Chapter 15
I don’t have a thing for Ryan. I can’t. The blocks always work like a charm but in this case slivers of desire are threading through.
I need to change the subject. This is none of my business.
“That’s it? You’re not going to ask me what I was doing having coffee with the woman who tore my heart out by its ventricles?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“But you make everything your business. Don’t think I didn’t catch you looking through my mail.”
Busted. I rub my sweaty palms against my jeans and bite my lower lip.
“I was…I was looking for something you asked me for. Don’t give me that look. You’re drowning in paperwork and asked me to organize you!”
“Uh-huh.” But he seems to be fighting a smile, his eyes twinkling. “I understand. You were curious. I can’t say I haven’t felt the same way about you.”
“You have?”
“When you left me alone in your shed so you could consider my offer, I took an inventory of every book you own.”
Inexplicably, I feel the start of a tingle in my belly. I’ve been seen.
“And…how did I do?”
“I’d have to say eight of ten if I’m grading. More romance that I would like, but with a generous showing for the classics.”
I have to smile at this. This is the man who’s written possibly the year’s bestselling romance book. Eventually, I will ask what possessed him. I assume it’s the money but with what I’ve learned about Ryan, there’s more to it.
“And speaking of romance, we were talking about your heart when you changed the subject. I mean, you’ve been warned. It’s not like I have to tell you about the high failure rates of a second marriage with the same person. The problems you had before will still be there.”
“From what I’ve read, the failure rates of a second marriage in general are bad, so I’m screwed any way you look at it.”
I tip my chin. “Not with the right person. Those statistics are skewed.”
Ryan breaks into a smile, and it’s the most relaxed and authentic one I’ve ever seen on him. “You’re making that up.”
“I am not. It just makes sense that your outcome will be different with someone new. Two different people with differing backgrounds and histories make for a completely different situation.”
He lifts a shoulder. “I won’t argue since it seems to put me on a more even playing field.”
“So…you’re not trying to get back together?”
Another smile. “I thought you said this was none of your business.”
Now, I’m done with my waffle cone so I throw it in the receptacle. “It still isn’t, but you brought it up.”
“The thing is, maybe it is your business.”
My heart jumps. He says it’s my business, too, but I can’t imagine why. Maybe Ryan is beginning to have some slight, and by slight I mean minimal, interest in me beyond being Elizabeth.
“W-why is it my business?” My voice sounds shaky to my own ears.
“She knows about you. I had to tell her.”
This is more serious than I thought. I’d like to say it’s fear that strikes me but unfortunately it falls far closer to excitement.
She wouldn’t know about me for any other reason than he’s talking to her about me.
This worries me because I’m dangerously on the cusp of what I might describe as giddy.
“How does she know about me?”
This is where my imagination runs wild. He could lean in close and say he told her there’s someone else.
He can’t stop thinking about me. Since the night of the spontaneous party Eddie threw and I danced with my cousins, he can’t stop thinking of my legs and the way I gyrated my hips.
The way I threw back my head and let the music guide me. Like Shakira.
But he doesn’t say anything remotely like that. He simply drags a hand through his hair. “She’s heard about the book and she knows everything.”
Oh, the book. We’ve switched gears and now segued to the book. It takes me a minute, but I’m now on track.
“She knows you wrote a bestseller with a pen name. A woman’s pen name.”
He nods. “It couldn’t be helped.”
I’m having a tough time keeping up here. They’ve been divorced three years. It’s like Ryan has left out important information.
“How did she read the book? Did she get an early copy?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“In which manner of speaking?” Now, I’m the one who’s annoyed.
“She had the earliest version, because in a way, I wrote it for her.”
I’m stunned. Shocked. My ability to speak is temporarily gone. I’m probably gaping so big a seagull could make a nest in my mouth.
“You wrote the book for your ex-wife?”
“No, not exactly. And she wasn’t my ex-wife at the time. We were separated. But remember I told you that I wrote the book as a joke, a lark? Just to see if I could do it? That was a lie.”
