Chapter 11

Mother Mary Margaret had rented two stretch airporter vans for the day of Alex’s graduation. All of the nuns were going and they were very excited as they climbed into the vans, with Sister Tommy driving one, and one of the older nuns the other. They had their tickets, and would occupy a full row in the auditorium. Alex was dressing in the dorm, and they wouldn’t see her until the procession. They were so proud of her. It was one of the most thrilling days of Alex’s life, and the Buchanans were coming too. Elena was still working for a family in New York, and her contact with Alex had dwindled to a Christmas card every year to stay in touch. Alex hadn’t seen her in many years. When she had tried to see her the summer she worked in New York, Elena was in Martha’s Vineyard with her employers, which was disappointing.

It was a beautiful day as the family and friends of the graduates took their seats in the Robsham Theater at the College of Arts and Sciences. The nuns could hardly sit still as they chatted, waiting for the procession to start. And then they saw her coming down the long aisle, with her classmates, in pairs, to take their seats and claim their diplomas. The nuns cheered even louder than they had at her high school graduation, and the graduates let out a whoop and a roar as they threw their mortarboards in the air after the ceremony. It was a very special day.

The Buchanans invited all of them to the Chart House, with harbor views in the city’s oldest dock building, for lunch afterward. Alex was beaming, and each of the nuns hugged her and had a photograph taken with her. In the end, she had grown up with twenty-six mothers instead of one, and it had served her well. She was a happy, balanced person, and even though she still missed her father, she had been loved and well taken care of for more than seven years. She was twenty-two years old, and Bill congratulated her and was stunned by how much she was paid for the advance for her last books. It was a major achievement, and added to what her father had left her, she would be safe for a long time.

Alex had invited Bert to come to the ceremony too, but he said he didn’t want to put on a suit, and would drink a glass of wine, or possibly rum, to her health and future success at the appointed time. She would have liked to have him there, but he said ceremonies made him uncomfortable.

By the time they got back to the convent late that afternoon after lunch, Alex was exhausted. She had thanked the Buchanans for everything, kissed and hugged all the nuns, returned her rented gown, kept the tassel from her hat as a souvenir, and set her diploma in its leather case down on her desk. It was a landmark in her life. She had graduated. And her dream now was to travel around Europe, in France and Italy. The nuns were nervous about it, but Mother MaryMeg had discussed it at length with Sister Tommy, who had convinced her to let Alex go. She had to try her wings. And she wasn’t short of money, so she could stay in decent hotels in good neighborhoods. Both women thought she could take care of herself and would be safe. She was sensible and not given to high-risk behavior. She was leaving for Rome in a week, and she could hardly wait.

She was lying on her bed, thinking about the day, when there was a soft knock on the door, and Sister Regina slipped into the room. She had been looking better lately. She’d gained back a little weight and seemed more serene. She came and sat down on the foot of Alex’s bed and smiled at her.

“We were so proud of you today.” They always were, and Alex smiled back at her.

“It was great.” It had been everything she had always dreamed of and more. And the only one missing was her father.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Sister Regina began cautiously. Mother Mary Margaret had asked her to wait to tell Alex, so it wouldn’t distract her from graduation. She didn’t want anything to spoil it for her, in case Alex was upset by the news. But this time, Alex guessed before she said it.

“You’re leaving?” Her longtime friend nodded, with tears in her eyes, but they were tears of emotion, and not regret. She had taken years to decide and mull it over, and she knew she was doing the right thing. Alex wasn’t surprised and knew how hard the decision had been for her.

“I have to. If I don’t, I’ll always regret it, and life will pass me by. Mother MaryMeg says I can come back if I want to. I’m not being banished or anything, or excommunicated. I just need to try life outside for a while, and see if it’s for me. Maybe I’ll come back with my tail between my legs, but if I don’t do it, I’ll feel cheated forever. It’s as if you had never tried to write a book. You need that to be who you are, and I want to try to have a regular life with a husband and kids, if God decides that’s what I should have.” It made sense to Alex, and she thought it was the best decision, and she hoped Regina found what she was looking for out in the world. If she wanted kids, she should have them.

