My Christmas Darling

by Vivien Mayfair

Lucy sat back and thought it over.

  She felt a need for proof that he was legitimate. Whereas William Harcourt didn’t know that she knew him, she certainly did. What she did know was that the man didn’t like Christmas one little cookie crumb.

  She finished the email.

  Flattery.

  Couldn’t hurt.

  I must ask what you envision for my book? Do you really feel it will be successful? I want the world to love my fictional town of Snowdrop Valley and not just because of the money it will make for others. Wouldn’t it be delightful if Snowdrop Valley, a town entirely devoted to the book industry, really existed? They do have them in other countries, you know. Honestly, I’m not sure why nobody ever thought of it.

  She uttered, “This is so wrong.”

  “A little what?” Heather inquired, deep in reading, which for her meant a Vogue article about which shoes would make a woman’s feet look smaller. “A little bit of that hot dish?”

  “Prozac, Lexapro, you name it.”

  What kind of involvement would I need to have? Honestly, the human race is a big disappointment. I refuse to partake in interviews, publicity events, or book tours. It isn’t my place to guilt others into spending money on what comes from my imagination. If they want to buy, let them, but I don’t need my face in front of the press to do it. I like my world quiet and kind and reserved. I have my books, and they have me. Sincerely, Bibi Roquette.

  Surely, there was something else to say.

  “I sound like a total loser,” she agonized out loud. “Like I’m in dire need of counseling.”

  “You sound like a writer. All writers are total mental cases.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Send it,” Heather prompted, now filing her fingernails. “Now or never.”

  Now.

  Never.

  Now.

  Oh, cookie balls.

  “Did you tell him I’ll be his house servant?”

  Lucy scrunched up her NYU sweatshirt sleeves. “What if he finds out it’s me?”

  “How could he?”

  “Somebody will have to sign publishing contracts, which will require a meeting.”

  “Have him FedEx them to you.”

  “They require a witness.”

  “Maybe you can feign some kind of psychiatric illness.”

  Lucy clicked the send button with a held breath. “It wouldn’t be feigning.”

  “Let’s eat.”

  Back in the kitchen after a timer zinged, Heather pulled out a vegetarian pizza. Not very holiday-like, but good chick-flick food considering they were about to cozy down and watch A Princess for Christmas.

  Lucy dropped her head on the table. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “It’s just an email, not homicide.”

  “Literary homicide. If he finds out, he’ll nix me to the entire industry.”

  Heather rolled a slicer over the pizza and brought it to the table. “You need a Facebook account. It’s like the newest thing, growing more every day.”

  “Facebook is for busy-bodies.”

  “You want him to believe Bibi is real? Authors need social media followers.”

  “Like I want to encourage people to catch my lie.”

  “It’s not a lie that you wrote the book.” Heather took a bite of pizza and pulled the laptop closer to her. “Let’s see, you’re French, so what do you look like?”

  “A dead woman.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “A criminal then. Any pictures of Lorena Bobbitt on there?”

  Her friend quickly typed out a Facebook page form. Just as quickly, she added a business page with the name Bibi E. Roquette, Author, listing her residence as SoHo New York – a lofty aspiration. She waited patiently as the record turned to Josh Groban’s I’ll Be Home for Christmas.

  “You listed me as single,” complained Lucy.

  “All the better. More male followers.”

  “I’d rather eat my toes than meet a man online.”

  “Are you kidding? My sister landed two totally hot guys that way.”

  “They’re all liars with fake profiles. You can’t trust anybody online these days. A hot guy who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio is probably really an obese senior with a wig and dentures.”

  “As soon as we launch your page, I’m going to blast this to all of my friends. We’ll have a hundred likes within the hour. All we need is a photo.”

  “Noooo.” Lucy nearly chucked out an olive. “Anonymous.”

  “I can get a stock image, or we can use mine.”

  “That’s intentionally misleading. I won’t!”

  “More misleading than being Bibi Roquette?”

  “It was your idea. Seriously?”

  “Then how about a cover for your book? Didn’t you say you made up a prototype in Photoshop?”

  Despite better judgment, Lucy took the laptop back. Clicked through her JPG files for the mock-up cover she made months earlier. Her artistic talents were intrinsic beyond the written word.

  “It has my real name,” she declared.

  “Then change it.”

  Photoshop popped open as Lucy dragged the image in. Moments later, the name was replaced with her French alias. She saved it before uploading the image to Facebook. “What do we put for postings?”

  Five minutes.

  Twenty.

  Gorging on Chicago-style pizza, they scrolled through other author pages for sharable content. It didn’t take long to send invite requests and launch it as official. Heather posted a first status announcing publication.

  “Now, you’re more believable,” her chum boasted.

  “To the deaf, dumb, and mute, maybe.”

  “This is totally fun. I should make a fake me for meeting guys.”

  “Which they’ll figure out as soon as they meet you. Oh, can my fake me be a size five c-cup brunette?”

  The email program dinged. Their heads snapped up.

  Lucy squealed, “What was that?”

  “He wrote you back. It says one new email.”

  “That’s way too fast.”

