Just Her Type (27 page)

“Not in the least. I’m flattered,” he said,
looking quite delighted. “What’s a little cyber stalking between friends?”

“I happen to know how much you donated to the
Democrats last year. That’s got to spook you?”
 
One,
two, three, go!

 
“Nope,
not at all. I didn’t use a people-search site, but I Googled
you
a few times, Kendra Camille Porter.
Fun facts: when you were a kid, you had a hamster named Gizmo, and you had an
extra toe removed, so there.”

“It wasn’t
really
a toe. I called it that to sound more fascinating and mutant-like. It was some
extra skin, a big tag, positioned like a tiny toe.” Kendra had provided that
information in a silly
Ten Things Most
People Don’t Know About Me
interview she did with a popular book blog a few
years earlier.

“So where do we go from here? I think there’s
great promise. Might as well stop fighting it. We’re well matched.”
 
Dominic closed the distance between them
before she had a chance to run. He looped his arms around her waist and kissed the
tip of her nose. “Don’t you think?”

“Depends.” Kendra gently pulled away. “There are
other matters we’ll need to discuss, especially
business
matters.”

“You mean like the fact that you’re Brody’s new
agent?” he said casually, catching Kendra off guard.

Chapter 33

“So he told you already?”
Kendra asked.

“Yes, but I had a strong hunch something like this
was afoot when I found you two together on that bus in Maui.”

“And?”

“You two will be working together from this point
forward.”

“And you’re not feeling some kind of weird way
about that?” Kendra searched for the micro expressions of annoyance in him.

“Nope.”
 
Dominic’s smile didn’t quite meet his eyes before he finally tasted his
beer. “What were you expecting? The reaction of a jilted lover, perhaps?” He
affected a shrug of indifference. “We’re all adults here. I have a deep bench,
dozens of successful clients. No need to be greedy.”

“If you say so.”
 
Kendra took another drink.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that.” Kendra reached for a second bottle
of beer and tried twisting the cap off to no avail as Dominic studied her.
 
When she tried to wrench it off with her
teeth, Dominic tossed her the bottle cap remover. “Thank you,” she replied,
opening the bottle. She poured and angled the glass to maximize the brew’s
creamy head.

“You gain an exceptional new client, fair and
square with our mutual respect, but most importantly, your virtue still
intact,” he said. “And why would I sweat losing Brody when I just closed a
major deal with an up-and-coming author with an enthralling new voice? She’s
already generating major buzz. I believe her work has enormous potential.
 
The best of both worlds.
 
Beyond the money, this novel will have
permanence. Importance.
 
It will
make the lists, but I also foresee multiple prestigious award nominations.
 
A Rowan-Reece Prize. American Book
Medallion maybe. The cover of
New York
Gazette Book Journal
.”

“Are you referring to
Four Simple Wishes
by Corinne Ostertag by chance?” Up went the
bottom of her snifter and down went a waterfall of beer.

“Ah, so you read the latest
Publishing Grapevine?
” he said, all but thumping his chest.

“I did. And I also read that manuscript. In fact,
Corinne and I discussed working together.”

“So she did pitch you after all.” Dominic placed
his beer on the island. “You read it, and then you pitched her.”

“Well, I…Wait a second here. Before I go on, did
Corinne send the manuscript to you?”

“No. Her—”

“Or did you happen to see the manuscript in my
hotel room in Maui?”

“What? Have you lost your mind? I can’t believe
you’re accusing me of—”

“Oh, come now,” she said, trying to act sharp
while her sluggish thoughts floated and dispersed like blobs inside a lava
lamp. “Why so offended? Weren’t you just wondering if I was an adulterous
skank?
 
So I repeat, did you happen
to see or skim the manuscript while I was asleep in Maui?”

“You’ve hit your limit, lady. I’m cutting you
off.” When he reached for her drink, it spilled.

“I am not intoxicated,” she replied, which
probably meant —counting the stout downed before arrival— she was
well on her way to
drunker than Cooter
Brown,
as Uncle Alex would’ve said. Cooter Brown. Cooter Brown. This Cooter
Brown, who could never hold his liquor, had always intrigued her. And the fact
that she was fixating on this Cooter Brown in the midst of a crucial
conversation meant she was most definitely, without a shadow of a doubt,
hammered.

Dominic snapped his fingers before her glazed eyes
when she got quiet for a minute. “Kendra?”

 
Her
mind went blank for a few more seconds. “Coote, I mean, Dominic. What were you
saying?”

