Chapter 5
5
‘“His pounding member swells in my hand as I spit on…”’
‘Words I never thought I would hear my brother say,’ I talk over him, cutting him off.
Tom laughs.
‘This is putting me off my panini,’ he says, his lunch in one hand, a book in the other.
Tom and I are tucked away in the corner of a café near his work. It’s the kind of place that seems to be used exclusively by businessmen and women, none of whom seem to stay longer than it takes them to grab a caffeine fix and a sandwich to take away. The service is frantic but efficient, like a well-oiled machine that goes at a million miles a minute. No one looks up from their phone, as they order their artisanal latte and quinoa salad, but no one expects them to. There’s a constant hum of activity – baristas shouting out orders, the hiss of the espresso machine, and snippets of business jargon being barked around. Oh, and then there’s me and Tom, sitting in the corner, reading the mucky bits in romance books while I dig into the avocado bagel that’s going to stop me getting on the property ladder until I’m in my forties.
He’s currently reading excerpts from The Harder the Heart by Kelsey Kane. I’m yet to meet Kelsey, she’s a debut, but there’s already talk about them making her horny professional golfer romance into a movie.
‘I would’ve made more use of the balls,’ he tells me.
I stare at him blankly.
‘Like, the golf balls, ball puns – I thought you were the writer,’ he jokes.
‘Sorry,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I’m just… frazzled. The last thing I thought she was going to do was send me away with a pile of horny homework and expect me to flick through it over lunch.’
As soon as the words leave my lips, I realise what I’ve said.
‘Don’t,’ I quickly insist.
‘Oh my God. “He fills me with his?—”’
‘Fore!’ I call out, stopping him in his tracks. ‘I can probably guess.’
‘Seems more like an eight, from what I’m reading,’ Tom jokes. ‘Eat your bagel. I’ll do your homework for you.’
Tom is a corporate lawyer, and a good one at that, so I figured if there was anyone who could send me back into my meeting with Jen armed with a bunch of buzzwords to get me what I want, it would be him. He’s also someone I can always count on to cheer me up, when I’m feeling down in the dumps.
He picks up another book. Summer at Cove Bay by L. E. Price.
‘Well, for starters, before we even get to the mucky stuff, I’m pretty sure a cove is just a type of bay, so that’s a silly name,’ he points out. ‘Still, let’s give it a chance.’
Tom thumbs through the pages until he gets to the subject matter we’re after.
‘Wow, Chapter Three, we’re going for it,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s see. Oh… oh, oh, God.’
‘Don’t make it sound like you’re joining in,’ I joke.
‘It’s a solo scene,’ he informs me. ‘“I wasn’t expecting the new lifeguard to be so hot, but I need him, I need him to save me. My knees are weak, my heart is beating behind my big breasts. Just thinking about his rock-hard abs makes me flick my?—”’
Tom pulls a face at the page.
I sigh and roll my eyes.
‘That’s not…’
‘A man wrote that,’ I tell him, reading his mind.
‘Well, that makes sense,’ he says. ‘I assumed L. E. Price was a woman.’
‘I think it’s on purpose,’ I reply. ‘There was thriller writer, Dickie Woodrup.’
‘That’s never his real name,’ Tom practically cackles.
‘Well, Dickie Woodrup by name, Dickie Woodrup by nature,’ I joke. ‘It was sort of an open secret in publishing that he was kind of a sleaze – he grabbed my arse at the summer party a couple of years ago. Anyway, I guess one day he grabbed the wrong arse, people started sharing their stories about him, no one wanted to read his thrillers any more – and suddenly, as people were rereading them, it was becoming apparent exactly how creepy he really was – so that was that for Dickie. But you can’t keep a bad man down, can you, so now the new open secret is that he’s quietly writing romance novels to pay his bills.’
‘Well, he’s not very good,’ Tom points out.
‘Well, that rarely stops men who want to succeed,’ I joke.
‘And there’s me thinking publishing was boring,’ he says as he sips his coffee.
‘No, no, we have our sex pests too,’ I tell him. ‘It keeps us on our toes.’
‘I wanted to become a lawyer to counter blokes like him,’ Tom says, his tone shifting from laughing at whatever was about to be flicked to something more serious.
‘And yet all you seem to do is argue to make millionaires billionaires,’ I tease him. ‘But that’s what I need from you, I need ruthless Tom, I need you to tell me what to say, to get what I want.’
