by Amy DeLuca
As they glided along Ocean Drive at sunset, the warm wind whipping her hair behind her, a strange thought came to Bonnie unbidden.
I could get used to this.
She immediately chastised herself. She would not be getting used to this. She would be there for two days—three tops, if tomorrow went late—and then it was back to her father and her life in New York. Strangely, seeing Dad again was the only part of that she really looked forward to.
Anyway, at least she had tomorrow there in Newport, and tomorrow was, as they said, a whole new day. Bonnie had a feeling it was going to go far better than today had.
Ten
Shave and a Haircut
Friday
Why had Jack told Bonnie he’d meet with her again today? Maybe it had been the scent of all those roses going to his head or something, but now he regretted it. The more time she spent with him, the more likely it was she’d discover the truth.
He was a fraud.
As soon as she’d left yesterday, he’d gone directly to his office, overcome with the desire to write. He hadn’t felt that way in a long, long time, and it had excited him. He’d wanted to be the “incredibly talented” writer Bonnie thought he was. The writer he used to be.
After talking with her, he’d believed he could be that guy again. And their walk in the rose garden had stirred up a plot bunny he’d been eager to explore.
But as soon as he’d sat down with his laptop, the entire idea had seemed stupid, the magic of it dissolving like sugar in boiling water. He’d banged the side of his fist on the desktop. What the heck was wrong with him? Where had all his inspiration gone?
He’d tried to force it, closing his eyes and chasing it down what felt like an endless dark tunnel. It used to be so easy, so effortless. The ideas used to flow almost faster than he could type them. That place seemed long ago and far away.
Maybe he really was washed up, as some of his so-called fans on Twitter had started to speculate lately.
Note to self. Stay off Twitter.
Okay, where was he? Washed up. Right. Only when Bonnie had been there, and he’d actually started talking to her instead of treating her like week-old fish wrap, Jack hadn’t felt washed up. He’d felt like the old Jack. Writer Jack. Maybe the phenomenon would reoccur this afternoon.
He swam then showered as usual, catching himself humming a few times.
Hmmm. Haven’t done that in a while.
Grabbing his bathrobe, Jack started toward his dressing room. But then he caught his reflection in the mirror and stopped. This time he didn’t smile over his raggedy appearance. He certainly didn’t look like the old Jack. Maybe he’d feel more like him if he did?
His electric razor sat to one side of the counter, waiting forlornly on its charger, untouched for months. He grabbed it and went to work, first trimming the beard and then deciding to just lose it altogether.
It was strange to see his own bare face again. And the clean-shaven look highlighted how overgrown his hair had gotten. So, he reached into the drawer where he kept a pair of trimming scissors.
Here goes nothing. He could always go for a crew cut if he messed it up too badly. Fifteen minutes later, Jack stepped back to survey his work. Not bad, if he did say so himself. It wasn’t even lopsided.
Opting for a nice pair of jeans and a light vee-neck sweater this time instead of a t-shirt and holey jeans, he got dressed. As he descended the stairs it occurred to him—Bonnie would notice the drastic change in his appearance. Would she think it was for her sake?
A nervous tremor started in his belly. Of course, it wasn’t for her. Was it?
No. No way. he’d try anything to cure his writer’s block, and if a shave and a haircut would do the trick, any wrong assumptions she might make would be a small price to pay.
Mrs. Potts entered the foyer just as Jack reached the bottom of the staircase.
“Well, well, don’t you look handsome?” Approval glowed on her face. “Miss Bonnie’s going to think she’s come to the wrong house today.”
He felt his freshly uncovered face heat up and no doubt darken a shade or two. “This has nothing to do with her. I was just ready for a change.”
“And a nice change it is.” Mrs. Potts patted his smooth cheek. “It’s good to see your face after so long.”
“You might not say that when you get a look at all the hair in my bathroom. I tried to clean it up, but the stuff got everywhere.”
She grinned. “It’s worth a few extra runs with the vacuum to see your smile again.”
Jack quirked his head to the side, confused. “You couldn’t see my smile with the beard?”
“You can’t see what’s not there. You’ve smiled more in the past twenty-four hours than you have in months.”
Her hands went up in a defensive gesture, anticipating his protest. “I know, I know, it has nothing to do with her. But whatever’s brought it on… I like it.”
Jack might have argued the point further, but the doorbell rang. This time he didn’t let Harrison get it but went to open it himself. Bonnie stood outside, of course. Today she wore flat shoes with a navy dress that clung to her curves and momentarily made him forget to speak.
When she saw him, her eyelids flared, and her jaw dropped a little, causing her mouth to form a perfect little O.
“Oh! Jack. You… wow, you look… different.” She didn’t say anything further, just stood and stared.
Jack rubbed his clean-shaven jaw, feeling a tad self-conscious. “Yes. I shaved. Please, come in.”
He stepped back, letting the door swing wide so Bonnie could enter. She did, never taking her eyes from him, staring as if she’d never seen a man’s face before. Or maybe his haircut was crooked after all.
Since she apparently wasn’t going to speak, he did. “Did you… want to talk in the library today?”
