Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  “Is that why you volunteer?”

  A prickle of heat spread across his cheekbones. The question embarrassed him. “Yeah. I work with teenage boys who didn’t get the chances I got, didn’t have someone teaching them like my parents taught me. I’m trying to offer them a different fork in the road.”

  “Does it work?”

  “It has a few times. Time will tell how many of them stick with it, but so far, it’s encouraging.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Your character in your first novel. She ends the book living a half-life, right? She starts off thinking her life is on this shiny path and then she ends feeling like it’s much less straightforward. It’s like she doesn’t believe things will ever be uncomplicated again, like there’s always going to be this . . . interior grayness? Does that make sense?”

  She gave him a small smile. “I don’t think you’re as bad at metaphors as you think you are.”

  “I’m going to ask the million-dollar question here for every writer: would you rather win all the literary awards or would you rather hit the bestseller list?”

  “I know that’s supposed to be an easy way to identify whether you’re more interested in the money or the fame, but I think it’s a more complicated question than that.”

  He smiled. “Of course you do.”

  She gave his fingers a light squeeze and it made him want to reach over and haul her into his lap, to kiss her the way he’d meant to out on the deck. But he’d held back because it had felt dishonest to let her open up to him physically without telling her that he’d read that memoir and seen more of her than she’d offered to share and the same feeling crept over him again.

  “My answer will surprise you, I think,” she said. “I’d rather be on the bestseller lists. Not because I want the money. But because I want people to read what I write. And that’s one way to know they’re reading you.”

  “But then you’d love it if your book had shiny award stickers all over it too?”

  She laughed. “Exactly. Because then it would mean that everyone thinks I’m as good as…”

  “Your mother?”

  “As I want to be.”

  But he sensed he’d been closer to the mark than she wanted him to be.

  He twined his free fingers with hers, and now they both sat hands clasped, arms on knees, as they leaned toward each other. “I have another idea.”

  There was a long pause. She bit her lip, and it made him want to do the same thing to it.

  “What is it?” Her voice had acquired a slight huskiness.

  He swallowed hard and ordered his mind back to the business at hand. “A new challenge. A writing one.”

  “Writing?” She blinked at him like she was trying to understand what the word meant.

  “Yeah. The first one worked well, right?”

  She straightened, and her hands slipped from his. He could almost see her thinking switch from the attraction that hummed between them to the more practical thought of writing. He regretted it, but it was necessary. There was no point in having amazing chemistry with her if they couldn’t connect in other ways. It was how they always ended up owing each other apologies, and there had to be a way to fix that.

  “A writing challenge.” The huskiness had melted out of her voice, and now a bright note of curiosity had crept in. “What is it?”

  “What if we each wrote a thorough outline of the rest of each other’s novel—more like a synopsis with complete paragraphs—and did it in our own style. What if I imagined yours in the style of mine, and you did the same thing?”

  It was her turn to shift uneasily. “I don’t know. It takes me forever to write even a couple of pages as it is, and Valeria is impatient for me to get her a new novel. I don’t think I have the time to go on that long of a detour just because.”

  “Then don’t. And don’t think of it as a detour. Let’s each commit to wrapping up each other’s novel in five pages. We won’t have time to get bogged down at the line level, but if it’s five single-spaced pages, it’ll give us plenty of time to do a pretty detailed sketch of how we think each other’s book should end. That’s what we’re talking here: a sketch, not a marble sculpture.”

  “But what’s the value?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I love about it. All I know is that I found a new level after our last challenge, and I’m the kind of guy who likes to push.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Is that skepticism on your face?” Her expression changed to something an awful lot like “Duh.” “I figured you would be the first person to accuse me of being too pushy,” he said.

  “Only about some things.”

  He had an inkling he knew what she meant; she was put out that he hadn’t kissed her earlier, but the devil in him wanted her to say it. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  Whatever he thought would happen, it wasn’t the sudden wicked glint in her eyes. She rose and leaned over him, forcing him to lean back against his chair to keep watching her. She placed her hands on his shoulders as if to keep him there, but she didn’t have to worry. The jaws of life couldn’t have gotten him out of that chair as she lowered her mouth to his, and settled onto his lap. When she kissed him, there was none of the tentative exploration that had marked the beginning of their first kiss by the lake. She was picking up where they had left off, and he was happy to let her, except for one thing: he reached around her, and as she set her clever mouth to work, he unbuckled the strap of his stupid watch and tossed it on the table, not once breaking their connection. But he felt her smile and then he quit thinking about anything else as he slid his hands into her hair and deepened the kiss, getting lost in the heat that hijacked all his rational thought.

  She was incredible. There weren’t enough metaphors to capture her taste, her touch, her smell. She was sugar and jasmine and silk.

  When she finally broke away, it was only to rest her forehead against his. The breath she drew was shaky.

  “Wow.” It was all he could say. That was bad for a guy in the word business. He didn’t care, letting his eyes fall closed as he let her rich brown hair slide through his fingers.

