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“Just bagels. We’ve got lunch at one thirty, and it’s after ten.”
“Don’t tell me you got up at dawn and worked out.”
“Habit. I need to talk to you.”
“Sure. We can walk, you said, to the agency place. I meet Carlee face-to-face, then—gulp—talk to Yvonne about the cookbook. I’mtrying not to think about it. Then I head over to the publishing place and get my tour before we all meet up for lunch. Can’t wait to meet the publicity gang, and Melissa in Marketing. Hey, really good coffee!”
“Marco, Carlee called this morning, about an hour ago.”
“Yeah?” He took the warming lid off his bagel. “Berries, too? Nice.” Then he looked up. “Ah hell, does she have to cancel?”
“No. Marco—”
“How come you’re wearing that face? That’s your twisted-up-inside face.”
“It’s not, exactly. She said she’d just gotten off the phone with Adrian.”
“Editor girl.”
“Yeah, and they… Marco, they made an offer on the book.”
“Jesus jumping Christ!” And he jumped up with it. “Mimosas! Now!”
“No, Marco, no. Wait.”
When she squeezed her eyes shut, he dropped down in front of her.
“A crap offer? Okay, so a crap offer’s still an offer, right?”
“No, not crap. Carlee said it was pretty solid, but— Okay, give me a minute. She said she feels it’s on the low side, and laid out three choices.”
“Let’s hear ’em.”
“The presales of Bollocks’s book are pretty good. Better-than-expected good. That’s all the work you’ve done, his social media. She said that.”
“All right, I’ll grab onto some credit.”
“Because they are, she thinks we can counter, that she wants them to have more invested. So first choice would be just take the offer. You know, bird in the hand, and it’s a hell of a bird, Marco. They’d publish my book, and that’s—I can hardly breathe thinking of it.”
“You’re doing fine. I’m thinking second choice is to let your agent do her agent thing and say how about some more?”
“Yeah, basically. And there’s stuff about subrights and percentages. Anyway, that’s door number two. The third is to let her send it out, other publishers. She thinks she can drum up some interest shopping it around and get more than the more.”
“Now tell me what my Breen wants.”
“To get it published.”
“Goes without saying, and it will be. What do you want to do?”
“I could just grab it, and it’s done. And it’s more money than I ever thought—you haven’t even asked what they offered.”
“We’ll get to it. It’s not the important thing first off.”
She closed her eyes again because he understood. Of course he did. “If she shops it around, there’s a possibility of a lot more, a bigger house, all of that. But—”
“Door number two, because you trust her to do her job, and you know your editor, you know the people at McNeal Day. You’ve got a relationship.”
“It would be like putting the eggs in one basket.”