Bonnie blinked a few times. “No. No thank you. I think we’ve determined you’re not a library guy. You’re a walk-and-talk-outside guy. Maybe we could go to the beach? I wore better shoes for it today.”
“Sounds good.”
Jack led her to one of the back doors. There was a large sun terrace running along the back of the house, and from it, a path down to the beach.
As they stepped outside, he noticed it was cooler than yesterday, and clouds hung low in the sky, blocking the sun.
“Did you bring a jacket? You could wear one of mine, though it’ll be huge on you,” he offered.
“No thanks. I’ll be fine. I’ve lived through twenty-six New York winters, you know.”
Ah. So she was twenty-six or twenty-seven. He’d been wondering how old she was—not that he’d been thinking about her constantly since she’d left yesterday or anything. He was strangely pleased to learn she was close to his own age of thirty-two instead of being obscenely young. It was sometimes hard to tell with women.
“I’ve experienced one or two of those myself,” he said. “I mean, I’ve visited them at least. I like to spend summers and fall here, but I’ve done some book signings in the city in winter.”
“Yes, I remember.”
She looked down at the stone and crushed shells that made up the path, seeming overly concerned with keeping an eye on her footing.
Once they reached the sand and were walking side-by-side again, he studied her profile. “You look familiar to me. I thought so yesterday, too. This may sound strange, but have we met?”
Bonnie’s face flushed a bright pink. Interesting.
“Well, since I’m going to be asking you a lot of questions today, I suppose you’re entitled to one or two of your own.” Her eyes came up to meet his then flitted away again. “And to an honest answer.”
“Oookay…” Jack was instantly intrigued. “So we have met.”
Maybe that was the reason she’d gotten so angry with him yesterday—other than his rude behavior and insults of course. Maybe they’d crossed paths in some nightclub back when he used to go to those places. Maybe, Heaven forbid, he’d hit on
her or something.
“So… this is kind of embarrassing,” she began. “No, ‘mortifying’ would be a more fitting word. But you did ask, and I don’t want to lie to you…”
“The suspense is killing me here, Bonnie,” he prompted when she paused.
Please tell me I didn’t make out with her or something and then totally forget about it.
Back in the early days of his fame and commercial success, there had been a sudden tidal wave of female attention, and he’d let it get to his head a little. Okay, a lot. But then he’d settled down with Claudia. Since her there’d been no one.
“Well, I know you were in New York for a signing because I went to your last one.”
“Oh. Whew. That’s all. I was starting to think it was something bad.”
“Well it wasn’t good,” she said. “I think I scared you.”
“What? No. There’s no way you would have scared me. Believe me, there are some interesting people who come to those signings.”
“Yep, I’ll bet. And I was one of them.” She gave him a disbelieving head shake. “You really don’t remember me?”
“Wait—you’re not a stalker, are you?” Jack joked. “You don’t have the real Bonnie Hamelin, newspaper writer extraordinaire, tied up in a trunk somewhere, I hope?”
“Ha ha. No, this is the real me. The same me who went to your last signing, and when I finally got to the table, I was so nervous I babbled and then started crying.”
She dropped her face into her hands, covering it.
Jack laughed. “Is that all? That happens all the time.”
She peeked between her fingers with one eye. “Really?”
“Absolutely. And if I were ever to meet LeBron James, I’m sure I’d do the same thing. Believe me, Bonnie, that is nothing.”
“But you scooted your chair back away from me. I nearly spilled my drink on you. You looked horrified.”
“I don’t even remember it. I do remember I was sick as a dog during my last signing in New York. I was careful not to let anyone get too close to me. I didn’t even take pictures with my readers at that one because I didn’t want to expose anyone to my crud. You probably reached out to shake my hand or something, and that’s why I backed away.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so relieved, although I think it was the spilled drink that did the trick. I almost didn’t take this assignment because of that.”
He laughed out loud, squinting as the sun came out from between two clouds. “Well, I’m glad you did.”
She gave him a doubtful smile.
“I’m serious. This has been good for me. I’m getting some fresh air, I shaved.”
Oops. He’d just admitted his decision to shave did have something to do with her after all. But he wanted to make her feel better. She was so adorably miserable over the old memory that had clearly haunted her.
Stopping, Jack turned back toward the house and pointed. “See that turret there?”
Bonnie turned as well, shading her eyes from the sun as she followed the trajectory of his pointer finger. “Yes. It’s beautiful. The whole house is beautiful, Jack, like something from a dream.”
A swell of pride filled his chest. This place was his dream house, and it was nice that she appreciated it, too. “The top window in the turret—that’s where I write,” he told her. “You asked me about it yesterday, I just thought you might like to see it.”
“Wow. It’s perfect,” she said, and he could tell she meant it. “Would you mind if I take a photo and share it with our readers?”
Jack looked around at the private beach shielded by a natural rock barricade from the road. It would be hard for tourists to access. “I guess that would be all right.”
Bonnie drew a small digital camera from her bag and took a few shots. “I’d love to see the view from up there in the tower,” she said. “I’ll bet it’s incredible.”
