Chapter Two
Fourteen Years Earlier
MALCOLM BUCHANAN IS WELL AND TRULY FUCKED.
It’s almost midnight, and he is sitting at the hotel bar, nursing his third Scotch and tapping his pen against the paper as if the steady rhythm might coax the words out.
So far, no luck.
He parted ways with his agent, Harry, three months ago. It was mutual, except for the part where Harry said, “It isn’t working out,” and then explained that what publishers were really looking for was something that hadn’t been done before.
“No shit, Harry,” he said, before trying to explain that crime was as much about the formula as breaking it.
The agent, no longer his agent, pressed on, as if to drive the point home.
“The work’s not bad, Mal,” he said. “It’s just . . . not good enough to stand out. Not in this market.” This market, which cares more about novelty than novels, and has publishers pushing out good old-fashioned crime for books that, half the time, don’t even open with a body.
“Crime still sells,” insisted Harry. “It just has to do something unexpected. Take Arthur Fletch. He always finds a way to make it new.”
Great, thought Malcolm, then, and now. All he has to do is take a page from one of the most successful names in publishing. All he has to do is be Arthur Fletch.
He looks down at the scribbles in his notebook, his conference pass shoved between the pages as a makeshift bookmark.
It has been three years since his last book, which feels like a lifetime, especially since sales are dipping dangerously low, and he is spending more time on the road, filling out panels and giving guest lectures to bored college students who care less about the craft than seeing their name on a book.
If he isn’t careful, he’ll become one of those writers who teach more than they write, and then one of those writers who teach, and never write, and eventually the writing part will be forgotten, a footnote in his history.
(There is a reason, after all, for the saying that those who can’t do, teach.)
And Malcolm Buchanan will be damned if he lets that happen.
He’s about to tip back the last of his Scotch when a hand lands, featherlight, against his shoulder, and an undeniably female voice says, “Is this seat taken?”
Malcolm looks up.
The first thing he sees is her hair. A sunny shade of blonde he assumes—wrongly, as it turns out—is both natural and permanent.
Of course, later when she asks him what he noticed first, he’ll lie and say it was her eyes—that’s what women want to hear—even though the truth is that her eyes, pretty as they are, registered last, after her perfect breasts, the way her black dress hugged her waist, and the fact that she smelled like French vanilla.
But now he gestures at the stool beside him and says, “All yours.”
As she peers around for a bartender, he puts her at twenty-five, maybe a youthful thirty.
Younger than he is—thank god for that—but not as young as the college students that sometimes flirt with him.
The ones that hang on his salt-and-pepper looks (gray strikes the Buchanan men early) and romanticize the age gap in a way that he, admittedly, does little to dissuade.
When it’s clear that the hotel bartender has retired for the night, she flashes Malcolm a smirk and, much to his surprise and delight, leans across the vacant counter and liberates a bottle of red wine and a glass from the other side.
“Don’t tell,” she says, opening the bottle between her knees, in case anyone else is looking. But it is just the two of them.
“I wouldn’t dare.”
She fills her glass and raises it toward him, and he tries to think of something to say, a flirtatious barb or clever toast, but finds himself at a loss for words. A bad thing, for a writer, but it’s late, and he’s one sheet shy of drunk, and in the end, it doesn’t matter.
Sienna beats him to it.
“To secret keepers,” she says, clinking her wineglass against his tumbler. They both take a sip, but as she sets her glass down, her gaze flicks toward his pen.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Malcolm glances down at the notebook. The last thing he’s written, more than an hour ago, is Like Bond, but cop? So, safe to say, she isn’t interrupting much. He flips the notebook shut. “That’s all right,” he says. “I think I’m finished for the night.”
She settles into her seat. “I’m Sienna.”
“Malcolm,” he says. “Malcolm Buchanan.”
“I know.”
Two small words, and yet, somehow, they are the two sexiest ones anyone has ever said. She blushes and looks down into her glass of wine, adding, “I saw your talk.”
His hope falters. Ah, yes, his talk. On the legacy of British crime.
There was a decent crowd, but Malcolm quickly learned that it had very little to do with him, and far more to do with the next two speakers, an agent and an editor.
