by Lila Monroe
“I’m planning to listen to Taylor Swift,” I try desperately. “Like, a lot of Taylor Swift. A Taylor Swift career retrospective, starting with her earliest country release and proceeding in chronological order, including b-sides and deep cuts.”
“All right?” Liam looks a little confused. “Well, I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with her work, but I’m always open to discovering new artists.”
Seriously? Who IS this guy? “I’m leaving right this minute.” I try.
“Excellent,” he says, nodding briskly. “No time like the present, I always say. My car is right downstairs.”
And with that, he marches off toward the elevator.
Two hours in commuter traffic with the infuriating, frustrating, extremely good-looking
object of my X-rated bathtub fantasies?
“Can’t wait,” I mutter, and trudge off to grab my purse.
But as we get the trip underway, one thing becomes clear: Liam is not a Taylor Swift superfan.
“This is terrible,” he announces before we’ve even left the city, glaring at the stereo like Taylor herself might be in there, eagerly anticipating his opinion of her life’s work. “Seriously, how can you listen to this caterwauling?”
I frown. I don’t know why I’m surprised, really. Other things he’s scorned in the short time we’ve been riding together: my road trip snacks (too sugary); my traffic app (too unreliable); the A/C (too wasteful). My hair sticks to the back of my neck in the humidity. Still, I can’t help but take the bait. “What’s wrong with Taylor Swift?”
“What isn’t wrong with Taylor Swift?” Liam fires back. “Her insipid melodies. Her obsession with her own reputation. Her exhausting lyrical autopsies of whatever romantic entanglement she’s currently engrossed in. Is it all the same man? Is it a different man each time? I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Ooookay,” I say, reminding myself with some difficulty that this is the guy who holds my entire career in his annoyingly strong-looking hands. Besides, Taylor doesn’t need me defending her, she’s doing perfectly fine all on her own. “What would you like to listen to?”
“I prefer quiet, actually,” he says pointedly.
I blow a breath out. “Fine,” I say, clicking the stereo off as we merge onto the highway. Silence it is.
* * *
We ride like that for close to an hour, the dense city landscape turning to suburbs and eventually the leafy green farmland of Eastern Long Island. Finally, though, I can’t take it anymore. Who takes a vow of silence on a road trip? What are we, Tibetan monks?
“So,” I try, “you’re from California?”
Liam nods curtly. “Malibu,” he says.
“Must have been hard to grow up so far away from Harry.”
Liam shakes his head. “We weren’t close.”
“Oh.” I cast around for a follow-up. “Um, do you still have family there?”
“My mother.”
“Do you see her often?”
“Not particularly.”
I blow a noisy breath out, unable to contain my frustration. “Look,” I say, “I’m just trying to make conversation here. If you don’t want to talk to me, you can just say so.”
Liam glances at me sidelong. “I believe I did say so,” he reminds me.
“Fine.” I throw my hands up. “But may I remind you, you’re the one who invited yourself along on this little road trip. I was perfectly happy to go it alone, listen to Tay Tay, and eat my delicious, diabetes-inducing trail mix in peace. So, if you want to do your hot mysterious jerk routine, that’s your business. But don’t act like this is all my fault.”
That gets Liam’s attention. “I’m sorry,” he says, and I can’t tell if I’m imagining the tiny smirk that plays across his infuriatingly kissable mouth. “My what, exactly?”
Crap. “You know what I mean,” I stammer, flustered.
“I’m not sure I do.” Oh, he’s definitely smiling now, a self-satisfied grin that makes me want to either punch him in the face or climb him like a tree, I can’t decide. “Tell you what,” he says as we pull off the highway. “I’ll keep doing my hot mysterious jerk routine as long as you’re perfecting your beautiful, morally outraged ingénue act. Sound like a deal?”
I open my mouth, then close it again, like a fish out of water.
Beautiful?
He thinks I’m… What now?
I don’t know how to process that revelation, so I decide not to think about it at all.