  “Maybe he was sitting in front of the computer waiting. How romantic.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  She was in no mood for Heather’s singsong voice and sparkling cranberry lip-gloss that stuck to pizza crust. Clicking the inbox, sure enough, a reply email from William Harcourt waited. Her throat went dry as sandpaper making it impossible to swallow.

  “Well, what does it say?” Heather’s eggnog and pizza breath hit her face.

  Lucy scanned the paragraph. It was more than a paragraph; more like five paragraphs. She’d never known her boss to write anything beyond quick blanket statements involving policy and procedure.

  Or, rules.

  Dear Ms. Roquette: Your words in email are just as lovely as in your book. I feel privileged to hear from you. Already, I hope to learn more about you. With an adorable name like “Bibi” you must have a fascinating background. To answer your question about why your book, let’s just say that is what I do for a living. I spot talent and give the small man a voice. Not that you are small in any way. What I mean is you are going to be a real burning sensation by the time I get done with you. Your book touched me on levels that I didn’t know existed. I believe it will do the same with our readers. More importantly, I can see the characters, the town, and the plot come to life on screen. Now that, Ms. Bibi, is one movie worth paying for, and I will make sure of it.

  Lucy read it three times.

  Maybe four.

  The writing didn’t match the man she knew. William Harcourt as a team leader never expressed an emotion unless it was negatively disguised as an order or complaint. At least he agreed she was the little man.

  “He says I’ll be famous,” shared Lucy.

  Heather got tired of waiting, so she started cleaning up her wrapping disaster. “Like me!”

  “He’s going to give me everything I’ve dreamed about.”

  “That’s a
problem?”

  “He doesn’t even know it’s me, Heather. It’s not right.”

  Make no mistake, Bibi, that your book will be quite successful if you give me publishing rights. We’ll put it in hardback, paperback, audio, eBook, braille, large print, and get it on the USA Today’s best seller list. I’ll have a television studio ready to snatch it up. You’ll see your book town come to life. Readers will not be disappointed. You, Bibi, will not be disappointed. I’m charmed by you, mystery lady. Tell me more.

  Lucy grimaced, already disappointed. There was no way the hoax would hold.

  “It’s all just flattery,” she sighed, reveling in it, liking it. Loving it, in fact.

  “Oh, shucks, what will you suffer through next?”

  Lucy continued reading the remaining paragraphs, adoring him just a little bit more. By the time she reached the end, her book was the last thing on her mind. The email read like romantic prose that left her head in a daze wanting more. It was hard to imagine the email came from the ice-fish.

  Then the end.

  Charles Dickens knew you were coming. I hear him breathe through your pages. They made me want to crawl inside the story and never come back to the real world where nothing good ever happens. Your story resurfaced a forgotten holiday for me and brought me back to happier days that I once loved. Days that I never thought I would have in my life again. Your book, Bibi, has given me hope for my future. You go beyond presents and candy canes and holiday parties. Deeper, to the heart of Christmas, where hope reigns. Thank you, Bibi, for breathing some life into me. It is my wish now to do the same for your future, and some future it will be.

  Her eyes watered.

  Thinking of this highly desirable man as lonely and dead inside broke her heart in half. It dawned on her that the rocky exterior he displayed at work could be an illusion. Or, was Lucy really that talented as a writer?

  “Good or bad news?” posed Heather.

  “He didn’t say anything about money or contracts or meetings.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “But, that’s all he does. That’s his job. It felt like a personal email.”

  “So, what did he ask?”

  “Nothing, that’s just it. It was all praise and commentary that I’m not sure I deserve. I mean, I know my story is good and my concept is unique, but he seemed touched by the whole thing.”

  “So what?”

  “This man has all the emotions of a tarantula.”

  Heather struck a match to a cinnamon candle. “Not a bad fate as a writer. It’s the same with acting. My job is to entice the audience to feel something. Lust most likely, but amused is totally okay, too.”

  Lucy wrote back, fingers gliding naturally over the keys.

  Twenty minutes.

  Thirty.

  One pizza later, and she bore her life story.

  Head spinning, she detached from the laptop and face-planted on the sofa. “I told him too much. He’ll find out it’s me. Why did I do that?”

  “You told me he hardly speaks to employees. As Lucy, he knows nothing about you.”

  “Well, now I know too much about him.”

  “So, what’s wrong with that?”

  Lucy felt all gooey inside from reading his emails. That’s what was wrong with that. She couldn’t stop thinking about his dimple when he leaked an accidental smile in his office the day they first discussed Bibi Roquette. The man actually lit up about her book – now she knew why.

  A secret fetish.

  The holidays.

  Part of her wondered if the man dabbled in his own writing. He was a book publisher, after all. Surely, he loved books despite the fact that he spent most of his time shooting them down. Now, her great debate loomed.

  To tell or not to tell.

  A debacle?

  That was the truth.

  Your book has changed my life.

  William clicked send.

  He leaned back in his chair, pressing a hand on his thigh. Six emails back and forth well into the night. It washed over him with a feverish excitement that felt like a shot of green Matcha tea. It was never his intention to sound so personal. The woman was a hermit.

