7. Violet #2
She shrugged, chin lifted. "My advice is to drop the pen name and tell him the truth. But given the way your body goes haywire when you so much as see him, I doubt you're going to do that. You want him close. I'm sure you want him right next to you, or preferably on top of you, and knowing you—"
I grabbed a glossy tattoo magazine off the side table and hurled it at her head.
She caught it easy, laughing hard. I pressed my lips together, fighting a smile, before giving up and letting a small laugh slip.
Coming out publicly as V.M. Ashby wasn't impossible only because of Simon. It was impossible because being V.M. Ashby was something I did in private, in silence, wrapped in the safety of total anonymity.
Five million people knew the name and had no idea who was attached to it.
Which meant five million people could love the books without measuring them against the flawed person who wrote them.
I wasn't ready to find out what happened to the books when they stopped being just the books.
Simon was only a fraction of the problem.
"I'm hungry," Sloane announced, tapping my knee to break the tension. "Let's go get food, but I want to stop at the bookstore first. I need fresh reference material for your next cover."
We bundled up and set out into the crisp afternoon.
The bookstore was three blocks away. Sloane worked the shelves, pulling titles, turning them over, holding covers at arm's length, sliding them back or tucking them under her arm.
I trailed behind her, browsing the stacks.
"I'm going home in a few days," she mentioned, not looking up from a dark, brooding cover she was turning in the light. "My grandmother isn't doing well. I'll be unreachable for long stretches."
"For how long?"
"I don't know yet." She slid the book back into its slot. "Just don't do anything overly dramatic while I'm gone."
I picked up a blank journal from a nearby display. "Your grandmother is the only person in your family who really loves you, you know."
Sloane glanced up, her face softening. "At least I have a family member who loves me. You can't exactly say the same."
"My brother loves me," I countered. She paused, giving me one long, pointed look, and said, "Xavier would choose your mother over you.
And you know it." I closed my mouth, the fight draining out of me.
I didn't argue, because there was nothing to say.
Or there was, and I'd just never been brave enough to test it: to call him without our mother on the line and find out.
I put the journal back on the display.
Sloane turned back to the romance covers.
I drifted a few steps down the aisle and picked up a different title.
I wasn't reading the synopsis. I was just holding it, needing something for my restless hands to do.
There was an elaborate display at the end of the fiction section, a rotating stand of popular romance paperbacks.
I turned toward it, my gaze sliding to the far end of the store.
There was a young girl standing near the back.
Thirteen, maybe. Dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders, a worn sketchbook tucked under one arm. She stood quiet in front of a shelf, her back mostly to me.
I'd seen her before. At the funeral, months ago. She'd been dressed in stark black, crying so hard her whole body shook with it. I'd spotted her from across the room and looked away fast, because raw grief at that range wasn't something I knew how to stand near. But I'd learned her face by heart.
"Sloane," I whispered.
Sloane looked up from the paperback she was studying.
I tipped my head toward the back of the store.
She followed my gaze, studied the girl a second, then looked back at me, confused. "Who is that?"
"Simon's niece," I breathed.
"Olivia?"
"Yes."
Sloane looked back toward the rear of the store. Her gaze drifted past Olivia and locked onto something further into the shadows. "Is that—" She stopped. "Wow. He's very tall."
"Sloane—" Panic climbed up my throat. "We should go. We should just go right now."
"Absolutely not." She hadn't moved an inch. She watched the far end of the store with the focused, hungry stillness she brought to things she'd decided were worth watching. "I want to see what happens to you when he's standing next to you in real life, outside the office."
"Nothing happens to me—"
"Why? Is it not a chemical reaction worth seeing? Are you really that boring?"
"I'm not—"
"I'm just curious," she cut in, a wicked glint in her eye. "Scientifically speaking."
"Sloane, we are leaving—"
Before I could finish, she reached to her left without looking and picked up three heavy hardcovers from the display table. She set them down again, hard, positioning them two inches too far off the edge.
They slid off the table together.
The sound they made crashing onto the hardwood floor was not small.
I closed my eyes for one long second.
When I opened them, Simon Beckett was looking right at me from the far end of the store.
