How Hard Can It Be? (17 page)

Authors: Robyn Peterman

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary

BOOK: How Hard Can It Be?

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“He’s as tough as nails; he’ll be fine. He just wants someone there with him. I’ll be back on Thursday,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I want you to call me while I’m gone, and I’ll call you.”

“I don’t have your number,” I said sheepishly.

He pulled his card out and laid it on the table in front of me. “That’s what this is for. Do you think you’ll be able to refrain from eating it?”

“Probably, unless you make me really mad.”

“I have a better idea. Give me your phone.” He put his hand out. I dug through my bottomless Hello Kitty bag and obliged. He put his name and number into my phone and handed it back.

“Can I still have your card?” I asked, wanting something that was his.

“Are you going to eat it?” he teased.

“Only if I get really hungry.”

Chapter 17

“N
o fucking way.” Shoshanna let out a long low whistle and dropped heavily onto the desk chair in our poufy pink, pornographic statue-filled office.

“What?” I asked, looking over her shoulder at the computer. It was entirely too early on a Monday morning for LeHump to be dumbfounded.

“She can’t do this. It’s not possible.” Shoshanna’s dazed expression made my stomach flippy.

“Can’t do what?” I asked more forcefully than I intended, startling Shoshanna out of her stupor. Was the Walking Botox Experiment going after one of the girls? Was she going after me, or my dad, or Kristy? Had she announced her new lover, Jack, on her website? Speaking of . . . I didn’t tell Jack about that. Oops. That was a fairly large omission, but I didn’t want to worry him when he needed to focus on his grandpa . . . I’d tell him on Thursday when he got back.

“She’s going to release the book at the end of next week.” Shoshanna looked up at me with eyes as round as saucers.

“What book?” I asked. A small whoosh of panic settled in my stomach and started a slow waltz.

“The pirate book. Your book.”

“What?” I yelped. “It’s not done. I don’t even know what else is going to happen in the damn thing. And how in the hell can you release a book that fast?”

“I guess she’s going to self-publish it. If she went through traditional New York publishing, it would take a year to eighteen months,” Shoshanna said, staring at the computer as an evil smile slowly spread across her face.

“Why are you smiling?” I asked. The waltz in my tummy increased its pace.

“This might not be a bad thing.” She clapped her little hands together in glee. “If she publishes herself, the book will be released with every single word you said, including my favorite,
pork sword.
It will be horrifying,” she squealed, bouncing up and down. “Her website says that she has over six thousand pre-orders. It says here,” Shoshanna read, “that the national morning shows will be in town to cover her. She will do a reading of a chapter on live television. Hmmm, apparently, her going into independent publishing is big motherfucking news. She says it’s her greatest work to date and she dares anyone to deny it. Goddamnit, she’s a psycho,” she laughed. “This is definitely not a bad thing.”

“How in the fuck is this not a bad thing?” I yelled. “I’m going to have to live here at the monster porno house to get this pile of poo finished.” I paced the small office. I had to move to counterbalance the tummy waltz that was quickly morphing into a violent tango.

“Oh, oh, oh—” Shoshanna bounced with excitement. “It says here on her site that she’s going to unveil her greatest masterpiece at the Midwest Romance-o-Rama Convention next week.”

“Oh my God,” I gasped. “Wait, what is the Midwest Romance-o-Rama Convention?”

“It’s the mac-daddy romance writer and reader convention in the country and this year it’s right in our backyard.”

“Where?”

“Let me find it.” Shoshanna pulled up the convention schedule on the computer and couldn’t control her burst of laughter. “This is too good. Every major author, publishing house, and reviewer will be there. She is so going down.”

“So it’s here in Saint Paul?” I whispered. An icy chill crept up my spine. Getting busted in my hometown so soon after the fucking weather girl disaster was simply too much.

“It’s at the WMNS TV station building downtown. God, that’s one ugly-ass building.”

“Are you sure?” Apprehension coursed through me. Could it get any worse? The thought of having to possibly go to that building and get arrested again made bile rise in my throat.

“Have you seen it? It’s uglier than a hat full of assholes.”