The audience was packed full of hopeful writers, hungry for secrets, shortcuts, anything but the grim truth: When it comes to writing, revising, selling books, there is no way out but through.
“You’re a writer, then?” he asks.
He would have preferred simply an adoring fan, but still. She knows his name.
Sienna bites her lip and wavers. “I write . . . sometimes,” she says, in that nervous way so many do, when they are starting out, after they’ve put in the time and before they’ve gotten anything out.
Whenever writers demur, he wants to shake them, to say How can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you won’t show them how?
Instead, he looks her in the eyes, holding her gaze as he says, “If you write, then you’re a writer. Simple as that.”
She smiles. “Then yes, I guess I’m a writer?” Her cheeks blush pinker, and she takes a larger sip of wine.
“No.” Malcolm is getting frustrated. “It’s not a question. Say it like it’s true.”
She straightens on her stool and lifts her chin. “I’m a writer.”
Malcolm smiles. “Good girl.”
Light kindles behind her eyes. They really are quite lovely.
A layered blue, like . . . like . . . Malcolm fumbles.
Description has never been his forte. He usually lets the action and the dialogue speak for him.
It’s crime, after all, not poetry. Maybe that’s why your books aren’t selling, hisses a snide voice in his head that sounds like Harry. But he doubts that’s the reason.
She rests an elbow on the counter as Malcolm eyes the last dregs of whisky in his glass. The bottle glints on the far side of the counter, and he finds himself wishing it were in reach. “I read your last book,” she says.
In a moment of rare self-deprecation, Malcolm says, “I fear you might be the only one.” He hates the words as soon as they are out. He had a mentor once who liked to say “Never let them see you sweat.” But Sienna only laughs. A sweet, bright sound.
“Well?” he asks, turning to face her. “Did you like it?”
She shifts so her knees are between his. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER THEY’VE TWISTED UP the sheets, Malcolm slips into the bathroom to freshen up.
When he comes back out, tying the hotel robe around his waist, he finds Sienna sitting naked at the desk, lamplight bouncing off her thigh, her cheek, her breast, as she skims the pages of his latest draft.
The one he’d been writing when Harry gave him the sack.
It’s not bad, Mal. It’s just not good enough to stand out.
Panic flutters through him, followed quickly by annoyance, and he is about to march across the room and snatch the paper from her hand when she says, “This is really good.”
His anger vanishes in the face of praise. In fact, as he watches Sienna turn the page, admiring, he feels himself starting to get hard again. He strolls toward her, hands in the pockets of his hotel robe.
She chews her thumb—it is a tic, he’ll learn, whenever she’s thinking—and says, “It’s the neighbor, isn’t it? Who killed the girl?”
That knocks the wind out of his sails. He’d been proud of that twist, and she’s pinned it in what, three pages? Four? Bloody hell, maybe he is losing his edge.
“That obvious?” he mutters and Sienna must clock the frustration in his face.
“But you can use that,” she adds brightly. “If I guessed it, the reader will, too. So make it a red herring, and have the killer be the friend instead. Put him right there, on the page, front and center at the hero’s side, and it will be so bold the reader doesn’t guess.”
Malcolm blinks. “That,” he says, “isn’t half bad.”
She breaks into a smile. “You think?”
It’s a good idea.
No, it’s a great one.
Of course, with enough time and the right amount of focus, he could have thought of it himself. He would have, probably, but now, he doesn’t need to. Because Sienna has.
“I think,” says Malcolm, wrapping his arms around her naked shoulders, “it’s exactly what the story needs. You’re an angel,” he adds, planting a kiss on the top of her head.
Sienna lets her head fall back against his chest, looking up at him with a mixture of surprise and delight.
“You really think so?” she says as if he’s handed her a prize. And he has, hasn’t he? After all, he is Malcolm Buchanan, published author, public speaker, crime historian, and she is just Sienna. A young woman who doesn’t even have the guts to call herself a writer yet.
“I do,” he says, smiling into her hair. He looks past her at the paper in her hands, and sees what the story is, what it could be.
With Sienna at his side, he can prove old Harry wrong.
Who knows, maybe one day he’ll be even bigger than Arthur bloody Fletch.