The Publicist Book One and Two

by Christina George

  Kate laughed; a tear trickled down her cheek. “Grace, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “Nick thought it would be fun to surprise you.” Grace winked.

  Kate looked over her shoulder at Nick, who smiled and shrugged. “Guilty,” he said.

  “You flew her here? Really?”

  “This is the biggest time of your life; I figured you’d want to share it with the people who love you.”

  Love you. He hadn’t said he loved her—well not since they started sleeping together again, but Kate knew.

  “Grace, come inside.”

  Grace suddenly realized her surroundings; she’d been too excited to notice on the way in. “Wait, you live here? Seriously? No wonder you haven’t come home.”

  “It’s a great place and a great city. Come inside.”

  “Oh, God yes,” Grace smiled. “I hate the sun. Doesn’t it ever rain here?”

  …

  The patio deck in the back yard extended out from the house. It had a table and a brightly colored umbrella, a built-in stone barbecue, and several deck chairs. Nick fired up the barbecue as Kate and Grace watched. Grace, of course, careful to keep herself under the umbrella.

  “Gracie,” Kate smiled, “the sun will do you good.” She sipped her wine and watched her friend frown.

  “The sun is evil. All you sun worshipers will end up shriveled like raisins someday, and don’t even get me started on melanoma.”

  “Grace, you are cheer personified,” Nick laughed.

  “Seriously Gracie, if you’re going to be here for a while, you’ll have to get used to it. It’s always sunny here.”

  Her friend smiled and shrugged. “I’ll give it my best shot. I think it would be easier to tolerate if everyone wasn’t so damned happy here. What’s up with that, Nick? Are they putting something in the water?”

  “Injections,” he said, putting the hamburger patties on the grill.

  “Do you know when I landed, someone at the gate said, ‘Welcome to California!’ You know how people welcome you to New York? They steal your purse.”

  Kate busted out laughing. Her friend was partially right; New Yorkers had a harder life.

  “Grace, you should consider moving here. Tons of galleries and everyone loves art here.”

  Grace shook her head. “No way. I’m staying in New York where everyone hates my work and the galleries turn their noses up at me.” She threw her friend a smile. “I like the challenge. Say, Nick are those burgers hormone-free, free range, and all that?”

  Kate nudged her friend. “Grace, Nick runs natural stores. I think if I ever brought something processed into this house, alarms would go off. However, I do have a box of Twinkies under our bed, you know, just in case I get a hankering for processed food.”

  Our bed? Grace mouthed, and Kate slapped her gently on the knee. Grace beamed. Kate knew she’d have a lot to discuss with her friend once they were alone.

  Nick seemed to take his cue. “You ladies stay out here and talk. I’m going to put together the salad.”

  “Oh, let me help you.” She tried standing up, but Grace stopped her.

  “You heard the man. He clearly wants us to talk. Now spill it. What’s happened since you became a California girl?”

  Kate took a tentative sip of her wine. “We’re taking it slow.”

  Grace cocked her head. “Eh, our bed doesn’t seem slow to me.”

  “It’s complicated.” Kate took another drink of her wine. She had a feeling she was going to need it.

  “No, Kate. Mac is complicated. Nick is not complicated. He’s sweet, smart, funny, and so handsome it hurts my eyes just to look at him.”

  “I need to take it slow, and keep your voice down.”

  Grace leaned into her. “Look, Kate. I love you. You are like a sister to me, but I’m going to tell you right now: If you have any hesitation about Nick, you should stop this now. He deserves all of you, not whatever is left after you spend the rest of your time obsessing about Mac.”

  “I don’t obsess.”

  “But you do think about him.”

  “He was a big part of my life.”

  “And a big part of your demise.”

  Kate shot her a glare. “I don’t want to talk about this now.”

  “That’s fine but we will talk about this, because Nick loves you and if you aren’t totally in love with him, then you should let him go. He’s not a life raft, Kate. Look, I don’t know him that well, but what I do know of him is that he’s a gem—a keeper, as you like to say.”

  “Message received.” Kate was getting annoyed. She wanted to go inside and bury her head in her pillow. She wished she really did have a box of Twinkies in the house. She’d dig them out, rock in the corner, and devour them.

  “Kate, are you still in love with Mac?”

  Kate got up and left. “I need to go help Nick.”

  It was all the answer Grace needed. She shook her head as she watched her friend walk inside. If Kate didn’t get her head together about Nick, she was quite certain that Kate would end up breaking his heart as bad or worse than Mac had broken hers.

  Chapter Fifty

  Kate surveyed her office space; it was small and efficient with two offices and a front reception. There was one meeting room. She envisioned having author meetings there, or maybe visiting with agents.

  Authors. Plural.

  Kate had been considering publishing more authors, depending on how Allan’s book did.

  “Nice place, Katie,” Grace said, following her in.

  “Nick said he’s going to help me paint this weekend. Care to join us?”

  “Of course!” Grace smiled, “I am a painter, you know. How about a mural of crazy authors?”

  Kate laughed. “Tempting, but no, we’re painting the walls a soft olive. The guy in the paint store said it was soothing. We want soothing.”

