A is for Author (The ABCs of Love) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EPILOGUE

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  B is For Barista Sneak Peek

  B is For Barista Chapter One

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  Chapter One

  Emerson Lindsor did not like berets, but she always tucked one into her bag on Author Days. The bag itself was also toted out only on Author Days, a leather satchel that was designed to communicate that Emerson was a Serious Author. They’d both been gifts from Maggie, her best friend, on the day her first book debuted.

  First and only book.

  Five years ago.

  Emerson squeezed her eyes closed and pushed that distracting fact from her mind, then opened them again, pulled the beret out, settled it on her head, and checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. She repeated the affirmation Maggie had forced her to memorize when she’d presented her with the Serious Author bag and beret.

  “I am super good at this and people will listen to me.”

  Then, still following Maggie’s instructions, she removed the beret and tucked it into her bag again. The beret was a joke. “Never actually wear the beret,” Maggie had told her. “That’s pretentious. You just need to believe you have the right to the beret, as much as your mom or anyone else. This is more like a soul beret.”

  Emma leaned forward, checked her lipstick—a tasteful neutral tone that didn’t compete with her dark brown hair—and her eye makeup, still smudge-free even after spending the morning grading final essays from her Modern American literature students.

  She was as ready as she would ever be. She didn’t love public appearances. The audience rarely knew who she was, but if they did, it meant she would get the Dreaded Question. When is your next book coming out?

  Normally she would have declined, but this invitation had come from Beverly, her favorite librarian at the Coupeville Library. She’d wanted Emma to appear on a panel of local authors, and because Emma was forever indebted to her for the many deep dives Beverly had done for her on book research, Emma had agreed.

  She forced herself out of the car and found Beverly in the library reading room. Even though she’d made a point of arriving a half hour early, half of the chairs were already full.

  “Wow,” she said, after returning Beverly’s hug. “I knew we had a lot of readers on Whidbey Island, but I honestly didn’t think there would be this much interest in an author panel.”

  “That’s because of the programming change,” Beverly said, “You got my email, didn’t you?”

  Emma wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t think so. When did you send it?”

  “Three days ago.”

  Emma shook her head. “That explains it, then. I’ve been buried in grading. End of semester and all that.”

  “We had to make a change in the author line up. Kelly LaFell couldn’t make it, so I switched in another local, and now we’ve got this,” she said as three more women came in, laughing and arguing about which seats would give them the best view of the panelists.

  Emma had a feeling she knew who it was. “You got Aidan Maxwell?” she guessed, as another group of four women walked in.

  “You know him?” Beverly said, relieved. “I was going to track down a revised copy of the author bios I sent in that email. I guess you won’t need it?”

  “Not necessary,” Emma said. She didn’t actually know Aidan Maxwell, but it was hard to not know of him. If he sneezed and someone published the tissue, it would hit the New York Times bestseller list, probably with a cover showing the hot blonde actress who played the lead character in the TV series based on his police detective novels. Not that Emma had an issue with beautiful actresses, but she resented male authors who wrote them busty and smoldering as part of their wish fulfillment.

  But Aidan Maxwell was a big deal—and from what she’d seen of the relentless marketing materials his publisher used to push his books—he was good-looking. That would explain the steadily growing audience of women in the library.

  “I should have guessed you two already knew each other,” Beverly said. “You’re both in here often enough.”

  People often assumed she knew Aidan Maxwell because they were both writers living on the same island, but Whidbey Island was big, and she didn’t want to get into it. Instead she asked, “He comes in here a lot? Doesn’t he have research assistants?”

  “Me.” Beverly pointed to herself. “When he’ll let me help him. He likes to do most of it himself. But he lets me help him often enough that he thought he owed me when I asked him to fill in today on short notice.” She glanced around at the steadily growing audience. “I think I need to get more chairs,” she said, her tone fretful. “Will you feel slighted if I have to leave you alone?”

  “Not at all,” Emma promised. “In fact, why don’t I help you?” She didn’t let her distress show at the size of the audience. Now she had an even larger group of people with whom she wouldn’t connect, all of them here to see a big shot whose books couldn’t be more different than hers.

  Beverly shot her a relieved look as she gestured for Emma to follow her to a storage closet and pull out more chairs. More women arrived to fill them as fast as she and Beverly could set them up.

  She kept an eye out for the other author scheduled for the panel, trying to match the new arrivals with the author photo Beverly had sent in their informational packet. Finally, she recognized Jamal Ingram, who wrote young adult novels in verse. He made it with plenty of time to spare, but at five minutes ‘til, there was no sign of Aidan Maxwell. He was way past the requested arrival time.

  “I need to go close the doors and be the bad guy to let the rest of the guests know that we’re full,” Beverly said. “I hate to ask, but do you mind getting the panelists settled in at the table?”

