Wickedly Charming (17 page)

Charming finished the book one Sunday afternoon in early April. The ending surprised him—not because he wrote something he hadn't planned (hell, he hadn't planned the whole book; nothing went according to his initial vision), but because he wrote “the end” pages (no, chapters) ahead of where he thought it would actually end.

He got out of his chair, wandered around his study, and felt like he had screwed up somehow. He had no sense of whether or not the book was any good. Nor did he trust Mellie to make that judgment. She had made it clear in their many phone calls that she was slogging through his favorite books, pretending to like them, when it was clear she didn't like them at all.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out the window at his garden. The flowers were in full bloom, something he and the girls enjoyed. In the Kingdoms, spring would have just arrived. Here, it felt like summer—without the actual killer heat of a real LA summer. Pleasant.

What he needed was a first reader, someone who could be totally honest with him about the quality of the book, someone who would understand the risk Charming was taking just in writing it. Someone who would respect the secrecy that Charming had to maintain as a ghost writer.

Charming only knew one person like that, someone whom he could trust, not just with his book, but with his writerly ego: Sheldon McArthur.

Sheldon (Shelly to his friends) used to own the Mystery Bookshop in Los Angeles. In fact, Shelly started the business, selling it only when he decided to retire to a small town on the Oregon Coast. But Shelly couldn't really retire any more than Charming could stop reading. So Shelly opened another bookstore up north, called North by Northwest Books.

Charming had stayed in touch with Shelly after the move. Shelly sent books that he felt Charming should read, and Charming did the same for Shelly (not that there were many books that Shelly missed).

Charming went to his desk, and called Shelly. Shelly cheerfully told him to email the entire manuscript. Then Shelly added, “It's about time you wrote a novel.”

Charming hung up, feeling relieved. The book was in the hands of someone who knew good literature, someone who would be completely honest if the book failed.

But there was one other person who had to read the book in this draft. By that agreement Charming had signed with Mellie, she had to read the book too.

On good days, he had no idea what she would think of it.

On bad days, he worried that she would hate the book.

On terrible days, he worried that she would hate him because of the book.

This was a terrible day. But he screwed up his courage (more than he even knew he needed), picked up the phone, and called Mellie to set up an appointment.

He was going to hand her the manuscript in hard copy, just like she had asked.

Then he was going to leave, and fret about whether she would ever talk to him again.

They met in their favorite coffee shop. Well, Mellie's favorite coffee shop. She had never asked Charming if he had liked it or not.

But he was the one to suggest it, rather than his house or her Malibu beach house.

She understood. He probably figured they needed to see each other in a public place to keep the discussion to a minimum. He had said on the phone half a dozen times that he wanted her to read it before she made any judgments about it.

She understood that too. She had felt that way when he had looked at her manuscript, all those weeks ago.

She arrived early. She ordered the cinnamon rolls and the coffees, asking the barista—the same one who had threatened Dave Bourke with a call to the police—to hold the second cinnamon roll and coffee for Charming's arrival.

Only Mellie had enough presence of mind not to call him Charming to the barista, who had smiled at her and asked how the relationship was going.

“Oh, it's not a relationship,” Mellie said with airy good cheer (or so she hoped). “It's just business.”

“Hmm,” the barista said. “It never looked like business to me.”

Mellie frowned. How could it not look like business? They had books, they had briefcases, they had laptops.

“What did it look like?” Mellie asked.

“Like a major flirtation,” the barista said. Then she smiled. She looked a lot younger and more vulnerable when she smiled. “I mean, how can you not be attracted to that guy? He's so handsome. And nice.”

“A regular prince charming,” Mellie said dryly.

“Oh, hell, I don't think so,” the barista said. “He's a bit too battered to be Prince Charming. I mean, Prince Charming has to be, like, you know, Zac Efron with shoulders or like, I don't know, George Clooney but younger. You know.”

George Clooney but younger? Mellie already thought George Clooney was young enough. And handsome. Although not as handsome as Charming.

“I mean, Prince Charming,” the barista was saying. “He's like twenty-five, right? Not married? Square jaw, perfect features, black hair—”

“Like the cartoon,” Mellie said dryly.

“What cartoon?” the barista said.

“I don't know,” Mellie said. “Take your pick.
Cinderella
?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
?”

“Maybe
Cinderella
,” the barista said. “There's something off about that prince in
Snow White
. I mean, what guy wants to kiss a woman in a coffin?”