I pointed. “I knew that didn’t sound like you!”
“You were right. It’s too humiliating to admit, but I don’t see how I have much choice now. I wrote what amounted to a short story, a love story left open to see who she’d choose. Me, or the other guy. So now you see why it isn’t standard romance fare.” He shrugged.
It makes sense now. The book is written from a male’s point of view because it might as well have been a diary.
No wonder the book read like the writer bled all over the pages.
He had. Even I’d never do something like this.
I doubt any romance author would. A poem or short story?
Sure. But devoting an entire novel, tens of thousands of words within a plot, is too much work to simply be a gift never intended to see publication.
“And…if it was just intended for her, when did you decide to try to get it published?”
“I didn’t. It wasn’t a book.”
“I’m lost.”
He works his jaw. “I never had plans for this to be a book, much less be published. But she took the liberty of sending my unedited pages to my agent.”
I take a step back as if he’s slapped me. “She did what?”
I’m outraged on Ryan’s behalf. Just the idea that someone would send off unedited pages is anathema to my brain. It’s unthinkable to do this without the author’s permission and particularly with such a private matter. I’m furious on his behalf.
“It’s…it’s a breach of privacy, of intimacy.”
My heart is racing and pumping. I feel the pounding beat in my eyes.
Ryan nods. “Anyway, my agent read the pages. She assumed I was okay with it, or this is what she tells me, since it came through my wife at the time. You can imagine my response when she said she loved the premise and wanted to talk about making it into a book. She tried to sell me on romance, and how it’s a bestselling genre.
I had no idea what she meant by my pages and when she explained, I hung up on her. We didn’t speak for three weeks.”
“I don’t blame you. But at some point, you decided to do this.”
“After Kate wouldn’t leave me alone I eventually agreed to consider publishing a romance.
Kate promised me a great deal of money if we worked hard to tailor it to the market.
But it took a year of back and forth, revisions, cuts, with Kate always promising me more and more.
By then Millie and I were divorced.” He lowers his shades, shaking his head.
“I thought I’d get an advance, sell a few copies, move on.
I had no idea it would all blow up like this thanks to a reality star that somehow saw her husband in Grayson and loved the book.
Believe me, I don’t understand any of this. ”
“Gosh, if you’d just been honest with me from the start, I would have had more sympathy for you. It’s been tough to feel sorry for someone who has met with your success almost accidentally.”
“And that’s just the point. I never wanted you to feel sorry for me.
I would have kept this from you forever.
Keep in mind, I’m used to writing in anonymity like most authors.
Despite what Kate promised, I thought this book would be forgotten.
But readers of love stories are voracious and dedicated and… we don’t give them enough credit.”
I smirk. “We’ve established that.”
“Anyway, I’m not allowed to be angry. This book changed my life. It was good therapy, too.”
“As you recently said to me, ‘you don’t have to like her’ and you’re allowed to be mad at your ex.”
“It feels like forever ago when I wrote the book. I barely recognize that man. And the truth is the final version is entirely different from what I intended.”
“But…you were saying your ex knows about me?”
“That’s the reason she wanted to meet.” Ryan turns to face the ocean and the gray color of the waves. “When she asked about the book, I told her it was being released under a pen name and that we’d hired a kind of reverse ghostwriter to play Elizabeth.”
I consider this. It seemed inevitable that the ex would have to know everything. But I feel somehow exposed and seen in a way Ryan’s publisher didn’t prepare me to face.
The fog is set to roll in as it does nearly every afternoon. It’s hovering in the distance, waiting to cover us with gray.
Ryan keeps talking. “She wanted to meet because she somehow thinks this book means more than it does. For me, the book has become a product I was able to sell. For her, it’s our love story. Let me assure you, it’s not.”
Ryan’s reluctance to fully embrace his book, his desire to keep a distance from it, makes more sense than ever.
Publishing the book kept a tie to his ex-wife that he no longer wants.