Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy (3 page)

Ten thousand today alone.

It’s going to take another
week for the first royalty payments to flood Gordon’s parched bank account and then he’ll be able to lift the financial weight from his harried sister’s shoulders.

Gordon knows that he’s going to need all his skills at fiction to come
up with an explanation for his sudden windfall.

4

Jane Cooper
feels a giddy rush of happiness as she speeds the nippy little rental Honda across the RFK Bridge, leaving Manhattan (and her misery) behind.

She
likes to drive.

Coming from the
Midwest she’s been driving since she was a teenager and it was one of the things she missed living in Manhattan, where she’d surrendered her car and become just another face on the subway.

Not wanting to play any of the music on her iPod (too many memories of Tom)
she tunes the radio to some easy listening station that gets her happily up the Hutchinson River Parkway and into Connecticut, the GPS’s reassuringly stern female voice guiding her.

A couple of hours into the drive, somewhere near Hartford, her happiness starts to leak from her and she feels icy tentacles of anxiety playing her nerves like a banjo.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s lost her relationship, does she want to lose her job, too?

Taking off into New England on a self-indulgent whim, looking to escape her own misery with nothing but the slenderest of clues linking Vermont to Viola Usher . . .

Getting on the bad side of
Jonas Blunt would be career suicide.

She has seen him
dispatching previously favored minions with all the emotion of an automaton.

Jane has been with the
Blunt Agency for five years, carefully negotiating perilous waters, slowly trying to make herself indispensable to Jonas.

She still earns peanuts, of course, and has to live with
junior agent
printed on her business cards, trusted to represent only a few unimportant authors.

But what if she’s right?

What if Viola Usher
is
in East Devon, Vermont?

A coup like that would put her on the fast
track to promotion.

Crossing into
Vermont from Massachusetts, the Fall leaves a burst of color in the late afternoon sunlight, she tries to calm herself.

She has
merely acted on her intuition.

Hasn’t that paid off in the past?

About as often as it has failed you
, the voice of negativity assures her.

Think of
how wrong she’d been about Tom Bennett, a sexually perverse little creep disguised in a Brooks Brothers suit.

How eagerly she had allowed herself to be wooed by him
when she’d met him within her first months of arriving in New York.

A handsome young associate at the legal firm that handle
d the Blunt Agency’s business.

At first she’d asked herself wh
y he would be interested in her, then she’d allowed herself to be swept away.

She was attractive in a severe way, with her black bo
b and her smart-girl glasses, and peeled free of the dark, almost mannish, suits she favored, her body was slender and well formed.

Gamine
, Tom had called her.

Sai
d she was sexy in a kind of Audrey Hepburnish way.

Which had delighted her
—
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
had been her favorite movie as a teenager.

She
’d soaked up its sophistication, swearing to herself that she, too, would be one of those chic Manhattan girls one day.

And
so she had.

With
her apartment in the Meat Packing District, a job at the hottest lit agency in Manhattan and a gorgeous husband-to-be.

She
understands now that she’d been perfect for the Jekyll and Hyde that was Tom Bennett.

Her job had her traveling
frequently: attending the book fairs and conferences that Jonas Blunt was too mighty to waste his time on.

Acting as his emissary and paying person
al visits to the clutch of aging big name authors on Jonas’s books.

These crusty literary types didn’t make a huge amount of money for the agency, but they lent it a certain chic.

Meanwhile Jonas was able to party on both coasts with his celebrity clients: fashion models and actresses who wrote cookery, yoga and diet books that sold like crazy, made her boss wealthy and had him frequently splashed on the society pages.

And w
hile she was away Tom had shed his suit and turned into something vile and filthy.

In their bed.

Eew
.

As
Jane crosses into Vermont her cell phone rings and she has to force herself not feel some pang of hope that it may be Tom.

She clears her throat when she sees it’s
Jonas Blunt.

“Are you there yet?” he asks.

“I’m en route.”

“I’ve just had breakfast with
Raynebeau Jones,” he says, casually dropping the name of Hollywood’s hottest young actress. “She feels she was born to play Suzie Ballinger and I think she’s right.”

Suzie, despite her sexual proclivities, is very smart, which makes the character
memorable.

Raynebeau
Jones is an airhead.

Jane says, “That’s interesting.”

“Very,” Jonas says. “I told her that we’re on the brink of signing Viola Usher and that we’d very shortly be in a position to negotiate the sale of the movie rights.”

“Isn’t that a little premature?”

“I thought you’d found her?”

“I’m following a lead.”

There’s a pause, then when Jonas speaks his voice is menacingly level.

“Okay, here’s how it’s going to go: you find Viola Usher and sign her and you’ll get a corner office with a
n agent sign on the door. Screw this up and you’re history. Do you understand?”

“Yes,
Jonas,” Jane says, her voice breaking.

6

When Gordon, halfway into a bottle of his absent sister’s Chilean cabernet, responds to a knock at the front door and yanks it open to reveal Suzie Baldwin illuminated by the dim porch light, he yells, “Will you for heaven’s sake please just go away!”

He is about to slam the door when he sees this isn’t the spectral Suzie, but a young woman with bobbed black hair and glasses, who stares at him in shock.

“I’m terribly sorry if this is a bad time,” she says.

