Chapter 25

When Charming got home from the coffee shop, he found an email from Sheldon McArthur—lower case, in a hurry, cryptic: you might need an agent.

Charming sat in the sunlight pouring in from the windows in his lovely home office and stared at the computer screen. No matter how hard he studied the email, it did not change.

It said that he might need an agent, and that was all, except for Shelly’s virtual signature and his store’s address and phone number. By the time Charming got to the email, the store was closed. He got the voice mail. He could have called Shelly at home, but he didn’t want to disturb his old friend.

Although he should have.

He had no idea what was behind Shelly’s email, although he found out the next day, as the offers for Evil started pouring in.

Apparently, Shelly had shared the manuscript with a few editor friends, all of whom wanted the book now.

Which made Charming nervous. He hadn’t heard from Mellie. He had no idea what she thought of the book. He didn’t know if her silence meant she hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet or if she completely absolutely and utterly hated it.

He suspected the latter, but he knew he was already nervous about the project, and no real judge of his own work.

All he knew was that he had tried to write a Twilight kind of novel, and it had seemed silly to him. So he tossed out that draft and started again. And this time he wrote a story about life in the Kingdoms, and he used Mellie’s life to build a kind of truth.

She had to have hated it.

But they were going to have to discuss it.

He printed out all the emails marked “Offer” from the various editors, rerecorded the voice mails onto his cell phone, and then he called Mellie.

“We need to talk,” he said when he got her voice mail for the fifteenth time.

Yep, she hated the book.

No doubt about it.

***

Mellie got Charming’s voice mail. She also saw all the missed calls.

She just couldn’t bring herself to return them.

Nor could she bring herself to leave him a message at all.

Still, that didn’t explain how she found herself in his neighborhood early the next afternoon. She had lunch at a restaurant she’d always wanted to go to—one he had mentioned on the phone in fact during their calls about the book, a restaurant very close to his house.

And after she finished a delicious lunch—at least, she hoped it was delicious; she hardly tasted it—she found herself driving down the street that he lived on.

“On the Street Where You Live”—one of those Broadway musical songs. Of course, sung by the guy in My Fair Lady who didn’t get the girl. That was probably a sign. Because Charming was the pretty one in this relationship, and Mellie wasn’t ever going to “get” him. Especially since he was clearly so ambivalent about her.

Mellie sighed. And looked, following the addresses. The neighborhood was—oh, she hated to think it—charming. And Charming’s house, appropriate, a two-story mock Tudor with faux rock and mullioned windows.

Lovely, lovely house, with a handsome, handsome man standing on the stoop, looking stunned to see her vehicle.

Of course, she couldn’t just drive by now. She had to stop.

So she did.

She wanted to stay in the car and have him come to her, but that wasn’t right. Instead, she forced herself out. The sidewalk leading to the house wasn’t really a sidewalk at all. It was a cobblestone path, beautifully designed to fit into the lovely garden that was blooming with seasonal flowers.

The air smelled sweet—some kind of flowering California plant that she couldn’t recognize. There were no tulips here, no daisies, no plants that needed cold to go dormant in the winter. Just plants that could handle the warm winters and the even hotter summers.

She ran a hand through her hair. She was focusing on flowers because she couldn’t bear to think about anything else.

“Mellie?” Charming said as if he couldn’t believe she was actually there.

She swallowed hard and hoped her voice would sound calm when she spoke.

“I got your messages,” she said. “What could be so urgent?”

He hadn’t moved from the stoop. He looked a bit mussed—his at-home clothes, instead of his in-public clothes—khaki pants that looked well worn, a polo shirt with a rip along the sleeve. Even his hair was tussled, as if he hadn’t combed it yet that day.

The look made him seem less formidable, more boyish.

“Um,” he said, sounding as nervous as he had at their last meeting. “I—um—well, once you might have thought it was good news.”

“What?” she asked.

“Come on inside,” he said. “Have you had lunch?”

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded, as if he had expected it. He opened the door, and waited for her, like a perfect gentleman.

She tottered along the walk, her heels catching in the uneven stone. She had hated cobblestone in the Kingdoms and she hated it here. It was an affectation, even if it did look good with the garden and the mock Tudor house.

