Chapter 5

Cara

I had been coming to Groundwork for a week.

In that week I had learned a few things. Claire was the morning barista. She was efficient and kind and had stopped asking for my name after day three. The leather chair by the window was almost never taken before eight. The businessman in the blue pinstripe who sat at the middle table every morning ordered an Americano and spent the entire time scrolling his phone.

And the man in the charcoal grey coat crossed the street from the high rise at eight forty-five. Every weekday. Without variation.

I had started arriving at eight.

Coincidentally.

This morning I was trying to fix Gabriel.

Gabriel was my new male lead. He had existed in my manuscript for a few days now, and in that time he had failed spectacularly to become a person. He had a face I couldn’t describe with any conviction. Every time I tried to write him into a room, what came out was generic. When he spoke it was flat and rehearsed. In short, Gabriel was the literary equivalent of a stock photo in a suit.

The female lead was fine. She was sharp and funny and made bad decisions with great confidence. Slightly autobiographical. I liked her enormously. But a romance novel without a convincing male lead was just a woman having a difficult time.

Which was a memoir, not a love story.

I needed Gabriel to breathe.

I stared at the paragraph where he walked into a room where the female lead was sitting for the first time and felt the despair of a writer who knew exactly what was wrong.

And couldn’t fix it.

Presence couldn’t be described. It had to be felt. And I couldn’t feel Gabriel.

I picked up my coffee.

I looked out the window.

I waited, without admitting I was waiting, for eight forty-five.

The door opened.

He came through it the way he always did. The CEO god wore the same thing every day. Dark grey coat and trousers, pristine white shirt, no tie. He moved slow, sure, and confident. Claire straightened behind the counter and her face took on a sort of hopeful glow. Like a stray dog hoping the man would throw her a bone.

He went to the counter and greeted Claire. He turned slightly while he waited and his eyes moved across the room in that brief efficient sweep he did every morning.

They landed on me.

I was used to being recognised in public, at least, back in the years when my books were popular. I knew what it felt like to have someone’s attention adjust in your direction.

This was not that.

This was the look of a man who had noticed something in his environment that he found displeasing. Like a fly that had just landed in his soup. His gaze held mine for three full seconds — long enough to be deliberate, almost rude, and short enough to be dismissive. In those three seconds he communicated, without a single word, that he had looked at me and found me unworthy of his attention.

Then he collected his coffee and walked to his table without looking back.

I looked at my screen.

Well, I thought. Alright then.

I found my Gabriel.

My eyes moved over the CEO god, tracing his face, his broad shoulders, his impeccable posture.

Then I started typing.

Gabriel looked up when she walked into the room. The way he looked at her was nothing like indifference. His eyes moved over her face with the focused attention of a man studying something precious and unique. When she met his gaze he didn’t look away. He held it, and what she saw in his expression made her breath catch.

He looked at her like she was the most decadent dessert on an à la carte tray.

I sat back.

There he was.

Three weeks of nothing and all it took was one spectacularly unfriendly look from a man in an expensive coat. I had taken his face, his body, the exact way he moved through a room.

And I had given it to a man who would use those same qualities to adore someone rather than dismiss them.

It was an author’s revenge.

And it was the most fun I’d had writing in two years.

I was so deep in my new chapter that I almost missed the notification that buzzed on my phone. I ignored it for four minutes before I reached for it automatically.

Kelly Aström cordially invites you to celebrate the launch of The Deal With The Bad Boy. Friday 7th November, 7pm, The Pemberton Gallery, SoHo.

I stared at it. Friday was today. The launch was tonight.

Kelly was my closest friend. Maybe my only friend. She had called me three times since the Leanne interview and left voicemails that I had listened to in the dark and not returned. She had texted I’m still here, talk to me, every few days. My best friend had finished her book and sold it and was launching it into the world on a Friday evening in SoHo and she wanted me there.

I should go. Kelly had stayed by my side through all my ups and downs. She celebrated with me when I published my books. She deserved to have me in that room, cheering for her achievement.

The Pemberton Gallery.

SoHo.

Publishing people. Industry people. People who had likely been in attendance at the Vantage & Cross gala. They had likely watched the Shelf Life video or read the spin off tweets that erupted afterwards.

My flat white was still half full. I reached for it absently, without looking and misjudged entirely, catching the side of the cup and sending it sideways across the table. Coffee spread in a slow decisive arc across my keyboard, my notebook, the edge of my coat sleeve.

No no no no —

I grabbed a fistful of napkins and pressed them against the keyboard. Claire appeared automatically with a cloth and a look of sympathy.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

She smiled, “Don’t worry, it happens to everyone.”

I mopped and blotted and turned my notebook upside down and watched a thin stream of flat white drip onto the floor. I felt the eyes of the room on the back of my neck.

I did not look at the table near the back. I couldn’t deal with his condescending eyes. Not now.

I gathered my things with what remained of my dignity and left Groundwork with coffee on my sleeve and Kelly’s invitation glowing on my damp phone screen.

I stopped on the pavement and stared at the coffee soaking into the cream wool of my favourite cardigan sleeve. I sighed heavily. It was yet more evidence that Cara Lennox could not be trusted in moments of emotional crisis.

I opened the Uber app. Normally I took the train to save money. But the invitation on my phone qualified as an emergency.

A book launch. A public appearance. Tonight.

I was still staring at my phone when a white square appeared in my peripheral vision.

I looked up.

The CEO god was standing beside me on the pavement. He must have exited Groundwork just after I had bolted from my table. He was holding out a folded white handkerchief with a look of absolute disgust on his too-handsome face. Clearly he was not handing me a hanky as an act of chivalry. Rather it seemed to be an act of self-defence against the dripping mess that was me.

Maybe he was worried that if I didn’t mop up my sleeve it might somehow drip onto his very expensive grey suit.

I took it. I don’t know why. I just took it.

He gave the briefest nod — the nod of a man who had resolved an irritant — and crossed the street back to his steel and glass building without another word.

I looked down at the handkerchief in my hand.

White silk. Pressed. Monogrammed in the corner with a single initial.

D.

I stared at it.

D? D for what? D for douchebag? D for desperate? D for Dick?