“You know what?” I say finally. “Maybe silence wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”
Liam tilts his head to the side, still smiling. “Have it your way.”
Thankfully, we arrive at Verity’s sizeable estate not long after.
“Is this the right place?” Liam asks, frowning at the gold-plated gates.
“I don’t know, ask your superior map system,” I reply, looking around.
He pulls up to the intercom, and is about to announce us, when I remember: I got the address under false pretenses. “Let me!” I blurt, and quickly get out of the car, circling around.
“Delivery for Ms. Lange,” I say, angling my body so Liam hopefully can’t hear me. “From the Brooklyn Chocolate Company?”
The gates buzz, and swing open, and I go dive back into the car.
As we slowly drive up the long, winding driveway, past lushly manicured grounds, the house comes into view: a massive, chateau-style castle set right on the water, with a flock of pink plastic flamingos parading across the front lawn. There’s an enormous marble fountain to one side of the tall columns at the front door, a full-size—and gloriously naked—male figure who at first I think must be some sort of Greek god but upon closer inspection actually seems to be…
“Is that George Clooney?” Liam asks, squinting in horror.
“I was going to say Matt Damon,” I confess, tilting my head to the side. “But I guess it could be a trick of the penis—I mean, uh, a trick of the eye.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “This is what the company’s money has paid for?” he asks, nearly wailing. Any trace of the wry, flirtatious Liam I glimpsed in the car is long gone as he tallies up the operating costs of this little homestead. He looks like he’s about to pass out.
“I mean, I can think of worse ways to spend it,” I admit, turning a slow circle as I take in all in. But clearly, the Sterling checks are a drop in the money bucket to Verity, because this place is insane. The property backs up to the ocean and I can hear the faint, rhythmic sound of waves crashing against the shore, the brisk salt air a welcome relief after three long months of summer in the city—and two long hours in the car with Liam. I glimpse a lushly manicured pool around back, tennis courts, and is that…
A maze.
The woman has her very own manicured maze in the backyard. Why not?
We make our way to the front door and ring the doorbell, which echoes with a pipe organ version of “Everlasting Love”. A moment later a ripped guy dressed in a tight white T-shirt and jeans swings the door open. “Good afternoon,” he greets us.
Both Liam and I gape for a moment, dumbstruck at the abs on display, but I manage to find my voice. “Hi,” I say brightly. “I’m Eliza McKay, and this is Liam Sterling. We’re here to see Verity Lange.”
The butler frowns, flexing his tan, hairless pecs. “Ms. Lange isn’t expecting any visitors,” he says.
“She’ll want to see us,” I promise. “We’re friends of Harry Sterling’s. Will you just let her know we’re here?”
The butler looks dubious. “Follow me,” he says. He leads us inside, our footsteps echoing on the marble floor of the foyer and through the massive house. I try not to gawp too openly, but it’s hard. Yards of pink and purple satin and velvet everywhere. A massive white piano. Toile wallpaper depicting what looks to my quick glance like a Roman orgy.
This is MTV Cribs: Romance Novelist Edition, and I’m loving it.
The butler leads us past a powder room, where I spy what
I’m pretty sure is a gold toilet through the open door, and out onto a wide, lushly landscaped pool deck that offers a breathtaking view of the Atlantic. “Wait here,” he instructs, nodding at an outdoor sofa upholstered in an aggressive chintz. “I’ll tell Ms. Lange you’ve arrived.”
Once he’s gone Liam looks at me with suspicion. “I thought you said she was expecting you,” he says.
I tilt my head to the side, like I’m thinking about it. “Did I, though?” I ask. “I’m pretty sure what I said was that I was driving out to meet her.” I smile hopefully. “Which is what we’ve done!”
Liam frowns. “But you’ve spoken on the phone.”
I wrinkle my nose, knowing that I’ve stalled as long as I possibly can at this point. The jig is well and truly up. “So, here’s the thing,” I admit, perching on the edge of the patio table. “When I said Verity and I had done an editorial call I may have been… exaggerating a little bit.”
