CHAPTER ELEVEN
By nine fourteen Friday morning, Nat had refreshed her email often enough for the button to develop a personal grievance.
She knew Langford Press would not make a decision before the acquisitions meeting.
She knew the meeting might not begin until ten, might last several hours, and might produce no immediate answer.
Her agent had explained all of this twice.
Michael had explained it once, using fewer words and a more convincing understanding of corporate schedules.
None of that prevented Nat from checking again.
The inbox remained unchanged.
She closed the laptop and carried her coffee into the kitchen, where two lemons, a bunch of thyme, and an unopened carton of cream waited on the counter.
She had planned to spend the morning developing a lemon-thyme custard for one of her sponsors.
Instead, she had spent forty minutes measuring ingredients without combining them, which was not cooking so much as arranging an anxious still life.
Her phone sounded from the dining table.
Nat crossed the room too quickly, struck her hip against a chair, and reached the phone before the second ring. The screen displayed Lena’s name.
“You are not my agent,” Nat said.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I’m waiting for the acquisitions meeting.”
“I know. You sent me three messages before seven.”
“The first was informational.”
“The first said, ‘Today is the day.’ The second said, ‘Unless today is not the day.’ The third was a photograph of toast.”
“The toast looked apprehensive.”
“The toast looked burned.”
Nat glanced toward the plate beside her laptop. “It was experiencing uncertainty.”
“Have you heard anything?”
“No.”
“Then stop refreshing your email.”
“I have stopped.”
“For how long?”
Nat checked the clock. “Almost two minutes.”
Lena sighed. “Come work at my office.”
“I have custard to develop.”
“Then develop it.”
“I’m waiting for Langford.”
“You can wait while separating eggs.”
“Emotion affects custard.”
“That sounds like something you invented to justify pacing.”
Nat looked down and discovered she was, in fact, pacing. “You have no respect for the emotional sensitivity of dairy.”
“I respect dairy more than I respect your current judgment. Call me when you hear.”
Lena disconnected before Nat could defend either.
Michael had left for work at his usual time after placing a cup of tea beside her and advising her not to interpret the absence of an early message as evidence of a negative decision.
Nat had told him she understood. He had looked at the open laptop, the phone in her hand, and the email application already displayed on her tablet, then declined to accept the statement without supporting evidence.
He had also promised not to contact her unless she contacted him first.
That had been thoughtful. It had also removed one possible source of distraction.
Nat returned to the kitchen and began the custard.
Separating eggs required enough precision to occupy her hands but not enough to quiet her thoughts.
The editor liked the concept. The platform figures were stronger now.
The revised marketing section showed that she understood how to reach readers beyond the audience she already had.
Michael had made the proposal better without making it sound like someone else had written it.
She poured cream into the saucepan and added strips of lemon peel. At nine forty-seven, she checked her email.
Nothing.
At ten twenty-three, the custard curdled.
Nat stared into the saucepan. “That feels unnecessarily symbolic.”
She carried it to the sink and began again.
The second batch reached the correct temperature at eleven twelve. Nat strained it into ramekins, placed them in a water bath, and slid the pan into the oven. Her phone remained silent.
At eleven forty-one, an email arrived from a shoe company.
At noon, Mrs. Gable knocked to ask whether Nat knew why a grocery delivery had been left beneath the front steps.
At twelve fifteen, Walter Bell came down to retrieve it and remained in the kitchen long enough to explain that Eleanor had ordered six jars of imported marmalade because the website had described them as limited.
Walter believed scarcity was being used irresponsibly.
“Most scarcity is,” Nat said.
“That is what I told her.”
“Did it work?”
“No. She ordered the orange kind too.”
At twelve thirty-eight, the custards came out of the oven. At twelve fifty-two, Nat placed them in the refrigerator. At one seventeen, she considered whether calling her agent would demonstrate professional initiative or emotional collapse.
At one twenty-one, the phone rang.
This time the screen showed Grace Ellison.
Nat answered and forgot every sensible greeting she had ever used. “Well?”
Her agent laughed. “Hello, Natalie.”
“Hello. I’m sorry. You can provide context and civilized conversation after the result.”
