His Belt (Part Thirteen)

by Hannah Ford

  “I was angry,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “What’s going to stop it from happening again?”

  “It won’t happen again.” He says it with that same finality, and that same temptation flows through me, the temptation to just take his hand and accept his offer, to head back to his apartment with him, to take my job back, to slip right back into the life that I loved, the life that I thought I’d lost forever. But I know it would be a lie.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be, a voice whispers. Maybe it would be real. Go ahead, ask him.

  So finally, I turn to look at him, to face the emotion and pain in his expression, the dark circles under his eyes that betray the fact that he’s been here all night with me.

  “Elijah,” I say. “What happened? With your mom the day your dad almost committed suicide?”

  I see the change in him instantly, the way his shoulders snap back with their familiar tension, the determination in the set of his brow, the way his jaw is set. I wait a moment, giving him a chance.

  But when he stays silent, I turn away again.

  “Elijah.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to leave now.”

  Chapter 5

  ABIGAIL

  The truth about Will comes out in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks, the press seizing hold of the story like a dog with a juicy bone and running with it. And now it’s not just some two-bit websites and social media that are interested in my life. Now it’s big publications – The Washington Post, The New York Times, along with all the major gossip print magazines and websites.

  Of course, I already know most of the information. Elijah has been emailing me constantly, forwarding me the things he’s found out about Will thanks to his security team and his private investigators. I read the emails but don’t reply, except with an occasional terse word of thanks.

  “I can’t believe I had sex with him,” Hailey says, shuddering as she flips through the magazine she’s holding, a gossip mag with a four-page spread on what happened, including a crime scene pic of my bloody couch and Will’s mug shot, complete with the dead-eyed stare he gave to me the night he attacked.

  “You didn’t know,” I say, turning the magazine toward me so I can get a better look. Weirdly, reading about this stuff doesn’t upset me. I want to know the details. Being armed with the information makes me feel as if I have more control over the situation, even though I know that’s not really true.

  Not that there’s nothing to really have control over anymore. Will’s in jail. And true to his word, Elijah made sure that he didn’t get bail.

  “I know, but still.” Hailey shudders and picks up her coffee. We’re sitting in a corner booth at a tiny, no-name café way on the upper West Side. We can’t go any place that’s close to my apartment, because there are paparazzi on every corner, wanting to get a pic of my bandages. Joke’s on them, though, because my bandages are gone, and the only sign of what happened to my wrists are pink scars that I’m told will fade to white. Other than those and some slight headaches-- which I’m also told will go away --physically, I’m okay.

  “I still don’t get this,” Hailey says, her eyes scanning one of the more in-depth articles about what happened. “So Will is the son of the man your mother killed?”

  I nod. “Yes. We didn’t even know the guy had a son, but apparently he did. And when they found that new DNA evidence… well, it confirmed that it was Will’s father.” My stomach churns, both at saying Will’s name and at the thought of my mother killing someone. It was something I really preferred not to think about, not now, not ever.

  “Jesus,” Hailey breathes, taking another sip of her coffee. “But why didn’t you ever know there was a son?”

  “He was always just a John Doe,” I say, dragging my fork through the salad in front of me, picking out the croutons and dunking them in blue cheese dressing. I’m supposed to be eating protein, because it helps with healing -- but all I want is carbs. “The guy was a complete drunk and drug addict, and supposedly Will’s mom was afraid of him. So when he went missing, they never even bothered to report it.”

  Hailey shakes her head, then reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I’m so sorry, Abs.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know,” she says. “It’s just one of those things you say, you know? When you don’t know what else to say.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you… I mean, have you talked to Elijah?” She keeps her tone light, turning her attention casually back to the magazine in front of her, turning the page to a story about Reese Witherspoon’s new house.

  “No.” Just hearing his name causes my throat to close up, and my heart to beat fast.

  “He still sending flowers to your apartment?”

  “Every single day.”

  She nods. She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it and flips another magazine page. Then she opens her mouth again. Then changes her mind again.

  “What?” I ask. “Go ahead, just say it.”

  “I just… I mean, don’t you think you’re being a little hard on the guy?”

  “What?” I shake my head. “No. No, I don’t. He broke up with me, Hailey.”

  “Yeah, because he was scared. Not because he doesn’t love you.”

  “If he loved me, like really loved me, then he would let me in.” I set my fork down. “And unless he’s going to do that, then there’s really nothing else to say.”

  Chapter 6

  ELIJAH

  “Yes, Darren,” I bark as I answer the phone on the way out of my building. I’m late for a meeting, but there’s no way I’m going to miss this call. I make my way to the car that’s waiting for me by the curb, pushing through the throng of tourists taking a photo in front of the famed Armstrong Media building, fighting a wave of annoyance as they notice it’s me passing by and immediately turn their phones toward me, trying to get a pic of the famed Elijah Armstrong.

