Josh was playing dirty, but it was the only way to get what he wanted. He needed to hear why Hailee left all those years ago, and he knew she would never tell him.
At least not the whole truth.
But dangling the possibility of being a millionaire changes even the most closed of hearts.
Josh’s senior editors loved the pitch he’d hung out in front of them. A love-life-relationship expert who couldn’t handle her own love, life, or relationships. So she does what any reasonable person would do. She flees the place she grew up, changes her name, and begins to dole out advice on a topic she clearly knows little about.
Love.
Josh was extremely proud of himself. He could see the press release now.
Relationship expert isn’t who she’s claimed to be. Has famed Emilia Hudson—author of Emilia’s Love Pursuits—misled millions of readers? What led her to flee her small-town life and begin again as a new woman? See why readers are calling this latest memoir “a salacious read they couldn’t put down.” Find out how a woman duped millions of readers into believing her advice column as she laughed herself all the way to the bank.
Josh cringed at the last sentence and wondered if he was too harsh. Possibly, but he hadn’t crushed the publishing industry by being considerate of others.
Nope. He built a world that wasn’t fair and didn’t depend on other people’s luck. He created his own, and he intended to do the very same thing once he got hold of Hailee Howard’s rights to her story.
The story she didn’t know she was about to tell. But with a few clever editors, she’d be guided right where Josh wanted her, a place where she’d have no choice but to tell the truth and answer all the questions Josh had pent up over the years.
Josh rocked back on his heels and stared out the window to see the empty streets. The snowstorm came in as a blizzard and buckled down on the residents. The city was just beginning to come out of the aftermath, and all he could think about was how nice the brief break from the NYC insanity could be.
Josh wanted to feel guilty about tricking Hailee, but he didn’t. He should feel guilty, but he wouldn’t.
And that kind of disturbed him. It said a lot about the man he’d become.
After all, he was voted the guy most likely to save a puppy from a burning building back in high school. But that was the problem. He’d still save the puppy. He just wasn’t sure about anyone else calling for help.
What really drove Josh Turner mad was the fact that he still had feelings for Hailee after nearly two decades. It made him feel weak and pathetic. He was almost forty, never married, without kids that he knew of, and he didn’t even have a pet. What he did have was a fancy penthouse apartment, a publishing house that always turned out bestsellers, parties to attend on a Friday night, and nothing of any substance in between.
Josh turned into the very man he’d despised while growing up. There was nothing more irritating to Josh than reading The Great Gatsby in junior high.
He, of course, read it before the book was assigned in high school, and he quickly decided that wealth like the Norths—his own cousins—had created more problems than solutions.
After all, he’d fallen in love with Hailee Howard, and she was the happiest girl he’d ever met. And she had nearly nothing, if you thought in terms of materialistic items. It was that happiness that Josh had embraced for the next several years based solely on high school bliss.
Or as his parents told him, puppy love.
Sure, his views might have been romantic and idealistic, but that was what he’d embraced about Hailee Howard. She brought the best out of him, and once she left, the real Josh Turner came out of nowhere. He sank his teeth like a piranha into the book world, finding new talent and exploiting stories for more than they were worth.
But the public bought into the hype.
The real Josh enjoyed money, having the finer things in life, and living in the lap of luxury. It only helped that he was good at what he did.
Josh quickly realized his simple dream of owning a bookstore in his small town wasn’t enough. Why shoot for something so comfortable and mundane when he could change the world by finding new voices and bringing them to the masses?
And that was precisely what Josh Turner did. He worked behind the scenes in a somewhat thankless position to help his people scout out stories that he knew would make his company millions.
It just so happened that his high school girlfriend’s story might be the most interesting of them all, and he couldn’t wait to hear the details. He often liked to think he was helping people by bringing these books into the world. Maybe someone would relate, or perhaps they’d just get a good laugh, but either way, he wanted to believe he made a difference.
Even though the truth of the matter was that he knew he didn’t. In fact, his press was often referred to as the literary gossip rag of the book world, but he figured the other publishing houses were just jealous because they couldn’t sniff out the good books like his people could. That in itself was an art.
But he’d heard the whispers as he walked down the halls. He knew what most of Manhattan really thought of him.
Heartless.
And maybe that was the case, but it wasn’t his fault that the woman who broke his heart never came back to put it together again.
Josh wandered over to his laptop and turned it on. The machine instantly flashed Hailee’s photo on his screen. He wasn’t stalking her. It just so happened that the last website he was on happened to be her blog. However, to say he was annoyed with himself was putting it mildly. He absolutely hated the fact that he couldn’t get enough of Hailee’s story.
Her views on life were so opposite of anything he’d ever experienced with her. It was as if almost every single thought was implanted by some alien force because whoever was writing as Hailee Howard was extremely jaded, and while she attempted to hold out hope for the dating world, it really seemed to be an intricate ruse to keep readers writing to her.
For instance, he saw this post from a year ago.
Dear Emilia-
I don’t understand why all the men who reach out to me on the dating app want me to be their mother? All I want is a capable man who maybe opens the door once in a while or takes out the trash if we get serious. Is that too much to ask? Why is it that I only get the men who want to make sure I get the meal on the table by six and his clothes washed by eight? Attached is my dating profile.
~Desperate in Denver
And Emilia wrote back,
Dear Desperate in Denver,
The reason you’re finding the men who need to be taken care of instead of wanting to take care of you is happening for several reasons. The first one is simple. Most men are big babies. They want to pound their chest when it suits them, but underneath it all, they whine at the drop of a hat and run for cover if their day isn’t going so great. They want to be babies because that’s what they are.
The second reason is that your dating profile sounds like an advertisement to be their mother. Don’t broadcast that you love to cook and bake because it sounds like you’ve been waiting your whole life to cook and bake for them. And don’t list that you’re handy around the house because it pulls in the men who are looking for a handyman for themselves—and yes, there are disappointingly many of them. I’ll still never forget a date I went on where the guy (a lawyer) revealed to me that he had to hire someone to change his own lightbulbs. Seriously, dude? Grab a ladder and a set of... well, you get my point. Basically, what I’m telling you is don’t advertise about yourself the very thing you’re looking for. And finally, never believe the hype! If a guy writes to you, explaining how he fits the bill perfectly, run in the opposite direction immediately. No male is perfect. Females might be close, but males are far from it. Hope that helps!
Josh couldn’t help but laugh at some of Hailee’s observations. Since he lived in the city, he now knew several of those men who couldn’t change a light bulb to save their lives, but it didn’t make her post any less jaded. He really wanted to know what went wrong in the last eighteen years to make her hate men so much.
That was what he could surmise, at least, that she hated men. Or at least, she didn’t think of them very fondly, and he was sure he would soon be in that bucket.
As Josh scrolled through more posts, his fingers became itchy with anticipation. She hadn’t signed the contract yet, but once she did, he knew she’d get the surprise of her life, mainly since he wrote in the fine print that the president of the publishing house had the right to accompany her on all press tours, signings, and the like.
He could only imagine the look on her face when he showed up at one of her television appearances. If he could keep a secret for that long.