CHAPTER 5
After a few cups of black coffee and a lot of cold water splashed on her face, Willa felt ... well, not exactly ready for her conversation with Vanessa, her old editor from her cookbook ghostwriting days. But she was at least awake , and right now, that was about all she could ask for.
The phone rang ten minutes late, and Willa forced herself not to jump on it. “Hello?”
Act casual. Act normal.
“Willa,” Vanessa said, her hyperbright voice sounding perky. “It’s so nice to hear your voice!”
Willa smiled for a second, until Vanessa’s follow-up.
“I so rarely, you know, talk to anybody these days. Authors do everything over Zoom or text or even Discord. Or email. But you’re old school!”
Old, Willa’s brain emphasized.
“Well, you know me,” Willa demurred. There was a pause, and she figured she might as well go for it. “You said you had—”
Vanessa was too quick, though. “I was so sorry to hear about Steven.”
In a blink, the conversation jumped the tracks, like those treadmill-fail videos where someone inevitably went flying off the back of the belt and plowed into drywall.
“Ah. Thanks.” She’d learned there wasn’t anything else to say to the sentiment, and it was the quickest way to head off uncomfortable or awkward questions.
“I meant to get in contact with you earlier,” Vanessa said, not quite moving on but at least not digging deeper, “but you just seemed to have so much going on, and you hadn’t written for us in a while ...”
Willa could almost feel the guilt rolling off Vanessa like a Chicago cold front. “It’s fine,” she said, her own voice brisk. “It’s been two years, and I was ...” She hunted for a word. “ Busy before that.”
“Busy” didn’t even come close to describing it. But then, she didn’t have that kind of relationship with Vanessa. Even if her parents hadn’t drilled professionalism and “no blurring lines” into her since college, she knew this was business, not friendship, and it was better not to muddy the two. Especially not when she needed this contract so badly.
“I’m ready to get back into the swing of things,” Willa continued, confidence picking up. “You said in your email that you had a project that I could maybe go for. I’d love to hear about it.”
Vanessa sighed with obvious reluctance, but shifted gears. “Things have changed since you’ve been in the game,” she said, with more of the characteristic bluntness that Willa remembered. How long had it been since she’d last ghostwritten an actual cookbook? Five years?
No. Almost ten. She winced. Steven had some investments that they’d slowly cannibalized as he got sicker, and she’d taken some piecemeal projects here and there, menu planning for whoever needed it, doing desperation work that she could manage the deadlines for without too much of a problem.
Ten years was a lifetime.
Crap.
“Changed how?” she asked, still trying to sound positive.
“The fees aren’t what they were, to start with,” Vanessa said. “Hell, advances aren’t what they were, unless you’re a celebrity. ‘Celebrity’ meaning a TV-show or internet person, not like a Michelin chef, by the way.”
Willa felt thrown, her stomach knotting. “How low?”
Oh, God. Can I not even make a living doing this anymore?
Vanessa threw out a number, and Willa tensed. She had been counting on this money to help her stay afloat. The mortgage on her new-to-her house wasn’t going to pay for itself, after all, and there were still debts to pay.
Besides, this was a new start. She needed to get back into the pipeline. She needed Vanessa to start seeing her as a viable hire again. This was a stepping stone.
“But I do have this one project that pays more,” Vanessa continued. She made a puffing noise, not smoking. Vaping, maybe? “One I think you could maybe knock out of the park. There are just a few little provisions.”
Willa almost, almost felt her hope bloom at that ... but her chest felt like there was a lead blanket on it.
Provisions. That screamed “red flag” instead, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“What do you need?”
“One: your name can’t be on it.”
Willa shrugged, then realized Vanessa couldn’t see it. “You know that’s never been an issue for me.” She preferred being behind the scenes, normally. She’d seen enough chefs, worked with enough in restaurants and pop-ups and things, to know that their egos could be both sensitive and oversize. She’d even worked on a few books for chefs who would’ve hated the idea that their “enemy” had used the same ghostwriter. Others didn’t like anyone questioning whether their genius might’ve come from what they termed a “glorified stenographer.” (Not that newer generations even knew what a stenographer was , but most chefs didn’t know “Dragon software,” so it didn’t matter anyway.)
She wasn’t under any illusions, and she knew what she wanted. Money was money. She wasn’t going to be putting out her own cookbook, after all, even though her friend Nat had insisted years ago that she start “demanding her due” and get credited with her name on covers.
“Two,” Vanessa continued, “it’s due in two months.”
Willa winced. That was tight. “That’s ... doable,” she said, a little more slowly. “Depending. What sort of shape is it in now?”
“That leads me to three.” Vanessa let out a nervous laugh. “This guy got a big advance, because ... well. He’s a social media guy.”
“What does that mean?” Willa asked.
“You’re not going to believe it.” Vanessa laughed again, even more high pitched. “He does these short videos where he cooks ... usually shirtless. Sometimes pantless. And he, um, licks things.”
“He,” Willa echoed, sure she’d misheard, “ licks things.”
“Yeah. That’s his whole deal.” Vanessa sighed. “The guy’s got millions of followers or whatever on a number of different social media outlets, enough of a platform that they’re offering him the money. No culinary school training, no restaurant background, but a pack of rabid followers who are dying for this cookbook, especially if we can get it out by spring.”