  “She’s okay,” Darren says immediately. He’s learned the hard way that when he calls, he needs to immediately alert me to the fact that Abigail is okay. “She’s having lunch with Hailey.”

  “Reporters?”

  “None. They went to some no-name café way uptown. Almost Harlem. Took my guys about an hour to get there, which is going to cost you extra, boss.”

  “Anything else?” I ask, annoyed that he thinks whatever he’s going to charge me would make me stop my surveillance of her.

  “No, not much. Just that she has a job interview tomorrow. An email was sent to her Armstrong Media account to set it up, and we were able to access it.”

  A job interview. I close my eyes, imagining Abigail at another publishing house. Other men who work there, watching her, being exposed to her wit, her body, her laugh, her intelligence. Rage pulses through me, and I fight to get control of it.

  “Where is the interview?” I demand. I slide into the back of the car and the driver pulls out into the street, taking me uptown to a meeting with a studio executive about some bullshit film he’s producing. The screenplay is so horrible I suspect he wrote it himself, but he has other projects I’m interested in, so I’m forced to play the game.

  “Skyscape Publishing,” Darren says.

  I frown. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a start-up, an e-publisher of romance. The woman who runs it was keen to meet with her.”

  “When’s the interview?”

  “Tomorrow,” he says.

  “You’ll have someone on her?” After Will was caught, and after that psycho who cut Hailey was also put in jail, Abigail insisted that I call off the security detail I had on her. Actually, she didn’t insist anything to me. Instead, she told the security guards to piss off, and when they insisted they’d been paid to follow her, she threatened to call the cops on them for harassment. I had no choice but to put Darren’s guys on her, albeit covertly. They’ve been keeping me up to speed on all her movements.

  “Of cour
se.”

  “Good. Get me everything you can on Skyscape Publishing, and on every single person who works there.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  He clicks off, and I check my texts.

  One from Ryan.

  Call me when you can. We need to talk about Dad.

  Chapter 7

  ABIGAIL

  The offices of Skyscape Publishing are nothing like the ones at Armstrong Media. Armstrong is big and glossy, towering into the sky in a show of steel and glass.

  Skyscape is in a converted brownstone on the Upper East Side, located on the kind of street that’s lined with trees, the kind of street that makes you feel as if New York isn’t a big scary place, but a small neighborhood where everyone knows each other.

  I walk up the steps and ring the buzzer for the third floor.

  A woman comes down to greet me. She’s wearing a smart white blazer and heels so high I’m not sure how she’s walking in them. Her hair is pulled back in a low chignon, and loads of silver bangles are on her wrist.

  “Abigail?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “Jasmine Watts.” She smiles and holds her hand out to me. “Come on up.”

  I follow her up the winding staircase, suddenly feeling slightly nervous about this whole thing. This definitely doesn’t look like the kind of place that houses a publishing company.

  Of course, Jasmine has a great reputation – she worked at Random House, where she was an editorial director for five years. So when I got her email a few days ago, letting me know that she’d started her own e-publishing company and asking if I’d like to come interview, I jumped at the chance.

  And yeah, okay, fine, part of that was because none of the resumes or letters of interest I was sending out were getting me anywhere – everyone said they had no positions available, even if the position was clearly listed on their website. And that was if they bothered to reply at all.

  I know that publishing is a hard business, but I was beginning to suspect that the lack of interest companies had in me had more to do with a certain viral photo rather than a shortage of jobs.

  We reach the landing of the third floor, and Jasmine opens a frosted glass door with SKYSCAPE PUBLISHING printed on it in aquamarine block script, and we step into an open concept office.

  Inside, it looks exactly like a publishing company. Or at least what I always thought a publishing company would look like until I moved to New York and realized that publishing companies look pretty much like any other corporate offices, with reception desks and heavy wooden doors and nameplates and sleek conference rooms.

  But Skyscape is different. The office is large and sun-filled, and the walls are lined with built-in shelves filled with books. Big wooden desks are scattered around the room, and about a dozen or so people are at work, taking phone calls or typing. Two girls sit on the floor in the corner, surrounded by manila envelopes as they pore over manuscript submissions.

  There’s a glass partition at the far end of the room, and behind it are a few more people sitting around a circular white table. It looks like they’re having a lunch meeting – they’re eating pizza while deep in conversation.

  “Surprised?” Jasmine asks, as she leads me to her office, which isn’t through a door but on the other side of beautiful tan and white partition that allows us privacy but also feels welcoming.

  “A little,” I admit as I take a seat in front of her desk. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when you emailed me.”

  “Do you know much about Skyscape?”

  “Just what I’ve read online,” I say. “That it’s an e-publishing company that focuses solely on romance books.”

  “Yes. Is that something that you think might interest you?”

  “Yes,” I say honestly. It is.”

