Page 31 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Rudely personal,” Ross observed mildly. “I actually didn’t, which was nice. My agent did a very good job. She had ammunition because the breakdown between me and—the publisher,” he said carefully, “was . . . complicated. We sort of had a special relationship.”

“Like the US and UK ‘special relationship,’” probed Petra impertinently. “Or seriously inappropriate, don’t tell anyone, X-rated ‘special relationship’?” she asked.

If she recalled correctly, the editor who acquired Ross’s debut was well-known in the industry as a ball-breaking, fast-tracking wrecking machine, currently editorial director in one of the big five publishing houses, an ascent that meant the woman had serious cojones. Plus, conceded Petra, the woman—Cassandra, was she called?—was one of those shiny, leggy, perfectly manicured women other women loved to hate. Which was fine if you liked that sort of thing. And why wouldn’t he?

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” she said, keen to pry further revelations from him now that he was in the mood to talk. “Tell me about your agent?”

“Did I have a special relationship with her too?” he said, deliberately misunderstanding. “No, as it happens. I’m kind of a one-woman guy. One woman at a time, I mean, I’m not saying that I’ve only been with one woman,” he added hastily. “’Cause, you know, I’m thirty-four, so that would be borderline weird—”

“Yeah, all right, all right, I don’t need to know about your entire romantic history,” said Petra, finding that she very much didn’t want to hear about any of it, for some reason. “Are you still with your agent at least? It’s Veronica Bampton, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Was. I mean, it still is, of course. She’s not changed her name. But no, I’m not signed to her anymore.”

“So basically,” said Petra, struggling to get to grips with this monumental car crash Ross was describing, “you’re a major international prize-winning debut novelist and you’ve now lost your publishing deal, your editor, and your agent. Correct?”

“To put it bluntly,” he agreed. “But this we know,” he protested. “We’ve talked about this, remember?”

“Yeah, but I just didn’t . . .” Petra whistled through her teeth, shaking her head. Ross had clearly had a very, very bad time of it. “Oh Ross,” she said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“Thank you,” said Ross, selecting a large piece of chocolate from the fast-diminishing stash in the box. “Catch,” he said, aiming it at her mouth.

She did. “I’m not a performing monkey,” she protested with her mouth full, well aware this was a diversionary tactic. Or at least an attempt to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, I’m not a performing monkey either,” he said. “And that’s kind of why the whole thing with book two happened.”

Petra gave him a sympathetic look. “We ask a lot of our writers,” she admitted. “People who don’t know the publishing industry tend to ask us whether we are all actually frustrated writers ourselves . . . Maybe some of us are but—in all honesty—I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“You put your trust in your editor, for sure,” he mused, not looking at her. “You have to. It should never have gotten messy, like it did.”

He looked so abject, Petra felt bad for grilling him. Time for a change of focus.

“So,” she said, “going back to current writing that you are—or possibly are not—doing . . . ?”

Ross sighed, staring into the fire for a long moment. “I actually really am,” he admitted, squaring his shoulders. “Just recently, I started again. Since we met, as a matter of fact. First time in a long time, and it feels . . . well, it feels surprisingly okay.”

“So, can I read it?”

“No.”

“Oh, go on,” Petra wheedled. “I’m a professional, remember?”

“No,” he said again, but he was smiling.

Chapter Thirteen

Later that night, in her bed, Petra lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Poor Ross. Okay, so the sad, grinding, low-level failure to thrive that the majority of published writers experienced in their careers was soul-destroying enough, but this? This shooting-star success followed by complete disintegration? This took “messed up” to a whole new level. No wonder he was hiding out in Portneath.

And now he was writing again? Exciting! Disillusioned as Petra was with the whole book industry, she wanted to read what Ross was writing. A lot.

Ross was awake too. Strange, he thought, how he had felt able to be so candid with Petra tonight. He hadn’t shared much about that period in his life, five years ago, with anyone, not even his family or his small handful of remaining childhood friends back in Scotland. And now here he was, telling all to a woman he had known for a very short time. Though actually, perhaps not “all.”

But Petra was a woman who was—until very recently—part of the machinery that had crushed him so totally. And as for the woman who had been at the heart of that damage—a woman who still often haunted his dreams—she was someone very different from Petra. He saw that increasingly clearly these days. Henrietta had been a drug he hadn’t known existed until he was already addicted. The process of sharing his manuscript had created an emotional intimacy that left him wide open, and Henrietta had known exactly how to move in. Before he knew it, she had cast herself in the role of guide and mentor, someone who even replaced his agent as the facilitator to the future he so craved, as a recognized and published author. Without her, she persuaded him, he would stray from the path and become prey to all the misfortunes that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for all the other aspiring authors. She had picked him up out of obscurity, and now she was his greatest fan and acolyte.

He could trust her. That was what she had told him.

And yet, when she touted him around the literary world on her arm, and as she persuaded him his work was nothing without her input and oversight, he also slowly became aware—too late—that neither their working relationship nor their romantic relationship was quite as it seemed: She was not the devoted acolyte to the magician creator she had told him he was. Far from being the Ariel to his Prospero, she had made him her Caliban, her Frankenstein’s monster, being held resentfully in her thrall, while being emotionally dismantled so—as in Stockholm syndrome—he became infatuated with his jailor.

He had become her creature.