Writing Mr. Right (2 page)

Call Burgess.

Sam says apartment is clear. I’ll pick up deposit on way home.

Another review in Entertainment Weekly. A-!!

Call Burgess as soon as you land.

They want to know if you’d be alright adding a third stop in Inverness.

Scotland must like you or something.

Two interview requests in Edinburgh. Will you have time? Call me as soon as you land.

Have you landed?

It says you haven’t landed. Call me when you get these.

It says you landed.

Despite the barrage, Georgia chuckled as she pulled up Cassie’s contacts and pressed send.

“Oh thank God, you landed!”

Georgia rubbed the unsatisfying plane sleep from her eyes. “Just. Still on the plane. Why? Was there ever any doubt?”

“I don’t know. No. Still, I just get antsy sometimes.”

“You don’t say?”

Cassie unleashed the text worthy information anew and Georgia yawned. They’d arrived at 8:45 am, but for her it was 3:45 am, and she was riding on less than forty five minutes of fitful sleep, curled up beside Snores McGee of the catastrophic nose hair. She sniffled softly, grumbling at the thought of coming down with something.

“So your car should be in arrivals for you. They’ll take you to the Hyatt in New Town. Your first signing isn’t until tomorrow morning – car will arrive at nine, but the newspaper has asked for an interview this evening. It can be done by phone. Are you going to sleep all day?”

Georgia closed her eyes. It was too early in the morning for this kind of energy, and what the hell was Cassie doing still up, anyway?

“How many Lattes have you had today, Cassie?”

“All of them.”

Georgia laughed. “Thought so. Yeah, I’ll probably try to catch a nap when I arrive.”

“Good. That’s good. And you’re not gonna go on Facebook, are you?”

“No, why?” Georgia asked, mid yawn.

“No reason. Just curious.”

Georgia paused. “Why, Cass? What’s on Facebook?”

“Nothing. Just curious. Was just updating the account for you, didn’t want to double post.”

Georgia shifted in her seat, pulling her iPad from her bag as the plane taxied into its gate. She considered the Scottish data charges, but then remembered the fat check she’d be receiving from her publisher when the royalties for the follow up novel to her current best-seller came in
- a best-seller no one, least of all her, ever saw coming.

She could afford a little Scottish data.

Two seconds later, Facebook was open. Georgia stared at the screen in silence.

“Georgia? Are you getting off the plane yet?”

Georgia didn’t answer. She just stared at the screen, trying to decipher this physical pain she felt in her chest. The feed on her Facebook had its usual drivel and nonsense and hilarity, but peppered in amongst the mundane and unimportant were wedding pictures. Not just any wedding pictures – his wedding pictures.

He got married. Walter fucking ‘Sorry your Nan died, rot in hell’ Timlin got married.

“Gigi? Why did you go quiet? Tell me you’re not looking at Facebook.”

Georgia swallowed. “I’m not looking at Facebook.”

“You are! Damn it, Georgia! Are you ok?”

Georgia took a moment to think about it, but before she could decipher, the fasten seat belt sign turned off and passengers surged to their feet, collecting their things and heading out into the world. Her misery would have to wait.

“Hey, they’re letting us off. I’ll call when I’m at my hotel, alright?”

“Remember, you marry your
Douglas MacCready
.”

“Yeah, so you say.”

“Gigi, don’t be upset. He’s a douche bag. He married a shrew. He deserves what he got.”

“Do I deserve what I got?”

With that, Georgia’s throat grew tight and she hung up the phone. Then, she quickly tucked her belongings into her purse and slipped out of her seat, the crowd held at bay for her by the gracious Mr. Nose hair.

She managed to make it to the airport bathroom before the tears set in.

The Hyatt was everything she could hope for. Her room had a gorgeous view of the city, but more importantly, it had black out curtains, much to her relief. Georgia had every intention of sleeping the day away. It didn’t go as planned.

Walter Timlin, the man she’d once thought perfect, was married.

They met shortly after his first marriage ended – a marriage as loveless as could be. He’d showered her with affection and assurances of his love, proclaimed his desire to father her children, something Georgia had always wanted with a hint more desperation than she wanted anyone to know. And Georgia fell, hook, line, and sinker. There was another rather telling detail of his character that made him irresistible.