‘Okay, well, let’s start by deciding what you do want,’ he tells me, snapping into professional mode. ‘I take it you don’t want to write flicking and sucking and whatever a duck buster is?’
‘I think you might have misread that last one but, no, that’s not what I want to do,’ I tell him. ‘I want to write funny, twisty murder mysteries with romance arcs running through them.’
‘Okay, so what you need to do is march back in there, keep your head high, and remind yourself that you’re hot shit, you’re the professional, you’ve been successful before and you’ll be successful again because you know what you’re doing. And then you sit your editor down and you tell her that you believe in your idea, that you’ll do a good job, and that you would really appreciate it if she would read what you had written so far so that the two of you can find a way to make it work for both of you.’
God, that sounds good.
‘But what if she still says no?’ I ask, because obviously I’m already thinking about what I’ll do when it all goes wrong, before it’s even happened.
‘Then you tell her, right, okay, then I think perhaps I need to take a step back, to take a break, and think about what I’m doing, and what I want to do moving forward,’ he replies.
‘Yeah?’ I say, unsure I can pull that off.
‘Yeah, make her sweat,’ he says. ‘You have more power than you realise. If she thinks you’re backing off then she’ll panic. She needs you to write this book too, you know?’
‘I’m in contract, obviously, so I can’t not do it,’ I remind him.
‘But what you’re forgetting is that it’s a contract that goes two ways,’ he says. ‘Do you think your editor can afford to humour you indefinitely? She has other authors to read the work of, meet, email with and so on. You don’t make the publisher a penny until you give them a book they can sell. It doesn’t make her look good, to be wasting time with an author who isn’t being productive.’
‘Okay, I see what you’re saying,’ I reply, draining the last of my latte. ‘So, basically, if I make it seem like I’m going to be a pain in her arse, who isn’t making the publisher any money, she’ll try harder to meet me in the middle, to create something we can both be happy with?’
‘That’s the plan,’ Tom replies. ‘But, Amber, listen to me, you have to believe in yourself. I don’t mean this in a corny way, it’s business. Anything that can be interpreted as any kind of weakness puts people off, and it doesn’t make them want to give you what you want. Go in there with confidence, and be clear about what you want, but at the same time try to say as few words as possible.’
‘Wait, you want me to be confident, but quiet?’ I check.
‘People who are nervous, anxious, scared – things that aren’t viewed as positive traits – tend to talk more,’ he explains. ‘They say too much, they show their hand, and that weakens their position. So say only what you have to, but mean it.’
I puff air from my cheeks.
‘Wow, okay, I get what you mean, and I definitely do all of that stuff, so that’s good to know,’ I reply.
‘I know you do,’ he chuckles. ‘That’s why you never got away with anything as a kid. It’s probably why you have a chronic apologising problem too.’
‘Something which I am tempted to apologise for, but I’ll start as I mean to go on,’ I say with a smile. ‘Okay, I’ll let you get back to work, and I’ll go kill a little more time before I head back in to see Jen, and I’m leaving with the kind of reply I want this time.’
My confidence builds as my sentence goes on – of course, it’s easy, when it’s just me and Tom.
‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ Tom says, wrapping an arm around me, giving me a reassuring squeeze. ‘You can tell me all about it later, at Mum and Dad’s.’
‘They just had to tell us they were getting pre-divorced before Dad’s birthday,’ I say with a sigh.
‘And before Christmas,’ he adds. ‘It’s going to be so awkward. But, hey, at least we’re in it together.’
‘Yeah, there is that,’ I reply with a smile.
‘And if all else fails, bring your mucky books, and we’ll get them reading pages,’ he suggests. ‘That ought to keep them quiet.’
I know that he’s joking but that might work.
‘Okay then, I’ll see you later,’ I reply. ‘Thanks so much for your help.’
‘Thanks for lunch,’ he says.
‘You paid for lunch,’ I point out.
‘But I would’ve eaten it over my desk if you hadn’t called, so you’ve saved me a bit of indigestion.’
‘Oh, okay, well, I guess we’re even then,’ I laugh. ‘See you later.’
Tom heads out, back to his serious job, whereas I bundle my novels into my bag and wander aimlessly outside.
I’ll saunter back towards my publisher – hopefully, the VIP is gone now, and my editor will have time to hear me out.
I just need to remember what Tom said and do my best. And I need to do it now, before I lose my nerve.