by Dylan Newton
Kate listened raptly as Drake gave a brief synopsis of his historical romance, which he was calling Memory’s Lane, and found herself charmed. The hero was an injured World War II veteran with amnesia, who was searching for a girl he fell in love with during the war but couldn’t remember.
“I don’t want to tell you the ending, because I’m still tinkering with it, but…” Drake paused, pulling a stack of papers around an inch thick from his backpack. “I brought you this.”
Kate looked down at the papers, held together with a black binder clip at the corner. On the front, printed neatly in the middle of the page, was the title, Memory’s Lane, and by Drake Matthews.
She glanced up at him, in surprise. “You’re letting me read this? But I thought you didn’t let anyone read the first draft of your books?”
“It’s just the first seven chapters. I’ve got more written, but I don’t write in sequence, so this is all I have at the beginning. I’ll never publish it—my fans don’t want to read a historical romance written by the Knight of Nightmares, and writing under a pseudonym isn’t a viable solution. With all of the social media presence you need as a less established name, and with the inherent in-person signings, speaking engagements, and virtual events necessary to grow an audience—orchestrating a pen name personality’s promotions, in addition to maintaining my own, sounds…exhausting. But still, I’d…” Drake hesitated, pushing up his black glasses that Kate now knew were more of a shield from the world than an actual necessity. “I’d like to hear what you think about it, since this romance was largely inspired. By you.”
“B-by me?” Kate touched the manuscript draft, a feeling of something like awe and surprise and sweet satisfaction sweeping through her. “That’s—wow. I don’t know what to say.”
Drake’s expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes held something that looked like…worry? Was he really afraid that she wouldn’t like his book?
Then Kate remembered his biggest fear: rejection. She closed the distance between them, standing on her tiptoes to reach around his neck and tug him to her lips for a kiss so deep, he dropped his backpack. He slipped his hand inside her robe, cupping a breast, kneading it and gently tweaking her nipple until Kate finally was the one to pull away, which she did with a gasp.
“You’re going to be late. But I needed to show you how flattered I am to be your muse,” Kate whispered, touching the edge of his newly clean-shaven jaw. “I can’t wait to read it. And I think you’re wrong about people not wanting to read Memory’s Lane just because it’s a different genre. Your fans love you because of your incredible writing—not solely for your ability to scare them. This book deserves to be published, especially if it has been living in your head for so long.”
Drake snorted.
“Yeah. You saw all those fans lined up out there.” He gestured toward the wide world outside their window. “Do you really think they want romance? From me? If I wrote a happily ever after, they’d string me up and beat me like a piñata. Instead of lining up for autographs, they’d be vying for a chance to throw rotten tomatoes at me.”
“I think you’re misjudging your readers.” Kate shook her head. “They’ll love you for showing that the Knight of Nightmares is like a Milky Way bar—hard on the outside, but sweet and ooey-gooey on the inside. Besides, writing romance gives you access to a whole new set of readers, who will all fall in love with you—”
Kate stopped speaking just in time. What had almost rolled off her tongue was Just like I have. She reminded herself that she’d known this man for less than a month—too soon for declarations of love. She hadn’t even told her best friend about their relationship status change.
Imani. Damn. She cleared her throat, stuffing away that thought for later as she finished her sentence. “—and your writing, and you’ll have a whole new set of Drake Matthews fans!”
He captured her hand on his face, bringing it to his lips. He kissed her palm, and then cupped the back of her neck, giving her a final, lingering kiss.
“It’s kind of you to say. And while it’s never going to be published, it means a lot to me to get it written—to honor my grandfather’s legacy and somehow pay tribute to Ryker’s loss. Hopefully, after it’s finished, I’ll finally be able to get my head screwed on straight and get Twisted Twin done and to my editor.” Drake checked his watch, ran a frustrated hand through his hair, and backed toward the suite’s door. “The car’s downstairs. I’ve got to go. Text me when you get back to Wellsville. Kate, I cannot wait for this launch to be over with.”