“Where will you live?”

“I got an apartment, with a roommate, it’s very small. And I have a job, teaching at a public school in South Boston. I start at the end of August. I’ll stay here till July, and then I’ll move out and get settled.” Regina felt like this was her last chance to have the life she had dreamed of.

“Do the others know?”

“Not yet. You’re the first one I’ve told. We decided a month ago. Mother has been very kind.” And then she looked at Alex sadly. “Will you stay in touch?” They had been friends for seven and a half years, and Regina had watched Alex grow up from a young teenager to a woman, and had seen her develop her talent. Regina wanted to write a book too, a novel, about a nun leaving the convent, although she knew she didn’t have Alex’s gift, but she had a story to tell, even if she only wrote one book. “But hopefully no one gets murdered in mine.”

They both laughed and hugged each other, and Alex promised she’d write to her from Europe.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I have nothing to rush back for. I want to travel for a couple of months. I’ll be back in the fall. I want to start a new book then. But I can write while I’m away too.”

“Well, come and see me when you get back.”

Both of them were excited when they talked about their respective plans that afternoon, and sat on Alex’s bed until dinnertime.

They went down to dinner together and the mother superior could tell that Sister Regina had shared her secret with Alex, and she didn’t mind. She knew how close they were. And Regina wasn’t leaving St. Dominic’s in disgrace, she was going to find herself, with their blessing. Mother MaryMeg knew full well that the religious life was not for everyone, and the vocation Regina had been so sure of as a teenager twenty years before no longer felt right to her as a thirty-five-year-old woman.

Alex left a week later, after saying goodbye to Bert and promising to write to him too, or call from time to time. He told her to take some time off from writing for the next two months, it would do her good, and give her a chance to fill the well again, as he put it. She had written five books in a relatively short time. And he thought Europe would give her fresh ideas. There were so many places she wanted to visit: Paris, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Provence. She had a long list of cities and locations she had read about and only imagined for years, and all of them would make fantastic settings for a book.

Sister Regina, Sister Xavier, and Sister Tommy drove Alex to the airport, and she had only taken two bags. One of them was very heavy because she had her Smith Corona in it. She had brought her laptop in her carry-on bag and two of her father’s favorite books. She had packed comfortable clothes and a few dresses, and some notepads in case she wanted to write longhand. She had hugged Mother MaryMeg before she left and thanked her for everything. How did you thank someone for a third of your life, being your family and giving you a home? She couldn’t, and they just held each other tight, and the mother superior gave her a blessing, and told her to be careful and call from time to time. Alex promised she would, and it was a tearful scene at the airport with the three other nuns she had been closest to, who had been a trio of mothers to her for all the years she’d been there. They hugged and kissed a dozen times, and waved as she went through security, until they couldn’t see her anymore, and then they drove back to the convent, alternately crying and laughing, remembering things she had done when she was younger. And by the time they got to the convent, Alex was on the plane, thinking of them. She was a little nervous about traveling alone, but if it didn’t work out, she knew she didn’t have to stay, she could come home.

But the trip exceeded her wildest expectations. She thought Rome was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen, with the Colosseum, St. Peter’s, the Vatican, and the countless small beautiful churches. She spent a week there and walked everywhere. She went to Florence and spent days in the Uffizi, and four days in Venice, visiting every church and monument on her list. Being in Venice sparked an idea for a new book, and she started taking notes. She thought the canals and the palazzi, particularly at night, were a perfect location for a sinister crime, with Interpol involved, and she created an Italian detective. She went to Milan briefly, and then flew to Paris and spent two weeks there. It was mid-July by then, and she had called the convent several times to check in, so they didn’t worry about her. She rented a car, and drove to the châteaux of the Loire Valley, and fell in love with Provence when she went there. She made a detour to Ireland, and loved it despite terrible weather, and then flew to London and spent two full weeks exploring the city. She had been in Europe for more than two months, she still had no desire to go home, and her notebook was full of jotted notes for a new book.

