Chapter 9

Eloise

I was behind on my deadline and it stressed me out that weekend. Usually my rule was that I didn’t do any writing unless absolutely necessary on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes I had admin work that would spill over but writing rarely did. When it did, my stress level ratcheted up and I knew I was close to triggering one of my migraines.

Camille had invited me to go to the children’s museum with her and the kids, but I declined and said I had to work. I did do some writing, but I also went into the city and brought my laptop to my favorite bar and parked myself to work and people watch and chat with my favorite bartender, Dom. She was such an important part of my life that I’d thanked her in several of my books for providing sustenance and gossip during my writing sessions.

Dom was in her late thirties and managed the bar with an iron fist and didn’t suffer fools. She was my favorite kind of no-nonsense person who could silence anyone with a look.

“You writing about me this time?” she asked when I sat down in my usual spot at the end of the bar and opened my laptop.

I rolled my eyes. Dom had been asking me to write a character based on her since the first night that I’d met her.

“I’ve told you, I don’t write about real people. Gets too messy.” That wasn’t entirely true. I would take pieces of real people that I’d met and incorporate them in my characters, but never a whole person with how they looked and everything.

Dom put a hand to her heart. “You wound me. Does our friendship mean nothing to you?”

I rolled my eyes. Dom was seriously gorgeous with tan skin and dark hair that she kept up in a messy bun that was never actually that messy and blunt-cut bangs across her forehead.

She also had the kind of aura that you didn’t want to mess with her, but you also wanted to confess every single secret and sin to her. Spending any length of time with her was like being bewitched. Made her incredible at her job.

“What can I get for you, my favorite author?” she asked, even though she knew.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll try something new. An old fashioned, if you have it.”

Dom grinned and slapped one hand down on the bar.

“You got it.”

While she made my drink, I pretended to look at the menu, even though I already knew what I wanted.

Dom presented my drink and I ordered my favorite bourbon barbecue burger with bacon and fries. There was no sense in coming to a place like this and not indulging myself. Normally I wouldn’t let myself be caught dead in public eating a burger that would inevitably leave my face covered in sauce, but this place was different, and Dom was always giving me a million napkins, and always loaded me up with extra fries.

It was still early for the dinner rush, and also Sunday, so the place was pretty quiet, which meant Dom would come and chat with me about work and I’d ask her about customers as I let the alcohol warm my blood and ate the perfectly crispy fries and did my best not to inhale my burger too quickly.

A group of guys wandered in and ordered drinks and one attempted to hit on Dom while I pretended to be looking at my laptop while watching. I’d seen this so many times before and it was satisfying every time. Since she did work on tips, she knew how to reject people in the smoothest way and they weren’t even aware it was happening. This time the guy didn’t take the hint (sometimes they didn’t) and kept going and then Dom broke out her stare and before I knew it, the guy was apologizing and moving away from the bar with the drinks and going back to his table.

“One of these days you’re really going to have to teach me how to do that,” I said when she came over to my side of the bar to see if I wanted another drink.

“It’s all in the attitude. And I’ve seen you hold your own. You don’t need my help.” That was true. Every now and then a man would try a line on me and I’d have to rebuff him. I almost never got recognized by men, which said a lot about their reading habits. The conversation never got far enough where I disclosed my identity, so I didn’t get to see their reaction to who I was.

“What is it about a woman alone in public that is such a magnet for certain kinds of guys?” I asked.

Dom laughed and leaned back against the counter. “When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”

I huffed out a laugh and went back to my manuscript. I’d ended up using Cadence’s butterfly idea. I hadn’t told her yet, because who knew if it would make it into the final manuscript. A lot of things could change from the first draft to the last. Hell, I’d had to change character names before and that was a nightmare. You’d think you could just find and replace, but that didn’t always work.

The bar started to fill up and that was my cue to call a car and head home.

Dom said goodbye and told me not to be a stranger before I left. Not a bad Sunday night. I’d gotten a few words and I’d had a fantastic burger.

Not for the first time that weekend, I wondered what Cadence was doing. Was she reading more of my books? What did she think?

