The Publicist Book One and Two (32 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

The bar was packed with people. The conversation floated like a hum through the Fat Cat, where Kate had asked Grace to meet her to celebrate the launch of her latest book. Thankfully, this time the launch had gone off without a hitch. TVs played over the bar, but Kate hardly noticed them. She sipped her drink. She’d done it; she’d pulled this off. Kate could feel herself beaming. After all these years in book publicity, she always felt a surge of pride when an author’s book launch went off flawlessly.

Grace nudged her friend. “Kate, I didn’t know that Singer was supposed to be on Nancy Grace. Is that a good thing?”

Kate spun in her stool to face the television that hung precariously in the corner of the bar; she was just in time to see the crawl at the bottom. Someone had been arrested.

Oh, God. It was her author. It was Singer. The crawl read: Bestselling author Michael Singer accused of selling children into child sex ring.

“Turn it up!” Hearing Kate’s panic, the bartender punched a button on the remote. The voices on the screen grew louder.

“So as it turns out,”
Nancy Grace began in her distinct Southern drawl,
“Michael Singer has been doing something not good. In fact, it’s downright disgusting. When I tell the whole story, you’ll agree that anything related to this guy, including his book, should be banned.”
Kate thought she was going to faint. Nancy continued
, “Selling children into a life of pornography. The Feds raided his Seattle offices and found evidence of this on the computer systems. Singer, as you know, just released the mega-bestselling title: The Continued Promise. Well, I can promise you this, if he’s convicted, he’ll go to prison for a good long time. I hope anyone who bought a copy of that book will take it back to the bookstore in protest. We cannot support anyone who does this!”
Nancy Grace continued, but Kate stopped listening.

Kate felt lightheaded and nearly slipped off of her barstool. Grace steadied her.

“I take it you didn’t know about this?” she asked quietly.

Kate didn’t respond. She dug for her iPhone, which was vibrating out of control in her purse. It continued to buzz in her hand as she glanced at the screen. Messages were flooding in—show cancelations, event cancelations. Word of this incident and Singer’s possible involvement in this was spreading faster than she could have anticipated.
Damage control
, she thought to herself.
She needed damage control.
But how do you control this? The thought of what Singer might be doing sickened her. If she had known, she would have never been a part of this. Not ever.

Kate pounded the redial button. Mac, of course, the last person she’d called. She turned her head, trying not to look at the flash of pictures of Singer being carted away in handcuffs. The Feds had pulled a hood over his head and he looked even more sinister.

Mac’s number rang. No answer. Voicemail. All she said was, “Mac, call me. It’s extremely urgent.” Next, she tried his apartment. Still nothing. She sent him an urgent text message and waited an interminable five minutes for him to respond. When he didn’t, she realized she couldn’t stay in the bar; the sounds of laugher and conversation had started to grate on her.

“Grace, I have to get out of here.” She slid off the barstool, not waiting for Grace to respond.

Kate wove in a daze through the bar, ignoring the smiling faces. She was fixated on her phone. The night air still warm and sticky, the streets teeming with pedestrians. She tried calling Mac again. Nothing. Finally, a text message popped up.
Let’s meet at your apartment.

Kate grabbed the first cab she could and was home in ten minutes. By the time she got there and flipped on the TV, every major news station was covering the story.

It was, by all accounts, an unmitigated disaster.

A knock. “It’s Mac,” he said, and then slipped his key into the lock. She was standing in front of her small TV, remote in hand, flipping through news stations that were all showing the same footage Nancy Grace had: Hooded author, disgraced.

Mac walked inside and she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Mac, this is horrible. What are we going to do?” Mac wrapped his arms around her but didn’t say a word. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

Kate? Mac rarely called her Kate in private. A nervous coil of something curled inside her. She looked up. “Sorry, for what? This isn’t your fault.”

Mac could only look at her.

“Mac, say something. What’s going on here?”

He walked around the room, his hands deep in the pockets. He didn’t bother to sit down; it wasn’t likely he would be staying long anyway.

