Trust Me (41 page)

“Everyone here is holding their breath, waiting for me to fail,” Molly said. “I’m damned if I’ll give them that satisfaction.
I would rather be run through with a cutlass.”

“Cheers,” Carter said. “I salute your determination. Just one question, though.”

“What?”

“Do you like it here?”

“What do you mean?” Molly felt an upwelling of anxiety in her chest. “That’s a silly question. This is my job. I worked very
hard to get it. Why wouldn’t I like it?”

Carter shrugged. “Just asking.”

“No, you weren’t. You were making a point. I can tell by that smug look on your face. But you can forget it, Carter. I am
not a trashy novel writer. I’m a professor and a historian. I have an excellent academic reputation, and I’m not going to
throw it away just because my
hobby
accidentally turned into something huge!”

He gazed at her, unfazed. “But do you like it here?”

Molly scowled at him. “You know,” she said, “every historical detail in
Pirate Gold
was one hundred percent accurate. You could learn as much from that book as from an introductory text on the eighteenth century.
Just because there was a little bit of sex in it…”

“A
lot
of sex.”

“Well, a reasonable amount of—”

“Molly,” Carter said, “it was a lot. And then there were the kidnappings, and the keelhaulings, and the torture scenes, and
that rather… stirring episode in the waterfront bawdy house with André DuPre and the two ladies of the evening.”

“Oh, all right,” Molly grumbled. “Whatever.”

“Don’t try to explain to me why your novel has academic merit,” Carter said. “I don’t care. But I’d love to know why you want
to stay at a place where you have to hide the fact that your book was on the
New York Times
bestseller list.”

“I like it here,” Molly said. “I
like
it here. Okay? Satisfied?”

“If you say so.”

“I do! I have an office. I have students. I like teaching.”

“So come and live in Chicago, teach writing at the community college, and quit panicking when someone reads over your shoulder.”

“Leave me alone!” Molly exclaimed too loudly. People turned to look, and she blushed, avoiding the curious stares. On her
laptop screen, the tropical fish meandered through their virtual ocean, electronically bright and perpetually placid. “I really
don’t want to talk about this.”

He held up one hand. “I didn’t drive an hour north just to argue with you. I do have another reason for being here.”

“Good,” Molly said. “What?”

“My new project.” Carter reached for her coffee cup again and began to fiddle with it, turning it round and round in his fingers.
He flashed her his most charming smile, and Molly noticed that the tips of his ears were reddening. “It’s big. Very big. But
it hinges on a couple of things. One thing, actually, in particular.” He took another swallow from the cup and made the same
face.

“Carter,” Molly said, “would you like me to get you some new coffee?”

He shook his head. “No, listen, this is important. The project hinges on you.”

“Me?”

“I need your help.”

“What, as a consultant? You’re doing a historical piece?” It seemed out of character. Carter’s writing style was aggressively
commercial, the kind of work more likely to be published in
Esquire
than
American Antiquity.
It was hard for Molly to imagine being any help to him on the kind of project that he would consider “big.”

“Not exactly,” Carter said. His ears were getting redder. He frowned. “I’m not sure how to put this.”

Molly hadn’t seen him look so uncomfortable since their senior year in high school, when he had tried to talk her into telling
Kara Swenson that he had already asked Becky Lipinski to the prom.

“Out with it,” she said. “What’s the project?”

“Okay,” he said. He put down the cup and stared meaningfully at her. “Two words. Jake Berenger.”

Molly nodded. “And?”

Her lack of reaction had clearly disappointed him. “You do know who he is,” he said reproachfully. “The hotel mogul? The resort
developer? The
billionaire
?”

“Of course I know who he is,” Molly said. “I read the papers. But what’s so new about this? You told me a year ago that you
were doing a profile on him. You said that the
Miami Herald
wanted to run it in their Sunday magazine. Last I remember, you were busy interviewing all of his former girlfriends.”

“Not all of them,” Carter said. “That would have been physically impossible if I wanted to publish in this decade. Anyway,
it was getting redundant. They all said some version of the same thing. ‘Jake was always a gentleman, but I could tell that
underneath it all, deep emotional wounds were preventing him from ever trusting me with his heart.’” He rolled his eyes. “Yawn.
Spare me, please, from the pop psychobabble of a bunch of models.”

“You never showed me the article,” Molly said. “How did it turn out?”

“It didn’t. He wouldn’t talk to me. Not in person, not on the phone, not even by mail. And then I found out that he never
gives interviews.”

“Never? But he’s always in the papers. There are pictures of him everywhere.”

“Yes,” Carter said. “People take pictures of Jake Berenger. People write stories about Jake Berenger. But he never gives interviews.
He may be the world’s most publicly private person.”

“How strange,” Molly said. “Doesn’t the CEO of a major corporation have to talk to reporters sometime?”

“Oh, sure, he does the earnings reports,” Carter said. “Very tightly controlled by the Berenger corporate PR office. But he’s
never done a single personal interview, not that every magazine and newspaper on earth hadn’t been trying to get to him. Word
on the street is that he hates the press.” He chuckled evilly. “Can’t imagine why, when we love him so much.”