“Exaggerating?” Liam repeats. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning I’ve never actually talked to her.”
Liam’s eyes widen. “What?”
“It’ll be fine,” I assure him quickly. “Like you said back at the office: No time like the present. And we’re here now, aren’t we?”
“I’ll say.” He looks back at the house, scorn and contempt written all over his face. You’d think we were waiting outside a house of ill repute. Or a Hot Topic.
“Look,” I tell him finally. “If you’re going to be such a grouch about the whole thing, do me a favor and let me do the talking here, okay?”
Liam crosses his arms. “What does that mean?”
“I’m just saying, you might want to rethink your—” I break off and wave my hand at him in a way that’s meant to communicate tone, attitude, and general approach to life. “I’ve handled a lot of authors in my career, and they’re a delicate breed, you know? Trust me, the best way to handle this is going to be to stroke her ego a little bit.”
Liam doesn’t look convinced. “I mean, I’ll defer to your expertise,” he says, in a voice like he’s doing me some kind of favor, “but she’s not exactly writing the great American novel here.”
That irritates me. Nothing gets my back up as fast as wholesale dismissal of romance novels, especially from somebody who has no idea what they’re talking about. Still, I let it go for now. “Listen,” I tell him. “I’ve been doing this a long time, all right? Verity has sold a lot of books—”
“Sure, for other publishers—”
“And for all we know she’s suffering from writer’s block—”
Liam scoffs. “What could she possibly have to be blocked about?” he demands. “For god’s sake, I could write a romance novel. Insert tab A into slot B, add some panting, a throbbing member or two—”
I jump to my feet. “I know you did not just say ‘throbbing member’ to me.”
Liam’s cheeks get the tiniest bit pink at that, and I know we’re both thinking about that kiss outside the ice cream shop. I have a brief flashback to last night’s little bathtub-vibrator adventure, and push it out of my head as quickly as possible.
“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding strangled. “I certainly don’t mean to be… inappropriate with you. But acting like this woman is some sort of artistic genius is simply delusional—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” I tell him, holding a hand up. I know I should probably let this go. After all, he’s my boss, and he’s made it perfectly clear what thin ice I’m on to begin with. But I’ve spent one too many Tinder dates smiling gamely while pretentious Hemingway fanboys talk crap about what I do. What I love. What I’m passionate about. “First of all, have you ever read a romance novel?”
“Well,” Liam admits. “No.”
“No,” I tell him triumphantly, “I didn’t think so. So maybe you should do a little research into your product before you go dismissing it, boss man.”
Liam shakes his head. “I hardly think—”
“Second of all,” I interrupt, “as a so-called ‘management consultant’ I’m sure you must realize that blockbusters like Verity’s are the engines that keep publishing companies running. Without authors like her, there is no great American novel—whatever that even means—because the publishers can’t afford to keep the lights on.”
“I realize that,” Liam says, though I can tell I’ve flustered him. “I was only making the point—”
“Third of all,” I say, really getting into it now, “whatever you might think of them, romance novels are one of the great feminist art forms. The centering of the female gaze, sex-positive representation of women seeking pleasure, stories where women are respected and catered to are actually radical and transgressive in a patriarchal society like ours. And the only reason men like you are so quick to dismiss them is because several millennia of misogyny makes books with pink covers an easy target for people who have no idea what they’re talking about.”
It feels good to blow off steam like this. In fact, it’s almost as pleasurable as Liam’s voice in my ear last night on the phone, if I’m being honest. I’m about to launch into a 300-level lecture about the semiotics of female desire when Liam interrupts.
“All right,” he says, holding a hand up to stop me. “Enough. You’ve made your point. You think I don’t realize how important Verity is to the company? You don’t think I realize what’s riding on all this? Sterling is on the knife’s edge of going under, Eliza. If I can’t get this book delivered—and if it isn’t a massive, runaway bestseller—every single one of your smug friends is going to lose their jobs.”