See, Walter Timlin was what Georgia came to refer to as a ‘fake Scot.’ He owned a kilt and often wore it out drinking with his friends, claiming he liked the attention it drew. He often faked a Scottish accent while having a few drinks for the same reason. Along with these particular details, he was a dark haired, barrel chested Virgo with the sex drive of an Arabian Stallion, when he wasn’t commenting on her weight.

Georgia remembered Nana’s comment often – ‘You’ve already met him.’

That fake Scot tricked her Nan into thinking Georgia already found her love. At least she passed away before discovering how wrong they’d both been. The fates had nothing to do with Walter Timlin.

Yet he’d fooled them all. Why? Because as everyone in Georgia’s life knew, since her first visit as a little girl, Georgia was in love with Scotland. When she sat down to write her wishes on the New Moon each month, the most important wish was always for love, followed immediately by living in Scotland. When she wrote this same wish around Nan, Nan demanded she combine the two. Georgia obliged, writing ‘I marry a man in a kilt.’ When a man in a kilt named Walter Timlin appeared and began showering her with affection, there wasn’t a single person in her life that didn’t believe he was the one.

But he wasn’t the one. He wasn’t even a fraction of the one.

Yet, despite his complete failings as a human being, he’d done one great thing for Georgia.

Enter Douglas MacCready. Douglas
was
the perfect man. He was tall, dark haired, hilarious and kind, honest and courageous. He was a green eyed pirate who loved a strong woman and loved tossing her around the bedroom with painstaking regularity. He was also born of the Highlands of Scotland, and was known to wear a kilt from time to time.

The being Scottish wasn’t what made him perfect, nor the green eyes or the dark hair. Those pieces were just details that had been as much Georgia’s control as the Earth orbiting the Sun. Still, once she’d written them, they became such integral parts of the character, and she found herself fixated on those details – and on Douglas MacCready.

The only problem was that Douglas MacCready was one hundred percent fictional. Georgia had written him herself, and he was now the focus of several thousand readers’ affections as well. He really was a spectacular specimen of man.

And he didn’t exist.

Yet, when Georgia was in the middle of mourning her Nan, of mending her heart after Walter Timlin shattered it, she escaped in the act of writing her novel, and in thoughts of Douglas MacCready.

She was midway through writing the book when Nana passed, and in the weeks leading up to Walter’s betrayal, she found that strange gift of hers rearing its ugly, fickle head. First there were little things; the way Walter tucked her hair behind her ear one day, exactly as she’d written it the night before, or the way he spoke of the sea when he sprung the news that he was going to buy a boat – direct quotes from her yet to be finished manuscript. By the time he broke her heart, he’d recited parts of her novel as though he’d learned it for a stage play.

Yet, one of the many red flags Georgia overlooked when they were together was that despite his claiming to be madly in love with a writer, Walter never once read a single page of her writing. Not a single word.

Now, he was staring at her from her iPad screen, married to a woman exactly like his first wife in every way save for her hair color – the very woman he broke her heart to pursue.

Georgia’s phone was ringing. She woke in a strange daze of memory. She wasn’t distressed, but her chest was still tight. Then she remembered, and the pain rolled in anew. She rolled onto her side, snatching up the cell – it was Cassie.

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“Well, cut it out. They’re going to call around five, your time.”

“I know. Don’t I have hours?”

“Um, no. It’s 4:40 PM there, isn’t it?”

Georgia glanced at the small alarm clock on her nightstand. It was indeed. She’d slept all day. She was still exhausted.

“God, I don’t want to talk to fucking anyone right now.”

Cassie gave a sympathetic whine. “I told you not to go on Facebook.”

Cassie had been Georgia’s assistant for less than a year, but she knew her damn well.

“God, why did that asshole have to post so many pictures? You were doing so freakin well! How are you holding up?”

Georgia took a deep breath and sat up. “I’m alright.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

Cassie listened a moment as Georgia shuffled into the bathroom and fearlessly peed with Cassie still on the phone.

“If it makes you feel any better, there was literally only one picture of the bride and groom together,” Cassie said, stumbling for consolation.

“Nope, can’t say it makes me feel better.”