  After a minute, she straightened and returned to her chair. “I can be pushy too.”

  “That just went to the top of the list as your best quality.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  He wrinkled his forehead. “What?”

  “Your writing challenge. I accept.”

  He shook his head to clear it, as if that were a thing that ever worked. “Right, writing challenge.”

  “Five pages and we finish each other’s stories in a detailed synopsis?”

  “Yes. It means we have to trade what we each have now. How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t normally let anyone see my unrevised work. But.”

  “But?”

  “But it can’t be any worse than your unrevised work.” She flashed him a grin. “I’ll risk it.”

  He gestured up and down the length of his body. “This is me, taking the high road. Take a mental picture because it almost never happens.”

  “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

  He held up a warning finger. “Don’t go spreading any rumors about how I sometimes do the right thing. I’ll deny it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bad boy of publishing, complete with leather biker jacket. Got it.”

  “Wait, are you mocking my leather jacket again?”

  She only answered him with a fake innocent smile.

  “Just so you know, I got that jacket from a biker whose grandson I helped out of a legal jam. I earned that jacket.”

  “Of course you did. Talk about someone with layers.” She shook her head. “It’s irritating because now I have one less thing to make fun of. I’m running out. Do you keep your suit of shining armor lying around here too?”

  “I’m not showing it to you. You’ve lost your armor-viewing privileges.”

  She leaned t
oward him and ran her finger lightly down his arm. “I bet I can win them back.”

  He slipped out of his chair and escaped behind the kitchen island again. “Stay back, witch woman. I’m trying to think.” Although thinking looked far less interesting than seeing where the mischievous expression on her face might lead them. “We should set a deadline for this challenge. How about next weekend? Oh, wait,” he said before she could even agree. “I have the Publisher’s Showcase in New York next weekend. That won’t work.”

  “I’ll be there too.”

  “Really?” And then he wanted to kick himself for his surprised tone. The event was the biggest in the book industry every year, full of hundreds of publishers all pushing their upcoming releases to bookstore and library buyers, trying to convince them that they each had the next guaranteed hit on their hands. Generally, only authors with high profile projects were brought in for appearances by their publishers, and only if their books were already available as advanced reader copies complete with a cover design. “I just meant that I didn’t know you had a book ready.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But my mother asked me to come as her guest. She’s releasing her first essay collection this summer, and she got a huge advance, so her publisher expects her to show up and smile for the purchasing agents.”

  “That’s great. You have to let me take you to my favorite New York restaurant. It’s this out-of-the-way place, but you wouldn’t believe what they can do with fresh fish.”

  For the first time since their earlier tense moments, her lips lost their curve, and her eyes took on a shadowed look. It wasn’t regret. It was more like she had put up her guard again. Why?

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that,” she said, and he wasn’t surprised. He’d sensed the rejection coming when her expression shifted. “I’m there less than two days, and I’ve already got more commitments than I know how to keep.”

  “Your mother is keeping you hopping?” She lifted a shoulder like she was agreeing, but it wasn’t an actual answer, and his instincts told him she was hiding something. Why would she need to hide anything from him? Unless . . . “I guess Luther Van Dijk will be there? Seems like the exact kind of guy some of these publishers would want to ingratiate themselves to.”

  “He’ll be there.”

  “So is that one of the commitments you need to keep?” Jealousy twisted his gut again, and he hated it. He had no claim on Emma, no right to begrudge how she spent her time, no right to expect that she would make any time for him.

  “You say that like it’s an accusation. Yes, I’ll be seeing Luther. It’s not a date, but even if it were—”

  He held up his hands to stave off the rebuke he knew he deserved. “I know. It’s none of my business. I get that. But there’s something about that guy. Are you sure he doesn’t see it as a date?”

  “Are you kidding me? You said it yourself: he’s got at least fifteen years on me.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not trying to tell you how you should do things. At all. But I have to say one more time that he reads as interested in you for nonacademic reasons.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” she said, rising and putting her laptop away with movements so deliberate it could only mean she was angry. “For your information, he invited me to observe one of his college lectures. But of course, why would a critic of Luther’s caliber be interested in the opinion of a colleague in academia? Surely he’s just trying to get me into bed. How did I never think of that?” A look of extreme frustration crossed her face as she slid her computer into her bag. “I wish I had a briefcase lid to slam right now. This is very unsatisfying.”

  “Whoa, whoa, hey, I’m sorry. I must have misread the situation.” He hadn’t. He’d bet on it. “I think you have smart things to say about writing and literature. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.” He hesitated to tell her the truth about how it made him feel to imagine her with Luther. For any woman with half an instinct, premature jealousy would be a bright red flag. “I guess it’s my own insecurities and a knee-jerk dislike of the literary tastemakers.”