“Mac, please.” Kate heard herself begging now. For the second time tonight, she didn’t recognize her own voice.

Mac slid into one of her chairs looking deflated and defeated. Kate walked over to him and was just about to kiss him when he said, “Kate, listen, we can fix this.”

“Fix this? Are you freaking kidding me? He is selling children into the sex market; there is no recovering from this. It’s not like he’s some petty thief, for Christ’s sake, Mac.”

“No, I don’t mean the book. I mean us.”

Kate was confused. They were fine. Well, as fine as they could be considering one of them was married. That’s when it hit her. She felt her body go cold. She moved away from where Mac was sitting. His eyes were on her.

He knew she knew. She’d finally gotten it. What he did, or rather, what he didn’t do.

“You knew,” she whispered hoarsely.

Mac nodded. “I did know he had done something, but I didn’t know it was this; I swear. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t? There’s a difference, Mac.”

“I couldn’t, Edward—”

“Fuck, you’re kidding me! Edward knew too? Were you two in a conspiracy to let this guy keep his book while he was doing God knows what to children?”

“Katie, listen—” Mac was up from his seat, walking over to Kate. He reached for her. She pulled away.

“Don’t touch me!” She felt tears streaming down her face. “How could you? How could you know and not tell me?”

“We were hoping—”

“What? That he wouldn’t get caught? That the book would be safe from all of this scandal? And then the children. What about these kids?”

Kate couldn’t breathe. There was no air in the room, and every bit of oxygen was being sucked from her lungs. The room seemed to spin. She could hear Mac’s voice somewhere off in the distance, “Kate, we needed this to work. We needed this book to work.”

Kate felt her heart crumble in her chest. She was in love with a man who allowed this to go on for longer than it needed to. Even an hour was too much.

“You set me up. You and Edward set me up,” she sobbed. “I could have done damage control for the company. We could have figured this out. Instead, you assholes rolled the dice that the creep wouldn’t be found out before the book launched.”

“Kate, the Feds came to Edward and asked him not to say anything. They needed to trap Singer to get him. They needed our help. Our hands were tied. I swear to God I did not know what Singer was being accused of.”

His explanation was coming out in fragments, he knew. “Ed told me only that Singer was being investigated. Hell, Kate, I thought it was for fucking tax evasion. I swear to God I had no idea. I couldn’t tell you. I never imagined it would affect the campaign.” That, of course, was only partially true. In his gut, Mac had worried more than he cared to admit.

“That wasn’t up to you to decide!” she yelled, “I am the publicist on this project! You damned well could have told me he was going to go down for something! You should have prepared me! Instead, you were too worried about making your precious sales and needed to buy some time!”

“No, it wasn’t that. I mean, we were asked not to say anything publicly until the authorities could be sure.”

“Publicly,” Kate sneered. Mac walked over to her, putting his hand on her arm. She shrugged him off. “I am not the general public. Now I look like a fucking idiot for booking all these gigs for him and for not being prepared for this. I have a thousand emails from all over the country: canceled interviews, canceled book signings, and canceled book orders. Books are going to come flying back into the warehouse, Mac. If I had known…”

“You couldn’t have done anything to stop it,” Mac said softly, realizing he was losing her.

Probably forever.

His heart cracked at the thought of that.

“No, but as my friend and my lover and as someone who is supposed to care about me, you could have warned me. Now it’s too late, Singer’s book is dead, and so is my career!”

“Kate, no. Listen, we can fix this. Fuck the book sales. Fuck Singer. What’s important here is you and me, and we can fix this.”

Tears were streaming down Kate’s face and her heart was pounding in her chest.

“Get out,” she said softly. “Get out and don’t ever come back. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Mac’s breath caught in his throat. “No, Kate. Please don’t do this. We’re good together.”

“Good—how so, Mac? You’re married and not to me. Where’s the good in that? Now, you just set me up and pretty much washed up my career. How the hell are we supposed to recover from that? How?!” Kate was screaming and crying. She couldn’t feel her legs and knew she needed to sit down, but she wanted to stand—to stand up to Mac, who had just betrayed her in a way that made her feel hollowed out.