“I hope you didn’t waste too much time on him.”

“It wasn’t a waste. There’s no shortage of market for articles about this guy. The fact that he won’t talk only makes people
more obsessed with him. But there’s only so far you can go with an outside-observer piece. The usual tabloid trash about the
girls, the race cars, the wild parties… you know the tune. I can do better. A lot better. I’m going to write…” He paused,
for dramatic effect. “A book.”

“A
book
?”

“The one and only authorized biography. Jake Berenger’s story in his own words. He doesn’t know it yet, but he wants to work
with me. I can feel it.”

“He sounds like a shallow playboy. Why don’t you pick someone more worthy to write about?”

Carter grinned. “He’s worth one point one billion dollars on a good stock day. That’s worthy enough for me.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Molly said.

“Share the wealth, Molly! This book will sell. It’ll get my name into the mainstream. When they write about him, they’ll quote
me. If I can make this happen, it’ll be the coup of the decade.”

“Great. All you’ll need to do is get the man who never even gives interviews to agree to help you write a book. Or did you
forget about that small detail?”

“No,” Carter said. “I didn’t forget.”

“So,” Molly prompted, “how do you plan to succeed where a hundred other hungry journalists have failed?”

“The approach,” Carter said. He nodded. “Yes. I truly believe that it’s all in the approach.”

Molly smiled. “Oh, you’re going to ask him
nicely
?”

“In a sense, yes. When you want to break through someone’s armor, you look for the weakest spot, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Right,” Carter said. He had a determined look on his face. “Okay. Molly, when we were in college and your car broke down
on our way home from the Dells, who walked eight miles in the snow to get help?”

“You did. You were very brave.”

“And who covered for you when we were sixteen and you were dating Greg Ackerman? You couldn’t admit to your father that you
had a crush on a football player, so you told him that you were studying at my house every Saturday night. And then you went
home slobbering drunk that time, and Stanford was sure that I’d done it to take advantage of you.”

Molly frowned. “I wasn’t slobbering.”

“He’s hated me ever since,” Carter said. “But most recently, who convinced you to send
Pirate Gold
to my agent in New York when you were barely willing to let it out of a locked dresser drawer?”

“Carter, I agree that I owe you a favor,” Molly said. “But I don’t see how I can help you with this Jake Berenger project.
What do you want from me, a letter of recommendation assuring him that you’re a decent guy? That you won’t do a hatchet job
on his life story?”

“You could include that when you talk to him,” Carter said thoughtfully. “It might help.”

Molly stared at him. “Hold it. Talk to him? Are you saying that you want
me
to ask Jake Berenger if he’ll do this book?”

“That’s the plan,” Carter said. “But first, you’ll need to seduce him.”

Dear Reader,

Whether it’s a matter of knowing when to be bad, or knowing when to trust, both of these elements can play a hand in bringing
two people together. As Delilah Montague and Carly Martin will discover in our Warner Forever titles this November.

Janet Evanovich exclaims, “When life gets tough, read a book by Leanne Banks.” Nothing could be truer than while reading
Leanne Banks
’s
WHEN SHE’S BAD
. Delilah Montague is a self-made woman who manages an exclusive spa in Houston, TX. She garners a bad girl reputation due
to her supposed establishment by a married tycoon, though they were never romantically involved. Delilah uses her bad rep
to keep people at a distance. She is one tough cookie who likes to be in control and live a quiet life… until a certain brainy
stud moves in next door. Benjamin Huntington begins upsetting her calm existence by renovating in the middle of the night
and playing opera music. But her world is about to be turned completely upside-down when a baby appears on her doorstep…
and Delilah may need a little help from her handsome neighbor
and
Cupid!

Going from sizzling guy-next-door to brooding alpha male, we offer
TRUST ME
by
Melanie Craft
, a wonderful new voice in contemporary romance. Veterinarian Carly Martin has a soft touch for stray animals and vulnerable
men, so she is shocked when a stranger barges into her clinic one day and accuses her of being a gold digger. The stranger
is Max Giordano, the illegitimate grandson of an eccentric millionaire, whose menagerie of animals is under Carly’s care.
With his grandfather on his deathbed, Max has to inform Carly that she will inherit the Tremayne mansion and the animals.
At first, Max is suspicious of her, only he begins to see she’s a guileless and gentle person that he is rapidly falling for.
Now if he can just get Carly to trust him after getting things off to such a bad start…

To find out more about Warner Forever, these November titles, and the authors, visit us at
www.warnerforever.com
.

With warmest wishes,

Karen Kosztolnyik, Senior Editor

P.S. With the holidays approaching, Warner Forever presents two titles that are perfect gifts—and perfect indulgences!
Lori Wilde
pens a fun-filled tale about a female private eye helping her drop-dead gorgeous client dodge bullets and goons on their
tail when they end up creating sparks that could ignite Las Vegas in
LICENSE TO THRILL
; and
Edie Claire
makes her mainstream romance debut in
LONG TIME COMING
, a captivating novel about a young woman who returns to her hometown to confront her childhood memories of her best friend’s
tragic death, and falls in love with the man she held responsible.