Sexy Ink!

by Jamie Collins

  The fact that the network banked on the project, further catapulted La Costa from the ranks of emerging writer to celebrated awarded author was all the confidence needed to affirm La Costa Reed’s standing as one of the most successful breakout writers of the decade. By the time the movie aired in the spring of 2011, and her second series was complete, she was fast becoming a household name, whose must-read, binge-worthy novels topped everyone’s list.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Newport Beach, CA – 2014

  “That’s all of it in a nutshell, I guess,” La Costa said, gathering up the plates and offering Felicia a refill on her coffee.

  “Oh, thank you, but I believe I have reached my limit and have taken up enough of your time,” Felecia said, content from the pie and the riveting conversation. She was satisfied that she had gotten what she had come for, as evidenced by the stacks of copious notes she had taken and the recordings that would more than fill a three-page spread in the magazine about the famed author.

  La Costa smiled.

  Just then, footsteps approached, and the front door swung open. A young, handsome teenage boy bustled in, wearing earbuds, oblivious to them at first.

  “Oh! You will get to meet my son.” La Costa brightened. “Louis, please mind yourself—we have a guest. This is Ms. Hayden from the magazine. Felicia, this is my son, Louis.”

  The boy quickly removed the earbuds and reached zealously to shake her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  He was a sight to behold, Felicia thought. Rail-thin skinny with a broad, honest smile and a gleam in his eye for his mother and for the pie he spotted on the counter.

  Felicia collected her things and stuffed them into her large leather portfolio. “I have just spent the most marvelous afternoon interviewing your mom. She is a great lady and a fantastic author, but, of course, you already know that.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with an awkward wag of his chin, and then looked for La Costa to release him.

  “Go on, then. Those waves won’t wait. It’s getting late,” La Costa said, and then, turning to Felicia. “He is quickly becoming an ace surfer. Who knew? Ever since we moved out here, he has embraced the water like a fish!”

  Felicia recalled from her pre-read of the memoir that Louis was enrolled in a high school for gifted children, showing prodigy-level aptitude for music composition. By age fifteen he was already an accomplished pianist, but much preferred the hustle of the basketball court in which to shine, with an eye on UCLA for college admission the following year, ahead of his classmates. La Costa had written that she would have much preferred Julliard but would be happy to let him follow his passion wherever it would lead. It was obvious that she gave him rein to follow his dreams.

  “He is quite an accomplished young man,” Felicia said, once she heard the door to his room bump shut.

  “He is dead-set on that scholarship,” La Costa said, removing the plates and cups from the table. “That’s why we moved out here. Thanks to technology and frequent flyer miles, we manage to close that cross-country gap, and I’m able to fly coast to coast when needed to see my publisher. Our main home is located in the Wilshire Corridor—twenty-one stories up. It’s near the country club and away from the bustle of LA, but close enough. Also, that’s why I bought this little place here on the beach. It’s the perfect escape for when things get too crazy in the city. We really love it.”

  “So, why now? Why write your story at this time? Surely you have many more novels left to write,” Felicia asked, almost as an afterthought, as she made her way to the door.

  “I don’t know,” La Costa said, walking her out. She gazed dreamily at the afternoon sky that would soon be giving way to evening breezes when the beachgoers would be packing up their towels and ice coolers and heading home to dinner. “It just felt like the right time, you know? I wanted to be transparent and real for my readers. I wanted to say some things that story-telling alone, could not allow.”

  Felicia nodded. She did know. “Well, La Costa Reed, you are as brave and enduring as you are beautiful. Thank you for a wonderful interview. The magazine and its readers are going to love this feature.”

  They exchanged goodbyes, and Felicia was off, scrolling through her phone, which had been buzzing with missed messages.

  Later she would write: Now, as La Costa Reed unwrapped her own story, book number eleven, No Secrets, she had established herself not only as a celebrated contemporary romance writer, but through the pages of her own superlative memoir, as a true and spirited survivor as well. As one of the bravest and enduring, the world had ever seen.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  2012

  Henry Paige was a simple man with pale white skin, a bristly mustache, a broad, genuine smile, and sparkling grey-blue eyes. He stood only a moderate five foot nine, but had a deep, soothing voice that was striking when he spoke. He was Scotch-German and was proud of it. He had, above all else, a gentle disposition and a tireless heart. That’s what most people liked about him.

  A former running back who played for Minnesota State in 1981, Henry studied business and horticulture at the university and dabbled in mystery writing on a part-time basis. He moved out West when he was twenty-three, and received his doctorate in business in the spring of 1989 from UCLA, while working as a bartender. Soon after, he took a job working at a small family-owned winery run by an extravagant entrepreneur named Dustin Gabriel in the summer of 1990, at which time he met and married Gabriel’s niece, Lynda. The two were anxious to start a family right away, which they did. The would-be novel he had been tinkering with all of his college years was relegated to the bottom of a forgotten drawer.

  Henry worked for Gabriel for several years, first as a sales rep, and later, helping to run the operations of the five thousand-acre vineyard, which came to yield year after year, the region’s choicest Sauvignon grape harvests, producing some of the Valley’s finest wines.