Wiped clean.

She clenched and unclenched her fists, digging her nails into the palm of hands hoping to make them bleed. She was almost sorry when they didn’t. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. Mac watched her, wanting to reach out to her but knowing she would just fight him off.

Suddenly, Kate heard the soft click of the door and realized Mac had left.

For good.

And she dropped to her knees and wept into her carpet.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kate didn’t know how long she’d been lying curled up on her floor, but the clock over her mantel told her an hour had passed. She pushed herself up, feeling slightly dizzy and oddly out of breath. She didn’t even dare look in the mirror; she already knew what would be staring back at her. A pale, swollen face. She didn’t need to see that. She had things to do. She had to do whatever she could to clean up this mess that Mac had left her to deal with.

Mac.

His name sat heavy in her mind. The pain of the loss of him tore through her. She sat up. She needed to focus on bigger things. Her relationship with Mac was always destined to end. She just could have never predicted it would end like this. Kate threw on her coat, grabbed her keys, and headed out. She needed to get to her office and work through this. She needed to stay busy, but moreover, she needed to do what she could to save what little was left of her career. Her phone continued to buzz. The sound of it grated on her. She needed to clean this up.

The MD offices were empty, with the exception of a small light that burned in Edward’s office. She wasn’t sure if the King himself was in or if someone had left a light on. She wasn’t about to find out. She slipped past his office and quietly shut the door behind her. Kate dropped herself behind her desk without even removing her coat. She flicked on her computer. Her iPhone kept buzzing in her purse.

No calls, just email cancelations.

Hundreds of them.

Nausea washed over Kate, but she closed herself off to her emotions, and, once it all finally downloaded, clicked open her email. There staring at her was a mountain of emails and even a few snide commentaries. She had a lot of work to do.

First, she needed to reach out to every single one of her contacts personally and acknowledge the cancelation. Did MD have an official position? Should she get some sort of official statement before she hit send on any of these emails? Kate pondered this and considered going to see if Edward was actually in his office. He was the last person she wanted to see, but protocol was protocol. Not that there was a standard operating procedure for dealing with someone who pimped children.

Edward threw back another glass of Scotch. Was it his third or fourth? Maybe it was his fifth; he’d lost count at this point. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. His hopes of another blockbuster had gone up in smoke. This was a disaster MD might never recover from, and he knew it. Edward sank into his heavy leather chair. Well, dropped was more like it. The chair bounced back and the Scotch spilled on his shirt. He didn’t even care that he’d smell like liquor when he got home.
If
he went home. He wasn’t sure what the night had in store for him, but knew he wasn’t finished with his Scotch yet. Edward suddenly felt the desire to be near a woman. Clumsily, he dialed the number of one of his recent companions. He fumbled with the numbers, hanging up and redialing several times when he’d hit a wrong number. Finally, he got it right. There was no one there. Well, the truth was she probably was there but had heard the news and wasn’t picking up.

“Fuck!” he said aloud and tossed back the rest of his drink. When the FBI had come to him, he decided to push up the title in the hopes of grabbing sales before this guy got his ass thrown in jail. It was harder to return a book months later. His plan, however, had been flawed. He brought Mac into the tail end of it, telling him only days before the book launch. However, Mac was less equipped to handle the news than he’d hoped—despite the fact that Ed had sanitized the version he’d told him. No one was sure what Singer did wrong, he’d said—least of all him.
Fucking FBI
, Edward thought.
When you need them to move slower, they suddenly get a fucking bug up their ass.

Kate stared at her incoming email for what seemed like an hour, putting them in priority of who would get responded to first. She needed to know what to tell them.
“Hi, I know you think I am a loser of a publicity person, but honestly I didn’t know. My married lover kept this news from me, and now in all likelihood my career is ruined and I’ll spend the next ten years working on press releases for books written by ex-drug addicted ex-child stars from the sixties that no one gives a flying fuck about.”

No, that wouldn’t work.