  “This won’t be MD, you know, Kate. If you decide to take on more authors, you can pick and choose who you want.”

  Kate nodded. “I know. Look!” she pulled out a sign that she had had made, a beautiful wooden sign that read: Lavigne House.

  Grace smiled. “Allan would have loved this.”

  Kate shrugged. “Sometimes I think he would feel the whole publishing house thing is going a bit overboard. He probably would have just made copies and handed them out.”

  Just then, Kate’s cellphone rang, which it did almost all day. The buzz around Allan’s book was almost deafening.

  “Kate Mitchell.”

  “Kate, Patty Neger, Good Morning America. How are you?”

  “Patty, hi, good to hear from you. Did you like the book?”

  “Loved it. Really magnificent work. Look, we want to book you on the show.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, we’re thinking of doing a piece on how you got this book. The reclusive author wills you this book. You leave publishing to become a publisher.”

  “Patty, I don’t really want to get into the whole MD thing.”

  “It’ll come up, It has to. It’s part of the story.”

  She was right, and the segment would help the book. “Okay, sure. What do you need from me?”

  “Nothing. Just your commitment is fine. We’ll want you on the week of release of course. You haven’t booked with any other morning shows, right?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Perfect. I’ll email you details. You’re in California now, right? We can use a studio there.”

  “Great. Thanks, Patty.”

  She turned to Grace. “We got Good Morning America.”

  “You’re going on TV?”

  “Apparently.”

  Kate licked her lips nervously. The thought of being on TV made her anxious. She was fine booking authors on TV, but she’d never considered it for herself. Publicists are heard but not seen.

  “But that’s good, right?”

  Kate nodded. “Good, but unexpected, I guess.”

  Grace put a hand
on Kate’s arm. “Listen, Katie. I’m sorry about the other night, about saying what I did. I just, I just want you to be happy.”

  Kate grabbed her friend and hugged her. “I know you do. I want that too.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The weeks leading up to the launch of Allan’s book proceeded at a frenzied pace. Lulu surprised Kate by flying out to help her with the launch. With her husband’s blessing, she was able to stay until Thanksgiving and was bunking in a friend’s empty apartment in Santa Monica. Kate really welcomed her help.

  As the November 12 date loomed, the interest for the book was overwhelming. Several movie production companies had even contacted her to discuss the movie rights for After the Fall. It wasn’t a surprise, really. When a book carried that much buzz into a launch, often movie rights were a given. But this time it was different. Allan’s first book had never been turned into a movie, but now there was talk of a two-movie deal. Since Allan’s first book still resided with MD, a movie deal might save them from certain ruin if the movie was a hit. But first, the studio wanted to get his second book into production, then see about doing the first. Kate finally settled on Ben Affleck’s company, and the deal was to produce the film by fall of the following year.

  In the midst of all of this, Kate decided she wanted to take on other titles. She was starting to get the hang of this publishing thing. She put in a call to Madeline Masters. The last time Kate had spoken with her was to tell her that MD didn’t want her book. It had been a rough call, but Kate had promised Madeline that she’d try to find her another publisher. At the time, she couldn’t have imagined it would be her. Madeline was elated and agreed to come by the following week to talk terms. Kate was finally going to get the books she wanted.

  Good books. Books that could change lives.

  On November 12, Allan Lavigne’s book was released to a very eager readership. People Magazine ran their story along with a book excerpt, and pre-orders had been in the thousands. When it released, the book hit all of the major bestseller lists right away. The ebook, which Kate released immediately, topped the New York Times ebook bestseller list. It was the biggest event of her life. She had no idea how any of it could get any better until she got the call about two weeks after the book was out.

  “Kate Mitchell.”

  “Kate, it’s Noah at Publishers Weekly.”

  “Noah, Hi. Good to hear from you. What can I do for you?” When Kate was at MD calls from media people often seemed routine, but now whenever a big call happened she got this unmistakable twinge of excitement. It was odd and good at the same time—sort of like being back in her early publishing days when everything was fresh, new, and exciting.

  “The Lavigne book is doing well. Beyond well, in fact. I’m thrilled for you.”

  “Yeah, thanks, it’s still so unreal.”

  “It’s been longer than I care to remember that a true literary fiction novel has had this much of an impact on the publishing community.”

  “I know. It’s high time we brought back literature.”

  “Agreed. Look, I wanted to let you know that we’ve decided on our publishing person of the year and we’ve named you.”

  For a moment, Kate felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Me?” she said, almost stammering.

  “Yes, for bringing back books worth reading, for bringing back literary fiction.”

  Kate recalled last year their publishing person was EL James of the Fifty Shades of Grey success. You could hear just about everyone in publishing groan when that announcement was made.

  Kate steadied herself on her desk. “Noah, I’m stunned. Thank you so much.”

  “The issue will be out in a couple of weeks. I’d love to get some more background for it. You don’t mind talking about the MD piece of this, do you?”

  By now she was getting used to it. “Sure, I’m fine with it.”