  In 1995, Henry became the head of marketing, selling to retailers, restaurants, and hotels throughout the East and West coasts. Then, later, as vice president of operations, where he assisted the seventy-two-year-old Gabriel for the next several years, until illness rendered the old man too frail to attend to the affairs of the business. The winery was eventually handed down to Gabriel’s children in 2002, and Henry was out.

  His viable stock interest in the vineyard, yielded a rich and bountiful take for him to share with Lynda, which he promptly dumped into the stock market. Within two years’ time, they had enough funds to purchase their own business.

  On his forty-third birthday, after a surprise party thrown by Lynda and their young teenage sons, Zachary and Grayson, Henry found himself driving alone in the night. Confused and angst-ridden, he sat contemplating his future, staring at a glass of watered-down gin, at a bar seventy miles away from their sprawling home in San Rafael. He had no idea how he had even gotten there. All he knew was that he did not want to invest in a business—or one more day of his life—with Lynda. And that’s how he knew that the marriage was over.

  In the end, Lynda got the kids, the house, half of all of their assets, and plans for the new business, a start-up vending service, of which he had no interest in championing. She even took their incorrigible yapping Yorkie named Barkley. As far as she was concerned, she had the right to everything, and she took it. The marriage was a sham. He could not go on pretending. He simply didn’t love her, and feared, perhaps, that he never had.

  Henry spent the next two years of his life rebuilding. He quit drinking the hard stuff, learned to become blissfully addicted to the taste of coffee and the exhilarating rhythmic trance of the tapping of the computer keyboard. He managed to resurrect his manuscript from obscurity and decided to give it some sort of resuscitation. Pulling the old, abandoned manuscript from the bottom of a storage box, he looked at it pensively. He was, by self-admission, hardly a wordsmith, but the practice of simply going through the motions freed him, in ways that he could
not explain.

  He drifted for a while in thought. Tried to write again. Gave it up.

  And then tried once more.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  August – 2014

  Why on earth Tess chose to call La Costa to a meeting halfway across the country at, of all places, a yoga class, was anybody’s guess. Trapped in an overcrowded storefront studio in Jersey, with steamy windows and floor mats that smelled like sweaty feet, Tess persevered. It had been over ten years, and an equal number of books representing La Costa Reed’s illustrious career. Now, La Costa was about to release No Secrets, number eleven, into the world. Tess’s last-born was now ten years old, and Tess was still trying to ditch the last twelve pounds of “baby weight.”

  “I just thought this would be fun to do instead of a Skype call,” Tess said, moving ungracefully into downward dog. “Besides, the ice queen wants to see us, and we have to bring her something big for this launch. You know how she can be.”

  Tess was referring to Patrycja Claypoole, better known as “Patty” by the drones who did her bidding from the large mahogany-desk-filled offices high in the sky of one of New York’s most prestigious testaments to traditional publishing known simply as Gaylord. Patty’s permanently planted humorless expression was no match for her take-no-prisoners approach to beating the competition.

  “She actually kind of scares me,” La Costa said, folding into child’s pose, which was her favorite because it signaled the end of the torturous machinations. “That’s why I have you—to deal with her. Me, I just write the stories.”

  The class ended, and a chorus of Namastes filtered above the ancient wooden floor up to the exposed-beamed ceiling. After which, the bevy of young and middle-aged moms and nannies, who had been staring at La Costa, broke into conversations about their days, their weeks, their husbands/boyfriends/lovers, she had guessed.

  “It’s all so predictable,” La Costa said, reaching for a towel. “Patty will just push me to write more, faster. Wait until the article by Felicia Hayden comes out in High Style. Then maybe she will not be so worried about the sales of the memoir hurting anything.”

  “Hurting anything?” Tess said. “Take a look at that.” Suddenly, someone broke away from the crowd of spandex and Lycra. She had recognized La Costa, and soon a crowd of women encircled her with accolades and requests for her autograph.

  “Ms. Reed! Is that really you?”

  “I think it is! Yes, it’s her!”

  “Would you mind signing a copy of the article? It’s just in my car—”

  “We love your books!”

  Tess smiled. “The article hit this morning. These are your people.”

  La Costa was pleased, and a bit perplexed. She didn’t usually garner such a reaction. She remained and chatted with the women, agreeing to sign their magazines and posing for photos. One fan even asked La Costa to sign her yoga mat.

  “The numbers don’t lie,” Tess later said. “And when you connect with these types of women—like you did in that interview, they are going to react this way.”

  “I guess something worked,” La Costa said. “I’ve never been recognized outside of a book signing. That was incredible!”

  “Yes, but we can do better. We can do more. Let’s get changed, and then I want to show you something.”

  A half hour later they were back at Tess’s house, a sprawling twelve thousand square-foot mansion in Englewood, just five miles from Manhattan, that once was owned by a hip-hop rapper. It had eight bedrooms and a movie theater built on the first floor. Tess’s favorite feature was the ultra-private office that was once a music studio located adjacent to the house. It was all hers, and even though it was windowless, she loved it. Her husband, Demitri, had the colossal double-door den just off of the dining room, with a view of the massive winding driveway located in the front of the entrance of the palatial home. The rest of the house was free-range paradise for their three children, live-in housemaid, and bevvy of shelter dogs that pretty much ran the roost.