She found a small hotel in Bloomsbury, and thought about what to do next. When she called Rose to check in, the agent made an interesting suggestion.

“Your publisher has an office in London. Maybe they could bend the rules and give you a job for a while, just to get a feeling for life there. Since it’s an American company, they’ll know how to get around your needing a work permit and can probably pay you from the States, or set it up as an internship of some kind.” Alex liked the idea and thought it might give her an excuse to stay, since she wasn’t ready to come home. She couldn’t tell them that she was Alexander Green, but she could use her internship in New York as a reference to get one here. She thought that Rose’s suggestion was a good one, and she walked into the publisher a few days later and inquired if they had any openings for an internship as an editorial assistant, and they said they might. One of their junior editors had gotten married recently and moved back to the States, and the current assistant who had taken her place was getting a promotion. They agreed to interview Alex the next day, and treat the junior editor’s job as an internship until they found a proper replacement with a work permit.

She wore the only nice dress she had brought with her, and at the end of two hours, after she met several people, they hired her. The pay was low, but she had her own money. She was doing it for the experience, not what she’d earn, which was an enviable position to be in, unlike her friend Regina, who was about to become Brigid O’Brien again, and was worried about how to make ends meet with her teaching job. Alex had the freedom to do whatever she wanted, and stay as long as she chose. And she liked the idea of working in London. She called Mother Mary Margaret and told her about her decision, and said she was sure she wouldn’t stay for more than a few months, and they’d probably have a permanent replacement for the job by then anyway.

“That’s what you’re there for,” the mother superior encouraged her, “to discover the world. It will be good for your books.”

Alex went to a real estate broker to find a furnished apartment rental, and located a small but very nice one in Knightsbridge that suited her, and rented it for three months. It seemed more sensible than staying at a hotel. So she had a job, and an apartment, and she was going to live in a new city for a while. She felt very adventuresome as she walked to work the next day and found the person she was supposed to report to, Margaret Wiseman, an older editor whose specialty was historical novels. She was chilly to Alex and told her which desk she could use, but she made no particular effort to welcome her, and handed her a stack of work to do. They were menial tasks, like filing, but it kept her busy until lunchtime, and Fiona, one of the young assistants, came to say hello and ask her to join them for lunch, and she accepted. She was three years older than Alex, and everyone was friendly as they sat at a sandwich shop, talking about people she didn’t know. They thought it very interesting that Alex had come from Boston for a job there, as a junior editor on an internship. She explained that she had just graduated from college in June, and had been traveling around Europe ever since.

“Good on you!” one of the girls said admiringly, and they all walked back to the office together, and got into the elevator with an attractive man in a black shirt, black jeans, and motorcycle boots, with tousled black hair, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a week, which Alex assumed was intentional. She laughed, thinking that he reminded her of one of the characters in her books.

He spoke to her as they left the elevator together, the lift, as the girls had called it, and he headed in the same direction as Alex.

“New girl in town?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, and she smiled and nodded. She was wearing jeans and a sweater because she’d been told that casual dress was allowed, within reason. No flip-flops, no shorts, no halter tops, but jeans were fine.

“Yes,” she said simply, as he fell into step with her.

“Ah, American?”

“Boston.”

“Intriguing.” He smiled as she went to her desk. She wondered what he did there, since the whole floor seemed to be mostly editorial people. He disappeared down another hall, and she didn’t see him again until they met leaving the building at the end of the day.

“How was school?” he asked and she laughed.

“Not bad for a first day.” The work seemed to be fairly simple so far, at least what they were giving her. She had done a lot of filing, but it was exciting to be in another country, and to have a new city to discover. And London was easy because of the language.