  It wasn’t enough to change her mood. She slung her laptop bag over her shoulder and pushed in her chair. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything. I knew you’d read it wrong. I’m not Luther’s. I’m not yours. I’m not even my mother’s. I’ll make my own decisions about where I go and who I spend my time with. Thank you for a delicious dinner, but I need to go home now.”

  He nodded reluctantly and stepped around the island to lead her back to the front door. He rested his hand on the knob and turned to face her before opening it. “I understand if you’re not into it now, but I’d still like to do that challenge. I think I could learn a lot from getting your fingerprints all over my work. If I send you my manuscript, will you look at it?”

  She studied him for several seconds, a prosecutor’s trick he recognized. She wanted him to squirm, and it was working. He fought the urge to shift from foot to foot.

  “I never back down from a challenge.” She nodded at the door handle, and he opened it, stepping aside as she glided out.

  He watched her drive off, then returned to his own laptop and started a search on Luther Van Dijk. Regardless of what Emma said, something didn’t feel right about that guy. His instincts never lied, and it was time to find out what they were trying to tell him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The noise rising from the exhibition floor of the Javits Center was unbelievable. The clamor of a couple of thousand conversations happening at once engulfed Emma in a sound cloud that vibrated with atonality as if a Phillip Glass and Rachmaninoff composition had given birth to a noise baby.

  She skirted past a group of loud book vloggers jockeying in line for the most buzzed about YA fantasy release of the expo, desperate to get one of the limited advance copies the publisher would be handing out. Once she stepped into the lobby space beyond the exhibit hall doors, the noise dropped by at least half. Still, at this point, she would find 34th Street quieter by contrast.

  She’d seen the display Aidan’s publisher had created for his next book from a distance. It was huge, done in shades of red, black, and gray. She pressed her satchel closer to her side. It was the one Maggie had given her, and in it were Aidan’s manuscript pages.

  She’d printed them out, finding it easier somehow to work with the pages when she held them in her hand. She wasn’t sure she would ever feel like she fully experienced a story if she read it on a screen.

  She’d stopped by the event center only to scope out where her mother’s showcase would be the next morning. She wanted to make sure she knew how much time to give herself so that she could arrive in enough time to secure a front row seat, and she didn’t want to lose time tomorrow wandering aimlessly trying to find it.

  Now she was headed to the NYU campus for Luther’s lecture. She glanced down at her outfit, making sure it was professional. She would have fussed over it anyway, but Aidan’s insinuations had added another layer of worry. It was insulting that he didn’t think Luther would have a professional interest in her, but she still chose something as understated as possible, an oversize cream sweater and pair of comfortable slacks and loafers. On the barest chance that Aidan was right, there was no way Luther would interpret her outfit as flirtatious.

  It took her almost thirty minutes to get to the college campus but not too long to locate Luther’s lecture hall since she’d made a point of “walking” the campus on Google Earth to make sure she knew her way. She sat near the back and watched as the room filled slowly, then more quickly as the start time approached. Luther entered at one minute before the start time and went straight to the podium, setting up his laptop, syncing it quickly, and opening his lecture slides exactly at eleven o’clock.

  He glanced around the room as if he were searching for someone, and when his eyes landed on her, he smiled. “Good morning. Before we begin, I want to note the presence of Professor Lindsor. She’s observing from Standish College to study wh
at good pedagogy looks like at an elite level.”

  He immediately turned his attention to his slides, and she was glad, or he would have seen her bristle. He’d misrepresented her reasons for being there. The education at NYU might be ivy-covered but it didn’t make it better than what she offered her students at Standish. What was more, she was here because he’d invited her to attend his lectures on post-structuralism so they could compare notes and discuss it afterward, not so he could teach her how to teach.

  She forced herself to stifle her irritation and concentrate on his lecture. At the very least, she would be able to hold her own in a conversation with him when they discussed it after.

  It was a creditable lecture. He made good points, thoughtfully organized, well-supported, and full of engaging examples. But having just finished the first week of classes with her new syllabus, she could honestly say it was on par with anything she did in her own classes.

  When class ended, the students filed out, a handful stopping to speak with him. As the last ones left, she made her way down to the lecture floor.

  “Emma.” He smiled widely and reached for both of her hands to pull her in for a kiss on each cheek in his European style. “Did you enjoy the lecture today?”

  She wanted to say, “It was adequate but there wasn’t anything ground-breaking.” Instead she said, “You have an engaging lecture style. How could I not?”

  He hadn’t let go of her hands. Sometimes when she wasn’t sure how to interpret whether the way a man was behaving toward her was appropriate or not, she used a simple test: would the man treat other males the same way? And she had a hard time believing that Luther Van Dijk would keep holding a male colleague’s hands.

  She slipped hers out on the pretext of adjusting her satchel strap. “I liked what you had to say about Bloom’s interpretation of Didion’s perspective on the role of aging women. His analysis doesn’t account for the lack of intersectional feminism in her work no matter how much I might love her turn of phrase.”