  Safe.

  If she was that antisocial, then there was no way she’d blab his biggest secrets. When the praise flowed into his emails, so did chunks of his nostalgic heart for the Christmastime from his childhood.

  “Okay, no more!” he hopped up.

  Went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

  Swished with Listerine.

  Then came back to the computer at a table next to his bed. For some reason, the California king mattress looked emptier than normal. The kind of empty that made him feel like the only man on earth.

  He jotted notes in a Word doc. Plans. Thoughts.

  All superficial.

  What he really wanted to do was email Bibi some more. He enjoyed every word of her writing. Of course, it would never do to admit it, but her book made him cry at least twice. Many passages he read over and over because they moved him so much. The emotions, setting, and descriptions sucked him back in time to a Christmas he once knew. More than that, it stirred up nostalgia for the sweet Christmas bond he once had with his mother.

  Bibi did that; she could do it for others.

  William wasn’t a man who expressed much personally. A surefire way to lose respect. His initial plan had been to mold her like a fluffy Care Bear until she invited him into her Care-a-Lot. Sharing personal details would soften her enough to gain needed trust.

  Not easy over email.

  Obtaining her comfort was critical to his plans for her book. How else to lure her from hibernation? Discovering her humanity relaxed his resolve. Genuine, personal memorandum graced all of his words.

  The woman had passion.

  And, not the kind that he’d find in a spicy romance novel. More like a heartfelt blueberry pie old-fashioned girl scorned by a Big Bad Wolf and was now in need of sunshine and rainbows. He had worked with dramatic authors before who were stubborn and impossible to the core.

  Bibi was different.

  Not stubborn.

  Not impossible.

  She was scared to the bone and hiding something. A patchwork of ugly face moles? A transgender identity? A nose like Lucille Ball’s in the I Love Lucy Hollywood episode when she met William Holden after accidentally chucking a pie in his face? Something was amiss.

  William basked in the misery of her cave.

  What to do?

  Each email ended with an adamant reminder that she didn’t like people or the press or even Manhattan. How to get around that when she could soon be the next John Grisham who wrote The Christmas Train, or Nora Roberts and her acclaimed All I Want for Christmas? The world would read and see Bibi’s work. Her face was a part of the deal, which meant staying out of the spotlight wasn’t an option.

  People galore.

  No avoiding it.

  Groaning, William checked his email one last time. It was well past the Santa hour, resulting in an empty inbox. He closed his laptop and pulled on his Boston University jersey before plopping down on his bed.

  “Get a grip, Will,” he said up to the ceiling fan. “You do this every day.”

  Talking with Bibi Roquette confirmed his decision to exploit her genius for the sake of the company. He could almost see his father’s face when they made the Top Five off a Christmas novel. Yet, he knew it wouldn’t happen without the author getting her face and voice in public.

  “A prodigy with social anxiety, great!”

  He fibbed to her.

  Then assured her in his last email that he could get her book into the world with little involvement; that he could assign her an agent to work with the publicity team who would do most of the work for her. Even Stephen King and Margaret Atwood had to get out there and talk to the press.

  Book tours.

  Book signings.

  Book fairs.

  What he didn’t tell the shadowy Bibi Roqu
ette was that the contract promising to make her rich had a fine print addendum requiring her agreement to spend numerous hours per month on book marketing. He’d soften her up first, gain her trust, and sell her on the American dream.

  Get her in the office.

  Somehow.

  Then, surrounded by her new author team, she’d sign.

  Voila!

  Locked into the contract, there would be no choice other than her marketing compliance. William knew that she merely needed to see a reward for her effort to make the emotional struggle worth overcoming. Lots of money and generous accolade would do nicely.

  She was the one.

  His ticket.

  The savior of Big Apple Books. The winning blow to take down his dad. He’d finally be good enough. Then why did he feel like a dirty rotten scoundrel? He trudged from bed and went to the window.

  The Carpenters’ holiday album played in his mind.

  Thanks to Lucy.

  Sweet Lucy.

  Red-haired, full-figured, sass-mouthed, smart-brained. Every month he looked forward to the meeting where she presented her suggested manuscripts for publication. And, every month just before, he got a fresh haircut, dabbed on a little extra cologne, and popped an extra breath mint.

  Lucy.

  Wintery skies of grey snowing all the day.

  Bibi.

  His mind bustled just like outside. Guilt festering inside him. For the first time, he really missed having Christmas decorations in his house. One more thing to change.

  Chapter 6

  “When your shelves crack from weight, buy more Christmas novels and cross your fingers.”

  With Love, Vivien

  * * *

  William plummeted straight into Santa’s doghouse. Or, maybe even into a banished elf house kicked straight out of the North Pole.

  Rapidly.

  The emotional roller coaster of emailing Bibi Roquette drained him deeply. For four days their banter turned into deep emotional sharing that was nothing like anything he’d ever done before. There was something about the mystery author that opened a portal to his past.

  His soul gushed out stories.

  It was nice while it lasted. Then a call from his dad came in to ruin it.

  Of course.