And then there was the fire. “It took everything, including all our catering equipment. There was insurance money, of course, but my debts and bills had been piling up. I’d spent a whole bunch on renovating my apartment and I was paying it off in installments—small installments as the money got tighter, so I still owed a lot on that. I couldn’t put off paying anymore. And my best friend, Tracy, was half owner of the building and the business. After the fire she finally admitted to me that she’d never really wanted to be a caterer, that her dream was to move to Seattle and study biology. That was the worst.”
He frowned. “Which?”
“Tracy moving away.” Her throat clutched. “That was the hardest blow of all.”
“Elise?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you going to cry some more?” He looked kind of worried.
“You know, I just might—and aren’t you sorry now you volunteered to listen to all this?”
He stuck out his hand. She watched his big, blunt fingers come toward her. He wrapped them around her arm. It felt really good, his touch, so warm and steady and more exciting than she would ever have admitted to anyone.
“Come here,” he said roughly. She went where he pulled her, though she probably shouldn’t have. He lifted her and turned her so she was leaning back against the rock-solid wall of his broad chest. Then he rested his chin on the crown of her head. “Continue.”
Wigs, still stretched out along the sofa back, had started purring. She reached up and ran her palm along the warm, furry length of him.
“About your friend Tracy moving to Seattle...” Jed’s deep voice rumbled in her ear.
She petted Wigs and leaned against Jed and realized she felt truly comforted for the first time in so long—comforted by Jed Walsh, of all people. “Tracy and I grew up together. She was the one person in the world I could tell anything to. She never judged me, though the awful truth is that I had some seriously bitchy years.”
“What is a bitchy year?”
“Let’s just say I wasn’t always the nicest person in the world.”
“But you are now?” He had the nerve to sound amused.
She would have elbowed him in his six-pack if only the angle had been right. “I still have attitude, I’ll admit.” He made a low sound. It just might have been a chuckle. She smiled to herself and continued, “But I used to be pretty certain that I knew everything. I was popular in high school.”
“You mean all the boys were after you?”
“Hardly. I mean I was kind of bossy.”
“Not possible.”
“I’m going to pretend you meant that sincerely.”
“Good idea. Continue.”
She tried to think of something quelling to say to him. Nothing came, so she went on with her story. “I had a certain way of taking command of any given situation. I also treated some people like crap, like they were beneath me. I would snub them, you know? And say rude things behind their backs, even start rumors about them. So maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that I had it all and then threw it away. Maybe losing everything kind of showed me that I had a lot to learn.”
He was silent, but his arms held her just a little tighter.
She forged on. “Anyway, Tracy was always the one person I could tell all my troubles to. But now she’s gone. Now I can’t just call her and unburden my heavy heart. If I did that, Tracy would only feel guilty and insist on coming home.”
He rubbed his chin, very lightly, across the crown of her head. “Do you want her to come home?”
Her heart still cried yes. But she did know better now. “Tracy needed to go. It was time for us to find our own separate lives. So the answer is no. I want her to have what she wants, what she needs. I want that most of all.”
“I asked you what you want, Elise. Do you want your friend to come back home?”
She drew a slow, shaky breath. “No. I don’t think we could go back now, anyway. I think we’re set on new paths and it wouldn’t work to try to be what we were before.”
* * *
That day, they had lunch together. Over sandwiches and chips, they talked about the scene he’d been working on when they broke to eat. She told him she thought Jack had too easily turned the tables on a mysterious woman with a scorpion tattoo who’d come after him with a syringe full of potassium chloride. Jed took the criticism well, she thought. And then he really surprised her by reworking the scene when they went back to the office, drawing out the tension before the scorpion lady got a deadly dose of her own medicine.
And that evening, he showed up when she was in the kitchen dishing up her dinner. He loaded up a plate for himself and they sat down together.
The next day was Saturday. He didn’t eat with her at breakfast or lunch, but he showed up at dinnertime. They talked about it—about how they both kind of liked having meals together—but neither of them wanted to be locked into meeting up every time they ate.
So they agreed: no mealtime expectations. They spent so much time in the same space as it was, it would be easy to get sick and tired of each other.
But Elise wasn’t getting sick and tired of Jed. Far from it. Every day she grew to like him more. She liked the way he listened to her, with such steady, serious attention, as though determined to absorb every word. And the way he treated Wigs—with a heavy dose of irony and grudging respect. He was kinder than he wanted anyone to know.
And goodness, he looked amazing without a shirt. He really got her lady parts humming. She could get interested in him in a big way.
But she wouldn’t. They’d forged an excellent working relationship and that was nothing to fool around with. Sex would only mess with the program and she couldn’t afford that. She was getting out of this with the nest egg she needed.
