The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  “What if you meet a cute boy this year? Your whole schedule will go to hell in a handbasket,” he teased her.

  “No, it won’t,” she said firmly, with a will of iron in her eyes. He had seen it before and been impressed by it. She knew what she wanted, and was willing to pay the price. Most people weren’t. Only real writers were willing to sacrifice everything for it, and he had met only a few of those in his lifetime. Alex was the most determined writer he had ever met. “The writing comes first, then school, and boys after. And too bad if they don’t understand that. And I haven’t met any cute boys anyway.” She still felt cheated by her experience with Scott, the teaching assistant who had been so jealous of her the year before. She didn’t want to run into another guy like him, although she’d be wiser now, and more alert to passive-aggressive behavior and manipulations. He had been her baptism by fire into the world of jealous male writers. And if he’d known about the book she’d published, he would have been infinitely worse. Bert was sure of that, and had warned her of it. But Alex had no intention of telling anyone about the books she wrote under the name of Alexander Green. She was determined that no one except her agent, Bert, and the nuns would ever know about them. They were her deep secret, the hidden life that fulfilled her.

  Despite Bert’s misgivings, Alex managed her Herculean schedule for all of the first semester, and was getting great grades and making good headway on the book, even faster than the last one. Bert kept telling her not to rush it and to take her time, but she had a writing style that wanted to lunge forward with the story and was hard to put the reins on. She pulled the reader along with her at breakneck pace, as she whipped them through the story and surprised and confused them again and again. Her fans and the critics loved it.

  She had just turned in her last paper before Christmas break when her second book, Darkness, came out, just in time for holiday sales, which Alex and her publisher hoped would help the book. She was packing some things to take to the convent with her when someone came to tell her that she had a call on the phone in the lobby of the dorm, and she rushed down a flight of stairs to get it. It was Rose calling from New York and she sounded breathless.

  “I have a Christmas gift for you, Alex. Darkness is on the Times list a week from Sunday.” She knew because the list was released to the trade ten days early. “Number ten, but you’re on it. Merry Christmas!”

  Alex’s face was wreathed in smiles as she tried to contain herself and could barely keep from screaming. At times of great excitement or elation, she turned into a kid again, and she could hardly wait to tell the nuns.

  “Something important seems to be happening with this one,” Rose reported to her, “and I don’t think it’s just due to Christmas sales. The critics are all crazy about it. Publishers Weekly called it the best new read of the decade, and your publisher says sales are going through the roof.”

  Alex was beaming.

  “Let’s see where it goes after this, although you’ve got some stiff competition on the list. Everyone wants their new book out this time of year for holiday sales.” Every big bestselling fiction writer was on it.

  She told the nuns when she went home the next day, and word of her book being on the New York Times bestseller list spread through the convent like a tidal wave. Several of them had already read it when she gave them advance copies, and the nuns who liked crime thrillers had loved it. The others just read it because she wrote it, and they were so proud of her and wanted to support her.

  The following week when Rose called her at the convent, the book had climbed from number ten to number four on the list. And her final Christmas gift after that was one more notch to number three, where it sat for two weeks, into January. The book had been the surprise hit of the season, despite its gory subject, and the fact that mostly men would read it. She didn’t have a heavy female readership, and no man would buy it for a woman for Christmas, with rare exceptions. They bought it for themselves, or the women in their lives bought it for them.

  Bert had called her immediately to congratulate her, and Amanda, her editor at the publisher, had sent her emails every week, announcing her ranking on the list, and telling her how thrilled they were.

  “Your publisher is very excited about this, Alex,” Rose told her on the phone. “This is a very important step in your career.” At twenty-one. It was hard to believe, and her publisher had no idea how young she was, since all their dealings with her, even contractually, went through her agent. She was a mystery to them, except for the bio that she and Rose had created for the mythical Alexander Green.

  It was difficult for Alex to absorb or even remotely understand what this could mean for her in the future. More money than the last deal probably, hopefully more readers, and the bestseller list again. But she couldn’t see beyond that, and didn’t need to. It meant she could support herself by writing, for now anyway, if people didn’t get tired of her books. She didn’t want to count on this yet, and was afraid the bubble would burst one day, and it might. It took years to develop a John le Carré, Stephen King, Georges Simenon, Frederick Forsyth, or an Agatha Christie. She wasn’t there yet and didn’t expect to be, maybe ever. But it felt fabulous knowing that her book had done so well, and there had been a steady build from the last one. She walked into local bookstores just for the pleasure of seeing her books stacked high on the bestseller table. She grinned from ear to ear each time she saw it, and the nuns took pictures at every bookstore where they went.

  Despite the astonishing success of her book, she went back to school after Christmas vacation, for her last semester at Boston College. She had only a few easy classes left to take for graduation. She’d done all the hard ones much earlier and had gotten the required courses out of the way.

  She finished her fifth novel during spring break, got Bert’s blessing on it, and sent it to Rose, expecting a warm reception for it. A week later, her agent called her and sounded worried.