I’m struck silent for a moment. “I—I—”
“What?” Liam demands. He takes a step closer to me, the heat suddenly blistering between us. “What?”
“Well hello there, peaches!” calls a sultry, smoky voice from the doorway. Liam and I turn in unison and there’s Verity Lange herself, a vision in a deep purple caftan.
. She’s trailed by a full staff of half-a-dozen servers, all of whom are dressed in the same Diet Coke break uniform the butler was wearing. They quickly get to work laying the patio table with a linen tablecloth, lighting tapers and laying out a massive spread of food.
“Ms. Lange!” I say, a bit breathless with excitement. My heart is pounding and I’m feeling faintly lightheaded, and I’m honestly not sure if it’s the thrill of seeing my literary idol in the flesh—
Or whatever just happened between Liam and me.
“Hi yourself, sweet pea.” Verity offers us a dazzling smile, swanning across the patio with a swish of her caftan. “I have to admit, if I’d known you two were coming I would have planned more of a spread. But have a seat and let’s see what we can throw together, shall we? I never talk business without lobster and champagne.”
Liam’s eyes widen. I choke back a laugh.
“Some writer’s block,” he mutters.
7
Eliza
“—So then I spent a few years in Paris working on the French Kiss Trilogy—you remember the French Kiss Trilogy, don’t you, Eliza honey?—before finally I just missed this little slice of paradise so much that I had to jet on back to the States for good.” Verity smiles, holding out her wine glass for a refill. A waiter hurries over with a bottle. Verity’s partner, Dot, a practical-looking woman in her fifties, smiles with barely veiled amusement from her seat at Verity’s side. “And I’ve been living and working here ever since!”
“Wow,” I say with a shake of my head, leaning across the table and eagerly hanging on her every word. “You’ve had quite the career.”
“I’ve been lucky,” she says, with a modest wave of her hand.
“No,” I insist. “It’s more than that.” I know I’m laying it on a little thick, but I can’t help it. I’ve had the chance to meet a few celebrities in my line of work, and I don’t think of myself as a person who gets star-struck. But having dinner with Verity Lange is a bucket list moment if ever I’ve had one. I keep thinking of all
the nights I spent curled up on the sofa at my grandma’s house, my nose buried in Love’s Last Stand or Touched by a Titan, and wishing that she was here to see this moment. “I have to tell you, Ms. Lange, I’m a real fan. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written.”
“Oh, child, call me Verity,” she instructs, “and don’t flatter me.” Then she grins. ‘I’m kidding, obviously. Flatter me all you want.”
“Where do I even start?” I ask with a laugh. I glance at Liam, who’s sitting to my left—and, judging by the look on his face, seriously considering going to dive headfirst off the roof of Verity’s mansion. “Verity is the author of basically all of the most iconic moments in romance in the last forty years. She’s a legend.” I turn back to her, unable to control my gushing. “The big reveal in Captivated by the Captain! The beach scene in Love’s Insatiable Hunger!”
“I wrote that scene at a writer’s retreat in Tulum,” Verity tells me, her husky voice dropping confidentially. “I was having a tryst with a pool boy at our villa there. He was very… inspiring, if you catch my drift.”
Oh, I catch it, all right. I’m about to press her for details—not that I think it will take very much on my part—when Liam finally breaks in.
“So, this new novel,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “The one you promised to Harry all those years ago.”
“Oh, Harry.” Verity sits back heavily in her chair, dabbing at her eyes with a cloth napkin embroidered with the same scrolling pink logo that’s emblazoned on the covers of all her books. “You look just like him, you know. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“I—” Liam clears his throat. “Ah, no.”
Verity shrugs, unbothered. “Well, you do,” she reports, “And, with all due respect to your stepmother, he was a very handsome man.” She winks. “I don’t think he’d mind me telling you that we always had a very… special relationship. Nothing sexual, mind you—get your mind out of the gutter, peaches—but creatively, there was just no one else like him.”
