Just Her Type (33 page)

Chapter 41

A
year later

Dressed in a faded Love
Nest Ninjas T-shirt and ratty sweatpants for an evening in, Dominic slouched on
his sofa with his bare feet up on the coffee table and his sleek computer
balanced on his lap.
 
In no mood for
Impact’s bi-annual “Pitch Perfect Slam,” he griped to himself.
 
The online event was a type of open-mic
session in which authors interested in Impact posted one-line pitches of their
completed manuscripts.

All Impact agents read these posts in real time
and requested partials or fulls, on the spot, for the most promising ideas.
Whose decision had it been to schedule it from five p.m. to seven p.m. on a
Friday, a few days before Christmas? He had a hot date with the remote and the
twenty-inch frozen Italian sausage pizza in the oven. His social life had been
lame lately, but he liked it that way.
 
And work kept him plenty distracted.
 
After signing Corinne, he’d taken on two
other talented clients and closed two additional huge deals in the past year.

Corinne’s advance and contract with excellent
escalators had exceeded Dominic’s initial expectations. Tucker had required the
extensive cuts Kendra had said the manuscript needed to whip it into top shape.
Lassiter & Crane had also retitled it the gloomy
Of Dissonance and Sacrific
e and gave it the publicity-and-marketing
push only a big player could, with a stellar first printing and a
twenty-five-city international tour with stops in the states, Canada, Germany,
and Spain among other places. Before the release, Corinne personally met with
six major booksellers. Eight thousand advance copies had also been distributed.
 
Author profiles-and-excerpt spreads
appeared in several national lifestyle, entertainment, and publishing industry
magazines.
 
She appeared on two
top-rated network morning news shows.
 
Overall, the novel received glowing reviews.

As Dominic predicted, the novel made the cover of
the
New York Gazette Book Journal
and
film rights had been snapped up by an A-list producer.
 
Only after the pre-publication buzz and
enthusiastic media reception translated into better than anticipated early
sales did Dominic breathe a sigh of relief. A great book, plus substantial
publisher support, did not always perform. In fact, expensive flops were more
likely.

Dominic had worked past all remnants of bitterness
where the Brody situation was concerned, even meeting at the office with his
former client, who’d packed a “special” lunch for him. As a gesture of
goodwill, Dominic put his squeamishness aside to eat the “parboiled-then-baked”
raccoon, which had been quite delicious after he stopped expecting it to taste
like chicken. (It was closer to beef, more tender, if a tad greasier.)

Kendra had enjoyed a good year as well. Though
Dominic found it painful seeing Kendra’s name, he couldn’t help reading about
the happenings at her agency. He considered reaching out with a congratulatory
text or email, but did not. The latest Blake Spencer fantasy series she sold
also had everyone talking. No doubt, the surprise success of his three
indie-published novellas spurred his longtime publisher to offer him a more
generous deal with stronger marketing plans.

 
The
first and latest books in Lizzy Hopewell’s
Cute
Coupledom
series had climbed to No. 2 and No. 4 slots respectively on the
New York Gazette’s
nonfiction ebooks and
nonfiction trade paperback lists after receiving multiple endorsements from
Raven Raw, of all people, who gushed about them on her half dozen social media
accounts with millions of followers.

The latest
Publishing
Grapevine
reported Kendra had also brokered a deal between Brody and
Glenallen & Fowler.
 
For Brody’s
new trilogy the publisher would pay the kind of advance usually reserved for
major celebrity tell-alls, a substantial increase from Brody’s last deal with
his previous publisher.
 
Way to go, Kendra and Brody.

Over the past year, Dominic had continued to
wrestle with his decision not to go after Kendra. But if he’d learned anything
after a succession of failed relationships, it was this: A man can’t
will
or
force
someone to love him back. And hell no,
one
cannot love enough for
two
.

Those early days after the breakup had been rough.
He’d wiped out with plenty of women before, but he had quickly rebounded. This
felt different.
 
He lost count of
the times he wanted to sob in his plate of hot wings, caterwaul cheesy tunes
about unrequited love, and play endless, solitary rounds of beer pong.
 

While under the influence of a potent prescription
allergy medication, he’d even considered standing outside her apartment
building and reenacting that John Cusack move from the eighties teen classic
Say Anything
, complete with the trench
coat and the boom box hoisted overhead
 
blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” However, his pride, along with
a healthy fear of a restraining order, had prevented him from going that far.
Only guys in rom-coms could get away with that sort of grand public gesture.

For a while, he’d lost his desire to write.
Instead, he’d enrolled in a series of online courses, absurd distractions
masquerading as self-enrichment:

Lego
Robotics

Breaking the
Rules: An Intellectual Discussion of the Ethics and Functionalism of Star Trek

How to Make
a Medieval Crossbow and Arrow

Post-breakup Dominic had buzzed his hair. For good
measure he’d gone for a chest wax because he’d once promised Kendra he
wouldn’t.
Ha! Take that.
As if she’d
somehow know what he’d done.

What a bonehead he’d been. Served him right he’d
ended up with a nasty rash caused by an allergic reaction to the concoction the
esthetician had slathered on his skin.
 
Upside, he’d lost some of the rage along with that chest hair. He kept
the buzz cut, but the chest hair eventually made a comeback.

The heartache lingered, but at least he had moved
beyond most of the woebegone boondoggling.
 
He was writing and working out at the
dojang
again.

Dominic had taken full responsibility for the ways
in which he’d contributed to the breakup. Even after noting her skittishness,
he had pushed for too much, too hard, too soon. It was a wonder Kendra hadn’t
scraped him off sooner.

His token efforts at romance had not gone well.
Though he spent time with some remarkable women, including Brielle’s friend
Chelsea, in the past few months, not one had intrigued him enough to pursue
more than a few dates.
 