Begrudgingly, Kate got up to see if Edward was working and see what the MD game plan would be—other than for the powers that be to do whatever they could to cover their asses and leave the clean up to the low-life publicity people.

Namely her.

Kate tapped lightly on Edward’s door. “Edward, are you in?” She pushed the door open and saw Edward sitting in his chair, leaned back, an empty glass on his desk. He looked drunk and the room smelled like booze.
Freaking great,
she thought,
I’m so out of here.

“Eh, never mind, Edward. We can discuss this in the morning.”

Edward was up like a shot. He felt lightheaded but made his way to the door to stop Kate from leaving. He grabbed her arm with as much strength as he could muster. “Kate, don’t go. I could use a friend.”

What the…?
Kate thought,
A friend? You need a friend? I need a freaking job, that’s what I need. Maybe we could trade.

Kate tried to pull away from him, but Edward’s grip became stronger.

“We have a problem with
The Continued Promise
, Katie,” his words slurred, which disgusted Kate even more.

The King had lost his crown, if only temporarily.

“I know. Mac told me. I came here to see what MD’s official position is. I have a lot of media waiting to hear from us and even more that have bailed on this entire project.”

Edward’s hand tightened on her arm. “Mac told you?” His eyes narrowed. “You and Mac. I know about you two. I see the way he looks at you. He’s a goner over you, Katie.”

Kate felt her heart race. Just what she needed, a lecture from another man they could have invented the phrase “serial cheater” for.

“Edward, you’re mistaken. Mac is a friend, nothing more.”

Edward leaned into Kate. She could smell the stench of liquor on his breath. It nearly made her vomit. “He’s a lot more than a friend, Kate. No, don’t worry, Mac didn’t tell me. I have eyes.”

“Edward, this really isn’t…” Edward pulled her inside his office and slammed his door.

“Isn’t what, Kate? A good time? Fuck, we’re all in deep shit over this fucking crook of an author. I can guarantee you there won’t be a good time for a while, a long while. We may not survive this mess, Kate…” Edward used all his strength to push her up against his door.

“Give me whatever you gave Mac. Give me whatever makes him smile all the time. I see it, I got eyes. He hums, Kate. Who fucking hums anymore, especially in publishing? I want to hum, Katie. Make me hum.” He clawed at her shirt and Kate tried to push him away. Even drunk Edward was still stronger than she imagined.

…

Mac looked out the window of his apartment. Night had fallen across the city. He’d come home, dropped his keys, and stared out the window without turning on a single light. He preferred it this way, shrouded in darkness. His heart felt like an empty shell. Grief coiled inside him. He could still hear Kate’s words as they echoed in his head.

It was over.

All of it.

Over.

In one fell swoop, he’d ended the best thing that had ever happened to him. Now he was left with what? A marriage that still didn’t work, a job… Well, the job was debatable. Nothing. But the loss of Kate was greater than any pain he’d felt in a long time. He’d known better than to get involved with Kate. She made him question everything: his life, his marriage, even his career. Why hadn’t he told her about Singer? He was obligated not to, but that wasn’t the point. She was his lover. He should have told her. Now her career was in a shambles and everything was a mess.

“Damn it,” he said aloud. “Damn it all to hell.” His hands balled into fists as he stared out the window.

He wondered what she’d be doing right about now. Knowing Kate, she was probably at work, trying to fix this mess. While he was home feeling sorry for himself, she was probably in her office poring over emails and making calls. He felt like such a loser. A man who’d climbed to corporate heights he’d never even dreamed, but when it came to character, he had very little of that. Much of it he’d traded or sold out to make his corporate climb. Mac was sick of it, of all of it. He needed a change, a new life. But first, he needed to do what he could to help Kate; even if she refused. He’d go to the office anyway and offer it to her. Besides, he had to see her, to know she was okay.

Mac turned from the window, grabbed his coat, and left.

…

Edward grabbed Kate’s blouse, tearing it open. Buttons flew like bullets across the room. “Edward, no!” Kate pushed him back. He fell into his bookcase and a few hardbacks toppled from the shelves. One of them hit him square on the head. Edward was pissed. “How
dare
you, Kate! I am your boss!”