In spite of herself, Mellie grinned. “I've often wondered the same thing.”

She took her coffee and her cinnamon roll to her regular table. The coffee shop looked no different, except that Dave Bourke didn't sit at the next table. The kibitzer guy sat in the corner, engrossed in his computer, his baseball cap on backwards. He didn't even see her.

All the other regulars were there too—a couple of men with laptops sitting at one of the bigger tables, chugging their way through half a dozen lattes in the space of a morning; a woman with a pen in her hair, writing on something that looked like a cross between a laptop and a smart phone; and five other people reading, although only three were reading physical books. The other two had some kind of e-reader, something Mellie wouldn't have even known about if it weren't for Charming, and his various reading assignments.

And her afternoon in that book fair.

If she was honest, she had to admit that day changed her. She was reading more, although she wasn't really reading fiction per se. Nonfiction and how-to books, mostly. But still, that counted. Or so she hoped.

She'd brought back six of Charming's books—nowhere near all the ones he had given her, but still a lot, for her anyway.

He entered the coffee shop exactly on time. So on time, in fact, that she actually wondered if he had been sitting outside in his car, waiting for the clock to inch up to the appointed hour. Then she reminded herself that that was something she would do. It didn't mean it was something someone else would do.

He looked fantastic. He was wearing perfectly creased pants and a white shirt that set off his skin and dark hair. That barista was wrong; he didn't look battered. And he looked
better
than Clooney.

Before she'd gone to the book fair, Mellie wouldn't even have thought that possible.

Charming came over, set his briefcase down like he had the last time, smiled at her (what a great smile. What a delicious smile. Oh, how she had missed that smile), and headed to the counter.

The barista was the one who told him that Mellie had already ordered his food. Then the barista handed him a tray with the warmed up cinnamon roll and freshly poured coffee.

Mellie smiled, happy that it had worked out as planned.

She closed her laptop, set it on the chair next to her, and waited for him to return to the table.

***

She looked good.

No, she looked better than good. Her features seemed softer, and her eyes sparkled.

Or maybe she had always looked like that and he had just forgotten. Although he didn't know how he could forget anything about her.

Especially considering he spent each and every day since he took on this project thinking about her.

He took the tray back to the table, saw that she had already nibbled on her cinnamon roll, and almost offered to get her another.

But, he realized, he was stalling. He resisted the urge to kiss her hello. He didn't want to startle her.

He didn't want to startle himself.

“Hey,” he said as he sat down.

“Hey yourself,” she said.

He was shaking. He had never shown his work to anyone in person. He'd always mailed it out, and if someone didn't like it, they just had to slap a form on it and send it back. No in-person critiques, no need to look someone in the eye.

It was what made writing different from the performing arts, something he had always appreciated. He had no idea how those people on
American Idol
(which his girls had discovered and adored) withstood the judges' comments at all, let along getting them in front of a national audience.

He would have withered and died of embarrassment.

Right there, in front of the studio audience, and all of those cameras, beaming everything to television screens all over the nation.

He was so happy the Kingdoms didn't allow television. He had no idea how it would have gone if his meeting with Ella—his dance with her on that one truly magical night of his life (a magical night that had led to years of misery [and two marvelous daughters])—had been filmed for the enjoyment of all the Kingdom's subjects.

He would have hated it.

His father would have hated it.

Although Ella would have loved it. She liked being famous, something Charming abhorred.

Good thing Mellie was the one who was supposed to do the promotion of their novel.

If, of course, she liked it.

“You seem nervous,” she said. She sounded surprised.

He
was surprised. He hadn't expected to be read as easily. He made himself smile. The smile even felt nervous.

“I'm not used to showing people my work,” he said. “It's not—”

He stopped himself before he could continue. He wasn't going to apologize for the book. He wasn't going to say anything that prejudiced her against it.

“Well,” he said, “you'll see.”

Without looking at her face, he opened the briefcase and removed the manuscript. He had put it in a box and then put rubber bands around the box. It felt weighty, and important.

A tome.

It hadn't felt that weighty and important when he emailed it to Shelly.

“It didn't take you very long,” Mellie said.

Charming flushed. She clearly thought he had written the book too fast. Maybe he had. He wanted to finish it. He wanted to see her again. He wanted…

Well, what he wanted really didn't matter now, did it?

“I mean,” she said. “I was surprised when you called and said it was done.”

“It surprised me when I finished,” he said. “The book really didn't turn out—”

He stopped himself again.