“Where are you staying, with friends?” He was very bold about asking her questions, as she tried to figure out what bus to get on outside the building. She had a map but was embarrassed to take it out and look like a tourist.

“No, I was lucky. I found an apartment, furnished.”

“Want a lift?” He pointed to a small, battered Fiat parked at the curb, with the steering wheel on the European side, not the British. She hesitated and then nodded. She knew where he worked, so he wasn’t a total stranger to her.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Where do you live?” She told him the address and his eyebrow shot up again. “Very posh. Knightsbridge. I live in Notting Hill.” And on the way to her apartment, he suggested dinner. It all seemed a little hasty to Alex, she wasn’t sure if he was just being friendly or was putting a move on her. It was hard to tell. “There’s actually a pub quite near you that I like. Want to rough it with a beer and a burger?”

“Sounds familiar.” She smiled at him. “Sure, thanks.”

They ordered dinner and wine when they got there, and the pub was cozy and dark. She realized she didn’t know his name then, and introduced herself.

“Ivan White,” he supplied. “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked, as they waited for the food. “Not an editor, surely.”

“Probably not. You?”

“I edit nonfiction right now. I have a novel in me somewhere. I’m waiting for it to come out.” She almost groaned when he said it. Not another writer, although he was just being collegial and this wasn’t romance. But he had homed in on her pretty quickly. “And you’re not a writer?” He seemed surprised.

“Not really. I wrote a little in college,” she said vaguely. “Mostly for school. And some short stories in high school.”

“And you don’t want to write women’s fiction?”

“Not at all,” she said empathically, and at least that was true.

“How refreshing. Most of the women I meet want to write novels. Very tedious, I assure you.” She wondered why it was okay for him to want to write a novel, but not the women he went out with, but she didn’t ask him.

“Why don’t you like women writers?”

“They take themselves too seriously, and it’s all too emotional and gushingly dramatic, or romantic. Erghk.” He made a face.

“And what kind of novel would you write?” Now she was curious about him and what made him tick. He seemed very sure of himself and was undeniably handsome, and knew it. Even the five-day beard stubble looked somewhat affected, but it suited him. She still liked the look of him for a villain in a book, and maybe he was.

“I think my style is more like Tom Wolfe,” he said blithely, as their burgers came.

“That’s impressive.”

“It’s what I’m drawn to, and I think when I actually sit down and write it, it will be pretty similar.” He seemed confident about it and she was amused.

“I enjoy crime books, I’ve been reading them all my life,” she said to change the subject a little.

“Like whom?”

She reeled off some names and he was unimpressed, and then she decided to play with him a little. “Have you read Alexander Green?”

He nodded. “He’s pretty good, very formulaic, though, don’t you think?” It was a major put-down, that she wrote by a formula, rather than having the books be different each time.

“How many have you read?”

“Two, I think. Odd that you’ve read them. They’re really brutal.”

“I used to read some pretty gory crime thrillers with my father.”

“You’re a strange sort of girl, aren’t you?” he mused, looking at her. “You jaunt off around the world, stop in London and get a job, find an apartment, like men’s books. You must have been a tomboy as a kid. What are your parents like?”

“They died when I was very young. My father worked for a construction company, and my mother was an actress and model.”

“Sounds like an ill-fated match,” he said as they ate.

“It was. She left when I was seven. I lived alone with him after that, till I was fourteen.”

“And then?”

“It’s a long story.” She didn’t want to tell him about the convent. She didn’t know him well enough and had told him more than she’d intended.

“It’s either a very sad story, or an extremely happy one,” he guessed.

“Pretty happy. It worked out well.”

“You married and had three children.”

“No, definitely not that!” She laughed.

“How old are you, by the way?” He had been curious about it since he first saw her that morning. He was moving quickly and wanted to know a lot about her.

“Twenty-two. I just finished college in June.”

“And you’re on a junket around Europe,” he added. “Rich parents. Poor people can’t do that. Did yours leave you a lot of money?”