Willa scribbled aimlessly across the top of her spiral-bound notebook. “What kinds of cuisines?”
“You think this guy has a set cuisine?” Vanessa sounded amused. “Based on what I just told you? His cuisine is stripping with food .”
“Right.” Willa grimaced. “What’s the theme of the cookbook, then? What’s the title?”
“No title quite yet, but his name is Sexy Chef Sam. So it’ll be some play on that.”
“So I’d be writing a book for a shirtless guy who licks things, and that’s the only theme I’ve got to work with?” Willa blurted out before biting her lip.
“Doesn’t matter if the theme is ‘food without clothes,’ the guy has an army, and we are going to sell them big, fat Sexy Sam cookbooks with full-color glossy shots of him sucking batter off his finger,” Vanessa shot back. “Need to strike while the iron’s hot, though. Before they find some new sexy guy with lots of followers. There’s plenty of competition out there, and nobody stays popular forever.”
“Got it. Does he have some recipes he wants to go with?” She grimaced. “I should meet him, I guess. Where is he based?”
“That is another thing.” Another puff sound. “He’s technically based in LA—almost all the influencers are, I hear—but he’s going to be in Ibiza for some party thing, then in ... I want to say Taiwan, to talk with people about licensing cookware. And/or possibly a clothing line?”
“A clothing line ?” Willa said. “From the cook who doesn’t wear clothing?”
Good lord. The game had changed a lot while she’d been out of it.
“Sexy aprons, for all I know,” Vanessa said, and Willa could practically hear the eye roll. “Although I will admit, the guy’s hot.”
Willa felt a headache making itself known, pounding at her temples. She pushed at one steadily with her fingers as she held the phone in her other hand. “All right, I won’t be seeing him. Maybe a phone call, at least? Or video chat is fine. It can even be in the middle of the night, but I need to get some sense of the guy.”
“If you want a real sense of what we’re looking for, I’ll send you a link to his socials.” Willa heard the sound of tapping. “It’ll give you his voice and his style, if nothing else.”
Willa frowned. “He doesn’t even have a list of recipes for this, does he?” she murmured as the true dread of what she was going to sign up for hit her.
“No.” Vanessa paused for a long second. “Okay, total transparency: no other ghostwriter wants to touch this. He is all over the map, and his food is ... well, chaotic at best. He doesn’t have any ideas. He just wants a turnkey cookbook that he can then work with a photographer to ‘make sexy’ and promote on his channels. So that’s what I need you to. Come up with thirty recipes ...”
“ Thirty ?” Willa said around a gasp.
“... and make sure they’re sexy. Or at least lend themselves to be eaten sexily. Or cooked sexily. Or something.” Vanessa sighed.
Willa flinched.
“Sexy?” she finally echoed, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears.
“Well, make it so he can make them seem sexy, anyway,” Vanessa added. “Which, honestly, could be anything. Donuts. Bananas. Figs. You see where I’m going here.”
“Yeah, I see,” Willa said, then straightened her spine. “Two months?”
“Two months.”
“Half up front, half on completion?”
“Absolutely,” Vanessa said, and the glee in her voice made Willa feel a little better. “I’ll get the contract to your agent as soon as possible.”
“No agent,” Willa said, since at this point, she didn’t have one. “Just ... send it to me.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Okay.”
Willa was glad Vanessa didn’t ask any further questions, but still felt it necessary to respond to the obvious curiosity in Vanessa’s tone. “With Steven being sick the last few years, I was only doing the occasional freelance thing anyway,” Willa said. “My agent and I agreed to part ways, amicably. She even said I could contact her when and if I decided to get back into the game. I think she retired last year, though.”
“Happening a lot,” Vanessa commiserated.
“Well, I’ve done enough ghost work to know the contracts, anyway,” Willa said, hoping again that her voice sounded comfortable, casual. Not weird. “Once I get more contracts going, and am doing more work, I’ll probably look around for another agent.”
Hint, hint! I want you to consider me for more work!
“You slam-dunk this one, and I’m sure we can find you more projects,” Vanessa said, and Willa bent a little against her countertop. “But I’m not going to lie. It’s not going to be easy.”
“Trust me,” Willa said, her voice turning grim. “I can handle it.”
Because she’d handled not easy for years. Trying to save a restaurant that was circling the drain wasn’t easy. Losing their house and moving to a small rental at the other end of the state wasn’t easy.
Watching her husband die, slowly, bitterly ...
A pain-in-the-ass so-called “sexy chef” didn’t even crack the top ten.
She could do this. She’d been up against the wall with worse disasters. She knew that she could cook anything, in theory, and reverse engineer any recipe. She knew big personalities. Sure, it’d been a while. But she could, without question, do this.
She’d just fake it until she made it.
“Okay!” Vanessa sounded relieved. “I will send over the links and the contracts. Can’t wait to see the sexy stuff you come up with!”
“Thanks!” Willa chirped. As she hung up, though, those words finally sank in.
The sexy stuff . . .
That you come up with!
Willa stared at her phone, aghast.
“Oh, shit,” she murmured.
Food, she could handle. All day long.
Sex . . . ?
There might be a problem after all.