Between the Covers

by Louisa Masters

  “Fairly well,” he told Léo. “I’m not convinced I’ve got one scene exactly right yet, but I’ll get there. There shouldn’t be any problem with meeting the deadline.”

  “Good.” Léo nodded, then cast him a sideways glance. “Which scene was that?”

  Malik laughed. “I’ll send it to you when it’s done,” he promised. His cousin was his best friend, his brother in all but blood, his staunchest supporter—and his biggest fan. Without Léo, he never would have finished his first book, stuck in the mire of a plot hole, uncertainty and self-doubt overtaking him. Between the two of them and a bottle of whisky, they’d spent a long night hashing out the possibilities, and Malik’s natural confidence had reasserted itself. That book had been taken on by the third agent he sent it to, snapped up by his publisher immediately, and had earned out the modest advance—not that he needed the money—far sooner than anyone had expected. His second book had hit best-seller lists, and things had gotten better since then. He wasn’t a list-topper, but his sales were steady and he had a solid fan base.

  Most authors would be thrilled by that. For Malik, it was a double-edged sword. He wrote under a pseudonym and viciously guarded his privacy and real identity. Both his agent and editor had initially urged him to publish under his real name, claiming that the publicity they could leverage with it would spur him to instant bestsellerdom, but he’d refused. He already had the press poking into his life; he didn’t want to give them more reason to do so. He also didn’t want to use an accident of birth to drive sales. He was wealthy because his parents were wealthy (and because Léo was a financial genius), and the resulting party lifestyle in his early-to-mid twenties had made him a recognizable face in the tabloid press, but he wanted to sell books because they were good, not because he’d featured on several eligible bachelor lists and several other “most notorious” lists. That was a naïve and idealistic stand for him to take, but he could afford to, so why shouldn’t he? He loved to write and treated it as a career in all other ways, but he would not compromise on keeping his real identity separate from his author self.

  It had made some elements of marketing and promotion difficult—he made no appearances, did no public signing events. He did do virtual signings twice a year through several bookstores he’d established relationships with—readers could order signed copies at no additional cost, and Malik would ship the personalized books to the stores. His author social media was mostly run by an assistant at his agent’s office—for an additional fee, of course—who also managed his fan mail. He occasionally logged on and posted something, but never anything that could identify him. Fortunately for him, his work didn’t attract the kind of rabidly obsessed readers that some other authors had. Most of his readers were happy to enjoy his books and share their feelings in the appropriate forums without being tempted to stalk him or otherwise invade his life.

  He got stuck in to his revisions and managed to work through most of the changes he wanted to make before the pilot warned them to strap in for landing. While Léo went to wake the sleeping puppies, he stashed his laptop safely away. By the time Dani and Ben had blinked themselves to consciousness, he was casually playing some inane game on his phone.

  “Sleep well?” he asked. Ben stared at him blankly, but Dani nodded.

  “Sure. Sleep. Yes. Coffee?”

  He and Léo both laughed. “Not right now,” Léo said regretfully. “But as soon as we land, we will get you some.”

  When he entered his apartment, he found it sparkling clean and smelling fresh. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence; the concierge ensured that all apartments in the building were visited by the vetted housekeeping service regularly, whether the resident was home or away. It had never before occurred to Malik that many people had to close up their homes when they went abroad and then go through the process of opening them when they returned—at least, not until Ben and Dani had dragged him through the process of packing up Dani’s house.

  Sighing, he left his luggage by the door and went to pour himself a drink. He’d unpack later; first he wanted to check in with his agent and let her know he’d be back on his normal schedule now and have the revised manuscript to her on time.

  Sitting on his balcony, enjoying the warm late-spring air, he waited for the call to connect and then to be put through to Elise.

  His agent was a charming but efficient woman in her thirties, and although Malik had been one of her first clients, she now had a list that featured many best-selling authors. He certainly wasn’t her most profitable client, but she treated him as though he shat gold. He suspected it had more to do with his personal life and contacts than his books but wasn’t above using it to advantage—hence the assistant who managed his social media.

  “So,” she concluded, having run quickly through the list of changes and dates, “there are no problems, then.”

  “None at all,” he confirmed, his mind already wandering. He wanted to get the last of the changes made this evening so he could tag along over the next few days as Ben and Léo took Dani around Monaco and Nice and the surrounding countryside. Then there was the trip up to Paris planned for next week.

  “Well, there is one more thing we need to discuss,” Elise said firmly, and his attention snapped back to the call. She only ever used that tone when she had something to tell him that he wasn’t going to like.

  “Oh?”

  “The assistant who looks after your social media is due to go on maternity leave in six weeks and has already advised us that she doesn’t wish to return to work. The agency owner has decided that rather than hire a replacement, we will redistribute her confidential work to other assistants, and her other tasks will be undertaken by interns.”

  His stomach sank. “And there will be nobody who can manage my social media?”

  He could almost hear her shrug. “Not consistently, unless we give it to the interns, and given the rotating nature of those jobs, I’m not certain we can trust them not to try to investigate your identity.”