“Holy hell,” I sputtered, forgetting for a moment that my life was blowing up, “did you just make that up?”

“Make up what?” LeHump shook her head, clueless.

“The hat asshole thing,”

“Oh, no. My mom used to say it all the time. You like it?” she asked.

“Um, no. But I may have to use that in the Pirate Dave saga.”

“See? I am good for something.” She stood up, took a bow.

I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose to ward off the panic attack that was hurtling toward Earth and heading straight for me, and I willed myself not to vomit. I had a decision to make and I had to make it fast. It was risky to talk to Shoshanna here at the Viper Bitch’s house, but options were getting slim and time was running out. LeHump needed to know . . . I walked to the door, shut it, and locked it. “Shoshanna, I need to tell you something.”

And I did. I told her everything. The weather girl debacle, my arrest (both of them), being set up with stolen jewels, being apprehended by Jack, not being paid, Sergeant Santa and Herbie the Dentist Cop’s visit, and Evangeline’s threats to my dad and Kristy and the writing gals.

LeHump stared at me for a long moment. “I knew you looked familiar,” she chuckled, referring to my fifteen minutes of fame as the idiot on the six o’clock news who thought the criteria for the Sunshine Weather Girl job only required showing up and hanging out at the station for a month. “The skank certainly does her homework,” she said disgustedly. “You were dead in the water the minute you gave her your name.”

“Shoshanna, have you thought this plan out all the way?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably on the couch.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, even if we destroy her career, what stops her from destroying us?”

That wiped the smile right off her face. “Oh, fuck.”

I raced down to Cecil’s office. If we were going to finish the book, he needed to be there taking notes. I had no clue how Evangeline was going to put my frightening brainchild together, and I didn’t care. There were more life-threatening possibilities to worry about. How in the hell had we come up with a plan that still left us as sitting ducks? What if, worst case scenario, people actually liked the book? The movie
The Producers
kept flashing through my mind. Fuckity, fuck, fuck. I was going to have to pull some atrocious stuff out of my warped brain. A hat full of assholes was probably a good place to start . . .

Cecil’s office was three doors down from ours. I’d never been inside before. I was curious whether it was as pink as ours. No. It was pinker. How was that even possible?

“Cecil?” I called out from the doorway.

No answer. Where was he? I moved cautiously into his office in case it was booby-trapped. I giggled at my pun. Cecil was nowhere to be found. God, I hoped he wasn’t sick today . . .

The office was a mess. Stacks of paper everywhere. The walls were lined with bookshelves and every single inch of space was taken with notebooks and binders. How strange . . . I didn’t take Cecil for a slob or a hoarder, but impressions can be deceiving.

I’d leave him a note to come and find us. I waded through the pigsty to his desk and found a stack of magazines that made my eyes pop.

“Hmm,” I giggled, leafing through the catalog. I now knew what rocked Cecil’s world . . . There must have been at least forty plus-size women’s lingerie catalogs piled high on his desk.

He was not getting it on with Evangeline if he liked robust gals. The Viper was a bag of bones. Every other page was dog-eared and many items had been circled. He clearly liked his women in lacy purple undergarments. Crotchless teddies seemed to hold an appeal for him also. Who knew?

After writing a quick note for him to haul ass to our office ASAP, I turned and knocked a pile of notebooks to the ground. “Shit,” I groaned, bending down to pick them up. Paragraph after paragraph of Cecil’s neat handwriting covered the pages. What the hell was this?

My stomach dropped as I read. No fucking way. I dropped the notebook and picked up another . . . same thing, and another and another. All the notebooks were filled with his neat script. I tripped my way over to the bookshelf. Yanking several down, I opened them and read. The pages were covered with beautiful descriptions of lovers spurned and rejoined. Mind-boggling dialogue and hot, racy sex scenes were described in perfect detail . . . Notebook after notebook was filled with Cecil’s handwriting, telling stories I could never even hope to write. The binders were dated and labeled. They went back at least twenty years. First, second, third drafts of all the Viper’s novels . . . all in Cecil’s neat print.