"Violet?" he called.
He said my name with his dark brows drawn together, his chin tipped forward. He started down the aisle toward us right away, Olivia trailing beside him.
"Hello, Mr. Beckett." I forced out a bright smile. "What a huge coincidence."
He nodded, stopping a polite few feet away. "It is. What are you doing here?"
"Just browsing with my friend." I gestured awkwardly to Sloane, who gave a cheerful wave.
"Hi. I'm Sloane."
"Hi." He reached out to shake her hand. "Simon. Her boss."
Sloane nodded, chin up, her smile sized to land just right. "That's easy to believe. When she told me she worked for the CEO, I pictured a wrinkled old man in suspenders."
Simon chuckled, amused. "I'm sorry to disappoint you."
"Oh, I'm very pleased," Sloane purred.
He grinned. Then he turned and laid a gentle hand on the teenager's shoulder. "This is my niece, Olivia. I'm sure you remember her from the service."
Olivia hung just behind his shoulder, her gaze flicking to me and away. I nodded and held out my hand. She took it with a small, polite grip.
"Of course," I said. "It's nice to see you again."
"Olivia, your jacket is killer." Sloane was already half a step toward the girl. "Where's it from?"
Olivia looked down at her oversized denim jacket, then back up at Sloane with a warming smile. "Thank you. It's vintage."
"I want to know everything about it. Do you like books? What genres are you into? Come on, I'm looking for cover inspiration—" Sloane waved toward the next aisle, and to my horror, Olivia followed her, eager. In seconds, they were gone.
I watched them disappear around the corner, my jaw locking tight.
I turned back to face Simon.
He looked my outfit up and down, then met my eyes, a teasing glint in his own. "So this is how my highly professional assistant dresses when she's not at work."
I looked down at myself in horror. Black baggy sweatpants, a plain white tank top. I'd all but fled the apartment in a rush. "What?"
He gestured at my getup.
"Oh." I glanced at his outfit, defensive. Black linen pants, tailored clean, and a dark linen shirt left open at the collar. No jacket. Infuriatingly simple. He looked unreasonably good in simple, and I wasn't going to say so out loud. "Well, we're obviously not matching today."
"Unfortunately," he deadpanned.
"We can match on Monday. What are you planning on wearing?"
"Something black."
I nodded, narrowing my eyes. "Should we plan to match, or just complement?"
He smirked, a devastating expression. "Surprise me."
Heat moved through me in one clean line. I nodded stiff and forced my gaze to the nearest shelf, staring at titles without seeing any of them.
We stood there in silence a moment. He shoved his hands into his pockets. I was still clutching the random romance paperback like a shield.
"Have you found anything yet?" he asked quietly. "On the search."
"Nothing much yet." The lie came smooth. "A few directions that might lead somewhere. I'm still working through the comment threads." I paused, daring to push. "Why is this so important to you? Not the corporate reason. The other one."
He went quiet a long moment. His eyes drifted to the wooden shelf, lingering there before snapping back to mine.
"My niece," he said. "She really loves Ashby's work.
Losing her parents was… a lot. It's been a lot for her to carry.
These books are the only thing that reached her when nothing else worked.
" He paused, something raw leaking into his voice.
"I just want to do something. I want to give her one good thing. "
I stood still, the paperback heavy in my hands.
The guilt settled deep in my stomach, the same as the first time he'd handed me this in his office.
Olivia was twenty feet away in the next aisle, talking to my best friend about vintage jacket provenance with her whole chest. And here I was, standing across from her grieving uncle, pretending to run a corporate manhunt for myself while he trusted me to find the answer to his family's pain.
"I'll do my best." My voice came thick. "I really mean that."
He nodded, the tense line of his shoulders dropping a fraction. "Thank you, Violet."
We stood there another moment, the silence between us easy.
Sloane and Olivia came back around the corner. Olivia now had two thick hardcovers tucked under her arm, and they were still deep in animated talk.
Simon looked at the two of them, then back at me. "We were just going to grab some lunch. Would you two want to join us?"
I opened my mouth to decline at once.
"Yes," Sloane answered for me.