The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  “I don’t believe you. You haven’t got what it takes.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never read a word I’ve written. That’s why my friend is coming over next month. He’s my editor.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m ghostwriting again.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “For whom?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” she said, looking uncomfortable. The web of lies she was spinning was strangling her.

  “And what do I care anyway? You’re not a writer, Alex. You’re a file clerk, for God’s sake. Ghostwriting for some celebrity isn’t like writing a novel. And what makes you think you can write?” She couldn’t tell him that either. She felt like an idiot trying to explain it to him. “What are you trying to do? Make me feel bad? Show me up? I told you I wanted to write a book, so you’re writing one? How pathetic is that? What is this, a contest?” He had managed to deflect her from the key question she had asked him, and she brought him back to it again.

  “Are you cheating on me, and having an affair?” she said calmly.

  He hesitated for a long time, and then shrugged as he sat back in the chair, defying her to stop him or do something about it. “Maybe I am. We’re not married. I never said I wouldn’t sleep with other women. Don’t be so archaic. She’s a cute girl, maybe the three of us could have some fun one night.” She stared at him in amazement, unable to believe what she was hearing. It showed a total lack of respect for her, and even the other girl. She knew that people did things like that, but she didn’t intend to be one of them. He had no morals, or decency. He was spoiled and lazy, felt entitled, and did whatever he wanted. It was finally clear to her. He didn’t love her. They were having sex. And the charade of hiding her books from him was just too difficult, and he didn’t respect that either, and assumed she couldn’t write.

  “You need to go,” she said to him and stood up. “I can’t do this anymore. I never should have in the first place. And you’re angry all the time, Ivan. Don’t be mad at me because I’m writing. You can write a novel, if you want to, even if you’re tired after work or you don’t want to stay up late or get up in the morning to write. Other people do it, so can you. And don’t punish me because I want to write. And no, I’m not going to have ‘fun’ with you and some girl. That’s disgusting. You don’t respect anything, you don’t care about anyone except yourself. I don’t want to live like this anymore, worrying about what makes you angry, afraid that you’ll be jealous or pissed about something I do. You have a chip on your shoulder the size of your head. And if you’re cheating on me on top of it, I quit. I’m done. I have work to do. Go home.”

  “Oh, give me a break. What kind of work? Are you going to write a story? What makes you think you can? A romance novel?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I write. At least I do it. What have you ever done except have sex and sit around and complain, and be mad at what other people do or have? You’re a nasty person, and a cheat apparently. I’m finished. Go home.” She stood there waiting for him to leave, and he finally unwound his long frame from the chair where he was sitting and walked to the door. He didn’t look sorry to go.

  “She’s better looking than you are anyway, and she has bigger tits,” he said, walking out and slamming the door behind him. She felt sick after he left, that he would even say something like that and cared so little for her. He had never loved her. He wasn’t capable of loving anyone. Only himself.

  She slept fitfully that night, and went to work the next morning. She saw him in the hall, and he ignored her and didn’t even try to talk to her. And she saw him with the little blonde from publicity that afternoon. He was kissing her in the back hall. When she saw them together, she woke up. She was crazy. She was spending her days filing so she could say she had a job in London and justify staying there. She didn’t need justification. She could be in London if she wanted to. And she had a book to write. Bert was coming in a month, and she had to get ready for him. She knew she had kept the job only so she could see Ivan in the daytime. It was insane. She had lost her mind for a while because she had sex with him. And even that wasn’t fun anymore. He was an empty shell. She had been dazzled by him in the beginning but there was no one there. And nothing had gotten better—it had all gotten worse. And now he was cheating on her, to add insult to injury. She cringed, thinking of the abuse she had taken for almost seven months. But it would never happen again, she promised herself.

  She handed in her resignation that afternoon, and gave them two weeks’ notice, which they said they wouldn’t hold her to, since she was only an intern. She could leave right away if she wanted. She didn’t see Ivan before she left, and hoped she never would again. She had a book to write, and he was a distraction she could no longer afford. She had to have the manuscript finished for Bert. And that was precisely what she was going to do now.