“That’s a little blunt, isn’t it?”

“It never hurts to ask. If they did, you can pay for dinner. If they didn’t, I will.” He was only half teasing.

“Let’s split it.” She didn’t want to be indebted to him anyway. And she wanted to start on the right foot so they could be friends. But in the end he didn’t let her pay for dinner and said he’d only been joking. He drove her back to her apartment after dinner and told her he’d had a fun evening with her.

“So did I,” she said easily. She had no friends here and was starting with a clean slate. And she wanted to have time to write, once she settled in.

“I think you’re lying to me, though,” he accused her.

“About what?” It was a surprising comment for him to make.

“I think you’re a writer in the closet.”

“What makes you think that?” She wondered why he would say that.

“Because you’re a keen observer of people. I see you watching me, and everyone around the room. I’ll bet you could describe everyone in the restaurant tonight, couldn’t you?”

“Of course not.” But he was absolutely right, which made him the keen observer as much as Alex.

“You look at people like a writer, checking out their reactions and emotions, and saving them for later.”

“You make me sound like a spider or a snake ready to eat them.”

“Perhaps you are, and I just don’t know it yet.” In truth, they knew nothing about each other. And he had told her nothing about himself in exchange for what he’d asked her, and for the little bits she’d said about her parents. It had been a one-way conversation.

“And where did you grow up?” she asked him.

“In London. With my grandmother. My parents were actors, perennially on tour. I hardly ever saw them. So our lives were not so dissimilar as children. Maybe that’s why we were drawn to each other.” He was presuming a lot. They had just met and had dinner. She had not been “drawn” to him yet, she was just inquisitive, and very cautious, after Scott. “I think people with dysfunctional families always seek each other out, instinctively, don’t you? All of my girlfriends came from divorced parents.”

Her parents had been divorced, but her father had been anything but dysfunctional. He was a very stable person, except for his one colossal mistake marrying her mother.

“I’m not sure that theory holds,” she said skeptically.

“I can promise you it does. And there’s a lot you haven’t told me yet.”

“And maybe never will,” she teased him. He was very pushy for a first evening. When they got to her address, she got out of the car and thanked him for dinner.

“Let’s do it again,” he said as though it was his decision, and then he drove off with a wave, and she let herself into her building, and her flat. She still had a bag to unpack and clothes to put away, and she thought about Ivan White as she did. He was a would-be writer. And he was a little too aggressive for her taste, and too nosy. He seemed like a good person to keep at a distance. She put him out of her mind as she unpacked her father’s photograph and his two favorite books she had brought with her.

Ivan’s persistence over the next several weeks was startling. She told him she was busy every time he invited her to dinner. And he wanted to know why and with whom, and if she had a boyfriend in London. She said she didn’t.

“Don’t you want one?”

“Not necessarily. I want to get my bearings, figure out my job, explore London, make some friends, do some work I brought with me, and if a man I like turns up in all that, that would be nice, but I’m not shopping for a boyfriend.”

“Are you afraid of men?” he pressed her.

“No. I’m afraid of making a mistake and being unhappy.”

“Then you end it, and start again.”

“That sounds exhausting. I’d rather be careful in the beginning.”

“That’s ridiculous. You have to experience life. How can you do that if you never make mistakes?” He was always trying to convince her of something. She didn’t have dinner with him again for a month, but he kept badgering her and she finally gave in. She knew by then that he was twenty-seven years old, and he had recently broken up with a girlfriend who had left him for someone else. The girls in the office thought he was hot, but said he looked like a cheater. She wondered how they knew that. They said it was just a feeling, when Alex had lunch with them. She particularly liked Fiona, an assistant editor from Dublin. She edited picture books for children aged three to six, and she seemed to like it.

Alex’s job had turned out to be not at all challenging. Her boss never gave her anything interesting to do, and a lot of filing. The assumption was that she wouldn’t stay long as an intern. She seemed to resent Alex, and was unfriendly to her. It made for boring days and very little satisfaction. She was writing on weekends, which gave her something to do. She was working on the outline for her next book.