He smiled at her as she stepped past him into the darkened interior. She tried to ignore that smile. It was one from his arsenal of lethal smiles—warm and welcoming and insecure all at the same time.

As she walked past him, she realized he wasn’t wearing shoes, that he was completely barefoot. With her wearing heels and him barefoot, he wasn’t that much taller than she was. The look suited him more than she wanted it to.

He put his hand on her back as he guided her through the door. His palm was warm through her shirt, making her breathless.

He was so casual in his touching, so comfortable with the motions of politeness. Like that kiss on the hand, the one she had found so very erotic.

And she didn’t want to think erotic thoughts about Charming because she might turn around and kiss him. Really kiss him, not like she had at the book fair, but full on, shove the man against the wall kissing, the kind that might lead to clothes getting ripped, and parts getting caressed and—

She made herself stop. She couldn’t think of that.

She didn’t dare.

“Nice house,” she said, and meant it.

The interior smelled faintly of a young girl’s perfume mixed with a stronger scent of garlic. The entry was neat, but not too neat. Shoes were pushed haphazardly against the wall, the front closet door was slightly open, and someone had left a stack of books on the stairs leading up to the second floor.

Charming led Mellie into the kitchen. A woman she didn’t recognize was browning some meat. That was where the smell of garlic came from. Some chopped onions sat on the sideboard along with some glistening tomatoes.

The woman was heavyset, with soft, careworn features. She wore a blue T-shirt and faded blue jeans. She was barefoot too.

Charming introduced her, but Mellie missed her name. His housekeeper, and the person who kept him honest, he said. Mellie wasn’t sure what that meant.

He got a lime cooler from the fridge and offered her one. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to stay very long.

Then he led her to the back patio. The patio was also made up of cobblestone. A glass table with matching chairs stood in the center. The glass was perfect because it showcased the riot of flowers back here. Even underneath the table itself, flowers bloomed in a circular planter around the base.

Mellie sat, but he didn’t. He walked to the edge of the cobblestone patio and looked out over his backyard, showing off that perfect back again. How could she be so attracted to a man’s back?

She made herself look away.

“I know you don’t like the book,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me about it. Your silence says it all.”

“Charming,” she said, then let her voice trail off. She really had nothing to say about the book. She couldn’t tell him how disconcerted she felt that he had seen her clearly. And she couldn’t tell him how much it had hurt her because then she would have to explain why, and she didn’t want to.

She no longer wanted to be vulnerable in front of this man.

“But we have a problem,” he said. “When I gave the book to you, I also gave it to my friend Sheldon McArthur, who is a book dealer and knows a lot about literature.”

Her cheeks heated. She bit her lower lip. She wanted to excoriate him for letting someone else read the book, but she didn’t want to start yelling now.

If she started yelling now, she might never ever stop.

“I thought, you know, that if you liked it, we had to make sure that it was an okay novel before we marketed it, and since neither of us were experts…” Charming shrugged. He was still facing the garden.

She was glad for a moment that she couldn’t see his face. Or, rather, that he couldn’t see hers.

“Anyway,” he said, “Shelly liked the book, and he gave it to a few people—”

“He what?” she asked.

“He does that,” Charming said. “I didn’t know that he did that, but he’s done it with some now-famous mystery writers. He uses his connections to make sure the book has a hearing.”

Mellie’s heart pounded. Other people had read this book? She was going to die of embarrassment.

She closed her eyes. And part of her heard her own thoughts: she sounded like a teenager. Worse, she sounded like an inconsistent teenager, one who could protest a book fair but not let people see her life story.

As written by Prince Charming.

“So far,” Charming said softly, “I’ve gotten six offers on the book.”

“What? You have?” She opened her eyes.

He had turned around slightly, so that he could see her face. She could see his. It was filled with trepidation and regret.

“They seem to think I’m your agent,” he said. “Shelly sent the manuscript, and put them in touch with me, but my name isn’t on the document. Just yours.”

“Offers?” she asked.

He nodded. “Better than anything I could have hoped for. The kind of offers you wanted. The kind you needed to get the attention we initially talked about.”

“But the book is sad,” she said. “It doesn’t have a happy ending.”