“No,”
Gordon says, “my apologies. I thought you were some salesperson who has been bothering me. How may I help you?”

“You’re Gordon Rushworth?”

“Yes.”

“The author?”

“I am he,” Gordon says drawing himself up to his full and not inconsiderable height.

The woman sticks out a hand.

“My name’s Jane Cooper. I’m an agent with the Jonas Blunt Agency in New York.”

Gordon is suddenly very, very sober.

He submitted a copy of
Too Long the Night
to Jonas Blunt, of course.

But knowing the man’
s reputation for rudeness and his scorn for unsolicited manuscripts, he had not been surprised when there was not a reply.

But here this woman
is, in the flesh.

“You’re here about the book?” he says.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, please come in,” he says stepping back and opening the door.

As she enters the living room, Gordon is suddenly aware of how squalid it must seem with its tatty furniture (somehow Bitsy’s good taste in décor does not extend to her own home) and the blanket and pillow folded up on the couch.

Gordon dumps the bedding on the floor and points to one of the chair
s.

“Please, have a seat.”

The woman sits.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

She hesitates, then says, “That would be nice. Thank you.”

He ducks into the kitchen
, returns with a glass and pours some wine into it.

Handing her the drink he says, “So, how did you find me?”

“A woman named Grace at the diner directed me to you.”

“She has a big mouth,” he says and then quickly adds, “And an even bigger heart
.”

“I stopped in to ask
for information and ended eating too many of her really addictive molasses cookies.”

“
Joe Froggers
they’re called around here. I grew up on them.”

“So you’re from
East Devon?”

“Born and bred
, but I left as a teenager. I’m just back for a short sabbatical.”

Gordon
feels he has paid lip service to small talk and is bursting to get to the subject at hand.

They must want to represent him if this
woman has traveled all the way from New York City.

“So, you liked
Too Long the Night
?” he asks.

She stares at him blankly as she lowers her wine glass.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t understand.”

“My novel
?”

She shakes her head.

“Oh, God, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“You said you were here about the book
?”

“I am here about a book, yes.
Ivy
, by Viola Usher.”

Gordon feels as if he
’s caught in middle of a multiple vehicle wreck, getting hammered from all sides.

His disappointment at
Jane Cooper not knowing about
Too Long the Night
is trumped by the terrifying realization that somehow she has broken his cover.

That she knows
he’s responsible for that bit of sleazy trash.

That he
’s Viola Usher.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about
,” he says, his voice sounding strangled.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Rushworth. Have you heard of
Ivy
?”

He looks down his patrician nose
at her.

“I have not.”

“It’s a very sexy romance, self-published, written by an unknown author who we’re desperate to sign.”

“I see, and just what does this have to do with me?”

“Oh, nothing directly.”

He relaxes enough to gulp the rest of his wine.

“There’s a bridge on the cover of the book that I have traced to East Devon. I thought that Viola Usher may live here. Grace didn’t know her, but she said you’re an author and I thought that perhaps you may have some idea of where I can find Ms. Usher. A long shot I know.”

“Yes,” he says. “A very
long shot.”

He’s about to shoo the woman out when he sees an opportunity here.

“You say this book is called
Ivy
?”

“Yes.”

“Do you perhaps have a copy with you?”

“Only on my
iPad. It’s not available in print.”

“Ah, I’ll have no truck with those gadgets,” he says.

A lie of course, he has a Kindle hidden in the suitcase he’s living out of.

“Did you want to read it?” Jane Copper asks.

“Well, it seems a shame that you’ve driven all the way out here on a wild goose chase. I thought that if I read it, then perhaps I may be able to help you find the author, if she’s a local.”

“I could leave you my
iPad,” she says, digging in the bag that she dumped on the floor beside her chair.

“No, no,” he says, holding up a hand. “I’m a real Luddite, but I
understand that I can download a copy and read it on my laptop?”

“That’s true.”

“I’ll do it right away and read it tonight. We can meet at Grace’s for brunch and I’ll report back.”

“I’d be really grateful
, Mr. Rushworth.”

“Gordon, please.”

“Gordon.”

He looks at her.

“But I’m afraid there is going to be a little
quid pro quo
.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll read your novel if you read mine.”

She smiles at him
.

“I suppose that’s fair. I’ll take it back with me to
New York.”

He wags a finger at her.

“I was thinking that you’d make a start tonight, and you could give me your impressions at brunch.”

“I am a little tired.”

“Would it be unreasonable for you to read, say, five or six chapters?”

He digs into his suitcase and
withdraws a spiral bound wad of paper as fat as a telephone directory.

He sees her eyes widen.

“That’s quite some book,” she says.

“I hope you still feel that way when you’ve read it.”

She takes the manuscript and dumps it into her shoulder bag, which hangs heavy when she stands.

“Well, let me get across to my room at the Sugar Maple Inn.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

“I hope that’s a j
oke?”

“Only partly,” he says, with a smile.

Jane Cooper drags her mouth down in reply and he shows her out, a subtle hint of her perfume left in the air.

Gordon
sloshes wine into his glass and takes stock.

A bizarre situation, of course.

And one fraught with peril.

But surely he can turn it
to his advantage?

H
e empties the bottle and falls asleep on the couch, convinced that he can.