  “No problem,” Emma assured her. She straightened from squeezing the last available chair into the room and surveyed the set up to see if there was anything else she could do to help.

  “Do you mind taking care of this?” a deep male voice asked over her shoulder, and she turned to confront a broad chest covered in a denim shirt. Whoever it was stood so tall that it took a good bit for her eyes to travel up and find his face, then they narrowed. Aidan Maxwell. He looked just like the promo displays for his books. He was shrugging out of a leather jacket—a biker style. She barely refrained from an eyeroll. Of course it was a biker jacket. How predictable. And unutterably pretentious.

  She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t work there, but a woman had rested her hand on his arm and started speaking loud and fast about how she couldn’t believe it was really him at a pitch that hurt Emma’s ears.

  Aidan turned to smile at the woman while holding the jacket out to Emma. She should just take it and set it on the chair designated for him at th
e table in the front of the room.

  But she didn’t want to. Instead, she ignored him and walked off to take her own place at the front of the room.

  Seriously? She hadn’t expected much from him, but to show up after the designated start time and treat her like she was the coat check girl from a cliched 1950s movie? Ugh. If she hadn’t been looking forward to the panel before, she flatly dreaded it now. It would be difficult to keep a civil tongue in her head while paneling with a cretin like that.

  She slid into her seat as Beverly struggled to close the door on two women waving money at her, trying to wheedle their way in to stand and listen. Aidan’s seat was at the opposite end of the table from her, Emma noted with relief.

  She decided to ignore him until he took his seat, turning instead to smile at the other seated author, Jamal. “I’m Emerson Lindsor.” She offered her hand for a shake, which he accepted warmly as he introduced himself. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Maybe not.” Jamal cast a nervous eye over the sea of eager women, most of whom had their necks craned Aidan Maxwell’s way. “I don’t know if this is a teen poetry crowd. Think any of them would notice if we slipped out?”

  It made Emma smile. It was good to know she wasn’t alone in her nerves. She checked her watch then flicked a glance toward Beverly, who had managed to get the door closed but now seemed to be trying to separate Aidan Maxwell from his fan.

  Beverly caught her eye and sent her a frazzled look while mouthing, “Can you start?”

  Emma pointed to herself. Me?

  Beverly nodded like a bobblehead.

  Emma took a deep breath. She could do this. She’d imagine it was her first day in front of a new section of literature students. Except her biggest classes only boasted about sixteen students. And none of them were regarding her as an inconvenience while they waited to hear from an overrated typewriter jock.

  Each panelist had a mic in front of them. She cleared her throat and leaned toward hers. “Hello.” There, that was a simple, logical beginning.

  Except the tide of chatter continued in the audience, unabated. Jamal shot her a sympathetic look. She leaned closer and repeated her greeting a little louder. This time most of the women in the first three rows paused or lowered their volume to look toward her. Heartened, she kept going. “Welcome to this panel of local authors. We’d like to get started to be respectful of your time.” She gave the word a little punch, hoping that it would penetrate the cloud of arrogance surrounding Aidan Maxwell, but he and the fan were still talking. In fact, a couple more women had joined.

  He had an entourage now. Cute.

  Beverly looked more perturbed than flustered, and that was a pretty good mirror for Emma’s own feelings. She lost some of her nervousness as her irritation rose. Now she was simply determined to get Aidan Maxwell reined in. She couldn’t believe he was still back there, casually chatting, as if he’d never learned common courtesy.

  “We’re so pleased you could join us for a discussion of the subject we’re all passionate about. Books.” Aidan Maxwell turned when she said the word “passionate.” Of course he did. She repressed another eyeroll. “If you could all take your proper seats—” she sent him a pointed look, “we’ll have Beverly join us as the moderator. Can we bring her up here with a round of applause for the excellent job she’s done of organizing this event?”

  The audience obeyed with some polite clapping. Beverly shot her a thankful smile as the groupies finally took their seats. She touched Aidan’s arm to indicate he should go ahead of her, clearly determined to play bouncer for any other eager fans who might be overcome by his handsomeness and try to waylay him again.

  Even though his seat was at the other end of the long table, Aidan, with his ridiculous leather jacket hooked over his shoulder, broke off and angled toward Emma’s end of the table, where he paused and smiled down at her before extending the jacket to her. “How about now?”

  She opened her mouth to say something cutting, but she couldn’t be sure what that might have been because he slung the jacket back over his shoulder. “Kidding,” he said. He sauntered toward the last open seat, and instead of sitting in it like a normal person, he turned it around and straddled it before resting his arms across the back.

  Half the audience looked like it might faint right on the spot.

  He had to be kidding with this stupid swagger routine. She didn’t know if she was more annoyed with him or with the women who fell for such textbook alpha male nonsense.

  “Thank you for joining us,” Beverly said. “We appreciate your patience with the delay as we got everyone situated.”