“Well, I mean – that means that even on their wedding day, his bride was more interested in being near her bridesmaids than her groom. I mean – exactly what you said, right? Back when? About his choosing women that don’t -”

“Cassie, can we not talk about it?”

“Oh god! Of course. Of course! I’m sorry. Just thought you might want to vent, or something. You know? I mean, I’m worried it really upset you.”

Georgia took a deep breath. “It did.”

It had. She’d seen the picture of him, and it was the only attractive photograph she’d seen of the man that broke her heart in well over a year. Still, seeing the pictures didn’t break her heart or make her long for the man she’d once thought so well of. It made her angry at the gods.

The true crime of Walter Timlin wasn’t that he’d broken her heart, or that he’d waited until the day her beloved Grandmother died to break the news that he’d ‘never loved her.’ No, Walter’s greatest crime was something far more sinister.

He’d taken her faith – in love, in magic, in destiny. He’d taken her belief that there was someone out there for her, waiting to love her with the same unbridled passion she offered in return. Given that Georgia was a romance novelist, that was a pretty awful crime to commit.

“Well, lay it on me. I’m here for you. I’m happy to remind you of what a shitty human being he is -”

Georgia chuckled. “Surprisingly, I don’t need a reminder of that, thank you.”

“Well, I’ll do it nonetheless. He’s a scum bag. He’s a soulless cu -”

“Honestly, Cass. I don’t need that. I’m not upset he married her. They can have each other, they deserve each other.”

Cassie paused. “Then what’s wrong?”

Georgia slumped back down on the edge of the bed, her head down, the phone tucked under her wild tangle of dark red curls. She exhaled. “I’m heartbroken. I’m upset that he’s married.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That
he’s
married. That someone who is that soulless and terrible gets to have all the things I want, and I don’t even have the memory of ever really being loved.”

Georgia’s words broke off as she heard them from her own lips.

“Oh Gigi -”

“Why does a man that awful get to have the Happy Ending, and I’m sitting in a hotel room alone, again?”

Cassie paused as Georgia’s face contorted, twisting in a rampant ache of hopelessness. She knew this feeling well. She felt it more often than she’d ever admit. Georgia hoped Cassie couldn’t hear her weeping.

“For what it’s worth, he doesn’t have what you want.”

Georgia forced a laugh, and it was the snottiest, most pathetic noise a person could make. “How do you figure?”

Cassie sighed. “Well, we know one half of that marriage is him. That alone tells you of its depth.”

“A pot for every lid -”

“And he isn’t in a single picture, Gigi. If you were getting married, would there be a single photograph where you weren’t fawning all over your honey pie?”

Georgia sniffled, loudly. “No.”

“Exactly. He got what he deserves. The universe keeps a balance, sweetheart. Give it time. You’ll have something far better than he could ever have. You should write it. Do you have a pen? Write it down, ‘I am Mrs. MacCready.’ Then, bam. Bound to come true.”

Georgia laughed again, and it was only a little less pathetic. “Yeah, that’s part of the problem. I thought Walter was Mr. MacCready.”

The tears started up again. She tried to swallow the feeling as her phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced at it to find an unknown British number phoning in – the interview. Shit!

Georgia put the phone back to her ear just in time to hear Cassie speak.

“We both know he wasn’t Douglas, because Douglas would never let you go. Never. And he wasn’t a spanker, am I right?”

Georgia snorted. Cassie had a naïve way of saying the right thing, it seemed. “Yeah, if he were real. Hey, my phone is buzzing -”

“Shit, you sure you’re ready?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll call you later.”

“You better. I love you, hon. Don’t let this get to you.”

Georgia nodded, ended the call, and took up the second one, sitting up a little straighter as she said ‘hello.’

“Miss Mason? Is this a good time for you to talk? We’d love to ask you a few questions?”

***

“He took her hand, squeezing it tentatively as he led her to the dining room table. The leavings of their dinner still strewn across it, Douglas wasted no time swiping it aside to lay her on the flat surface, helpless before him. Deirdre braced against him, kicking her heel into his thigh to hold him at bay. He gave her a dark smile, spun her around, and threw up her skirts before she could protest, walloped her backside so soundly, it echoed off the walls –“