His smile was rueful. “I know. They’re calling it women’s fiction. One editor said it might start a trend of stepmother lit. They say the market is huge, given all the second marriages and blended families in this country. Everyone has a stepmother or knows someone who does.”

Mellie’s heart was pounding. “What does this mean?”

“It means we could have an auction,” he said. “It means that whoever buys the book will want to send you on tour and have you do publicity, and will promote the book as the definitive stepmother story. And—I hate to tell you this—they all seem to love the title.”

“The title is horrible,” she said, then stopped herself. She almost told him the whole book was horrible.

“I know,” he said and made his way over to the table. “I was going to turn it all down, but it didn’t seem right without consulting you. So I’ve told you. Now all I have to do is email them with a thanks but no-thanks.”

She swallowed hard. She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected any of this. Initially she had thought about the talks and the tours, the publicity and the promotion, just as a way to get her message across. But even all that got lost in her efforts to write the book.

And she had been so relieved when Charming took that over.

Until she saw the book of course.

Then again, she’d been trying for years to get a hearing on the mistreatment of stepmothers in fairy tales. Not just years. Decades.

He was right: she would have been happy about this a month ago. Hell, a week ago, before she had read the book.

But now the book was a reality, and it wasn’t quite her reality (but it was close—too close for comfort, in fact. But who would know that, outside of the Kingdoms? And how would it get to the Kingdoms, except for Charming?)

“Let me see the offers,” she said.

He grabbed a folder off a nearby chair. Inside were printed out emails—six of them—with the word “Offer” emblazoned across the top.

“I have voice mails too,” he said. “Some people left messages.”

She glanced at him. “They did?”

He nodded. “A lot of messages. These editors are afraid they’ll miss out. They really think you have the next best thing here.”

“You have the next best thing,” Mellie said. “You wrote the book.”

“Using your words,” he said softly.

Her cheeks heated. She spread the papers on the glass table top. Offer after offer after offer. He had arranged them from the smallest—if you wanted to call six figures small—to the largest, which made her gasp.

Not that she needed the money. But she had no idea there was so much money in publishing, particularly for a book like this.

“The money is just representative,” he said. “I’ve been talking to some writer friends. They tell me that these are advances, and they indicate how much push a publisher is willing to put behind a book. These advances mean that a publisher would try to make this book a national—maybe even an international—bestseller.”

Mellie looked up at him. He had wiped his face of all expression—probably deliberately—and he was just watching her.

Then he leaned forward, and moved some pages.

“Here’s what I think is interesting,” he said and tapped the middle of one of the sheets. “It’s an advertising and promotion plan, something they tell me is really, really unusual at this stage. But the publisher’s really afraid that they’ll lose out to someone else, so they’re letting us know everything they plan for the book. See? You’d go all over the country on a whirlwind tour. There’d be appearances on The Today Show, on Regis and Kelly, and they’d even try for a special Oprah segment, although they are really clear they can’t guarantee that.”

“Oprah?” Mellie asked. Oprah was the holy grail. Oprah promoted books, but more importantly, Oprah promoted causes.

“And The View,” he said. “If you’re a really good interview, they’d want you to spend a lot of time on The View. And none of that counts all the radio interviews. They also think the book would do well on the book club circuit, so they’d publish an edition with questions in the back specifically designed for book clubs.”

She scanned the document. All kinds of plans were laid out here, from the advertising budget (which was eye-popping) to the various promotion types, down to viral videos on YouTube.

“I showed this to Shelly,” Charming said, “and he warned me that you’d lose a month, maybe more, of your time, as you promoted this thing. But he said that he thought it would work, and it would make news. It would be something everyone would talk about for a nanosecond anyway, which is about all you can expect in this culture these days.”

“But would it change perceptions?” she asked, almost to herself as an aside. She was still staring at the numbers and the plans, and the exclamation points. All of the editors had used exclamation points to show their enthusiasm for this book. (Tremendous! Fantastic! I’m so glad that someone realized that stepmothers could be heroines!)

“It certainly did for the vampire,” he said. “They’re sexy romance heroes now.”

“You’ve said that before, but what about other archetypes? Has anyone rebuilt, say, ghosts?”

