

“It’s lemon blueberry loaf today. With a vanilla bean frosting,” she said as I passed the bag back to her.

“No, thank you.” I’d already told her not to bring me anything, but it hadn’t deterred her, so I wasn’t going to waste my breath.

She shrugged and went to get a plate in the kitchen.

“Do you mind if I make some coffee to replace mine?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

I now had her favorite Irish cream coffee creamer in the fridge, so she went ahead and boiled some water for the French press as she set out the cake on a plate and grabbed a fork. She’d gotten more comfortable in my kitchen and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“How was your weekend?” she asked, doing a little twirl and then making her coffee and waiting for it to brew.

“Fine,” I said. “I started reading one of those alien books.”

She spun around, her eyes lighting up as she grinned. “You did? And?”

I nodded and then sipped my coffee. “You weren’t wrong about them.”

She let out a little excited noise and bounced on her feet as if I’d just announced she was getting a pony for Christmas.

“I cannot believe you actually read one. Tell me everything.”

I didn’t want to tell her everything. We weren’t friends.

“They’re intriguing. Very readable. I can see why people love them.” There. That was neutral.

“Okay, but when you read a few more, you have to tell me who your favorite couple is.”

She was getting too excited and I needed to shut that down. “I’m not sure if I’ll read more. Maybe.” I took my coffee and went back to my office, effectively ending the conversation.

Cadence was more subdued when she joined me with her coffee. She must have eaten the cake in the kitchen before joining me.

“Can I make a request?” she asked before she opened her laptop and turned it on.

“Potentially,” I said, wondering what the hell it could be.

“Could we have a little, like, meeting in the mornings and go over everything I need to do? I’m good with lists, and it helps me focus. I’d also like to rate each task in order of priority so I can do the most important first. Is that okay?”

That sounded entirely reasonable to me. I’d gotten so out of practice working with another person. Mary and I had had twice-weekly chats like that, but at a certain point she was so good at her job that she knew what I needed before I needed it and my guidance would only be a hindrance.

“That sounds like a good idea. Maybe we keep it daily until your trial period is over and then we can reevaluate if we need it every day.”

She nodded and pulled her chair over to my desk with her notebook. She listed all her tasks for that day, and I told her which were most important, and which were less so. She took copious notes and I was hit with the sensation that it was nice to have someone here with me again. Someone to listen to me. Someone to talk to. Even just another breathing human in the room made me feel less alone.

Writing was solitary, and my laser focus on success had made me even more isolated. It was a miracle that Camille had stuck by my side for all these years, but she was an exception. Sylvia was my friend, but she was also my agent, which meant it was in her best financial interest to keep me happy.

I knew it wasn’t healthy to spend so much time with only my own thoughts for company. That was probably why both Sylvia and Camille had been pestering me so much to hire someone.

“Okay, that’s perfect. Meeting adjourned,” Cadence said, clapping her hands together and making me jump.

“Sorry,” she said, looking sheepish. “I’ll just get back to work.”

* * *

For some reason,I kept finding myself looking up from my desk at Cadence. And not just when she was making noise, which was almost constant. I had adjusted a little bit to her noises, but that wasn’t what drew my attention.

The wisps around her face and neck should have looked messy. They did, but in an intentional way. Her forehead creased as she concentrated and then she huffed out a breath, puffing her cheeks out. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen someone with that many freckles. They were scattered all over her face and arms and fingers and probably elsewhere. Little sprinkles of cinnamon that made her interesting to look at.

An email came through and I saw that it was from Sylvia, so I forced myself to stop staring at my assistant and go back to my actual work.

* * *

I’d managedto wrangle the difficult chapter from last week, but now I had a different problem. My characters needed to go on a date, and I was out of ideas. I’d gone through my lists and done searches and was coming up empty. It had to be unique to them, not just going to the movies or dinner. I was stumped and it was making me increasingly angrier. When the words didn’t flow, it was a level of frustration that I couldn’t explain to someone who wasn’t a writer.

I let out a sound of irritation and rubbed my forehead. Shit. It was hot, which meant that I might have a migraine coming on. I pulled one of my pills out of the drawer in my desk where I kept them. I popped it and chased it with a sip from my water bottle.

“Everything okay?” Cadence asked, pulling down her headphones and letting them rest around her neck.

“Yes,” I said. “Just a little stuck.”

“Want to take a break and pace about it?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes.

“No, I do not.”

I considered going back to my computer and ending this little interaction, but I didn’t.

“Okay. Fine.” I crossed my arms. “Give me a unique date scenario.”

Cadence’s eyebrows went up. “Are you actually asking me for input right now?”

“Yes. Reluctantly,” I said, and she grinned.

“Okay, a date scenario. Between your book characters, I’m guessing. A guy and a girl?”

I gave her the rundown of my characters and their personalities directly from the profiles I’d built out before I wrote the book. I’d barely changed my process since I’d written my first book. First came the beginning outline. My characters got names, jobs, hobbies, personality quirks. It was basic and not very specific. Once I’d thought more about the story and done some refining, I did a much longer outline that was the bones of the book. Whenever I would get stuck or get off track, I’d go back to that outline and it would keep me steady to the end. I wrote from the first page to the last page, all in order. Once that was done, there were rounds of edits and back and forth with the publisher and copy editors, but that process had worked for me so far.

I wasn’t into collaboration. A few author friends I knew had written books with other people, and two were even a writing duo who had published dozens of books together. Not for me.

But I was a dry well and she was here, and maybe, just maybe, she might have an idea that would spark something.

“Are there any themes in the book? Something that’s unique to the two of them? Or even unique to her, that he could make happen? Oh, and is there a budget?”

Her questions set off a flurry of thoughts in my head.

“Her mother, who died, loved monarch butterflies. She has a tattoo on her shoulder of one.”

Cadence turned to her computer and typed something in, and I waited.

“Okay, so depending on what time of year it’s taking place, and where they live, he could take her to see the monarch butterfly migration. He could surprise her with it. Maybe keep it a secret until they get there. And then blindfold her and when she takes it off, she’s absolutely surrounded by hundreds of them. Something like that.”

Well. There was an idea. It was a good one, too.

I nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

She smiled again. “Does this mean I get a writing credit?”

“I’ll thank you in the acknowledgments,” I said.

Cadence let out a little breath that was almost a laugh. “I guess. Still, that scene could make or break the book and I think I should get some kind of credit.”

She was persistent, wasn’t she?

“I don’t know that I’m going to use it anyway. It might not even work with the story.”

She didn’t seem upset. “That’s fine. I’ve got lots of ideas. I’m a romance reader, after all.”

And that was one of the reasons I’d even hired her in the first place. Someone who loved and respected the genre was the only kind of person I could have working for me.

“I need to get back to work,” I said.

“Let me know if you need more ideas,” she said, tapping her head. “Got ’em all up here.”

I shouldn’t have asked.