Things had been going so well today, he hated to be that guy and shut her down. But there was no way he could let her into his office, to let her get that close to his barely-started book that was due in only a few weeks.
Jack shook his head and gave her what he hoped was an amiable smile. “No can do. No one goes in there but me and, on occasion, Mrs. Potts when she insists on tidying up. Sorry.”
“Sacred space?” she asked.
“Nah. Mostly, it’s just messy—not much to see, really.”
“I understand,” she said, but the disappointment was evident in her voice.
Jack wanted to change the subject, bring back her smile. “Okay, well, I guess it’s time for round two of the interview. What do you want to know? I am, as they say, an open book.”
She extracted the voice recorder from her purse, and for the next half hour conducted a question and answer session about his writing process, his opinion on the TV series his books had spawned, on his plans for possible Onyx Throne spinoffs or sequels.
None of it was hard to answer, and Jack found himself almost enjoying the conversation. Bonnie had a very disarming way about her, a relaxed, breezy interview style. If she hadn’t been holding the recording device, he might have forgotten it was an interview at all.
Before he knew it, it was over. She clicked off the recorder and tucked it back into her purse.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Unless you have any big bombshells you want to drop on me.”
“I think I’ll hold my fire for now,” he quipped, the lightness of his tone contradicting the sense of low-grade panic her innocent remark set off.
“Okay, then… I guess we’re done. I really enjoyed meeting you Jack. I know we didn’t get off to the best start, but I think the interview turned out well.”
The reporter glanced back toward the house.
“Want to walk out to the point?” Jack had always considered the narrow, rocky peninsula that protruded from the shoreline behind his house one of the property’s best features. It was a great place to sit and soak up the sun, or think, and he and Hunter had used it a few times as a surf-fishing spot.
Bonnie smiled. “Uh… sure. Think it’s okay to just leave my bag up here?” She gestured to the grassy slope beyond the sand. “I don’t want to take any chances of falling in and drowning my camera and recorder and stuff.”
“Of course. No one will bother it. But the point isn’t as perilous as it looks. I had the rocks in the center flattened on top so there’s a stable walking path all the way to the end.”
“All the same, if anyone could manage to topple off it, it would be me. Don’t forget about that chai latte I poured all over the signing table at the Strand.”
Jack laughed. “You know, now that you mention it, I do think I have a vague memory of that. Never did quite get the smell of cinnamon and cloves out of my shirt. I remember I was worried about you. I think I sent a couple of my staffers after you to make sure you were okay.”
“Is that what they were doing?” she said. “I could have sworn they were enforcing a hastily issued restraining order.”
He laughed again. “You weren’t that bad. Until you reach the point where you’re mailing me your leather underwear—or full-size replicas of Pärgevian steel broadswords—you’re still solidly in the realm of ‘normal.’”
“I feel so much better,” she deadpanned.
Bonnie placed her purse on high ground, and they set off for the point. As they strolled, Jack realized he knew very little about her, at least, not as much as he’d like to know.
“So, tell me about you. How’d you get into journalism?”
She bent to pick up a smooth, gray stone and threw it out into the surf where it landed with a plop. “Well, as we ‘discussed’ yesterday…” Here she turned and shot him a saucy grin. “I started out wanting to write novels.”
Regret tweaked his heart with a short, sharp cramp. “I really am sorry about what I said yesterday. It was horrible.”
“No, it’s okay. You were right, for the most part. I mean, I took both jour
nalism and creative writing classes in college because I figured I’d need a day job, right?”
“Definitely,” Jack agreed. “Writing books is no get rich quick scheme—or get rich ever for most.”
“That’s what everyone said. So, I took a job out of school with a small newspaper upstate. I was enjoying it, moved up the ladder to a bigger paper, and then to the Daily Report. But all the while, I felt my real passion was writing fiction. Throughout those years, I kept starting novels. Sadly, I had no idea how to finish one.”
“It’s not easy. I had quite a few false-starts myself, believe me,” he confessed.
She gave him an appreciative grin before continuing. “Then a couple years ago for Christmas, my dad gave me a receipt showing he’d paid for a six-week novel-writing course being given at Columbia by a prestigious novelist. I was out of my mind with excitement, could hardly wait for it to start. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it through week three.”
“What happened?”
“That was the week we shared our first chapters with the class.”
“You didn’t have one?”
“Oh no. I had one. But after I’d read it aloud, I wished I’d never written it. I wished I’d never written anything in my life.”
Bonnie’s forehead wrinkled, and she kept her gaze trained on the horizon as she revisited a moment that clearly still caused her pain.
“The instructor wasn’t overly kind about anyone’s sample… but he had a special disgust for mine. He ripped it for a full fifteen minutes—I know because I kept checking the wall clock, praying the hands would move faster so I could leave. It went on and on, and he got more and more impassioned about his hatred of my writing. If it had been only about that chapter, I might not have been so destroyed, but he made it personal, you know? His final words to me were, ‘You’ll never be a writer. You should just quit now and save everyone the time and embarrassment, especially yourself.’ I walked out of there and never went back.”
She gave a sad laugh. “Thus endeth my career in fiction.”