And Ivan’s work as a “nonfiction editor” seemed to consist mostly of checking text proofs for errors before they went to print. Neither of them had interesting jobs, but Alex loved the idea of working in London. That gave her all the satisfaction she needed. She was getting very close to starting her next book, and had had several phone conversations with Bert about it. He liked her ideas for it a lot, and thought her publisher would too.

Ivan liked spending time with her, supposedly as friends, and he talked a lot about the novel he was going to write, which made her nervous. If he ever figured out that she was a writer and had published, he could be consumed with jealousy, as Scott had been, and take it out on her in some way, and she didn’t want to go through that again. It made her very cautious about everything she said.

He was hanging around her apartment one day, waiting to go out with her to the contemporary wing of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and saw an envelope from her agent on her desk, with a note in it about pub dates and a royalty check for fifty thousand dollars for her first book, but fortunately there was no mention of Alexander Green on any of the paperwork, nor the title of the book, just the date of publication. She saw him glance at it, and then peek into it as she walked back into the room, and he moved away from the desk immediately. He looked startled when he turned to her. He had recognized the name of the agency, which was well known in publishing, even in England.

“What do you need a literary agent for?” He made it sound like an accusation, as though she had taken something that belonged to him.

“I don’t. I worked for them one summer,” she said, trying to be creative, but she didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears. “They send me letters sometimes, and they owed me some money from a tax refund.” She said it in case he had seen that there was a check in the envelope, but she was annoyed at him for looking into her mail, which seemed incredibly rude to her.

“They must have paid you a fortune,” he commented drily, with an edge to his voice.

“They didn’t. Why? What makes you say that? Why would you assume that?”

“Because they sent you a fifty-thousand-dollar tax refund.”

She cringed as he said it. “That’s none of your business, Ivan,” she said, shutting down the subject.

“No, it isn’t, and it was presumptuous of me to look, but I was curious why they were writing to you.”

“You should have asked me. Don’t snoop through my mail.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” he accused her. And she knew it was a story that would have stunned him, but fortunately there had been nothing in the envelope that would expose her as the writer of the Green books. The publisher was very careful about that, so even their accounting staff didn’t know. All payments went to Rose Porter’s agency, and were then paid out to Alex, and the books were only referred to as Book 1, Book 2, and so on, with no titles and no author’s name. But the check was a big one, and why would a literary agency be sending her that kind of money?

“There’s nothing I’m not telling you, or that you need to know.”

“Have you ever written a book?” he asked her, looking her straight in the eye. Previously she had said she hadn’t, and had no interest in writing, which was a total lie, and he sensed that she was hiding something from him.

“I play around with short stories sometimes, but not in a long time.”

“That’s a lot of play money, Alex.”

“I did some ghostwriting for one of their celebrity clients while I worked there.” She was thinking on her feet, and that sounded more plausible to him. He was almost convinced, but not quite.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Because I signed a confidentiality agreement with the celebrity, so I couldn’t, and I still can’t.” She looked prim as she said it.

“Some people have all the luck,” he said, looking annoyed. “I’d love to do some ghostwriting for that kind of money. Who was it?”

“I told you, I’m not at liberty to tell you, or I’d be in breach of contract.”

“A man or a woman?” he persisted.

“A man.” She was inventing it as she went along.

“That’s stupid. Why would they use a woman to write for a man? You can always tell a woman’s voice when she writes something. There isn’t a woman alive who can write like a man.” There had been a number of them in history, but she didn’t press the point. He had the same limited view and prejudices as many others, which was why she wrote under a man’s name.

“I was the only one willing to do it. He was a very difficult person.”