  “I can’t pay you as much as one of the big publishers,” she says, staring at me over her desk and gauging my reaction.

  “Oh, I don’t… I mean, I wasn’t…” The talk of money throws me a little, because in my experience – which, admittedly, isn’t that vast – you have an interview, then another interview, then someone from HR emails you an official offer letter with your salary. Usually they take a long time to do that last part, so that by the time you get the offer you’re wracked with stress and nerves, certain you’re not even going to get the job, so you’re happy to take whatever it is they’re offering.

  I sit up straighter. If she’s talking money, she must be pretty serious about this.

  “Why don’t you tell me a little more about what the position entails?” I reach into my bag and pull out a notebook and pen, ready to take notes.

  Jasmine looks impressed.

  “The position is editorial director.”

  I freeze, my pen poised on my pad. “I was an editor at Armstrong.”

  “I know. But I’ve looked at your books, at your sales numbers, and I think you’re ready for a director position. You were particularly good at running price promotions for your authors’ e-books and leveraging the resulting sales against their entire backlists.”

  “Yes, well, I always thought that the publishing companies were short-sighted when it came to ebook sales. By slashing prices on ebooks, we could make much more profit per book. It may not have made sense on front list titles, but for the backlist it was a no-brainer.”

  Jasmine nods. “That’s why I left Random House. That and the long lead times.”

  “What are the lead times here?”

  “Three months.”

  My jaw drops. “And you’re able to make that work?”

  She raises her eyebrows at me, as if to say “Are you serious?” and I know exactly what it is she’s thinking.

  Of course it’s long enough. You edit, get a cover, and put it online. It’s not rocket science.

  We keep talking, and by the end of the interview, I realize just how much I really, really want this job. And it’s not because the other publishing houses aren’t getting back to me. I want this job because I know I would be really good at it, and because I’m they’re doing things differently here -- not only do I like the idea of that, I agree with exactly how they’re doing it.

  “Look, I could send you home and make you wait, but I pretty much knew I wanted to hire you from the moment I called you in for an interview. So my only question is when can you start?” Jasmine asks. Her desk phone rings, but she pushes a button and sends it to voicemail.

  “I can start pretty much immediately,” I say slowly. “But I do have two questions for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “One, is there any way that I can head up an erotica line?” After my disastrous meeting with Lucy and Jessica Chase, I decided I was never going to make a mistake like that again. I wanted to be a good business person. That didn’t mean that I was going to do throw myself into things I wasn’t interested in – for example, I could never see myself working in fantasy or sci-fi, no matter what the market was, because I just wasn’t interested in those genres. But I wanted to find a way to merge what I was naturally interested in with what was selling. And I was sure I could do that.

  “Done,” Jasmine says.

  I swallow, not expecting it to have been that easy.

  “And the other thing…” I smooth my skirt with my open palms. “I’m not sure if you know about the picture of me that was published on the internet, or the relationship that I had with my previous boss.” I force myself to look Jasmine in the eye. “I want to make sure that I put everything on the table before we start working together.”

  Jasmine leans over the desk and folds her hands together. “Honey, if I cared about any of that bullshit, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Two hours later, there’s an official offer letter in my email.

  Things move fast after that, which is something I’m definitely not used to when it comes to publishing. I start at Skyscape pretty much the next day.

  And two weeks after that, when I feel like I’m pretty settled in, I decide to host an ope
n house for agents to come and get a feel for what we’re doing. When I pitched the idea to Jasmine, she loved it.

  “Do I look nervous?” I ask Hailey, pulling at my sleeves nervously. I’m wearing a long-sleeved white blouse with a swirly black abstract pattern, a black pencil skirt, and patterned black hose.

  “No,” Hailey says.

  “You’re lying,” I say.

  “I would not lie to you about something like that.” She takes a sip of her drink, something pink and fruity that a bunch of cater waiters are handing out. “But you should probably go mingle now.”

  I turn around and take in the office – we’ve transformed it into a makeshift showroom. All the desks have been pushed to the perimeter of the room, and we’ve set up small, elegant glass tables, each displaying a different e-reader loaded with one of our author’s books. The displays are lighted from underneath, and the effect is simple yet striking.

  I wanted to give the agents a chance to mingle for a while, to talk and relax, have a drink before I started bombarding them with the packets of sales figures and stats I put together, along with a bio of me and the projects I’ve worked on, along with my contact info and how they can submit to me.

  But Hailey’s right.

  It’s time to mingle.

  I grab a drink so that I have something to do with my hands, and then throw myself into the fray.

  Half an hour later, I’m deep in conversation with an agent from Lorde and Weaver, one of the biggest agencies in New York, when Hailey touches my arm gently.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, giving the agent from Lorde and Weaver a huge smile. “But can I borrow you for a second?”

  I glance at her, wanting to tell her that whatever it is can wait, but when I see the look on her face, I can tell it’s important.