“I don’t know,” Charming said, “but werewolves are showing promise.”

Then he smiled. This smile was tentative, almost as if he was wondering if he dared hope that she might go for this project.

“What would you do?” she asked. “If this was your book.”

Then she took a sharp breath, realizing what she had said.

“I mean, it is your book, you wrote it, and—”

“It’s not my book,” he said. “It’s yours.”

She shook her head. “I can’t write.”

“But you have a way with words,” he said. “That’s what makes this live. Those speeches. See?”

He tapped another part of a different email:

What’s most astonishing about this book are the diatribes. They shouldn’t work. Instead they flow and convince and make us sad all over again for the life that this poor woman has led.

“This poor woman,” Mellie said. “Is that what people are going to think of me?”

“They’ll think you’re a survivor,” he said. “And remember, if you do go out and do all those tours, it won’t be about you. It’ll be about a character in a book that you wrote.”

She took a deep breath. She’d have to work on keeping that separate.

“So,” she said again, “what would you do if it was just you?”

He sank into the chair across from her. “This is every writer’s dream.”

“Touring?”

“Recognition,” he said. “Readership. You’ll get people reading your book, discussing it, thinking about it. They might not agree with it, but they’ll be talking about it, and what more could you want?”

It was what she had wanted all along. She wanted people talking about how unfair fairy tales were, how no one should believe in them, how harmful they could be.

And she would finally have a platform.

If she could stay calm—and remember that the book wasn’t about her, it was fiction. If she could try not to rant. If she could present herself well.

She gathered up the papers. Of course she could do that. She had done it, with several local television stations in interviews that got cut to pieces or didn’t air. But she hadn’t talked about herself as a fairy-tale stepmother. She had talked about herself as a stepmother—which she was, in the Greater World as well as in the Kingdoms—and how hurtful it was to see stepmothers portrayed as something less than human.

“Could we change the name?” she asked.

“They like it,” he said. “They even have a marketing concept—a black cover with a beautiful apple in the center of it, and a bite taken out of it. One editor even suggested a subtitle. Evil: The True Story of the Woman Who Raised Snow White.”

“I didn’t raise her,” Mellie said.

“I know,” he said, “but you see what they’re trying to do.”

She nodded. She did see. She could imagine that cover everywhere. It was lovely, even in her imagination.

“We’d have to tell them you wrote it,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “You hired me to ghost. That’s between us. Just thank me in the acknowledgements for help with the manuscript, and never say that you wrote every sentence while you’re on television. That’ll work.”

“But I don’t know the novel as well as you do,” she said. “Shouldn’t you do the interviews?”

“I wouldn’t be as passionate as you,” he said. Then he sighed and rubbed his nose. “Hell, Mellie, honestly, the idea of doing all that publicity—it scares me to death.”

She studied him. He did seem nervous all over again.

“And you,” he said. “It’s got you interested in the project, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not vain,” she snapped. She hated that accusation. It came from the Disney film too. Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all? Like someone would actually care about that.

He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “I didn’t say you were. But you’re a lot more extroverted than me. You like the idea of this publicity. Me, I just want to go into my office and hide.”

He said it with such sincerity, such force, that she actually laughed. He probably did want to go hide.

“You’d want to come with me on this, though, right?” she asked, and tried to keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said quickly, as if he had already thought about it. “I have my girls.”

“The girls could come,” she said, and realized she sounded just a bit desperate.

He smiled—the third smile of the afternoon, this one altogether different from the others. This one had no finesse, no regret, just a bit of amusement, as if he understood how uncertain she was.

“No,” he said. “They’re just getting used to being here. And they’re finally enjoying school. I can’t uproot them.”

She nodded. She understood. She really did. She just didn’t want to.

“Of course,” she said.

She stood up and looked out over the garden, just like he had. It was a lovely view, with that soft, flowery perfume in the air, the green, the reds and yellows and pinks, the overgrown vegetation. A person could get used to this place.

She could get used to this place.

But she wasn’t going to.

She was going to accept one of those offers.

“You’ll take half the money, right?” she asked.

“That’s in our agreement,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Then let’s figure out which of these offers we want to accept.”