by Ava Zavora
“You’re the more real to me than any man I’ve ever known…”
To book blogger Eden, Adam is the embodiment of every literary fantasy she’s ever had. Intelligent, wickedly funny, sexy, and attentive – he and his fascinating life seem right out of a novel. Their whirlwind relationship is so intense and all consuming that soon she can’t imagine being with anyone else.
But there’s one little thing that’s keeping Eden and Adam from their happily ever after.
They’ve never met. She doesn’t even know what he looks like.
Despite how hard she’s fallen for him and how he makes her feel, Eden’s doubts begin to threaten their passionate love affair. Why is he so mysterious? Why does he seem reluctant to meet her? What is Adam hiding?
Afraid that she’s being made a fool of, Eden is forced to choose between her heart and her head. Is Adam too good to be true, as her common sense is telling her, or is the truth more startling than fiction?
by
Ava Zavora
www.avazavora.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Ava Zavora
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Editor: Orry Benavides
Smashwords Edition
Other Works
Rosethorn
Belle Noir
Transfigured
Mirabilis
No Loyal Knight and True
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summary
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Books and Authors Mentioned in Dear Adam
Acknowledgment
Chapter 1
BOOK BOHEMIAN BLOG
POST TITLE: Why I Don’t Have a Boyfriend
DATE OF POST: July 31
STATUS: Draft
After a long period of being single, I finally find The One. He’s romantic and adventurous, and we spend all our time together. However, I start to panic when I realize that during the entire relationship, I’ve only read two books. “You’ll have to give up some of that,” he says/vaguely threatens. Life is full of romance but I am suddenly dissatisfied.
Single again (See above. Just kidding. No, not really.), I cautiously start dating. The men are intelligent, well-read, and funny, yet for some reason, there will come the time when I look across the table during a nice dinner at a restaurant and think inevitably, self-defeatingly, “I could be home reading a book right now.”
When asked out, I am hesitant, my glance straying to the beefy, 400-page mystery thriller lounging seductively on the nightstand next to my bed, with come hither eyes that promise an exciting evening of one climax after another. Never had a chance. Staying in Saturday night.
The longest relationship I've ever been in was with a man who was all sorts of bad and even worse. But dude let me read as long as I want and gave me a leather bound, limited edition of The Hobbit for my birthday. Farewell, Mr.-So-Wrong-for-Me - we'll always have Middle Earth.
Instead of marrying myself (that's so last year), I think I’ll marry a library instead. In sickness and in health. Till death us do part. I do.
Eden kept her index finger poised on her mouse, the cursor hovering right on top of the "Publish" button. She'd written semi-personal posts on her blog before, but they were always about books or bookish topics. Although this particular post was loosely connected to her abiding love for books, its tone was decidedly snarkier than usual. Contemptuous even. It was so sharp she could cut herself by posting it on the web for the entire world to see, her love life disemboweled for public consumption.
Readers would probably get a laugh out of it, but its honesty would make them uncomfortable. It made her uncomfortable reading it now.
She was supposed to be writing a book review for tomorrow but the confessional had poured out of her instead, like blood from a gaping wound.
And for what? So she could lobby a not-so-veiled parting shot at Troy – who may or may not be reading her blog weeks after their breakup? If she really wanted to tell him off, she should have just returned his phone calls and e-mails rather than throw up an impenetrable wall of silence.
She looked around her study, where teetering piles of books covered most of the floor. And still more piles in her bedroom. Often, she would wake up in the middle of the night, having fallen asleep reading, a book splayed open on her chest or on the empty space next to her in bed.
Was she truly still wounded by the breakup or by something else entirely?
Book Bohemian might be her own creation but it didn’t, shouldn’t, double as her diary as well. She was a blogger, not the second coming of Sylvia Plath.
Eden hit "Save as Draft" and finished writing her review of the new Arturo Valiente novel, The Angel’s Shadow. Purged of her anger and derision, she could now concentrate on one of her favorite authors and spent an hour or so crafting a thoughtful analysis.
Each of Valiente’s stories were set in dark, seductive cities, such as 1930s Barcelona or Madrid, and peopled with mysterious characters full of secrets. There might be moments of happiness, but the endings were uneasy and left her haunted for days. Yet she eagerly anticipated each one, pre-ordering months in advance. And as soon as she received a copy, Eden would devour Valiente’s books until late into the night.