Kate frowned, setting the manuscript down, and followed him to the door.
“Why is that?”
“So you can have the satisfaction of coordinating an EVPLEX-worthy event, and I can finish this historical romance, and we can both move on to a different chapter in our lives. One that’s…together?”
The last came out more as a question than a statement, and when Drake leaned in for one last kiss, Kate’s heart beat faster than the water rushing over the falls behind them.
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
Kate showered and got ready as soon as he left, packing her things and heading downstairs to the hotel’s café, her mind busy thinking about the future. For the first time, it wasn’t in terms of successful events or upcoming deadlines or checked-off spreadsheets; it was a grand anticipation of her own dreams. Of being fulfilled by more than just her career.
In a haze of happiness, Kate ordered a breakfast sandwich and another coffee. Just as she’d sat down at a tiny bistro table to eat and daydream, the sound of her phone pierced Kate’s musings. She fumbled for her cell phone in her purse, thinking it was Drake and he’d forgotten something, but she was surprised to see Imani’s name on the readout.
When she answered the call, it was only five seconds before her smile disappeared.
“The town council rejected our permit for the mechanical spider,” Imani began, and at Kate’s answering groan, she continued. “And that’s not the worst of it.”
Kate listened in horror as Imani told her that they’d also rejected her request to close part of the street down in front of Drake’s house.
“But I spoke with one of the council leaders at the fall festival,” Kate said, incredulous. “Mrs. Nowakowski said we had her vote, and it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, I heard from Drake’s mom that the whole launch was a boon to Wellsville’s economy and that the downtown merchants were all planning a sort of sidewalk bazaar to take advantage of the readers and news crews arriving.”
“According to my sources, one of the councilmen who has apparently been on the council since the dawn of time and holds a great deal of clout in town—some guy whose last name was Penny—said that the whole idea was preposterous and an embarrassment to Wellsville. He said he’d seen what sort of people ran these events, and he called us lewd and without class. They voted it down by one vote.”
The man’s name filtered through Kate’s memory, and then she jolted upright. Councilman Penny—was that the same Mr. Penny who’d witnessed her climbing Drake like a koala on her first day on the job? The neighbor who, according to Drake, then called Patty, telling her she should be ashamed of her son’s lewd behavior on his front lawn?
“Oh, no,” Kate said, the Mr. Penny and Councilman Penny phrases matching too keenly to be coincidence. “No! This can’t be happening. Not this close to the launch! Can’t we appeal, or something?”
“Not until the next meeting, which won’t be until mid-November. I don’t know what to do.” Imani’s voice was a mix of anger and frustration. “We’re going to have to scale way back. You’ll need to pull out all stops to at least come up with something passable before Saturday. I’m so sorry, Kate. I guess that puts a stake in the heart of your EVPLEX plans, doesn’t it?”
“I’d pretty much abandoned that last night,” Kate mumbled in reply, and before Imani could ask any questions, her friend’s phone beeped with an incoming call.
“I’ve got to go.
That’s my boss,” Imani said. “You’re getting a car back here soon, right? I know Trisha will have some ideas, and you will too, so let’s touch base in an hour?”
“Don’t worry,” Kate said. “We still have loads of decorations we can use. I’ll…think of something.”
Clicking to end the call, Kate put her head in her hands, dejected. Truth was, her mind was void of any ideas of how to salvage this at all. So much of the launch plan had been riding on the fans having experienced the street maze, featuring a vignette from each of Drake’s books, and then culminating in his front yard, where the mechanical spider would be dangled over each VIP guest as they took their souvenir photo in front of the Drake mansion. Now, all that planning was shot, and she was back to square one.
A blank spreadsheet. A blank page.
