Chapter Twenty
By the time Jay arrived home, he’d come up with the beginnings of a plan.
He glanced down at the copy of the Sea Shell , the one where he’d been profiled, still lying on his desk.
Telling Nelson that he’d return soon, he called a car service so he could pick up his car. Then, on impulse, he headed for the library. Libraries had been his refuge when he was a kid with no money to buy books. They’d been a safe place where he could hang out and read, escape into other worlds, learn things he never learned properly at school. Even now, donating to libraries to help keep them afloat was one of his biggest charitable endeavors. It made him happy to think about kids like him or people who just didn’t have a lot of money being able to access everything from recent thrillers to all the great classics. They also carried newspapers and magazines, and he was pretty sure the local library would keep back issues of the Sea Shell .
But when he got there, the library was closed because it was Sunday. He felt like banging his head against the closed door.
Back home he was greeted by Nelson as though he’d been gone a year, then found the library website. They had online services, and to his delight all the issues of the Sea Shell were available. He put on his glasses and settled down to read, searching out only Erin Davenport’s byline. He read everything she’d written in the last two years. Every single thing. There were profiles of important people and celebrities who’d moved to the area, her Dog of the Week feature—which was probably his favorite thing she did—articles about school plays and funding, and he noticed that a few times she referenced romantic comedy movies. That was funny, because it was one of the things she’d asked him about in their interview: Why was he always making movies like Shock Tactics and not putting his actors into rom coms? Now he realized that, as well as calling him out on some blatant sexism, she had also been showing him a side of herself he hadn’t seen before—a softer, more girly side, that loved to cozy up with a rom com.
He took off his reading glasses and settled in his chair. He’d spent a couple of hours getting to know Erin in a new and intimate way. He’d been inside her mind, he understood her wry sense of humor, and most of all, he understood what moved her, what caught her heart.
And he knew another thing for sure: she was a damned good writer. She could set her sights a lot higher than the Sea Shell if she wanted to, but knowing Erin, she wouldn’t want that at all. If he’d ever known someone who was exactly where she wanted to be, it was Erin Davenport. She was the least wealthy of the siblings, and her ambitions weren’t nearly as lofty, but she lived with a kind of contentment that was rare to see. Spending so long with Erin’s voice, absorbing every story and every word, he could feel her sliding deeper and deeper into his heart.
Maybe Smith was right. Maybe this was what love looked like. He shook his head in disbelief.
He was in love!
And now that he had finally faced the truth, he knew exactly what he could give Erin to show her how much he cared.
As quickly as his fingers could type, he messaged his assistant.
Pull every romantic comedy script that’s come in and send them to me asap.
Even though it was Sunday, Gina was far too much like him. She responded within seconds. It was one of the reasons he employed her and paid her an extremely healthy salary.
Is this some kind of joke? Or are you delirious with fever?
Great. Even his assistant thought he was a one-trick action-movie pony. He assured her he was serious, and within an hour, she’d emailed him half a dozen scripts and told him he’d have paper copies by courier first thing in the morning. He felt better than he had all day and, his plan in motion, settled back in his chair with his tablet.
Soon, though, he began to frown. In his opinion, they were all terrible.
“I could do a better job than this.”
Nelson opened one eye skeptically, then sighed and went back to sleep.
* * *
On Monday morning, Erin was still seething over Jay Malone’s embarrassing juvenile tactics to get her into bed. How could he not have seen that she was already there and didn’t need some cheesy, tried-and-tested line? She had been showered, shaved, primped, wearing her best underwear and her prettiest dress, her body already tingling, imagining how the evening would end. And in her wildest dreams she’d never imagined he’d make such a spectacular mess of it all. If he’d just kissed her, gently and softly, if he’d just showed her that he cared, he’d have had her. Instead, he’d treated her like a woman he’d just picked up in a bar and figured she’d fall for his stupid lines.
On some level, she still felt that he’d deliberately sabotaged himself, that he didn’t know how to be himself instead of the deal-sealing Hollywood agent character he’d so carefully crafted over the years. But knowing that was one thing, forgiving it another entirely. She was still too angry to really consider the psychology of what had gone down on Saturday night. All she knew was that she felt insulted, furious—and if she never saw Jay Malone again it would be too soon.
Even more irritating, all day Sunday she’d expected some feeble apology from him, but nothing. Not a phone call she could have ignored, not an email she could have deleted, not even a text message she could have refused to open. He hadn’t even given her that satisfaction.
And she felt like the world’s greatest fool for checking her phone every five minutes just so she could ignore him.
To take her mind off it, she and Buzzy had gone for a long walk on Sunday that turned into a six-hour hike, exhausting the pair of them. She’d thought about calling Mila and suggesting they go out for dinner, but she would have blabbed the whole story to her sister and, as mad as she was at Jay, she didn’t want to do that. Maybe it was to protect herself from embarrassment. Maybe it was also to protect Jay. Because she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right about him—that he was a good guy, deep and caring and thoughtful. And sometimes he was an idiot. A great big idiot.
And then she got angry all over again.
After her long hike, she’d cleaned her apartment from top to bottom, cooked herself dinner, and sat and watched Four Weddings and a Funeral for the umpteenth time. At least romantic comedies never let her down. Even if they were fantasy. She went to bed exhausted, but found she slept badly.
Now she was at the office, tired and irritable, trying to get her Dog of the Week feature finished according to her own high standards. But as she finally made it to the last line, the newspaper’s receptionist, Stacey, called, “Erin?”
She sighed in annoyance, her concentration broken.
“Something’s just been delivered for you. It’s from Jay Malone.”
Even the sound of his name filled her with fury. Whatever it was, it was too little, too late. She didn’t even turn around. “If it’s flowers, please take them to the library so everybody else in town can enjoy them.”
“It’s not flowers.” Stacey sounded puzzled. “Um... I think these are movie scripts.”
That got her attention. She spun around in her chair. “What?”
Since Stacey obviously had no intention of bringing them to her, Erin got up and stomped to the front desk.
Stacey held up a sheaf of papers with a big, fat binder clip holding them together. Bemused, she took the packet and glanced down. A handwritten note lay on top.
From the desk of Julius (Jay) Malone
CEO, Exceptional Talent Ltd.
Dear Erin,
I really screwed up on Saturday night. I knew that if I sent you flowers you’d just give them to somebody else who’d appreciate them more, so I thought about a way I could show you how sorry I am. I’m sending you half a dozen romantic comedy movie scripts from some of the top writers in Hollywood. You said I never put my actors in romantic comedies. Well, thanks to you, I’m willing to do that. Pick the one you like best. Whichever you choose, I will get it made. You have my word. This is my way of saying sorry.
Sincerely,
Jay
Erin stood there in the middle of the busy office, too stunned to move. He’d done it. He’d actually done it. Better even than a sincere apology on bended knee, his agreeing to make a romantic comedy showed that he got it. That he got her . She wasn’t sure how long it took to make a movie, but that was a lot of grovelling he was prepared to do. For her .
Her anger drained away. In fact, she was more than a little bit charmed. She read the note again and appreciated how he wasn’t too proud to actually say sorry. That was a hard word for anyone to get out, but he had let his guard down and had apologized to her in the most genuine way he knew how. It was so much better than flowers. She also couldn’t help but be impressed that he knew her well enough now that he’d guessed she would give any flowers away.
At last, he’d scored another point on her internal emotional scoreboard, which was good, because after Saturday night, she’d been tempted to take away all of his points forever.