This time, however, she didn’t have to pay for The Angel’s Shadow, as the publisher had sent her a finished hardcover for review. After regularly writing reviews for three years on Book Bohemian, she no longer had to beg publishers for advance copies of upcoming books - now they were asking her if they could send her one to review on her blog.
Angel was beautifully made, with deckle edge pages and a splendid deep blue and burnished gold jacket. Its embossed spine stood proudly with Valiente’s other books on her special shelf, the one she reserved for signed first editions.
She had finally met Valiente three days ago during his book tour and had taken with her all his novels, even the ones in the original Spanish she had ordered from abroad, to sign. Valiente was a compact Spaniard who spoke eloquent English with a soft accent. He had sharp eyes that seemed to miss nothing, probably seeing the stories lurking beneath the surface. His colorful wit made the book signing one of the liveliest she had ever attended, prompting the moderator to declare, “How I wish I could explore the labyrinth of your strange mind.”
She was a bit more wistful than usual in her review, noting how in The Angel’s Shadow, as well as The Palace of Forgotten Memories and The Midnight Garden, the hero becomes obsessed with an unattainable, angelic girl who turns out to be his downfall.
“In Valiente’s world,” Eden wrote, “Love is never consummated, but remains a figment of the hero’s own imagination. In preferring dreams to reality, the hero dooms himself. He would
rather risk a physical death than the death of his beloved illusion.”
This review, like all her reviews, was not personal. Nothing at all like the post she had spewed out in a tempest of emotion. But still, something of her soul resided in them.
Eden yawned. Dante had gone to bed long ago, dutifully pecking her cheek good night before turning in. Knowing how she got lost in writing and forgot the time, he had cleaned up downstairs, turned off the lights and locked the doors.
It was late and she had spent too much time on something that was supposed to be just a hobby.
She quickly scanned the review for any typos, added a high res image of the book cover, as well as a picture of her standing next to Valiente at the signing, and then scheduled it to publish the next morning.
@bookbohemian Excellent review. Though I immediately dislike you for having seen Valiente in the flesh.
Eden smiled when the e-mail had come in that someone had replied to her tweet linking to the review that morning. It was from an “@adamagelast” – no one she recalled ever having had a Twitter conversation with. She had to log into Twitter covertly. She was at work and supposed to be typing up 50 subpoenas for a case going to trial in a few weeks.
“@adamagelast” was apparently one of her 176 Twitter followers. Hmm. His avatar showed a comic book drawing of a bald man with a big nose and double chin. Figures that the only person who would find her review interesting would be a fat, old man. But she liked his mixture of flattery and irreverence.
@adamagelast Thank you! I will not apologize. I drove almost 20 minutes just to get to the signing.
He replied right back.
@bookbohemian 20 minutes? That must have been exhausting. What is your preferred of the 3 so far?
@adamagelast The lengths I go through...My fave is The Midnight Garden, an unforgettable introduction to Grimondo. Yours?
@bookbohemian Without doubt Midnight as well. Though the 4th is supposed to be operatic & eclipse the former.
@adamagelast Eclipse Midnight? That would be a feat. Nevertheless, my imagination is wild with how everything will be tied together.
@bookbohemian And now I want to visit Barcelona. The power of literature.
@adamagelast When I went to Barcelona, I tried to envision Valiente's world but it was hard as some of the areas are so touristy.
@bookbohemian I heard that. I have passed through but this time I'll be hunting, book in hand, comme un geek.
Not only did @adamagelast read, but travelled as well. Eden tried to squelch the tiny stirring of excitement.
She was about to reply, but paused. This was the most she had ever “talked” with anyone on Twitter. There were other book bloggers with whom she would say hi in passing every once in awhile or comment on one of their tweets. She was only on Twitter minimally as an accompaniment to her blog. She did most of her online socializing by visiting other book reviewers on their blogs.
Her hesitation lasted briefly for @adamagelast soon tweeted her again, not waiting for her reply. As though he were prompting her. It dawned on her that this was an actual conversation.
@bookbohemian I listened to the audio book of Angel last week after reading. Grimondo was voiced in a British accent. Quite bizarre.
@adamagelast Oh, no, that will not do. For some reason, I imagine him looking and sounding like Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful.
@bookbohemian That’s imaginable. Were you satisfied with the ending of Angel?
@adamagelast Of course I wasn’t satisfied! What will Lucien's fate be? He will attempt to avenge his mother's death but at a heavy cost.
@adamagelast What ever befell Marquez, he's obviously not dead. And that dastardly Cain Roquier - ooh, I hope he gets what’s coming to him.