However, it couldn’t hurt to know more about him. She would like to consider herself a friend of his. And she’d been meaning to read the McCannon books in order. It might give her insight into what made him tick. And it couldn’t hurt on the job, to have more information about the stories that had preceded the current one.
There were five of them so far, she found out when she looked them up online. And all of them were available in audiobook. She downloaded the complete set for her iPhone so she could listen in the bathtub.
That Sunday, her sisters took her to the Sylvan Inn for lunch. The inn, on the highway a few miles from town, had excellent food and a homey, cozy atmosphere.
Elise joined not only Clara, Jody and Nell, but also Chloe, who had married their brother Quinn. Their cousin Rory McKellan came, too. And so did Ava Malloy, a Realtor who represented Bravo Construction whenever one of their houses went up for sale.
It was the first time they’d all been together since Elise started working for Jed. Sunday wasn’t the best choice for a girls-only get-together, but it was the only day Elise had now and her sisters had put aside various family commitments to make it happen.
They sat down and ordered and then they all wanted to know how it was going with Jed.
“You’ve lasted how long with him now?” Nell sounded thoroughly pleased with the situation.
“On Tuesday, it will be three weeks,” Elise replied with considerable pride. She raised her glass of white wine. “To you, Nellie. I can’t thank you enough for finding me this job.”
Nell laughed. “I love it when you’re grateful.” They all lifted their glasses and shared in the toast.
“I don’t believe it.” Ava, petite and adorable with long blond hair, looked pretty close to awestruck. “The way I heard it, nobody could last with that guy.”
“He’s not so bad.” Elise set down her glass and reached for a fluffy, hot dinner roll.
“It’s a triumph,” Nell declared. “I knew you would be the one to tame that wild beast.”
“I wouldn
’t call him tamed, exactly. But we get along.”
Rory said, “I heard he was raised in the woods, just him and his reclusive survivalist father, that his mother died when he was really young.” Elise had heard that, too. Most people in town knew the basic facts about the famous Jed Walsh.
Clara made a sympathetic sound. “That must have been hard for him.”
Ava said, “And he was military, right? And married for a while.”
“What’s he like to work for, really?” Jody asked.
“Kind of scary at first.” Elise described how he acted out the scenes. “He also throws knives while he’s working.”
Jody scoffed, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Believe it.” Nellie backed up Elise. “We built him a special padded wall to throw the knives at.”
“He cleans weapons, too,” Elise added. “It’s part of his process, he says. And he demands absolute silence from me while he’s dictating.”
Chloe said, “It sounds awful.”
“It took some getting used to. But believe me, the money is excellent and I find that very motivating. Plus, I guess I’m kind of getting used to Jed.”
Jody was watching her a little too closely. “Ohmigod. You like him. I mean, you really like him...”
There were giggles and grins as Elise tried not to blush. “I told you. I’ve gotten used to him. And he’s been kind to me, that’s all.”
“Kind, how?” demanded Nell.
Elise sipped more wine. “Long story. Not going into it today.”
Nell gave her a too-knowing look. “Jody’s right. You could go for him.”
“But I won’t,” Elise replied with a lot more confidence than she felt.
* * *
Monday morning, Jed came into the kitchen as she was getting the oatmeal going. She offered to share and he accepted.
When they sat down to eat, she asked him, “So who typed your books before I came along?”
Was that almost a smile on his way-too-sensual lips? Sure looked like one. “Didn’t you hear? I’ve had an endless chain of typist-assistants. I terrorize them and then they disappear, never to be heard from again—which reminds me, never enter the walk-in closet in my room.”
“I see. It’s where you keep the bodies, isn’t it?”
“Just call me Bluebeard.” He made a show of stroking the beard scruff on his chin.
But she wasn’t letting it go that easily. “You’ve written five New York Times bestsellers. The last three made it to number one.”
“Been reading my book jackets, haven’t you?” He stirred brown sugar into his bowl.
She added raisins to hers. “Come on. You followed me to my room the other day and helped me through my meltdown. I’m grateful, Jed. And I would really like to know you just a little better.”
He took a very slow, very careful sip of coffee. And then he shrugged. “Her name was Anna Stockard.” He said the woman’s name too quietly. Was he sad? Regretful? With Jed, it was difficult to tell.
But Elise thought she understood. “You were in love with her.”
“Hardly.” He was wearing that sardonic expression of his—the one that passed for amusement.
“What? That’s funny?”
“Anna was calm. An excellent typist, like you. Unlike you, she was also a motherly woman in her fifties.” Motherly. And his own mother had died when he was very small. “She typed my first book for me, which I started not that long after I left the service.”
“Had you written before?”
“Fiction? Never.”
“What made you decide to write a novel?”
He looked at her so patiently. “So. We digress?”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have interrupted. I do want to know about Anna.”