  He sighed. “Thank you for letting me know—and for taking on the task all these years. What do you suggest?” Because he knew his own limitations, and there was no way he could reliably and consistently post as he should.

  “Well….” She hesitated. “You could hire a publicist, but that would likely mean a company and another group of people with potential access to your name. Ideally, you should find an assistant. There are some excellent virtual assistants in the book industry who can manage social media and charge by the hour. Arrange for them to be paid through your lawyer and keep all communication via your author email.”

  Something in her voice told him she had more on her mind. “But?” he prompted, and she laughed.

  “Am I so transparent? So much for my poker face!”

  “I’m sure if you wanted to keep secrets from me, you could,” he assured her. “But this is obviously something you want to share…?”

  “Yes.” Her pause spoke volumes. “I think you should consider hiring a full-time assistant.”

  Malik assimilated that. A full-time assistant?

  “I don’t need a full-time assistant,” he pointed out. Surely managing his social media wasn’t a full-time job?

  “I disagree. Let me explain why,” she said persuasively, and Malik, curious, agreed. “At the moment, your social media presence is minimal. That’s purely because we could only allocate so much time to it. If it was expanded, you would likely see a corresponding increase in sales.”

  “But couldn’t a virtual assistant charging by the hour do that for me also? I may be missing something, but even with an expanded social media presence, I don’t see it as needing a full-time employee.”

  “Correct,” she agreed. “But if you had a full-time employee with access to an expense account, they could also look at advertising. Your marketing is minimal, much more so than any author should have. You’re not interested in doing it for yourself and haven’t hired anyone to do it because of the complications in get
ting people involved with your author persona. I have no doubt that a dedicated advertising campaign and an expanded online presence will send your sales soaring. I know you don’t need the money,” she pressed on when he tried to interrupt. “But you need to consider the state of the industry. Traditional publishing is under a lot of pressure right now, and a lot of good, solid authors are being dropped in favor of those who can ensure sensational sales numbers. You sell well, but not brilliantly, and if your publisher decides not to offer a contract for your next book in favor of someone who will go the extra mile to market themselves, I don’t know that any contract I can get elsewhere will be as good. And since you don’t even like to do your own social media, I doubt you’ll want to self-publish.”

  Malik shuddered at the thought. Find his own cover artist? Editor? Copy editor? Proofreader? Have to deal with vendors? Formatting? Marketing? It was bad enough that he was bombarded with questions and requests for information by the people who looked after that—having to do it all himself was just not going to happen.

  “No, I don’t want to self-publish,” he assured her. “So, expand social media and other marketing, and advertise. Is that really a full-time job?”

  “No, although when you factor in the time needed to design the promotional graphics and monitor the ads, the number of hours does creep up. But you could also use your assistant to coordinate the virtual signings—I know you hate how much time that takes. You’d still have to sign the books, of course, but you’ll be amazed by how much quicker it will go if you’re given a stack that has a Post-it Note with the reader’s name on it flagging the title page. They could also do some beta reading for you. Right now, the only person who sees your books before me is your cousin. Another set of eyes is always useful. They could handle a lot of the more time-consuming research and fact-checking. You’re meticulous about these things, and we both know it takes a lot of time.”

  “I like doing the research myself,” he pointed out, but his mind was whirling. It would be helpful to have another beta reader—Léo was good, but his perspective was very similar to Malik’s, and often the feedback from Elise and his editor was that “most people don’t think this way.” Since his protagonist was from a background not too dissimilar from Malik’s own, he could get away with a lot there, but secondary characters from middle-class or disadvantaged backgrounds sometimes caused him problems. An assistant could also deal with his fan mail. His publisher often forwarded emails that were sent to them, and although he hadn’t made his author email address public, it had somehow gotten out there, so his inbox was frequently inundated. Once a week he allocated time to skim over the emails and usually just sent a form “thank you for your email, I’m so glad you enjoy the series” reply, but even that took hours and hours of writing time out of every month.

  “I’ll consider it,” he said abruptly, interrupting Elise’s persuasive comments. “I have a few weeks, yes?”

  “Possibly a month, but no more,” she warned. “You want to allow time for smooth handover of duties.”

  “Thank you. I will think about this carefully and decide the best way to go forward.” He would also do some research into the state of the publishing industry. Because he was so rabid about his privacy, he didn’t have much (read: any) contact with other authors. His isolation was by choice, but perhaps he’d done himself a disservice. No contact with others in his industry meant no access to gossip and rumor. And lately he’d been so immersed in writing this book that he hadn’t been keeping up with industry journals and blogs. That was poor business sense all around. It was time to open his eyes and make certain he knew what was going on.

  Chapter Five

  A week into her stay in Monaco, Dani wondered why she’d waited so long to come. Admittedly, her visit was probably different from the average tourist’s. She was staying in a multimillion-dollar apartment (very multimillion) and dining at exclusive restaurants. If she’d come with Ben when he first arrived, even with his windfall they wouldn’t have been living anywhere near so luxuriously.