  Yeah, right. The seating hadn’t caused the delay. The late-arriving hotshot had.

  “We’re delighted to have this wonderful panel of local authors here to discuss the creative process. I’d like to give a special thank you to Aidan Maxwell for filling in on such short notice.”

  Emma almost wanted to give him a tiny bit of credit for stepping in at such a small-scale event, until she heard the loud applause for Beverly’s acknowledgment. It was borderline thunderous. She shot a look down the table to Aidan Maxwell. He wore a satisfied smile. Emma deducted the few points she had rewarded him for decency, then a few more just to put him firmly in the negative. What a tool this guy was.

  “I thought we’d dive right in and have you tell us about your work for those who aren’t familiar with it,” Beverly continued.

  Jamal gave a short overview of what he wrote as if it were an easy question. And maybe it was if you worked in a clear genre so booksellers knew exactly where to shelve you. Emma was never sure how to describe what she wrote, but she’d come here knowing she might make herself look silly in front of an intimate crowd of twenty-five when she couldn’t explain. She’d been okay with that. She wasn’t okay with doing that in front of a crowd well over a hundred. She wracked her brain to find a description of her work as snappy as Jamal’s.

  She came up with . . . nothing.

  “What about you, Emma?” Beverly prompted her.

  “It’s hard to describe my book,” she said. She thought she heard a soft snort from Aidan Maxwell’s direction, but he was leaning away from his mic, so she wasn’t sure. “It’s about life, and how we fit into it, and redefining happiness.”

  “It’s a self-help book?” That was Aidan Maxwell, leaning forward and looking down the table toward her with an expression of genuine curiosity.

  She felt the beginning of a blush heating her neck. “Well, no.” She was really messing this up. “It’s fiction.”

  “So, like a romance?” he pressed, looking bored again.

  “No, I don’t work in genre fiction. I write literary fiction.”

  “Ah,” he said, directing his remarks to the crowd. “Literary fiction. No wonder you can’t explain what it’s about.”

  That won him a big laugh, and now her cheeks burned, but this time anger was rising. She’d dealt with belligerent males before. “It’s true that every single one of my books can’t be summarized with the exact same tagline.” Jamal choked back a laugh next to her.

  “You think my books can? Go ahead and take a crack at it.” Aidan Maxwell didn’t sound at all ruffled.

  “Smart man cop and sexy lady partner catch bad guys and put them in jail.” She leaned forward so she could meet his gaze. “How’d I do?”

  “Not bad, although you forgot the part about the car chase and the explosions.”

  “And foot chases with the sexy lady partner in high heels?”

  “Naturally.”

  She sat back, pleased that she’d held her own, although it would have been more satisfying if he sounded as nettled by her critique of his books as she’d felt by his. The crowd stayed pretty quiet, and as she scanned their faces, mostly she saw confusion.

  Beverly gave a small, nervous-sounding laugh. “On that note, maybe you’d like to give us your own description of your books, Aidan?”

  He waved off the request. “Nah. The professo
r got it right. I’m sure everyone in here knows what I write.”

  The cocky assumption turned up the dial on Emma’s temper again, off-setting the surprising fact that he’d read up on his fellow panelists enough to know that she was a professor.

  “Um, well.” Beverly looked down at the index cards in her hands and shuffled them quickly. “Given how different all of your genres are, I’m wondering if we’d be surprised by the number of similarities in your author process. If it’s not too presumptuous, I’d love to hear about your writing spaces. Let’s start with you, Emerson.”

  “There’s a little coffee shop near my place. I love to write there,” Emma said.

  “Of course you do,” Aidan interjected before she could explain why. “Are you even allowed to write literary fiction if you’re not in a café?”

  His tone was light, and his groupies awarded him with another laugh, but Emma sensed a bite in the words. What was his problem? He’d started this by assuming she was a coat girl, and then doubling down even when he’d realized she was a fellow author.

  Well, not a fellow author, exactly. He was in a totally different class. A low one.

  When Beverly began another nervous shuffle of her index cards, Emma decided to ignore his sarcasm. She didn’t want to add to the librarian’s stress. Emma smiled at Aidan Maxwell as if she found the café joke funny. “I sit at the most isolated table and drink pretentious coffee, black, because it’s good for staring into the existential void. It’s a sugar- and cream-free kind of void.”

  “That’s exactly how I pictured it.” Humor colored Aidan Maxwell’s voice.

  A hand in the audience shot up, a young woman who looked college-aged. “Why coffee shops? Or anywhere busy like that? You don’t find it distracting?”

  “My problem is that I’m in my head too much. Being in a coffee shop—or anywhere with some life to it—it’s good for me. It keeps me connected to the rest of the world, and I love to people watch, figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, imagine their stories. The more ordinary a person seems, the harder I tend to look, and the deeper the back story I give them.”