“Well, you were damn lucky to make that kind of money. So I guess you didn’t have a rich father after all, just a lucky job one summer. You won’t make that kind of money here,” he said, and she nodded, hoping he’d calm down and forget about it. She put the envelope in her desk drawer and they left for the museum a few minutes later, but he was out of sorts for the rest of the day, and sullen when they went to dinner, and he started talking about his future novel again. She dreaded the subject with him. And if he knew the truth, and how much she’d been paid for her last two novels, he would have hated her and she knew it. She felt as though she could never get away from jealous would-be writers who would begrudge her her success if they knew she was always hiding, and pretending to be someone else. She was becoming the fictional person, not Alexander Green.

“Why don’t you just do it,” she snapped at him when he talked about it over dinner, “instead of talking about it? If you want to write a novel, put your ass in the chair and write it.”

“When am I supposed to do that? I work all day and I’m tired when I get home.” So was she, and she had been in college for four years, and she had gotten up at four o’clock in the morning sometimes to write before her classes, or stayed up all night after she finished her assignments and then worked on the book. That was the kind of dedication it took.

“You could work on the weekends,” she pointed out.

“I have other things to do,” he said in a plaintive tone. “And you need time to be inspired, you can’t just sit down and write like an accountant with a calculator.”

“Sometimes you just have to do it,” she said with conviction. She had the kind of drive that was required, Ivan didn’t. He wanted to write at his leisure when he was in the mood. He wasn’t serious about it, and she knew he’d never write the novel. He would just talk about it. If he was compelled to do it, he’d have written his novel by then. All he wanted to do was complain, and resent others who had the grit and guts to do it. Writing wasn’t an easy business, in fact, it was damn hard. She’d given up sleep and fun and parties to do it, and dates and romance, relationships she could have had. To Alex, her life was the writing, not everything else, and the reward was finishing the last page and knowing you had stuck it out till the end. She sensed that he would never know the joy of that, because he wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself.

“What makes you think you know so much about writing,” he said angrily, “just because you did some ghostwriting for some fat cat who wrote you a big check?” She didn’t like his tone or what he said.

“I know what it takes. You have to give up a lot to write a book. But what you get back is so much better.”

“Yeah, the money,” he said bitterly.

“No, the pride in your work,” she said with a light in her eyes he’d never seen before. “The money is nice, but it really has nothing to do with it.”

“I hate my job,” he said then, and she felt sorry for him.

“Maybe you should do something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do, other than write a book?” She wasn’t convinced he really wanted to write either, just say he did. “The beauty about writing is that you’re competing with yourself, not someone else.”

“Bullshit. Every writer wants to be on the bestseller list.” He spoke with the lofty tone of someone who knew all about it, and as if she didn’t.

“Of course they do, but while they’re writing, they’re on their own, crawling their way up Everest.” He looked at her blankly, as though her words had no meaning and he didn’t believe her.

“You’ll never write a book, Alex,” he told her with conviction. “You don’t know what it’s all about.”

“I guess not,” she agreed with him, and finally got him to talk of other things, like the exhibit they’d seen that day. But she was shocked by how little he knew about the business they were in, and what the writers went through to produce a book. She had enormous respect for other writers. They were all lonely travelers, rock climbing to the top, fighting for their lives and the lives of their characters along the way. It was like trying to carve a statue out of marble, breathing life into it, and giving it the warmth of human flesh. They gave birth to their characters with each book. Ivan was missing the best part, by focusing on the money, when the words and story and characters they created were so much more valuable and interesting, although the money was nice too. But no one did it just for the money, because they had to pay with blood, sweat, and tears for the end result.

They talked about a variety of other subjects during dinner, and he was in better spirits by the end of the meal. He enjoyed her company, and thought there was something mysterious about her. And when he was charming and fun to be with, she liked him, and when he was angry and jealous, she wanted to run away from him. There was a bitter layer of envy under his skin. But also times when he was very seductive. She was confused about her feelings for him, and whether she wanted to be friends with him or something more. One thing was certain, she could never confess to him about her work. She would have loved to take someone into her confidence about the books she wrote, but she knew it would never be him.