I pulled down others and read more of the same quality writing. How was this possible? I glanced at the door. No one was there, thank you, Jesus. I would be killed if I got caught. This was bigger than salmonella-gate, much bigger . . . My knees buckled and I slid to the floor. Cecil was not the bad guy. No, my guess was that Cecil was in the same boat we were. Maybe worse . . . I’d bet my car and ten years of my salary that Cecil, the manservant, had been the one originally responsible for making Evangeline a
New York Times
best-selling romance author. Holy fuck.

“Shoshanna,” I gasped, fifty shades paler than when I left the room fifteen minutes ago. “I have to tell . . .”

“Hello ladies,” Evangeline purred. Her boobs, larger than ever, entered the room before she did.

I stared at her and tried to figure out what could have made her so damned hateful. Studying her at such a close range was alarming and made me realize I’d been wrong about something. Her neck did not resemble a rotted prune, it looked more like an elephant scrotum.

She wobbled her way to the computer and gave us a nasty leer. “I see you’ve read the exciting news. I believe we’re a bit behind schedule. I need the book by the middle of next week for formatting and pre-release to all the major reviewers in the country.”

Evangeline the Awful stood at the desk, trying to hold herself upright. She swayed to the left, then she swayed to the right. Was she drunk? It was only nine-thirty in the morning. WTF? Then it hit me . . . She had no balance because her bazooms were too heavy. That was why she walked so strangely and could barely stay on her feet. Holy shit.

“Impossible, you stinky whore,” Shoshanna muttered under her breath.

“Shokaka,” the odiferous streetwalker hissed, digging her nails into the desk. “When I say it will be done, it will be done.” Her voice got thin and shrill. “Do you understand me?”

We nodded mutely. I grabbed LeHump’s hand before she called the smelly ho anything else. I didn’t want the Viper to push the due date. What boggled my mind was her confidence in the brilliance of a story that hadn’t been written yet. Was she so out of touch that she couldn’t see that
Pirate Dave
sucked?

“Aren’t you worried about the product?” I asked before I could stop myself. Shoshanna squeezed my hand so hard I heard something crunch.

“Very sneaky, Rudy, very sneaky,” she spat, “trying to convince me the book is bad so I’ll give it back to you. Never. Going. To. Happen.” Her voice got louder and more ear-piercing. “This is my masterpiece. Mine. People will know my name all over the world. I will have free fast food for the rest of my life! Companies will pay me to mention them in my works of art,” she was screaming now and I feared a puncture to my eardrum. “James Cameron can shove
Titanic
up his ass because I’m the new King of the World,” she shouted and practically fell on her face. LeHump and I didn’t move. There was no fucking way we were going to help her. I was kind of hoping she’d have a heart attack or a stroke after her screeching harangue. It would solve so many problems . . .

“You two worthless nothings will get back to work and finish my book or I will finish you.” So much venom spewed from her voice I felt dirty. “Oh, and Rita, to answer your question, I’m not at all worried about the product. Cecil tells me it’s the book that will change my life and he knows better than anyone,” she hissed, throwing her head back, tossing her overprocessed hair, and banging her skull thoroughly on the doorframe. It was all I could do to hold back the Inappropriate Laughing Monster. My lower lip was going to be a bloody mess. Shoshanna didn’t even try to hold back. She cackled so hard, I hoped she’d brought another pair of panties.

Evangeline did not look back. She left the room in a daze, hopefully a concussed daze. I’d be very happy if we didn’t have to see her again for the rest of the day.

“LeHump, get ahold of yourself. I have to tell you something important,” I said, attempting to wipe the grin off my face. She looked at me and dissolved into another bout of hysterics. “I’m serious,” I hissed, punching her in the arm.

“Oww,” she giggled, trying to compose herself.

“When I was in Cecil’s office, I found . . .”

“Shall we get started, ladies?” Cecil asked from the doorway.

“Holy hell,” I shrieked, slapping my hand over my mouth so hard I got a headache.

“I understand we have a new deadline. I would suggest we get to work,” he said, sitting down and pulling out his notebook and pen.

“Um, sure,” I said, “but I’d like to ask a few questions first.”

“As long as they are not work related, you may,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Crap, they were all work related. What else did I want to know?