I rarely wondered what other people thought of my books, other than my team. It wasn’t productive and it didn’t serve any purpose. Reviews from readers were not for me. That wasn’t my space. Besides, I had so many of them at this point that they ran the gamut from glowing to brutal and what did that matter?

Cadence had said that she liked the ones she had read already. Her praise had thrilled me a little. The way that getting a good trade review still got to me. Even after this many years, having someone who mattered tell me that my books were good, that my writing was good, still gave me a rush.

Realizing that I wanted Cadence to like my books wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t want her opinions to matter to me that much. At least not her opinions on my books. She was a woman I’d met less than three weeks ago, and she did not get to have that kind of influence on me. No. That was not happening.

Thinking about Cadence was absolutely not allowed outside of work hours. And during work hours it was going to be strictly professional. Whatever she thought about my work didn’t matter.

It couldn’t matter.

* * *

Cadence’sthird week passed quickly. It was a busy one for me, with podcast interviews, a virtual meeting with my publishing team and a million other things. I had a book coming out in five months, and things were going to start getting busy for the promotion. Tour and interviews and TV appearances and all that. I’d done it before, but the idea of doing all of that for two and a half weeks was making me pre-exhausted.

If Cadence was still working for me, she would be going with me. I had her book travel and tickets and everything, just in case. Her eyes had gone wide when I’d mentioned it, but I’d told her it was not for months and that she didn’t need to worry about it.

“A tour,” she said, when she’d seen the schedule. “I don’t…that’s a huge commitment.”

“I know,” I said when I could sense her panic. “It’s just in case. You don’t need to think about it now.” My voice was firmer than I intended, but it seemed to do the trick. She took a breath and nodded.

“Okay. Okay. Um, sorry. I’ll get back to work.” She put her headphones on and went back to her laptop, but I had the feeling our conversation wasn’t over.

* * *

Cadence

She had me book tickets. To go on tour with her. Like that was a thing that was completely fucking normal. I guess in her world, it was.

Not for me, though. Things like that didn’t happen to people like me. And I didn’t think that this job was going to work out. Five months was a long time and booking tickets with my name on them now seemed like a wild expense.

She assured me it was just in case, but shit. Even if she canceled everything, she might still have to pay fees.

Fuck. That unexpected situation threw me all off and made my head spin. What the fuck did I even know about going on a tour? Eloise was going to have her team with her, and I was going to be trailing behind looking lost. I wasn’t a total barbarian, but she had booked some really nice hotels and we would be flying first class. I’d wanted to argue with her about the plane tickets, but who was I to argue with her about how she spent her money?

The idea of the tour ignited a level of panic in my chest that hadn’t been this bad in a long time. I texted Hunter and Reid and told them that the three of us should hang out. Hunter offered her place and Reid said she’d be there since she had the night off.

I made it through the rest of the day with Eloise and then went immediately home to put on regular clothes and then walked to Hunter’s. My energy was frantic, and I needed to burn some of it off before I saw anyone.

“Hey, babe. What’s up?” Hunter asked when I walked in.

“She wants me to go on tour with her,” I said, holding up two bags with cake in them. I was going to need it.

“Wait, like a book tour?” Reid asked from the kitchen where she was mixing drinks already. You’d think that she’d want to take a night off from being a bartender, but apparently not. She liked to experiment and then try her creations on us. They were always delicious.

Sometimes she’d come over to my place and see what she could do with whatever was leftover in my fridge. She said she liked the challenge.

“Yeah. A book tour. For two and a half weeks, all over the US. She’s doing TV interviews and signings and I guess I’m going? Because I booked tickets. But I haven’t even gotten the job yet, so you can see where I might be a little freaked out,” I said as Hunter took the bags of cake from me and started opening them.

Reid handed me a drink and I gulped at it.

“Isn’t that a good sign, though? That she wants you to go with her?” Reid asked, making another drink for Hunter. She knew each of our preferences for our drinks. Mine were always sweeter.

“I mean, I guess. But fuck. I guess it just hit me that this is a woman who is famous who gets invited on TV shows that the whole country watches. It’s just been the two of us in her house up until now and I forgot.”