 
“I
repeat, I did not see your copy of the manuscript.”
 
Dominic fixed his features in what
looked like a guileless expression. “At the Maui conference, Corinne’s mother
came to my room and gave me a hard copy. I knew you spent time with Corinne,
and I thought maybe she’d pitched to you, but I didn’t know for sure, until
now. I decided not to ask about it.”

“A maneuver deployed so you could plead ignorance
no doubt.”

“As if every-damn-thing I do is on the slick.”
Then a muscle in his jaw worked.

“Humph.”

Dominic shook his head. “So what happened between
you and Corinne?”

“Besides her mother mucking up things?”

“ ‘Mucking up things.’ Now that’s open to
interpretation.”

“Corinne and I clicked. We discussed representation.
And Corinne said she was thrilled. Told me how much she liked me. Said she
couldn’t imagine working with anyone else.”

“So you gave her an agency retainer. Did she sign
it?”

 
Kendra
averted her gaze. “Well, um, not exactly.”

“Either she signed it or she didn’t.”

“I didn’t give her one. I gave her a revision
letter.”

Dominic blinked. “Say what?”

“I gave her a revision letter.” Kendra’s fingers
tightened around the bowl of her glass as she guzzled some more. “It was about
cutting some, uh, grace notes.”

“Grace notes. How long was this letter? A page or
two?”

“Thirty-five pages. Thirty-five single spaced for
our first pass together.”

“So, let me get this straight.” Dominic stood
wide-legged, one arm wrapped at his waist, and the elbow of the other propped
on it so he could stroke his bristly chin, his stance when he was about to
clown a person for doing something idiotic. “You read the manuscript. Loved the
manuscript. I know it’s one of the best I’ve read in a long while. Why the hell
didn’t you lock it down when you had a chance?”

Kendra burped. “Um, well—”

“Instead, you ask for extensive revisions before
committing your services? Grace notes, my ass.”
 
Dominic looked skyward. “Unbelievable.”

“The manuscript was…”
 
Kendra knew he was absolutely right. This
was a crisis of her own making. Only a dim bulb would fail to lock down such a
book at the first opportunity. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security
after her long friendly hike with Corinne, complete with phone selfies
together, and their leisurely lunch during which they’d split
 
scrumptious tiramisu.
 
And the realization was too much to
bear. “It’s a wonderful book, but it needs work.
 
Okay, so it actually needs a lot of
shaping, not just fine-tuning.” She gulped more beer.

 
“In
your expert opinion.”

“And what’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“That it’s all subjective, babe. So you believed
the manuscript needed extensive work, but how can you expect her to tear the
damn thing apart on just a ‘well, maybe’
from
you?”

“I’ve done it before, and it worked out fine.
 
I needed to see if she could handle it,
the revisions. She seemed fragile when we discussed killing her darlings. And I
needed to see if she could rein in her meddling mother. If our arrangement was
going to have a chance of succeeding and being mutually advantageous, I had to
proceed with caution. That’s smart business.”

“Smart business
your
way.”

“Not the best way?” Kendra rushed to him and
tipped her head up to get in his face. “Why don’t you come out and say it? Poke
out your tongue, why doncha?
 
You
snooze, you lose.” She couldn’t swallow and get the words out quickly enough.

Dominic made quite the show of wiping away the
spittle that flew out of her mouth and landed near his chin, right eye, and
cheek. “Say it, don’t spray it,” he mocked her.

“Ha. Ha. You’re so funny,” she bleated, moving
away from him. “Go on, admit it. When pitted against you, I’m punching above my
weight.”

Dominic raised his hands. “Your words, not mine,
Ms. Porter
. But hey, now you have Brody
Goodwin. Good luck getting that last manuscript in his current contract out of
him. The guy has lost the fire in the belly if you ask me.”

Kendra had finished her second beer so she went
for a third. “Some writers go through a period of burnout, especially if they
can’t maintain the crank-’em-out schedule so popular these days. He told me he
was absolutely thrilled to have a
new
start with a
new
partner, someone who
has a
fresh
perspective on his
career. Someone not managing his career on auto-pilot or letting him rest on
his laurels. Someone who has no problem letting him take the time necessary to
hone his craft, take his writing to the next level. Every manuscript presents a
different challenge. Some are like a fine wine that takes time. You should know
that. You’re
supposed
to be a
writer.”

“
Supposed to
be
?” When Dominic braced his arms against the butcher block island, his
well-honed triceps flexed, looking like horseshoes pressing through the Henley.