  “The moment of truth has come, Alex. We want a new contract for your last two books. And we want a much bigger one this time, after the success of Darkness.” She still had another book, her third one, due out in the summer. But they had two more complete now to sell. “They just told me they won’t give you a contract now until they meet you. I’ve been arguing with them about it for three days.”

  “Tell them I’m in Europe and I broke both my legs.” She was only half teasing, but Rose wasn’t.

  “They say they don’t care how long they have to wait. They want to meet the phenomenon who is creating these books. Maybe they want to be sure it’s just one person, and not a committee of some kind, which is happening more and more these days, where a writer does the outline but has half a dozen minions to write it for him. Whatever the reason, they say no new contract until they meet you. They won’t even let me deliver the last two books to them until they do.”

  “That’s ridiculous. After the success of the last one, they should be willing to buy the new ones even if I were a gnome with three heads.”

  “That’s beside the point,” Rose insisted. “They want to meet you, and they’re not going to relent until they do. They’re just as stubborn as you are,” she said, sounding tense. Alex’s future was on the line here, even if she didn’t understand that. She could be a willful child at times.

  “They could blow everything if they let the cat out of the bag that I’m a woman,” Alex said, genuinely afraid of that. “It could really make people mad now. They might not even believe I wrote them,” more because of her age than her sex.

  “We could have some ironclad confidentiality agreement drawn up by an attorney, giving you a huge amount of damages if they talk. That’s not unheard-of. They have to have a stake in it too, and we could put some real teeth in it. But you’re not going to get out of meeting them. You’re a big investment for them now, and in the future.”

  Alex worried that Rose may have asked for too much money for them to buy the books and they were angry, but Rose assured her that
wasn’t the problem.

  “How much did you ask for?” Alex frowned as she asked her.

  “I asked for the appropriate amount,” Rose said firmly, “based on sales of the last book, and the first one. This would have happened anyway. They were already antsy the last time. You can’t hide in the shadows forever.”

  “I have to. I’m not a man, and they and everyone else think I am,” Alex told her with determination. “And I know you don’t believe me, but a lot of men won’t buy crime thrillers by women. My father said so.” Alex had believed him all her life. And this was no time to test the theory.

  Rose didn’t want to risk the publisher’s ire by Alex refusing to meet them. And she and Rose wanted a new contract, which wasn’t going to happen unless they met. There was a real danger that if readers knew the Green books were written by a twenty-one-year-old college girl, and that she’d started writing them at nineteen, readers would feel duped. In a way, she was a genius, but Rose didn’t want to have to explain that to the public, nor to her publisher. “Let me talk to a lawyer and see what kind of agreement we can draw up, where they have real money at stake if they expose you. But they might not be willing to sign it,” Rose warned her.

  It took a week for Rose’s attorney to come up with language they both liked. They were asking for a $10 million penalty for losses into the future if the publisher exposed her. Although she could start all over again under another pseudonym, her style was too distinct and recognizable now.

  With Alex’s permission, Rose sent the confidentiality agreement over to the publisher, and waited to see what they would say. Alex was reassured and liked the fact that they would have $10 million at stake. She didn’t think that she was worth it, and couldn’t imagine making that kind of money, but it would certainly force them to be discreet, and be a strong incentive to keep her identity secret.

  Much to Rose’s surprise, she got a call from the president of the publishing house two days later.

  “Who the hell is this guy? The president of the United States? And why is his identity worth ten million dollars?”

  “No, it’s not the president,” Rose said calmly. “But you could injure his career severely if you expose him.” She wasn’t going to let on that the author of the Green books, as they called them, was a woman until they signed the agreement.

  “Is he a criminal of some kind? Will his identity embarrass us?” The president was obviously worried, and with good reason for that kind of money. Any kind of slip could cost them a fortune, but it would damage Alex’s career irreparably. You couldn’t unring a bell once word was out, nor gauge reader reaction beforehand.

  “Not at all,” Rose reassured him. “It’s the author who is at risk here, not you.”

  “Like hell, with ten million on the line if someone talks.” He sounded frustrated. “I’ll get back to you in a day or two. We need to think about it.”

  “That’s fine,” she said smoothly. She reported back to Alex that night. All they could do now was wait and see if the publisher came around. She thought they would. There was too much money to be made in the future for them not to.

  It took longer than she thought, and he called her back in a week. He didn’t sound happy about it, but an entire committee had agreed they had no choice. But they were very worried now about who the author was, if he was a gangster of some kind, or someone whose work they wouldn’t want to publish if they knew the truth, although Rose had assured him that was not the case. And she was still concerned about the meeting, even with the agreement. She wasn’t as afraid they’d talk afterward—in fact, she was certain they wouldn’t—but she had no idea how they’d feel to learn that their star writer, big moneymaker, and latest discovery was a girl barely out of her teens. They knew that Bert Kingsley was editing Green, which they liked, since they had worked with him many times before, and they knew how superb his editing was. But they had no idea who the author was, which was why they wanted to meet him before they bought another book, let alone two, at a stiff price. It wasn’t unreasonable, just very delicate and dicey.