  “Oh, one more thing. Just happened this morning. We’re getting ready to do an announcement on it. Edward got fired. I guess the board finally put two and two together that he canned Lavigne and pretty much single-handedly sent MD into bankruptcy.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  “Babe, I’m so sorry. We caught one of our managers stealing money, a lot of it. Remember I told you I thought we had a shoplifter because stuff’s been missing out of inventory. Well, it’s not a shoplifter. It’s a greedy manager who just moved to taking cash. She’s looted over $5000 from us so far and had another stash of expensive stuff in her car. I need to wait for the police to get here. I’m so sorry.”

  Tonight was the premier of the latest Ben Affleck film, followed by the after party. With Ben’s company having signed on to the After the Fall movie deal, going to this event was a pretty big deal for Kate.

  “Nick, I’m glad you finally caught her. What a relief. Don’t worry; I’ll go. Of course, it’ll be fine. You take care of this.”

  “It’s pretty sad, actually. I never would have suspected. She immediately started crying when I confronted her. Anyway, I’ll call you and let you know how it’s going. I’ll try to join you later.”

  “Sure. See you later.”

  Kate hung up and surveyed the bedroom. She was disappointed she was going to the party alone; she had been looking forward to being with Nick at an event like this, especially with the movie deal. She walked into the closet and eyed her dresses. Thank goodness, she’d had them sent out after she left New York. When she moved out here, she never thought she’d need this part of her wardrobe shipped. She plucked the shimmering midnight blue dress from the rack and took a long look at it. It was, by far, her best evening dress. She wondered when she had last worn it. Then the memory of it hit her and knocked her back. The MD Christmas party, the night she and Mac had kissed for the first time. Kate slowly lowered herself onto the bed. The memory swung through her mind—the first snow of the season in Battery Park, Mac’s lips on hers.

  “Merry Christmas, Kate,” he’d said, and she was breathless.

  “Pull yourself together,” she said out loud. Kate stood up; she debated whether to wear another dress and then realized she was being stupid. She needed to associate the dress with another memory. Tonight, the party, the Ben Affleck movie. Hell, she’d probably even meet George Clooney. Kate unzipped the dress and stepped into it.

  Perfect fit. Screw the old memories, she thought, touched up her hair, and headed downstairs.

  …

  The movie had been amazing. She was so sorry that Nick had to miss it. She texted him right after the movie ended. Headed to the party. How’s your convict? XO

  He sent back a message that he was still waiting for the police to finish their report. Welcome to law enforcement in Los Angeles.

  When Kate arrived, the after-party was in full swing. The event was being held in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. She spotted Ben Affleck and his wife, and over the din of conversation, she heard familiar laughter. It was George Clooney. Lu would have loved this. She wished now she would have thought to call her. The girl would have come completely unglued seeing all of the celebrities.

  Kate mingled and talked to several people. Some of the folks she’d met during negotiations. Some knew her because of all the publicity around Allan’s book. Someone from Variety was there and asked her what she thought of the movie. “Brilliant,” she smiled. “I am so thrilled that Affleck’s group will be working on the screenplay. I’m certain the movie will be amazing.”

  …

  He’d been watching her since she stepped into the party, admiring how she floated from conversation to conversation, smiling, laughing; she was truly in her element.

  When she was alone, he walked over to her. Her back was turned, her dark hair twisted into a chignon.

  “Hello, Katie.”

  Kate froze. That voice, it couldn’t be. She turned slowly and found herself face to face with MacDermott Ellis.

  Her breath left her in a sudden whoosh. She nearly felt her legs give out, too.

  “You look beautiful
,” he smiled, “That’s always been my favorite dress.”

  Kate couldn’t speak; she blinked, hoping he would vanish. She must be imaging this. It was the dress. Damn this dress.

  “Kate,” he said again, his voice low and sexy, “are you okay?”

  She gathered her wits as best she could, despite the fact that they’d scattered across the floor, and she was pretty sure a few guests had already trampled on them.

  “Yes, f-fine. Mac, what on earth are you doing here?”

  “I was invited. I may be unemployed, but people still seem to want me around. Well, some people,” he added.

  “Mac, I need you to go. Nick will be upset.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I watched you, first at the premier and then here. I wanted to be sure you were alone before I approached you. I figured it was best.”

  Kate jutted out her chin; he’d been at the premier?

  “I was invited,” Mac said, “because I had to be in LA for other business anyway, so I thought I’d come. I had no idea you’d be here.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  Mac plucked two glasses of champagne from a waiter who was passing by. “Here, take this. It’ll help.”

  “I don’t need alcohol; I just need you to go, or leave me alone, or both.”

  Mac sipped from his glass. His moves were smooth and in control. He was dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt that set off his tanned skin and blue eyes.

  “Kate, I’m not leaving until I talk with you. It’s been months. You left New York, and we didn’t get a chance to, you know, set this straight between us.”

  “There is nothing to say, Mac. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Kate started to step away and Mac hooked her arm with his hand.

  “Katie, please.” His voice was low. Kate felt a familiar warmth grow deep in her body.

  Mac’s gaze never left hers. “I’m so proud of you, Katie. The rest of us just dissolved under this failure, but you, I mean look at you. You’ve become more than you ever thought you could be.”