  Tess ushered La Costa into her chic but efficient office and dropped her yoga bag on the floor. She readily bent over her computer and brought the screen to life. It was fixed on a spreadsheet from the publisher.

  “Come take a look,” Tess said, backing away so that La Costa could view the bright screen.

  “What am I looking at?” La Costa asked.

  “That right there are the figures for the pre-orders of No Secrets. They are at forty percent greater than the figures you have been pulling with each book in the Rebecca Steele series. This interview you did with High Style is resonating with men and women in the demographic, and particularly with a broader age-range. I’m telling you, you are crossing over completely into another level here, Bubbi.”

  “Wow!” La Costa said. “I mean, that’s good, right?”

  “That’s freakin’ fantastic—and we need to bounce on this momentum right away. As soon as the book drops, you’re guaranteed to be sitting sweetly at the top of all the lists—Publishers Weekly, USA Today, the Times—and it’s going to be my job to keep you there.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?” La Costa hedged, fearing that Tess had something bold up her sleeve, as usual.

  Tess glanced at the crystal clock on her desk, and then reached for the remote. “Let me show you.” She powered on the giant television monitor suspended across from the insanely expensive custom-made leather couch. The screen came to life with a glowing happy-faced talk show host named Kristen Michaels on the set of a lively, midday talk show that followed the local news with high, gleaming stools, and over-produced stage lighting.

  “I’ll give you the answer. We are going to get you booked on that, and every little morning and afternoon news show in the country—that’s how!”

  La Costa’s stomach dropped. While she couldn’t be happier with the pending success of the memoir, she was not so sure about live television appearances. She never signed up for that. In fact, the thought of it gave her the jitters. “Up until now, things have been comfortably private. Book signings were one thing, but . . .”

  “I’ve got a press release going out this afternoon, and several more in the week ahead. I wanted to run this by you in person before you head back to LA. Clear your schedule, La Costa, this is going to be huge—it’s really going to put you front and center. That little fan-fest back there at the yoga studio was nothing. There’s plenty more where that came from. Are you game, my Ketzel?”

  La Costa nodded. She trusted Tess, and that was all that mattered.

  “Okay, if you think it’s necessary. But you’re buying lunch.”

  “Deal,” Tess said, grabbing her cell phone and car keys.

  “Hey, what does ‘Ketzel’ mean, anyway?” La Costa asked.

  “It’s Yiddish,” Tess said with that assuring glint in her eye that La Costa knew better than to doubt. “Yeah, I think it translates to ‘little goat’ or ‘little kitten,’ or something. Either way, we got this, Bubbi. No worries!”

  Chapter Thirty

  2013

  Eventually, Henry purchased a small wine bar in La Jolla and named it Cork! He ran the entire operation on his own. In two years’ time, he was able to add on a small retail store and hire additional staff. He had eventual plans to build an indoor-outdoor bistro slated for the following spring.

  Henry believed in things like divine providence and cosmic destiny. So, it was no real surprise when the universe finally decided to serve him up a heaping dose of pure fate. The question being, was he ready?

  The answer came not three weeks later in the simple serendipity of an old magazine left open on the chair next to his in the library, where he liked to steal away at off-times of the day, alone with his thoughts, and “puke in his journal,” as he liked to refer to it. An advertisement caught his eye, with a bold proclamation, hyping the release of a sizzling new read, touting, A novel so riveting, you’ll not eat or sleep until the last page is turned!

  Henry chuckled to n
o one in particular. He was alone at his favorite table by the window, enjoying the solitude and the blissfully quiet, hushed tones of the sacred place. “What bunk! Who writes this stuff?” he wondered aloud.

  He eyed the ad further. He was an avid reader himself, but of mystery thrillers, not the sappy, drama-laced cookie-cutter paperbacks and supermarket rags for bored housewives to binge on. He caught a glimpse of the author pictured above the book’s cover. It was a stunning black woman posing on a deck with the surf and sand in the distance. She had a wide, familiar grin. Leaping from the newsprint in large script was a name that made him pause. Another great book in the Rebecca Steele series by La Costa Reed!

  Could it be? he wondered, studying the glossy advert. La Costa. He had only ever heard that name one time before. It was during his bartending days in college, at Miss Lucy’s Mink Kitty in Los Angeles—a long, long time ago. It had to be her! La Costa with the velvet skin and those stunning eyes. He never forgot a face, especially one as striking as hers.

  Henry scooped up the magazine, walked out of the library, and headed home.

  * * *

  A college roommate who was the in-house deejay for The Mink Kitty club had referred Henry to Lucy DuMont back in 1987. Henry had just moved to Los Angeles, transferring from Minnesota State’s graduate school, and was in need of a part-time job while he finished his degree.

  “They’re looking for a good bartender,” he had said. “Why don’t you check it out? Hey,