  The meeting was set for a Friday, in Rose’s office, at three o’clock. The president, CEO, and CFO were coming, the editor in chief, and Amanda Smith, Alex’s contact at her publishers, whom she corresponded with by email regularly and liked. Rose knew all the men coming to the meeting, but not Amanda. Each of them had signed a separate confidentiality agreement with the company, internally, accepting liability if they talked.

  Alex took the train down from Boston on the appointed day. She wore a new navy blue dress and matching coat she had bought to wear to her graduation dinner in six weeks. And in case she was late and had to run through the station to make it in time, she had worn little flat black suede shoes, and she looked more than ever like a schoolgirl with her shining dark straight hair down her back, when she arrived at Rose’s office at two-thirty. She was very nervous and her eyes were huge, as she sat anxiously at the edge of a chair across from Rose’s desk.

  “It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” Rose tried to calm her down. “They’re going to love you,” she believed it, after they got over the initial shock, which would be enormous. Alex did not look for a minute like someone who could write intricate, brilliant, violent books like the Green books. They were far too complex for anyone her age to write, and yet she did, even though she had spent the last six and a half years in a convent, and was still in college, though not for much longer, with graduation looming.

  The group from the publishers arrived on the dot of three. They were quiet and expectant, and were shown to Rose’s corner office by an assistant who led the way. Rose had thought to put bottles of water with a bottle of scotch, one of bourbon, another of gin, and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on the coffee table in her office, surrounded by a leather couch and four chairs for important meetings. She thought they might need the booze after reality hit them, either to celebrate, or revive them. In either case, it would calm their nerves.

  Instinctively Alex stood up and went to stand next to Rose before they walked in, as though she felt she needed protection from the publishing contingent. She had taken her coat off, which made her seem younger and slighter than ever. She looked like Snow White, or a dark-haired Alice in Wonderland, with terrified eyes when the four men and one woman walked into Rose’s office with stern faces. Rose was afraid that Alex might faint, as Rose shook hands with all of them and invited them to sit down, and thanked them for coming. They noticed the alcohol on the table and said nothing. All five of them were tense, and they paid no attention to Alex, who was nearly shrinking behind her agent, trying to disappear, and Rose suspected correctly that they had mistaken her for Rose’s assistant, although she didn’t look old enough to be that either, with her long hair and flat shoes, and no makeup.

  “Where is he?” John Rawlings, the CEO, asked tersely. “Is he late or in another room, waiting to make an entrance?” He was fiercely unhappy with the confidentiality agreement that they’d signed, but the president had convinced him they had no choice.

  “He’s here,” Rose said, drawing out the suspense a moment longer, and enjoying it, as the five representatives of the publishing house stared at her expectantly. “Right here, in fact.” Rose stepped aside quietly, leaving Alex exposed behind her, as Alex looked as though she would burst into tears at any moment. “I would like to introduce you to my client, Alexandra Winslow…otherwise known as Alexander Green.” There was dead silence in the room as the five publishing executives stared at her, some literally with their mouths open. Rose put a gentle hand on her shoulder, and Alex spoke in barely more than a whisper, staring at them too.

  “Hello.”

  “You’re not serious,” the CEO said, looking livid. “Is this some kind of joke? What kind of game are you playing?” he accused the agent, ignoring Alex again as Hugh Stern, the president, watched her closely. There was something very interesting in her eyes that was very different from her juvenile appearance. She had the
razor-sharp, determined focus of a genius, and he could almost see her mind racing as she took them all in, even if she appeared terrified of them.

  “This is not a joke,” Rose said quietly. “Alexandra came to me two and a half years ago, at nineteen, through a mutual connection. She came down from Boston where she lives, and left her manuscript Blue Steel with me. I was bowled over by it, just as you were. And the only condition she made was that no one ever know that she’s a woman, or just a girl then, really. She believes that men don’t buy crime thrillers written by women, and even if I disagree, Alex’s father told her that and she believed him. And I’m not at all sure that we would have had the success we did with the last book if the public knew it was written by a twenty-one-year-old girl. Alex has considerable experience with the genre, although she has diversified from it and created her own, which appears to be working. She’s been reading crime books, thrillers, and detective stories with her father since she was seven years old. And I can honestly say I think she’s read them all. I brought Bert Kingsley in to help her edit her work with her first book, and he’s been working with her ever since. You know his work. And Alex’s. What you didn’t know until today is her name, how old she is, and that she’s a young woman, and now you do. You can see why we have done everything possible to keep her identity secret, so as not to hurt the books, and scare off their male audience. And I suspect now you’ll be just as anxious as we are to do the same.”

  Alex was starting to feel more comfortable, and the five publishers in their chairs looked like they were in shock, except for Amanda Smith, who was smiling broadly, and Alex shyly smiled back. Amanda Smith had a daughter the same age, and she thought everything she’d heard was great, and she loved the fact that the hardcore, hard-edged, hard-hitting, brilliant Alexander Green that everyone was in love with had turned out to be a young woman.

  The CEO leaned back in his chair with his hand over his eyes and looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “Oh my God,” was all he could say, and the CFO was grim-faced. The editor in chief clearly didn’t know what to say. And then all of a sudden the president started to laugh. He looked at Rose and at Alex, and he patted the CEO on the arm.