@adamagelast But nothing had better happen to Grimondo in the next book or I will curse Valiente for ever after. And you, what did you think?
For some reason, she could picture @adamagelast, whoever he was, chuckling at her rapid succession of Tweets, straining against the 140-character constraint. Nothing got her quite so passionate as the topic of books.
@bookbohemian You really are a fan. I agree with all you said, but don't worry about Grim, he'll be safe in the palace of memories thinking up outlandish new schemes.
“Umm,” Eden heard someone say. She looked up in guilty haste, at the same time swiftly closing the web browser. No one at work knew she was on Twitter, much less had a blog. And she wanted to keep it that way. She tried not to look annoyed at having been interrupted.
“Hello.”
It was one of the newer police officers from Santa Margarita. He had been taken on a tour of the District Attorney’s office perhaps six months ago and given the lay of the land. She didn’t recall his name, but remembered how young he looked, freshly scrubbed, his navy uniform starched and pressed, his badge shiny with ambition.
“Uh, hi.” he now said, shifting on one foot then the other as he looked at her. “Where do I return my subpoena?” He held up a piece of paper.
“Over there,” Eden pointed to the basket right next to him which bore a large, yellow sign that stated “SUBPOENA RETURNS.” She could have sworn he asked the same question last week. And the week before that.
Santa Margarita’s in trouble if he was the one guarding its streets.
“Oh,” he smiled apologetically as he dropped the subpoena in the basket. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Eden said then turned around again to face her computer. She waited to hear him leave her cubicle so she could get back on Twitter but he stayed where he was.
“Is that your brother?” She turned. He was pointing to the pictures of Dante plastered all over her cubicle wall. Dante hiking in their trip to Spain two years ago. Dante in his basketball uniform. Dante with his baby cousins.
“No,” Eden smiled. “That’s my seventeen-year-old,” she said slowly and deliberately.
“Your seven-,” he said thunderstruck, eyes bulging. His head swiveled from Dante to her then back again, face slightly reddening.
Eden felt embarrassed, for him and for herself. She should be flattered every time she got mistaken for Dante’s sister, even his girlfriend (to Dante’s horror). She wished that she could come with a flashing sign saying, “I'm 35 years old and have a son that's almost full grown.” It would make things easier for everyone.
“Hi, Beau!” Lisa popped her head in, a big smile on her face. “Dropping off a subpoena?” Unlike Eden, Lisa loved cops. And the cops loved her. She was blonde and outgoing and everything else Eden was not.
“Oh, hey, Lisa,” he replied, his bewilderment vanishing. Everyone knew Lisa, even newbies.
“Are you going to Denali’s tonight?” Lisa asked with a wink. Eden was always in awe of how women like Lisa made even the most banal question sound like a double entendre. Denali’s was the bar across the freeway where most of the cops, some of the attorneys, and “badge bunnies” like Lisa hung out after work.
“Yeah, sure. Are you?” Lisa and Beau headed out of her cubicle and continued their conversation in the hallway, to Eden’s relief.
She immediately brought up her browser and logged onto Twitter again. @adamagelast hadn’t tweeted her anything else while she had been talking to the officer. She was surprised to realize how much she’d enjoyed their little exchange and felt a twinge of disappointment.
Curious, she clicked on @adamagelast’s avatar, which brought up his profile. All his bio said was an enigmatic “In the blue continent.” He was only following one account - hers.
She scrolled down his history of tweets. The first one he ever posted was this morning. To her.
Chapter 2
BOOK BOHEMIAN BLOG
POST TITLE: Beautifully Ravaged by Scarlett James
DATE OF POST: August 1
Book Bohemian has not been taken over by an alien - I am indeed reviewing a romance novel. Cassie at The Library Eclectic has dared me, and I am not one to back away from a challenge. If I can read Fi
nnegan's Wake and survive (barely), I can surely read anything you throw at me. Cassie, I can hear your *evil laugh* all the way from Idaho. Keep it down, will ya?
Cassie has been an evangelist for Beautifully Ravaged, the first in the Beautiful series by Scarlett James, saying that I "MUST READ IT!!!" With her all-caps-and-triple-exclamation-marks endorsement as enticement, I dove into Beautifully Ravaged with an open mind.
In sum, while considerably less painful than reading James Joyce, I am torn about this book. On the one hand, I can see why it is on top of the lists. The characters of Jax and Devon are compelling, each one haunted by tragic pasts and dark secrets. James does a creditable job fleshing them out and making them relatable.