Those who
hinted at wanting more time with him, he let go. Gently. His feelings for Kendra
were like a fever that would peak and break, only to return when he attempted
to move forward with someone else. It would start with the contrasting and
comparing, a competition other women couldn’t possibly win because there was
only one Kendra Porter. They deserved his full attention, not someone pining
for someone else.

 
If he
couldn’t have Kendra, he’d make do after the pitch slam by studying narrative
structure with a
Breaking Bad
rerun
binge courtesy of Netflix.

“Not in the mood for this,” Dominic said aloud. He
could’ve shirked the pitch slam. No one would’ve been the wiser. And he’d
rarely played the calling-in-rich card.
 
His sense of duty spurred him on. He scrolled through texts,
intermittently checking his watch and counting down the minutes until it was
over.

Forty-five minutes in, three agents had requested
what read like promising young adult, historical fiction, and thriller novels.

The howlers jumped out at Dominic:

 
It’s a fiction novel
…

“As opposed to a
nonfiction
novel?”
 
Dominic said to himself, reaching for the beer bottle on the end table.
“Ah, the pet peeve I can’t seem to escape after all these years.”

Best
described as
Fifty Shades of Grey
meets
Heaven is For Real.

“What the…?”

Muffy’s
memorial service and a grieving pet owner become deadly for one taxidermist,
who botches a job that sets off a chain of events that puts him, his family,
and business in jeopardy.

“Um, no.”

As Dominic read more, the effects of a second beer
took hold. The pitches became even more entertaining, but not in the way the
authors had intended. To make his cyber presence known and help those who
struggled with condensing their stories down to one sentence, he typed,
Home in on the protagonist’s main goal and
conflict.

An hour and a half into the session, Dominic
hadn’t read anything that piqued his interest.

He scrolled to the line for a novel titled
Click
.
One woman’s quest for Mr. Right, the Great American novel, and the
perfect knit stitch.

Dominic took another long pull from his bottle. It
wasn’t a pitch, but more like a tagline, simply stating the protagonist’s
goals. “Sounds like a one-way ticket to Snoozeville, I’m afraid.”

He read the next two posts for hard sci-fi and
cyberpunk novels, but for some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about the
dreary-sounding
Click
so he returned
to that post. What’s your name again,
Click
person?” Dominic said to himself, before he took another swallow. He scanned
for the contributor’s user name and snapped upright, spurting beer:
NormaButterfield?

Dominic blinked and then wiped the beer off his
chin and laptop screen with the edge of his T-shirt as he read the post again.

NormaButterfield
.

Novel.

Knit stitch
.

Something bubbled in his chest. Indigestion?
 
No.
Joy!

Dominic couldn’t type quickly enough
:
 
Norma
Butterfield, is
Click
a romance,
women’s fiction, or chick lit?

NormaButterfield:
It has elements of all three, but I would place it firmly in the
romance category.

Dominic closed his eyes, looked heavenward, and
whispered a quick thank-you before typing:
 
What kind of ending?

NormaButterfield:
A hopeful ending.
Girl
realizes she blew it. Guy gives girl another chance. Do you think that’s a
realistic resolution?

Dominic:
 
Depends on the execution. But I’d
like to see more. ASAP.

The pulsing curser appeared to sync with his
racing heartbeat as he awaited a reply that took too long.
 
His cell phone on the coffee table
vibrated announcing a text message. He didn’t reach for it immediately as he
kept his gaze on the laptop screen until curiosity got the better of him. He
snatched up the phone and after recognizing the phone number he read the text:
How soon?

Dominic typed:
Like
now if at all possible

She texted back:
Quite possible

His doorbell rang.

Dominic shoved the laptop aside and raced to the
door to find Kendra, shivering and bundled up against the cold in a puffy coat
and fuzzy hat. She looked more gorgeous than he remembered.

“Merry Christmas,” she said through chattering
teeth.

“Merry Christmas to you, too.” He gestured. “Now
get in here before you freeze to death. How long have you been out there?”

“A while. You sure this is okay? I know it’s
presumptuous to barge over here like this, after all this time, but I read
about your pitch slam… It hit me. I couldn’t wait a second longer,” she said,
cold wafting off her as she peeked around him. “I had to take a chance. I’d
phoned the agency and Quinton told me you weren’t there so I came over here and
waited. I’m sorry. I’m rambling.”

 
Dominic closed the door and folded his arms to keep from touching her.

“I didn’t know if…Do you have, um, company?”

“I wouldn’t have written ASAP if I did.” Dominic
quirked a brow.

“Right. Forgive me. I’m nervous. I know I’m not
making any sense.
 
I was thinking
about the woman I saw you with in the ER around Christmas last year.”

They didn’t move beyond the foyer. “So that
was
you.
 
I knew it!” Dominic’s right fist pounded
his left palm. “That was my sister-in-law Bree.”

“Oh. I’m glad. Dominic, there’s so much I want to
say, need to say to you.
 
I’ve
missed you.” Her beautiful eyes shimmered with emotion. “And I’m sorry. So sorry
I never said I love you back. I did.
I do
.
I love you. But I couldn’t come to you sooner because I had a lot of things I
needed to figure out first. But if you’ll give us another chance I’ll tell you
every day, but most importantly,
show
you every day.”

“But what about all those things that held you
back before?” he grilled her. “How do I know you won’t bolt again?”

“You see—”

“You crushed me, woman.” One hand went to his
chest.
 
“I mean,
pulverized
me. Right before that, you
handed me my balls without gift wrap.”

“I—”

 
“Disappeared for a year, a whole freakin’
year, Kendra.” His ego still battled his heart at times.
Don’t blow this, again.

 
“I
know. I’m so sorry. I hurt you. Deeply.”

“So how do I know you won’t do it again?”