“I mean,” he said, sounding like her, parroting her, “writing a book is different than talking about it.”

“Don't I know that,” she said, sounding wistful.

He made himself look at her. He had forgotten how green her eyes were, how the fringe of lashes around them made them stand out. A man could get lost in those eyes, forget that he ever worried about anything. A man could fall in love with those eyes…

He closed his own. He didn't want to fall for her. He didn't want to fall for anyone. It hadn't worked the first time.

It wasn't going to work this time either.

He opened his eyes. Mellie was watching him. He couldn't read her expression.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm just, you know—”

“Nervous,” she said.

He nodded.

She took the box, and removed all the rubber bands, wrapping them around her wrist. Then she opened the lid and stared at the cover page.

“That's my name,” she said.

“Yes, of course,” he said, frowning. Had she forgotten that part?

“Where's yours?” She asked, looking up.

“We said it would be your book,” he said. “I'm a ghost. I was just writing it.”

“Don't you get credit for that?”

“No,” he said. “I get money for that, not credit. It's your story. Your book. A lot of your words are in it, from those phone calls—”

“Is that why you called it
Evil
?”

His breath caught. He had known the title would be a problem. But he couldn't come up with anything else.

“No, no, it's not that I think you're evil,” he said.

Her face was blank, as if she had wiped all emotion off of it. He had seen that expression only a few times before, and it worried him.

He had planned to explain the title before she saw it, but in his nervousness, he had forgotten.

“It's that, oh, crap.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. He was making a mess of this, right from the first word. “It's a take-off of
Wicked
. You know, that book was about the Wicked Witch of the West. At least that was what everyone called her, even though her name was Elphaba. And everyone calls you—well, not you, but the character, you know—the Evil Stepmother.”

“Or the Wicked Stepmother,” she said, with a bite to her voice.

“Or that,” he said, “but I couldn't use
Wicked
, it had already been taken.”

“So you opted for
Evil
,” she said.

“It's not a good title. I was hoping we could come up with something better. It's a first draft, Mellie.” God, he was begging. He heard that sound in his own voice. Begging.

He hadn't ever begged before.

He blurted, “Just read it before you make up your mind. We don't have to do anything with it, you know.”

There, he had said it. The words that completely negated all of his work from the past few months.

“I know,” Mellie said, looking down at the manuscript, at that horrible word. What had he been thinking?
Evil
. Evil indeed. Jeez. “We had talked about that when we finalized the agreement.”

“Yes, we did. Right,” he said.

She took the lid and put it over the box, hiding the manuscript. “I don't like seeing my name under the word
Evil
,” she said.

“I know, I'm sorry,” he said.

She studied him. His heart was pounding. Why was he so nervous? How did he get so nervous? He had no idea he had had so much at stake in this manuscript.

In this project.

With this woman.

And now she was angry at him. He could feel it. He had ruined everything.

“I'll read it,” she said.

“If you don't like it,” he said, almost before she finished talking, “you can just chuck it. We don't have to do anything with it.”

“I know,” she said. “You just said that.”

Had he? He didn't remember. He was a complete and utter mess. He hated the feeling.

He hated the whole idea.

What had he been thinking when he offered to ghost this book?

Obviously, he hadn't been thinking.

“You know,” he said, reaching for the box, “this was probably a bad idea. I'll just take it back. We can forget the whole thing.”

“No,” she said, putting her hand over the box. “I want to read it.”

“I'll make it better,” he said. “I'll change the title.”

“Charming,” she said, “let me at least look at it before you offer to change anything.”

He made himself take a deep breath. Then another. And another.

“Okay,” he said. “But if you don't like it—”

“We don't have to do anything with it,” she said. “I know.”

“I know you know,” he said, “but that isn't what I was going to say.”

She looked at him. “What were you going to say?”

“Just that you don't have to tell me,” he said.

“I don't have to tell you what?”

“That you don't like it,” he said.

“How is that practical?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if I like it, I tell you and if I say nothing, you'll know I don't like it,” she said. “So you'll know no matter what.”

“Oh,” he said. He hadn't thought that through. “You're right. Never mind.”

“I'll like it, Charming,” she said and smiled. But her smile was wobbly and she didn't sound convincing. Or convinced. “Really, I will.”

He smiled back, then closed his briefcase. “Good,” he said, feeling a little light-headed and a lotta stupid. “I'll just be going then.”

“There's no need,” she said. “I thought maybe we could talk.”