I downed the rest of the drink and Reid made me another as Hunter passed me a fork. I went for the red velvet slice first.

“She became a regular person,” Hunter said.

“I mean, yeah.”

“You knew this might happen when you had the interview, though, right?” Hunter asked, going for the trés leches slice that I’d gotten specifically for her. Reid was going to town on the chocolate slice with chocolate frosting.

I waved my fork in the air. “I mean, hypothetically. None of it felt real at the time and it still doesn’t. But I guess I had kind of gotten comfortable and this threw me off. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be.”

I was absolutely doing that. Anyone else would have been excited about the traveling. New York, Texas, California, and a few other places and cities in between. The schedule was grueling, but Eloise had done this shit a million times. This was normal for her.

“No, I think it’s fine to be a little thrown by something like that,” Hunter said. “And like you said, it’s in the future. So no need to stress about it now. Plus, have you considered that it could be fabulous? You’re getting access to things that other people would kill for.”

That was a good point.

“You’re like that assistant from that fashion movie. Except your boss is much nicer,” Reid said, her mouth full of cake.

“Yeah, at least she hasn’t asked me to fly her home during a hurricane.”

My freakout was starting to wind down, thanks to talking things out with my friends, the cake, and the drinks.

“Fuck, I’m sorry I acted like this was an emergency.”

Both Hunter and Reid shook their heads at me.

“We’re here for you, kid,” Reid said. “That means good and bad.”

“We love you and I’d be pissed if you had stayed home and were all alone in this. So shut up and eat your cake.”

That was exactly what I’d needed to hear.

* * *

On Friday,I showed up at Eloise’s house with the usual coffee and egg and cheese sandwiches this time. I’d been running late, so I got breakfast at the expensive café instead of having nothing. When I unpacked the sandwiches and offered one to Eloise, I saw her preparing to say no. Every single day I asked and every single day up until now, she’d said no.

She let out a long breath and took the plate from me. “Fine.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I said, smothering a laugh as she sat down in the breakfast nook in the kitchen with her coffee and the sandwich. This was new.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said as she looked down at the sandwich. Now that she’d mentioned it, she did look slightly tired, her face a little pale and pinched. She still looked incredible, obviously, but I’d seen her face enough by now to notice small differences.

“I’m sorry. Was there a reason?”

She sighed and then took a tentative bite of the sandwich, chewing delicately and swallowing before she answered.

“Migraine,” she finally said.

“You get migraines?” She hadn’t said a thing, but I had caught her rubbing her forehead every now and then and taking pills from her desk.

“Yes. Normally I can take my medication in time to prevent them, but this one hit me just as I was going to bed and I was too tired, but then it came back with a vengeance.”

“Are you okay now? Do you need to take the day off?” I’d sat down in the chair next to her, but I made to stand up, as if I was going to physically send her to bed or something.

“No, no. It’s gone now. But they wipe me out when I have them. My brain is always a little foggy and my energy is shot for the next day. I’ll rally.”

She gripped her coffee cup like it contained the elixir of life. Today I guess it did.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, still concerned.

“No. Your job. That’s what I need. And don’t hover or ask me how I am too much.” She frowned and I almost wanted to laugh.

Eloise Roth was grumpy. Who would have thought?

She was grumpy and tired and finally showing me that she was human.

“I can do that,” I said, going back to my own sandwich. We ate in silence and I tried not to watch her too much. Fuck, the idea of grumpy Eloise was doing something to me. Low flutters in my stomach distracted me from my breakfast and my fingers tingled with…something.

Nothing I needed to think about. Nope. No way. Push that aside and do your fucking job.

Eloise did her work, but I kept catching her frowning and sighing. In general, she wasn’t a person who made a lot of noise, but I kept catching her when I pulled off my headphones to ask her something.

After lunch, I heard her curse under her breath. I’d been turning my music off and moving one-half of my headphones so I could hear her every now and then.

I swallowed a laugh and then heard another frustrated sound as she pushed her chair back and stood up.

“Not a word,” she said when I opened my mouth to ask if she was okay. Right. I wasn’t supposed to do that.

Figuring she was just going to the bathroom or taking a quick break, I went back to deleting comments on social media.