  She told Fiona she was leaving, and they promised to have dinner soon. Fiona felt guilty for causing the breakup with what she’d told her, but she hated Ivan making a fool of Alex. And amazingly, Alex seemed calm.

  She went back to her apartment, which she had extended at Christmas until June. And she had gotten a visa a month ago to extend her stay in the UK. She hadn’t told them about the internship, and now she didn’t have one anyway. She set her typewriter on the desk, took her manuscript out of the drawer, and sat down to get to work. The fun and games were over. Alexander Green had a crime thriller to write, and the book she was working on was going to surprise and shock even the most loyal Alexander Green fans. She wasn’t even sad to lose Ivan to the other woman. There was nothing to lose. He was just as empty and bitter as he had been when they started, and she no longer cared. He had been a terrible mistake, and all she wanted to do now was forget him and get back to work on what really mattered to her.

  Chapter 13

  Without Ivan and a job to distract her, Alex plunged into her work. She wrote constantly, as many hours a day as she was able, and it was a relief to lose herself in the book. She thought of him sometimes late at night when she finished, and compared it to the relationship she’d had with Scott. He had been jealous of her writing and tried to belittle her by tearing her down, in order to aggrandize himself. But with Ivan, it wasn’t her writing, since he had never read anything she’d written. It was everything, her dedication, her perseverance, her single-mindedness about life, her refusal to be swayed from the path toward what she wanted to achieve.

  She kept her eye on the goal, which infuriated him, because he had none. He only said he did, like the book he claimed he wanted to write but never would. He was too lazy to do it. He was sloppy about everything he did, and angry at those who weren’t. And even though he knew nothing of her secret career and association with the Alexander Green books, he sensed that she would go far one day, and hated her for it. He wanted all the prizes and praise for himself, but not to work for them. She wondered how many people like him there were in the world, jealous of others for what they had and couldn’t be bothered to do themselves. He was never happy for her, just angry. She felt as though a thousand-pound weight had been lifted from her when she told him to leave. He was always angry at her about something, it was exhausting to deal with, and have to constantly try to make it up to him for what he didn’t have, wouldn’t work for, and thought he deserved.

  And with her many hours of hard labor, Alex had finished the first draft of the book when Bert arrived in London in May. She had taken a room for him at a small hotel near her, and he was planning to stay for a week of intense collaboration. He was going to read and correct one section at a time. She would then make the changes he suggested, if she agreed with him—and she almost always did—and then they would move on to the next section. And while she was writing, he would have time to walk around and enjoy the city. He said he hadn’t been to London in years. And when he rang her doorbell, it was like a family reunion for her. She threw her arms around him and he hugged her and spoke to her gruffly as he walke
d in. He was wearing jeans and an old tweed jacket and hiking boots, and his beard and hair were as big a mess as ever. It was wonderful to see him. She had left Boston eleven months before and missed him.

  He sat down in a big, well-worn leather chair and she handed him a glass of red wine, which he accepted with pleasure, and told her she had gotten prettier in the last year, and thinner.

  “Are you eating?” he asked after the first sip of wine. “You don’t look it.”

  “I’ve been working really hard for the past month, so I’d be ready for you when you got here.”

  “Am I going to meet the boyfriend?” He was curious about him, and didn’t like what she had told him, but he didn’t want to scare her. He didn’t think it would come to a good end, for her. The boy she described had everything to gain from the relationship, and he couldn’t see what she’d get out of it, except a headache, and maybe great sex, which he didn’t ask. He had known she was a virgin when she left, but suspected she wasn’t now, not after seven months of dating a twenty-seven-year-old man. Even Alex wasn’t that saintly, and she was human and twenty-three years old, after all.

  She shook her head in answer to Bert’s question. “We broke up,” she said simply. “It wasn’t right.”

