“Do you know how rare it is to be published in both the Review and the New Yorker at the same time with two different stories? At twenty years old?”
“Nineteen.” I smirked and took a pull from my champagne. “Do you like my work, Mr. Lash, or do you like that little novelty? Because I’m drowning in my own bullshit, already. I don’t need you to shovel more in my lap.”
“Sometimes a writer is the next ‘hottest thing’ and sometimes he or she is truly something special,” Elliot said. “You happen to be both. And I wouldn’t be a good agent if I didn’t do everything in my power to make sure the world knew it.”
I toyed with my glass, swirling the golden liquid around and around. “I’ll think about it.”
“Please do. I think you’re ready for the next step. And it will be a big one.”
He finished his glass of beer and reluctantly left as if afraid he’d never see me again once he walked out the door.
Given my track record, he was probably right.
Stay…
I banished River’s pained voice from my memory for a solid ten seconds as I pondered Elliot Lash’s offer. But ugh, a whole book? A book took long hours of plotting and research and rewrites and editing. A book was a lot of fucking work.
“I hate work,” I muttered.
But instead of tossing Elliot’s card in the candle centerpiece and watching it burn, I shoved it in my pocket, downed the rest of my drink, and strode across the room to Jean-Baptiste Moreau.
“Well?” I demanded.
He smirked, amused, but his dark eyes raked me up and down. “Can I help you?” His voice was low and smoky and tinged with a thick accent.
“I hope so.” Help me, JB. Help me forget him. “I’m Holden Parish.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “I’m Jean-Baptiste Moreau.”
His hand closed around mine, and the deal was sealed right then and there.
“I have a question for you, JB.”
“No one calls me that.”
“But you make an exception for me.”
“I suppose I do.” His gaze roamed my face, lingering on my mouth and then my hair. “Silver. I like it.”
My one cheat against anonymity. River could find me in a crowd…
“My question is,” I said, “we’ve been in the same room for the last hundred hours. Why are we just now meeting?”
JB laughed, showing beautiful white teeth in a face of perfect dark skin. “Perhaps I’m shy?”
“God, I hope not.”
His smile turned seductive, his dark eyes locking on mine. “Why don’t you take me upstairs and find out?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Hours later, JB lay sleeping in the tangled sheets in my bed while I sat in the suite’s next room, writing furiously in a journal by the light of a small desk lamp. A bottle of Ducasse sat beside me, half empty.
For the last three months, Suite 1925 had been my home. It wasn’t the biggest suite the hotel had to offer but it had a view of the Eiffel Tower, and Josephine Baker had lived here for a while, which made it feel appropriately artsy.
With JB’s scent still all over me, my body still humming from our tumble in the sheets, I wrote about River until my hand cramped. I wrote to River, crying out for him, my pen crawling over the paper, falling down the page until it was just his name, over and over, blotted with my tears.
“Goddammit…” I whispered brokenly. “I can’t do this…”