Kendra promptly regretted the cheap shot. “I take
that back. You
are
a writer, and
you’re a good one. But Brody’s enthusiasm about our partnership was
heartening.”

“He’s high maintenance,” Dominic said. “There will
be months when you’ll hear from him every day. He doesn’t live far away. He
likes to pop up when you least expect it.”

“Anything you can handle, I can handle,” she said,
thinking Brody had already exhibited his “code red clinger” tendencies when he
made that late-night visit to her hotel room in Maui.

“Well, good for you,” he sniped. “I hope you two
will be very happy together while he wastes weeks removing, replacing,
removing, and then replacing the same freakin’ semicolon. You won’t make any
money until he’s fulfilled his present contract.”

“I know how it works. I’m not an imbecile!”

Dominic gave Kendra a look she took to mean that
was open to interpretation, too.

“I’m sure we will be happy. And I hope you enjoy
your
ménage à trois
with the Ostertags.”

“Hey, I don’t bed clients.”

“No? What about Raven Raw? The Guitar? Oh, wait.
Isn’t her biggest Billboard hit titled ‘I Like to
Please on My Knees?’
So
technically you don’t need a bed for her specialty.” Kendra’s head felt like a
boulder, heavy and impenetrable to all reason.

“You’re going there?” Dominic said with an
astonished look. “You’re actually going there.”

“And then there’s the good old-fashioned
figurative screw. Selena told me you played her. Or is that also ‘open to
interpretation’?
 
Your cop-out
response when refusing to take responsibility for your shadiness?”

“But I always manage to get the job done, don’t I?
Unlike
some
people. Don’t hate the
player, borrow his playbook.”

“Nice third-grade reply and from a wordsmith no
less.”

“Said the second-grader in the midst of a monkey
meltdown. Go ahead. Proceed to collapse on the floor, kick and scream because
you didn’t get what you wanted.”

“Do you always have to have the last word?”

“You do realize that question is a setup, right?”

 
Kendra
clucked her tongue.

“You lost Corinne,” he said. “Deal with it.”

“And you lost Brody.”

“Yeah, but I’m not going ripshit over it. Bottom
line, you
are
his second choice and
that’s a fact. Don’t forget it.”

“You’re insufferable!
 
How I could’ve ever thought—” She
hopped off her stool and brushed by him to head to the closet for her coat. “I
think I’d better go home for the night. This is getting us nowhere.”

“Wait, okay?” Dominic went after her, seizing her
by the arm. “Don’t leave.”

Kendra stopped, but could not look at him.

“Please.”

Kendra stopped, but wasn’t absolutely sure because
the room was spinning.

“We’re both behaving childishly,” he said. “Let’s
take a minute here. Breathe and calm down.”

“I don’t think—”

“Let’s sit.” Dominic led her back to the kitchen
with his arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t we put this discussion on ice and
enjoy our dinner, okay? We obviously don’t think clearly when monster egos
clash,” he said with a humorless chuckle as they sat on the stools at the
island.

Kendra’s ears still burned with resentment, but
she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of playing the bigger person.

“Okay,” she said with dawning awareness. This
argument reminded her of those she’d had with the exes. Similar quarrels had
always signaled the beginning of the end. This time, however, she had displayed
more restraint and applied some anger management techniques. She had yet to
unleash her special brand of uncut crazy (a.k.a CUH-ray-ZEE) on him, which at
various points in her dating past had involved breaking plates, hurling
profanities, and scaling the fire escape at a guy’s off-campus apartment with
the intent to storm his closet. That breaking and entering incident, one and
done. Thank goodness she had not regressed to such nutty antics since sophomore
year of college.

It had been inspired by a
Brady Bunch
rerun after her first real boyfriend, a second-year
grad student, had cheated on her soon after Kendra had lost her virginity with
him. So she wouldn’t get “too clingy,” he’d said by way of lame explanation. As
if he were actually doing Kendra a favor by doing her roommate. Mission
accomplished: Kendra did not cling, but that itching powder she’d sprinkled in
his pants sure did.

“Brody is your client now,” he said. “Corinne is
mine. We both win. Truce?”

 
Kendra
remained silent.

“C’mon, baby. I don’t want business to come
between us. You mean too much to me. We can always work out the details. Hash
out what’s discussed and what’s not discussed regarding our agencies and
clients.
 
And I promise I will keep
the hubris and collar popping in check from now on. I was wrong for that. But
for now, I’m starving. I say we eat ourselves into a carb-induced coma with our
Franken-pasta.”