  “What does that mean?” Bert asked as he studied her intently. He didn’t think she seemed unhappy, just tired, and he knew she’d been writing diligently. “Did he dump you, or did you dump him?” He hoped the latter, from what he’d heard before. “Should I kick his ass? I will if he broke your heart. It’s fine with me, if you broke his. He probably deserved it.” She laughed at her mentor’s loyalty.

  “I ended it. He was angry all the time and jealous of everything I did, and he didn’t even know about the books. I never told him.”

  “I hope not.” Bert was relieved. “I told you to stay away from writers.”

  “He wasn’t. He claimed he wants to write a book one day, but he’s too lazy to even try. He just wants the glory and the money. He’s an editor, theoretically, but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Basically, he’s just a low-level assistant.”

  “Jesus, he would have really hated you if he knew about the Green books.”

  “I told him I did ghostwriting on the side. He saw a check once on my desk, and I had to tell him something to explain the money. I’m not sure he believed me. It didn’t help that I was lying to him and he sensed it. But anyway, he cheated on me, so that did it. I should have ended it sooner, or not started with him at all.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” Bert said with feeling. That was two relationships that had gone awry, and this one had obviously been more serious, more involved, and lasted longer. “Are you heartbroken?” He hoped not, she didn’t look it.

  “It’s kind of a relief,” she said sheepishly. “He was interfering with my work, and I hate that. I need a boyfriend who doesn’t want all my time and isn’t jealous of everything I do or accomplish.”

  “That would be nice.” He smiled at her, happy to see her again. He had missed her fiercely, even though they spoke on the phone a lot and had continued working together for the past eleven months, but it was different than being in the same room, face-to-face, and talking out a change or a problem. It would be much easier working now in London for the next week. “So where’s our book?”

  She picked the manuscript up from the desk and handed it to him. He set down his glass of wine, put on his glasses, and started glancing through the pages. He glanced up at her a couple of times and smiled, then alternately nodded and frowned while he was reading, and looked up at her once in surprise.

  “A sex scene?” She blushed as he nodded. “My, my.” But he didn’t object to it, and then he looked up and told her to go play while he got down to work and read it carefully. He’d liked the glimpses he’d had so far in the pages she’d sent him, and she had tightened it a lot since. Her style was stronger than ever, her voice clear, the language beautifully handled with skillful turns of phrase, and he already knew the plot and liked it.

  She cleaned up the kitchen, put some clothes away, and read some papers on her desk while Bert read, and she put the bottle of red wine next to him. But he was totally sober when he put the first few chapters down after three and a half hours. He made a few notations in pencil on the manuscript, but very few so far. She was nervous when she sat down across from him after he called her back into the living room.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s your best book so far. And the sex is nicely handled. It’s just masculine enough not to blow your cover, but actually quite elegantly done. And the plot development is dynamite. You already have me confused and I know the story.” She looked at where he was and nodded.

  “The murder is in the next chapter. But there are two of them, there’s another one later on. I added it. It makes the book more exciting.”

  “Same murderer?” he inquired.

  “Of course not. That would be boring.” He laughed at her comment, and went on reading after a short break. He had been reading for seven hours when he stopped and said his eyes were tired and he needed more wine. He had finished the bottle, but showed no sign of being drunk.

  She had bought dinner for them while he was reading, shepherd’s pie, and she warmed it in the microwave while they talked about the changes he thought she should make, but there weren’t many. It sounded like an easy fix for now.

  They went over the plot again during dinner, and two new characters he thought she should add, and one he felt served no purpose and preferred that she eliminate, or make bigger and more important to give him a raison d’être in the story. His suggestions always improved the books, and she knew they would this time too.

  He went back to his hotel after dinner, and she got to work, executing the changes he had outlined to her, and she stopped work at two A.M., pleased with the results.