“Being my boss doesn’t entitle you to grope me!” Kate grabbed the handle of the door but was yanked back. Edward flipped her to the ground. She was sprawled out on his carpet. Edward tugged at his tie. “Just sit still, Katie. You’ll enjoy this. Most women do.” Kate lifted a spiked heel and kicked Edward in the groin, sending him to his knees in a yelp of pain.

At that moment, the elevator opened and Mac walked into the hallway. As he expected, he saw a light on in Kate’s office, but Edward’s was also lit. He hoped he could sneak past there without getting stopped. But as he neared Edward’s office, he heard a scuffle and Kate’s voice.

When Kate fell, she’d twisted her ankle pretty badly and as hard as she tried to put weight on it, she’d sink back to the floor. Edward pushed himself up and moved over Kate. He groped for her again, her blouse now hanging open, her breasts looking soft and appealing. He reached for one but Kate slapped him back. He grabbed her hand midair. “Stop fighting me Kate. We both need this.”

“No!” Kate could only scream. He was too much for her. She was exhausted and in pain and he was too strong for her. Just then, the door pushed open and Mac stood staring down at them. In a flash, he pulled Edward off of her and hurled him across the room. He fell into his desk, slid across it like a rag doll, and landed in a heap on the floor.

Mac was on his knees beside her. “Katie, are you okay?”

Kate fought back her tears. Exhausted wasn’t even a word to describe how she felt. “Fine,” she whispered.

“Are you hurt?”

“My ankle.”

“I’m calling the paramedics. There could be something else wrong and Edward probably needs medical attention.”

Against her better judgment, Kate leaned into Mac. “No, Mac, I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

Mac stroked her hair. “No, Sweetheart, you’re going to the hospital to get checked out, and I’m going to make sure they give you something to calm your nerves and make you sleep.”

Kate couldn’t argue that, nor could she argue with Mac anymore. She simply didn’t have the strength. Edward groaned but remained on the floor while Mac dialed 9-1-1 from his cell. Two minutes later, he hung up and returned his attention to Kate.

“Listen Kate, I’ll tell the paramedics anything you want. But the scandal…”

Kate nodded. “I know, Mac. I can’t take much more of this either. Tell them whatever you want. I have no desire to press charges or see that man again.”

“Kate, I’m sorry.” Mac kissed her on the top of her head as he cradled her in his arms.

“I know,” she whispered, “I know. But I’m glad you’re here. I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t arrived when you did.”

Mac was glad he’d listened to his gut, and he continued to stroke her hair while they waited for the ambulance.

“You know,” Kate said finally, “you and I, we would have ended eventually anyway. It’s always the way it goes. I only wish it hadn’t ended this way.”

Mac’s heart weighed at her words. “It doesn’t have to end, Kate. We can work through this.”

Tears filled the corners of her eyes. “I had a great time, Mac.” Her head was still buried in his chest; she couldn’t look at him, not now.

Maybe not ever.

Her voice was filled with goodbye.

“Please, Kate, let’s not do this now, not here.”

“I wish things could have been different,” she continued speaking, trying not to listen to Mac talk her out of her position.

When the paramedics opened the door, the moment was over. Mac released her into their care, wishing he could have said more. Wishing they hadn’t arrived, so he’d have one more minute to say what he really meant to say—what he should have said all along.

Much to Kate’s chagrin, the paramedic insisted she get on a stretcher. They wheeled Edward out too, who regained consciousness as they heaved his body up from the floor. Mac never left Kate’s side as the paramedics pushed her down the hall. Mac could feel his phone vibrate in his pocket. Word was already getting out. An “incident” at MD. What the hell would he tell everyone? Kate fell, and when she did, her blouse came undone? Fuck it all; he didn’t care at this point. The only thing that mattered now was Kate. They pushed her to the waiting ambulance and loaded her in, securing the stretcher for the short ride to the hospital.