“But you also want to know what made some guy raised in a one-room cabin by a half-crazy doomsday prepper imagine he could write bestselling thrillers.”
“I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way,” she said gently.
“I know.” He spoke as softly as she had. “My father was not only a paranoid survivalist who homeschooled me and taught me most of what I know about knives and firearms and living off the land, he was also a reader. He read everything he could get his hands on. He built a shed next to our cabin just to store the books, which he scrounged for free, showing up at the end of garage and estate sales when the sellers just wanted to get rid of what was left. He read to me. A lot. Those are my best memories growing up—him reading to me and later, as his eyesight failed, me reading to him. We got through all the great books of the western world, my father and me, before he died. And he loved a good thriller.”
“Well. Now your brilliant career as the creator of Jack McCannon makes perfect sense. What did your dad die of?”
“A fall. He had cataracts and they just got worse and he hated doctors, so he never had the surgery that would have saved his sight. He fell from the front steps of our cabin and hit his head on a rock.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why do people always say that?”
“I don’t know—because we feel sympathy and we don’t know what else to say, I suppose. How old were you when he died?”
“Eighteen. I went straight into the service.”
“And Anna? How did you meet her?”
“Anna was a widow. She rented the other half of the North Hollywood duplex I owned with my then-wife, Carrie. I was in my late twenties by then. Anna was a great cook.” Like you. He didn’t say it, but she could see it in his eyes. “And Anna was lonely, I think. She was always dropping in with casseroles and cupcakes to share. I told her about the book I was trying to write and how I thought I needed to hire a typist, how I’d figured out that sitting at a computer didn’t work for me. I needed to be up, moving around, saying the words out loud.”
“So Anna volunteered?”
“That’s right. Turned out she’d been a legal secretary for years. I hired her. And she was terrific. Carrie and I broke up when that first book, McCannon’s Way, sold for seven figures at auction. Carrie got half the advance and her ticket out of a marriage that wasn’t working.”
Elise wanted to know what had happened with Carrie, but she was afraid he might clam up if she asked. Then again, he seemed relaxed, willing to tell her about his life. If he didn’t want to get into it, he could just say so. “What went wrong there, with your wife?”
He made a low, amused sound. “I was wondering when you would get around to asking me that.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine with talking about it.” He ate a spoonful of oatmeal. “I met Carrie when I was stationed in San Diego. We were kids, really. Both of us just twenty-one. I decided I was in love with her the first time I took her to bed. I proposed. She said yes. We got married and moved in together. And then we grew out of each other—or maybe we just slowly came to realize that we never had that much in common in the first place. And we never spent all that much time together, anyway. I kept re-upping, partly because I felt useful serving my country and partly because I didn’t know what I would do with myself once I was a civilian again. Carrie got tired of waiting for me to come home. But she stuck. And then I finally left the service. I was home all the time and we had to face the fact that whatever we might have had once, it was gone. Divorce was the right thing for both of us.”
“But Anna stayed with you when your marriage ended.”
“Yeah. I bought a great house overlooking the ocean on the Oregon coast and Anna moved there with me. She worked with me through books two, three, four and five. She not only typed, she cooked meals and ran the house. It was all going so well.”
“And then...?”
“Anna had two grandchildren in Phoenix and her daughter was going th
rough a tough divorce. A year ago, Anna decided to move in with her daughter and take care of the kids. Exit Anna. Enter a bad case of writer’s block. I started hiring typists. You know the rest. None of them worked out, not until you.”
“What brought you back to Justice Creek?”
“After three months or so of getting nowhere on the book, I got this brilliant idea that going back to my roots would help me focus. It didn’t.” He was staring off toward the large oil painting of weathered barn doors on the wall opposite his seat at the table. But then he turned that green gaze on her. A shiver went through her, a lovely, warm one. He said, “What helped me focus was Anna. And now what helps me focus is you.”
* * *
Jed felt good. Really good, for the first time in over a year. The book filled his mind. He had scenes all lined up, ready to be written.
He felt so good, he was even nice to his agent, Holly Prescott, when she called just as he and Elise were getting down to work.
“I need to take this,” he said to Elise. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Good enough.” She left him alone, pulling the door shut behind her.
He put his agent on speakerphone and dropped into Elise’s chair. “What can I do for you, Holly?”
“Jed. You sound great.”
“Thanks. And I’m working. What?”
“I have a surprise for you. We’re in the process of getting you a spot on NY at Night. You’ll hear from the publicist to set up the details for the trip.”
The last thing he needed right now was to fly to New York to be on some talk show. “‘In the process.’ What does that mean?”
“It means it’s going to happen and it will be sometime next month, though we’re not confirmed on the date yet. I just wanted to tell you ahead. I knew you’d be pleased.”
“Are you pleased, Holly?”
“Very.”
Ms. Bravo and the Boss Page 6