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“Feral as always,” I said. So freaking accurate. Nolan was such a good writer. The way he weaved romances and created characters had readers eating out of the palm of his hand. I remembered his first book years ago. It’d been a weird little endeavor he didn’t think would work. It took a few years, but he made a name for himself—rather for N. Bailey. All of which he didn’t want, so I helped him deal with the people while he wrote all the words. “I had an idea.”
“No,” Nolan replied immediately, and I frowned.
“You didn’t even hear what I had to say!” I exclaimed.
“You have that look!”
“What look?”
“The one you always get when you’re about to say something I don’t want to admit is right.”
“Maybe you should listen to me more,” I stated, arching a brow. “I was thinking we should talk about your public image.”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that idea.”
“Nolan—”
“I like my public image where it’s at,” he cut me off. “I like not having one. At all. I like being a bookshop owner who secretly writes porn.”
“What if we hired Finn to be your public image?” I asked jokingly.
“Nah, you’d have to go with Lucas and that pierced dick he’s so incredibly proud of.”
“God,” I scoffed. “He’d end up dancing around the convention with it out just to get laughs. Obviously a reasonable choice.”
“No, the only reasonable one would be Declan,” Nolan said. Oh, good Lord. He wasn’t wrong. Maybe Sam could’ve pulled it off, but Sam would’ve cussed someone out for asking the wrong question. Only Declan would’ve had the mindset to handle all of it. I giggled.
“Can you imagine Declan trying to be a smut writer?”
“Can you imagine Raven if we asked him to?” he countered. He paused, his lips pursing together as he drifted off with the thought. Oh, he was going to ask Declan. “I might just ask him to mess with him.”
“Make sure I’m there,” I said. “Should I table this thought for another time?”
“You can. I won’t change my mind.” He kept saying that, but I had a feeling he would. Nolan was on the cusp of his writing career. I just knew it. “What else do we have going on?”
“Your editor will get Mac and Ella’s manuscript back to you next week.” I pulled up my notes list for him. “She asked that you have your read-thru done in two weeks, so she can do a once-over for you after.”
“Makes sense. I’ll adjust the shop schedule once I get it back, so I can prioritize that.” Of course, he would. He did so every time.
“I already shot an email to Raven about that. Your trailer will be ready in a week too.”
“God, I hate that trailers are a thing,” he muttered.
“They’re great for marketing,” I reminded him. “And we have several ads prepped for running, your street team is going wild with promotion.”
“How did we incentivize them again?” Nolan frowned. He never had a clue about half the things I did with his street team. He just shoved money in my direction and told me to take care of it.
“Artwork. Very… detailed… artwork.” God, I could feel my ears burning just thinking about the piece his illustrator had created. I’d never get that image out of my head.
“Good deal. What else?”
“Wutherford and Dart are helping with the next book’s announcements, your pre-order is set for submission when you’re ready.” I continued scrolling, prattling off the very long list of things I’d managed to accomplish or needed to be done. It just kept going and going and going. While I did, Nolan’s frown grew increasingly more intense until it drove me mad. “What? What’d I do wrong?”
“When did you get all this done?”
“Most of it I got done today.”
“You went to breakfast at your parents’, didn’t you?” Nolan sighed. I knew what he thought of my parents, but he couldn’t understand. He never would. Parents like Maeve Byrne were rare. We all weren’t that lucky.