Their friendship continued erratically, and sometimes she liked going out with him, but when she started her book a few weeks later, she no longer had as much time for him, or the girls from the office who invited her out too. She spent a lot of time on the phone with Bert in Boston, to talk about the book and get direction from him. He was like the conductor and she was the orchestra, playing all the instruments as he directed her. She had enormous respect for him, and trusted what he told her to do. He loved the subtleties of her new plot, with the psychological element she’d added. Her writing was maturing, and the book was going to be better than anything she had written when she finished. She didn’t go out with Ivan for several weeks while she worked on it. He questioned her about her absence when she had dinner at the pub near the office with him again.

“Are you seeing someone else?” he asked her, looking suspicious. She thought about telling him she was ghostwriting again, but she didn’t dare. Who would she say she was doing it for here? She knew no one in England, except him, her boss, and the girls at work. And she hadn’t had time to make other friends, now that she had started writing again. He saw the Smith Corona on her desk, but she had put all the pages of the manuscript away in a locked drawer.

“No, I’m not,” she said innocently. Except the characters in her book, who were fully alive to her.

He acted like a boyfriend at times, and a friend at others. And she was both attracted to him, and afraid of him and his competitive, jealous nature once you scratched the surface. He didn’t seem like the right man to her. She didn’t think Ivan was it. But he was sexy, and he kissed her one night when they came back to her place after dinner, and the kiss was searing. He’d drunk most of a bottle of wine by himself, and she responded to the kiss with more fervor than she wanted to. He ran hot and cold and criticized her so much that sometimes he turned her off totally. But when he kissed her, she felt as though her whole body was on fire. He knew all the right things to do to arouse her, and she was an innocent in his expert hands. He used sex as a means to get women to do what he wanted, and it always worked for him. She had thought she could invite him to come in, but she realized she’d been mistaken.

“No,” she said softly, but without conviction, when he unzipped her jeans, as they sat on the couch together. “I shouldn’t…I don’t want to.” He laughed at what she said, and slipped his hand into the small lacy underwear she was wearing, and she was startled by the tidal wave of sensations he created. It was more powerful than anything she had imagined until then. She had written about sex, but never done it.

“Which is it?” he whispered between kisses, as one expert hand started working her breast. He was coming at her from all directions, her mouth, her nipple, and between her legs, and she could hardly breathe. “You shouldn’t…or you don’t want to? And why shouldn’t you, Alex?” She couldn’t remember the right answer to the question. She had had a few glasses of wine herself, and shouldn’t have done that either, she knew, if she wanted to keep a clear head. But she could no longer remember why that mattered…why did she need a clear head with all the incredible things he was doing to her, and then he slowly peeled off her jeans, and all she knew was that she wanted him to, and it all seemed right. Suddenly she wanted him as she never had before. “I want you, Alex…I need you,” he said passionately, and she needed him too. He spread her legs wide and entered her, ripped off her blouse, and bent to kiss her nipples as she moaned. His hands were everywhere and his mouth, and she was murmuring his name as he moved rhythmically, and then suddenly she gave a sharp cry of pain as he thrust deeper and he paid no attention to it. She dug her nails into his back and was torn between wanting him to stop and wanting it to go on forever, and he gave a loud shuddering cry and so did she. It had been pain and pleasure all at once, and he looked down at her in surprise, as he lay on top of her and realized what had happened.

“Were you a virgin?”

She nodded, as two tears rolled down her cheeks. She had wanted the first time to be with someone she loved passionately, not because desire had overwhelmed her after too much wine. She was ashamed of what she’d done, but she had wanted him so much. He rolled slowly off her and went to get towels to get the blood off her legs, and then he held her tight against him. She wanted him to say he loved her, but he didn’t, and she didn’t love him either. She wasn’t even sure she liked him sometimes, but she had loved what he had done to her, some of the time at least. And she clung to him, feeling lost and confused and guilty, but when he touched her, all she wanted was for him to do it again.