Staring down at her things scattered across the hotel’s bistro table, she wondered at how the day’s forecast could have turned so quickly from magical to miserable. Damn that Mr. Penny and his judgey ways! She’d hoped to speak with enough council people at the festival, but she’d been so caught up with helping out Drake with his costume, then carving pumpkins and having a good time, that she’d only talked to one person on the council that day. She’d let her own happiness get in the way of doing her job, and it made her want to bash her head into the nearest wall and cry. She’d have been upset if this was a normal client, but the fact that her actions had caused it to happen to the man she’d allowed both in her bed and in her heart?
Drake had trusted her with everything—allowed her every liberty to plan—and now she was going to be left with…what exactly? What epic night could she possibly plan for this man who had shown her she could love again, when she only had three days?
Kate’s eyes caught at the top page of Drake’s manuscript. Without meaning to, she read the first paragraph.
Sam strode down a dark stretch of one of Picadilly’s mist-soaked cobbled streets toward his commanding officer’s hideout, the thick fog clinging to his booted feet and legs like a wispy shroud. His mood was as bleak as the English weather—that never-ending cold drizzle. As he brought the ragged ends of his Da’s old peacoat around him to hide his tuxedo, he had no idea that the empty, dank misery of his life was about to change; along with a sweeping, all-consuming passion, the universe was about to deliver a gut-punch.
In spite of the recent bad news, Kate’s cheeks burned pleasantly at the words “a sweeping, all-consuming passion.” Hadn’t he said the book had been, in many ways, inspired by her?
Signaling the barista for another cup of coffee, Kate glanced at her watch, an idea of how to save Drake’s launch tugging at her mind. What if she could tie something from his love for vintage, classic things to his horror writing?
Kate tapped her lucky pen against her lip. Her car wasn’t due for another hour. She’d have the entire trip from Niagara Falls back to Wellsville to figure out this launch debacle. But right now, her gut told her the answer might just be in Drake’s romance novel. She’d just read a few pages…
After the first chapter, she was hooked.
Her coffee grew cool, then cold, as she read voraciously, the pages seeming to turn themselves as she immersed herself in the love story of Sam and Ingrid. Something in those pages—the sweet nostalgia of black-and-white movies, vintage fashions, forgotten manners of days gone by—triggered an idea for how to save this launch and surprise Drake in the process.
Inspired, she stood from the bistro table, grabbing her purse to pull out money for the check as she called Imani.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, once her best friend picked up. “Meet me at the pumpkin patch by the cemetery on South Main Street in two hours and bring a car. Or better yet, a truck. Oh, and we’re going to need every can of black and white spray paint they’ve got in town.”
She lay down a twenty on top of the breakfast bill and checked her watch. Noticing she had only minutes to get outside the hotel lobby to catch her ride, Kate grabbed her rolling suitcase and rushed out, phone to her ear chatting to Imani the entire time, excited she might be able to fix this after all.
Behind her, the server called out. “Miss! You forgot—”
“Money’s on the table!” Kate shouted over her shoulder as she shoved open the doors to the portico outside, jogging toward the car she’d spotted from the bistro windows with her name on a card in the window.
Her heart thudded wildly as she threw herself into the car and began to detail to Imani her revised plan for salvaging this launch.
Chapter 20
Excuse me, Mr. Matthews?” The young man in charge of guests in the green room tugged at the wrinkled yellow-and-white-striped tie around his neck, loosening the knot slightly, as he peered around the studio’s door to call to the author, who still sat in the makeup artist’s chair. “They’ll be ready for you in about five minutes.”
“That’s fine,” Drake said, and would have nodded but for the woman applying some sort of dark cream to his face.
“We’re almost done, Mr. Matthews. Just a little more powder so you don’t shine…there!” The woman, dressed in a long, flowing floral dress and brown cowboy boots, complete with a cursive monogram, stepped back to survey her work. “We’ll let that dry on you and then I’ll remove those tissues from your collar. What do you think?”