“They want the book.”
Nat gripped the back of the nearest chair.
The kitchen did not change. Sunlight still lay across the floor, the rosemary plant still leaned toward the window, and the refrigerator continued making the faint clicking noise Michael had determined was harmless. Yet the room seemed to shift around the words.
“They want it?” Nat repeated.
“Langford wants to make an offer. The editor took it into acquisitions this morning, and the response was strong. They particularly liked the weeknight chapter structure, the voice, and the reader-engagement plan.”
“The revised plan?”
“The revised plan.”
Nat sat because her knees had stopped participating reliably. “An actual offer?”
“A two-book offer, if the terms come together.”
For several seconds, Nat could hear only the small kitchen sounds around her. “Two?”
“They want the first book to focus on weeknight meals and the second to build from your entertaining material. The advance is not enormous, but it’s respectable for a first cookbook, and the escalators are good. I don’t have the full language yet. We’ll negotiate.”
Nat pressed one hand over her mouth.
“Natalie?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re very quiet.”
“I think the loud part of me has temporarily left the building.”
Grace’s voice softened. “You did it.”
Nat looked at the dining table where she and Michael had rebuilt the audience figures, the refrigerator where the lemon magnet now held nothing, and the kitchen windows she had imagined working beside before the apartment belonged to her.
“We did it,” she said.
Grace misunderstood. “You and I have more work before I let you sign anything.”
“I know. I meant—yes. We did.”
Her agent outlined the preliminary terms, the expected schedule, and the questions Langford wanted answered before sending the formal offer.
Nat took notes, although her handwriting became increasingly illegible.
The first manuscript would be due in ten months.
Recipe testing would begin immediately after the contract was finalized.
Photography remained under discussion. Langford wanted a video meeting Monday afternoon.
By the time the call ended, Nat had filled three pages with numbers, arrows, and one large circle around the words TWO BOOKS.
She called Lena first.
The resulting scream caused Mrs. Gable to telephone upstairs and ask whether someone had been injured.
“No,” Nat assured her. “Something good happened.”
“That was not a good-happened sound.”
“It was Lena.”
Mrs. Gable accepted this as sufficient explanation.
Nat then called her parents. Her mother cried.
Her father announced that he had always known the cookbook would sell, which was generous but historically inaccurate.
He immediately offered to build display shelves for bookstores, demonstrating an unclear understanding of national publishing distribution but considerable paternal commitment.
After those calls, Nat opened her messages and typed to Michael.
Langford wants the cookbook.
She stared at the sentence before sending it. Then she added:
Both of them.
His reply arrived less than a minute later.
Both of what?
Nat laughed aloud.
Two cookbooks. They are preparing an offer.
The typing indicator appeared, vanished, and returned.
That is excellent news. Congratulations.
The response was completely Michael: correct, restrained, and inadequate to the size of what she felt. Nat knew he was at work. She knew he did not use exclamation marks merely because an event had become emotional. Still, disappointment touched the edge of her happiness.
Then another message arrived.
I am leaving now.
Nat looked at the clock. It was one fifty-nine.
You are working.
I have completed the urgent items. I will be there in twenty-three minutes.
That sounds researched.
It is the travel estimate.
She was still smiling when she put down the phone.
Michael arrived in twenty-one minutes carrying a bottle of champagne and a white paper bag from the bakery where he had purchased Mrs. Gable’s lemon tart. He entered the apartment, set both items on the table, and crossed directly to Nat.
“You received an offer?”
“They’re preparing one. Two books.”
He kissed her before she could explain the difference.
The kiss held none of Tuesday’s uncertainty. His hands settled at her waist, and Nat wrapped her arms around him, laughing against his mouth because happiness had exceeded the space available inside her. Michael kissed her again, more slowly, before drawing back far enough to look at her.
“Two books,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The second is contingent on the first meeting the contractual terms?”
Nat stared at him.
“I am pleased,” he said.
“You arrived with champagne and opened with contingencies.”
“The two facts are compatible.”
“They are uniquely compatible in you.”
Michael’s mouth shifted into the quiet smile she had learned to notice. “Tell me everything.”