  She fell into bed, and he was back at nine the next morning, with a bag of scones and croissants, and she set out jam on the table and clotted cream for the scones, which was very British but she’d grown used to it. And she made coffee for both of them, and showed him what she’d done the night before.

  “I like it,” he said, nodding approval, with croissant crumbs in his beard. He looked more like Einstein than ever, with his wild, unruly mane of white hair.

  They worked diligently for the entire week, and by the end of it, Bert had come up with more changes, which sparked more ideas for Alex and inspired her, and they were both delighted with the end result.

  “I stand by what I said when I got here. It’s your best book yet.”

  “I hope the publisher thinks so,” she said, always nervous about it. She drove herself hard, and never assumed anything. She was afraid each time that they wouldn’t like it, which kept her on her toes, and it was one of those things that Bert loved about her, and that she was willing to work hard.

  They went to the Rib Room for dinner to celebrate on the last night. The editing had gone well, the changes had been made. She had scanned and emailed the manuscript to Rose Porter to hand in to the publisher. Alex was as regular as clockwork, and her most recent published work was currently climbing bestseller lists at a rapid rate. She had become a regular feature on it by then, but was never blasé about it. It thrilled her every time when she got emails from Amanda congratulating her and telling her that one of her books was on the list week after week. This was another big bestseller. She was hitting one out of the park every time, and the Alexander Green books had developed a cult following among the elite cognoscenti of crime thrillers.

  Her publishers were still astounded that they were written by a young woman, and her identity was the best-kept secret in the business. The publicity department occasionally planted an item about the author, that he was hunting in Scotland, or researching a new book somewhere, or had just returned to his ranch in Montana to start work on a new thriller. It had taken on a life of its own, and at times Alex almost believed he was real, like some f
orm of alter ego. She always thought it was funny when they sent her a clipping about the elusive Alexander Green, or an alleged sighting of him somewhere unlikely, like Berlin.

  After Bert left, at the end of a very satisfying visit, Alex had to look for a new apartment, since the second lease on hers was expiring in June, and the owner was returning from a lengthy stay in Australia and wanted it back.

  This time it took her two weeks to find one, in Kensington. It was slightly smaller than the one she’d had, another furnished rental, which suited her, and she hoped to stay in London until later in the year, and then go back to Boston. She wasn’t ready to yet. An eighteen-month stay abroad still seemed reasonable. She hadn’t become an expatriate, it felt more like an extended student year abroad. She liked having her own place to live, although she missed the nuns and the warmth of being among them. She was happy too to move to an apartment where she hadn’t been with Ivan. She wanted to put the memories of him behind her. She had heard nothing from him for two months, and didn’t expect to ever hear from him again, and hoped she wouldn’t.

  The new apartment was bright and sunny, when there was sun in London. It belonged to a young woman, and Alex felt at home there, in the well-decorated one-bedroom flat, which had a feminine touch. It made her wonder if she should get her own place when she went back to the States, although she hated to move out of St. Dominic’s, which was home to her now.

  And Bill Buchanan had presented her with a big decision a few weeks before. She still owned the home that she had lived in with her father, which had been left to her as part of his estate. It wasn’t fancy, or overly large, but it represented a solid investment for her, along with his savings and the insurance policy, much of which she’d used to pay for her education. Their old house had been rented for nine years, since her father’s death, and their belongings were still in storage for a small monthly fee, which Bill paid automatically for her. There had been two tenants in the house for the last nine years. The most recent one had been there for five, and wanted to make an offer on the house if she was willing to sell it, and she didn’t know if she was. She hated to give it up, out of sentiment, and the rent was a steady income for her, which was nice to have, but she couldn’t see herself living there again, even years from now when she was married and had children. It would make her too sad. But giving it up forever was painful too, and severing a tie with her father and her past. She had told Bill she would think about it and hadn’t made a decision yet. He contacted her again in July, and said that her tenants wanted to know, because if she didn’t want to sell, they had an opportunity to buy another house, so she had to make up her mind.