Drake surveyed himself in the mirror lit by large, round bulbs set into either side of the vanity and tried not to grimace. The uniformity of his complexion, and the way she’d darkened and filled in his eyebrows, made him look like a marionette—a puppet whose invisible strings kept him sitting straight in the chair, and kept him from raging or, worse, breaking down. But he supposed the makeup artist knew what she was doing, and he shrugged, forcing a smile despite the pit in his stomach as his phone buzzed in his pocket for the billionth time.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m not paid to think. I’m paid to write.”
Four hours ago, after John landed the helicopter in New York City, Drake’s phone had begun blowing up.
First, it was his brother Zander.
“Duuuude,” the voice mail began, “why didn’t you tell me you wrote smut? I love smut. I want the sex scenes. Pronto.”
Before he’d had a chance to return Zander’s call, his mother had buzzed in.
“Honey!” she had sniffed, her voice watery with tears. “I just read your secret release, and I’ll put aside for a second that you shouldn’t keep such things from your mother, to tell you how much I love this story! Your Grandpa Matthews would be so proud to see you writing down some of his adventures in England, but sweetheart…you do know that he didn’t meet Nana Grace there, don’t you? And that scene where they kiss? Well, this is fiction, right?”
It’d taken him all of five minutes to pull up the online news story, and subsequent chapters, released in a blog called The Nightmare Sentinel, a website run by an unauthorized fan club of Drake Matthews novels. The site had published the first seven chapters of Memory’s Lane.
The same seven chapters he’d given to Kate just hours ago.
Right after he pretty much laid his heart at her feet.
Apparently, Kate had moved faster than he’d thought possible—faster, even, than Rachel, who’d at least taken a few months to publish it all—giving the public new fuel for their ridicule. It stung him in a way Rachel’s complicity never had, in that he’d been so gullible with Kate. He’d believed so much in her innate goodness that he’d never considered the benefit to her in outing him to his horror fans. He’d written the romance in such a way that he’d somehow confused his fictional heroine with reality, and as much as he wanted to lash out at Kate, lash out at the world, he knew he had only himself to blame.
Once again, he’d been the author of his own misfortune.
It took seemingly nanoseconds before the major news agencies had picked up the blog and had called his publicist to confirm if Drake Matthews’s event planner was indeed Kate Sweet, and if the two of them had been at the hotel in Niaga
ra Falls. It wasn’t Imani’s fault she’d confirmed those facts. When the news agencies first called, Imani had thought it was in response to press releases she had sent out on the book launch. Or, at worst, they’d gotten a picture of Kate and Drake together and were planning to print some sort of gossip column about the Knight of Nightmares finding his princess.
“I never dreamed it was some lie like this!” Imani said, her voice fiery with indignation. “We’ll sue the hell out of them for libel, Drake! My boss has spoken to Cerulean Books’ legal team, and they’re forcing the idiots who write the Sentinel to take down the chapters immediately. I don’t know whose they are, but they obviously aren’t yours—”
“They are,” Drake had said, his throat tight. “And there’s only one way they could’ve gotten hold of them.”
Seven chapters of his historical romance had been leaked to the media. Kate was the only person who had them. She was the culprit. There was no other logical explanation.
By dinner that night, Drake’s voice mail was full. He’d stopped answering his phone after Imani’s call, and then the call from his agent, followed by his editor. After explaining to them all that the chapters were his, but he’d never meant for them to be seen by anyone, he’d put his phone on airplane mode. He hunkered down during the much-too-brief ride to midtown Manhattan for the first day of the publicity tour. He didn’t bother going over the talking points Imani had previously given him for the upcoming launch of Halloween Hacker. Why waste his time? The hosts would spend a perfunctory five seconds on that book before grilling him on-air about the elephant in the room—the story that was way juicier than his tenth horror launch. No way would the media waste an opportunity to ridicule him in person, about how the Knight of Nightmares dared to write a love story.
He’d briefly scanned his missed call log to see that Kate had tried to reach him almost a dozen times and left about as many voice mails. He hadn’t listened to any of them. What could she possibly have to say about how the chapters were leaked? Hearing her lie to him would hurt worse than seeing what damage her leak had already done.