When she didn’t come back for at least twenty minutes, I wondered if I should go find her. Looking at her desk, I saw that she hadn’t taken her phone with her, or else I would have just sent her a message.

What to do, what to do. I sat there for another five minutes and then decided that I had to seek her out. What if she’d, I don’t know, fallen down or something? She could be bleeding out right now. Or maybe she was fine, and I’d just watched too many shows about first responders and medical emergencies.

She was probably going to be pissed, but I couldn’t take the risk that something was really wrong, so I left the office and hit the kitchen. No Eloise. The library. No Eloise. The backyard. No Eloise.

I tried the rest of the rooms downstairs. I’d never actually been upstairs, which was where her bedroom and the rest of the bedrooms and who knew what else were. This house was so large for one person, but she had the money to afford it so she could do what she wanted. I’d feel lost and small in a house this big alone. Even if I’d had the money, I would want something much smaller and cozier. I’d always thought a townhome might be the perfect kind of place. I’d have my own house, technically, but I’d be close to other people so I wouldn’t feel isolated. I liked being around people.

At a loss for what to do, I stood at the bottom of one of the staircases (there were two on either side of the first floor), and called, hesitantly, “Eloise? Just checking to see if you’re okay. You’ve been gone for a while and you didn’t take your phone.” And now I was babbling.

A few beats of silence passed and then Eloise appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I’m fine. You didn’t need to come get me. You’re not a nurse.”

She crossed her arms and the glare she gave me was frosty enough to freeze a glass of water solid.

“I know. But I am your assistant and I wanted to check on you. I’ll go back to work now.”

I didn’t move right away, letting her stare me down.

Eventually she uncrossed her arms and her shoulders dropped. “Fine. I’m fine. Just needed a minute. My mind isn’t cooperating with me and it’s frustrating.”

I nodded. “I can imagine it would be.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, take your time. Do you want some coffee? I know caffeine can help with migraines.” My mom had migraines growing up off and on and I remembered bringing her coffee to drink while she lay in the bedroom with the windows blocked out and an ice pack over her eyes.

“Yes, thank you Cadence,” she said. I still hadn’t asked her to call me Cade and at this point, it was too late. Here, I was Cadence. The little rush I got from her calling me by my full name had nothing at all to do with it.

Eloise appeared just as I was pouring sugar into her coffee and stirring it in.

She still looked a little wrecked, like she’d had a fun night, but she accepted the cup with a little smile.

“Do you ever take a day off?” I asked, washing out the French press and cleaning up.

“I take weekends off, as if I’m working a nine-to-five, but that doesn’t always work out. In the early days, I worked way too many hours. I’ve had to work at doing less and setting a rigid schedule so I don’t burn out. But I rarely take days off during the week. I can’t afford to.”

She drank the coffee and closed her eyes.

“Maybe you could take a half day? I mean, if the work you’re doing isn’t up to your standards, then wouldn’t it be better to come back when you’re feeling better?”

Her eyes snapped open and I prepared for her to glare at me, but she just sighed.

“I hate that you’re right.”

I grinned. “Wait, what was that? Can you say that again?”

Eloise rolled her eyes. “I said you’re right. Don’t look so smug. It’s not cute.”

I laughed. “On the contrary, I think I’m very cute.”

She cracked a smile. “You’re a menace.”

The fluttering I’d felt this morning appeared again and got a little more frantic in my stomach. Like the butterflies had multiplied.

“Shoulda figured that out in the job interview,” I said, taking a risk. Talking with her like this was walking a fine line, but she huffed out something like a laugh and then finished her coffee.

“Sylvia and Camille were pressuring me to get an assistant for years. Especially for the upcoming tour. And I haven’t had anyone since Mary.” She had spoken a little about her previous assistant, Mary, who had passed away. It was clear that they’d been extremely close, and it explained why she wanted to keep me at arm’s length.

“Mary left big shoes to fill,” I said. “I know I didn’t meet her, but she sounded like a wonderful person and an amazing friend.”

Eloise’s smile was soft and sad. “She was. She really was.” There were pictures of Mary in the office. I’d asked Eloise about them in my second week.