  Since her arrival, she’d hit all the tourist hot spots, even the ones she had no interest in, at Ben’s insistence. Léo and even Malik accompanied them several times, but Dani had quickly learned that an expression of polite interest meant they were deadly bored and had asked if she could have some one-on-one time with Ben. Léo had quickly hidden his relief and graciously acquiesced, going along with the pretense, but Malik had laughed and thanked her.

  “When you’re done each day with Ben’s grand tour of architecture and museums,” he’d said, “I’ll join you for the parties and restaurants.” Ben had pouted for a moment, but the fact was, it was a lot more fun with just the two of them. Dani didn’t feel like she had to explain private jokes, for one. She and Ben often thought along the same wavelength, and others tended to get lost. Plus, although she’d gotten to know Léo, at least, pretty well via Skype over the past year, there still wasn’t that ease of manner that develops between close friends. It was coming, she could tell—already she was getting a sense of what Léo and Malik would find funny, things they would enjoy or dislike—but it wasn’t quite there yet, and until then, she didn’t want to monopolize their time. Truthfully, she also wanted to give them time to get used to her. She knew she could be a bit hard to take sometimes, what with being opinionated, outspoken, and irreverent.

  Still, their evenings out, breakfasts at the yacht club, and the glittering parties had been just as much fun as her time exploring with Ben. She’d never eaten so much good food before in her life, and one of the first things she and Ben had done after their arrival was hit the shops, so she had a fabulous new wardrobe of evening wear. They’d carefully negotiated on that—Dani had wanted to pay for her new clothes herself, but Ben had pointedly told her that after she had made him spend a fortune on clothes for himself when he first arrived, he was determined to spend an equal amount on her. That had stumped her—never would she have expected her notoriously tightfisted bestie to willingly spend large sums of cash—but in the end they’d agreed to split the cost fifty-fifty, and Dani would take over cooking duties when they ate at home. So far, it was working well, and she now had some absolutely incredible clothes… that she would probably never wear again once she went home, but she was steadfastly not thinking about that.

  Tomorrow, they were going to Paris, and she literally could not wait. Unlike many young Australians, she and Ben had never done the backpacking through Europe thing—nor even a cheap bus tour. They’d both gone straight to uni, where they met, from high school, and although they’d talked several times about deferring for a semester and traveling, in the end it had never happened. Then when they were done with school, “real life” kicked in, and things had never quite lined up for them to travel the globe. They’d managed some overseas trips, but nothing as far as Europe. It had been tremendously hard for Dani to stay behind when Ben had embarked on his European Odyssey, and she knew it had been just as difficult for him to leave her—at one point she’d needed to talk him out of canceling the trip. But she was here now, in amazing Monaco, and tomorrow she was going to Paris. She and Ben had already roughly planned out everywhere else they were going to visit before she had to leave—the list was long, and Dani suspected they wouldn’t get through it all, but it would be thrilling to try.

  She added a few tops to the bag she was packing, and then went to the wardrobe to decide which of her fabulous evening dresses she would bring. When Lucien had called a few days ago, he’d warned her that his parents were hosting a formal party in her honor—and wasn’t that freaky? Léo had assured her that it was basically just an excuse for a party, and all she’d have to do was eat, drink, and mingle, which she would do at any party anyway. He’d added something about a champagne toast, but she wasn’t clear on the details of that.

  Whatever the party was for, she’d learned that when people here said “formal,” they actually meant it. Cute dresses that could transition from office wear to cocktail w
ith the right jewelry and shoes were not acceptable. She had several suitable dresses she hadn’t worn yet but decided on a royal blue silk dress that clung in all the right places and flowed everywhere else and that Malik had said looked stunning on her.

  Not that she was choosing it because of that.

  Nope.

  She just liked it.

  It suited her.

  It had cost a fortune, and wearing it only once would be criminal.

  Her decision had nothing to do with a clever, funny, unbelievably handsome and wickedly charming man complimenting her.

  Dani sighed and sank down on the bed. Who was she kidding? She was totally attracted to Malik and it was screwing with her head.

  For starters, despite the compliment and the occasional admiring glance that told her he was definitely aware of her as a woman, he’d never given any indication he wanted to act on that—not since the kiss-that-never-was. Sometimes she almost hated her bestie for interrupting them that day at her house, but in reality, it was probably for the best. They were friends, or rapidly getting there. Dani was on holiday—she had to go back to her real life eventually, and although she wasn’t opposed to a holiday fling, there was no way she’d put stress on her friendship with Ben by flinging with his boyfriend’s cousin. She knew herself too well—if she was going to embark on a short-term-only relationship, it had to be with someone she was guaranteed to never see again. Otherwise, even if she wasn’t interested in more, she would get unwanted feelings of jealousy and possessiveness. It was entirely unreasonable, but that was how she was and why she’d never remained friends with any of her exes. Even though she was happy to have moved on, and thrilled that they had, she was still possessive of them.