“You’ve convinced me.” She brought her cup to the sink and rinsed it out before putting it in the dishwasher. “I’m taking the rest of the day off.” There were only a few more hours in the day, so it wasn’t that much time in the grand scheme of things, but I could tell this was a big deal for her.

“Great,” I said. “I’ll let you have your time and I’ll finish up my day.”

I went to leave the kitchen to do just that when her voice stopped me.

“If you were to recommend me another romance book or series, what would you recommend? Apart from the alien books.”

Interesting. She was asking for book recs. From me.

“What are you in the mood for? Fantasy? Contemporary? Sci-fi? Short? Long?”

She blinked at me for a few seconds. “I want to read something beautiful that will teach me something new about the world.”

Now I was the stunned one. That was a tall order.

“Give me a minute,” I said, digging out my phone. I scrolled through my ebook app and searched for something that would give her that. I discarded a few options and then settled on one that was an out-of-the-box choice, especially for Eloise, and decided to go for it.

I told her the title and she looked it up. “Well, it certainly has a lot of awards. Time travel? I’m not sure about that.”

“Just…give it a chance. It’s one of those books that has to be experienced instead of just read. If that makes sense. Promise me that you’ll try it.” I shouldn’t have told her about that one. I should have picked something else. Why was it so important to me that she read this book and understood it? No use analyzing all of the complicated emotions firing in my brain right now at the prospect of Eloise reading a book that I had loved.

She gazed at my face for a long moment. “I’ll try it.”

* * *

Beingin the office without Eloise was strange and I didn’t like it. Even though I had my headphones on, the lack of her presence was like hearing my name called and looking up to find there was no one there.

I also kept wondering what she was doing in the house with her afternoon off. I might have thought she would leave or go do something, but her car was still parked in front of the garage.

I’d gotten the distinct impression, over these few weeks, that though Eloise did have friends and went out, at heart, she was a homebody. It made sense with the career she’d chosen. Not a lot of people would be able to stomach sitting alone and typing for hours on end in solitude for year after year. Definitely wouldn’t be me, no matter how much I got paid. My sanity would crack after a few days.

Eventually I made it to the end of the day, and I didn’t want to just leave without saying goodbye, so I sent Eloise a message that I was heading out and she told me to come and find her in the gym.

First I was hearing about her having a gym, so I tentatively went to the second floor and stepped down the hallway.

The second door on my right was open, and I heard sounds of a woman’s voice coming from a TV.

“Knock, knock,” I said while also rapping on the doorframe with my knuckles. Like a weirdo.

Peering in, I saw something that I didn’t expect, and that almost made me wish I was sitting down.

Eloise sat up from a yoga mat and hit pause on the workout that was playing on the large TV mounted to the wall above a line of mirrors.

And there she was, wearing a black sports bra and matching skintight yoga pants with her hair pulled back and looking up at me as if she hadn’t expected to see me standing there.

Fuck. I needed to say something. Right now. Anything. Anything at all.

Say.

Something.

“I…”

Eloise got herself together before I did. She shook her head and sat back on her mat, stretching her legs out in front of her.

“I was just doing a gentle class. My neck and back get all stiff when I have my migraines and it can help to stretch.”

“Oh,” I managed to say. There. That was something. Now that I had regained the power of speech, I had to get control of my eyes, because allllll I was doing was staring. And staring.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed Eloise’s body before, but she’d never been this dressed down in front of me and it was causing my brain to misfire and think all kinds of terrible, dangerous things.

I would not, I would not let myself look at that strip of skin between the hem of her sports bra and the waist of her pants. That was a no-go zone. A blaring red warning light.

“Are you on your way out?” Eloise finally asked.

“Yeah,” I said, gluing my eyes to her face so they didn’t venture anywhere else. “Yeah, I’m going home.”

She nodded and got to her feet, grabbing a bottle of water as she stood.

This was worse. This was so much worse. Skin. So much skin. Too much skin.

I stumbled backwards and banged my back on the doorway.

“See you tomorrow,” I gasped out before I turned around and basically bolted down the stairs so I didn’t say or do anything to get myself seriously fired.