Riveting.
“The author must’ve never visited a small town before in his life,” Mrs. Holly said when she noticed what had grabbed my attention. She shook her head. “One of my booksellers loved it, though. I don’t get why.”
“Noted,” I replied.
Of course he couldn’t write small towns. He’d never lived in one—he thought every small town was either Stars Hollow or Silent Hill. There was no in-between.
“You write better than he ever could,” she went on.
I stiffened.
“You know I still sell your book! Not as often these days, but I do. It’s a pity it went out of print already. Barely made it to paperback.”
“I didn’t like the paperback anyway,” I replied with a bit of bitter humor, because the paperback had been so ugly I couldn’t imagine anyone picking it up on their own. You knew a publisher had given up on a book when they let their design intern make a book cover.
I told Mrs. Holly I wanted to browse, and made my way back through the aisles of memoirs and self-help, past sci-fi and fantasy, to the back corner of the store where the paperback romances were. And there was Ben, looking through the used romances with cracked spines and dog-eared pages.
“Weren’t you a horror editor?” I asked as I slid up to him. “Why’d you come to romance?”
“My imprint shuttered.” He attempted to take a book off the shelf, but his hand fell right through it. He frowned, having forgot, and sighed.
“That can’t be the only reason.”
“I read a book once that changed me. And I realized I wanted to help writers write more books like that, and find more books like that, and give them the chance they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
“Must’ve been a great book. Bestseller? Have I heard of it?”
His mouth twisted into a grin, as if I’d said something funny. “If I’ve learned anything as an editor over my last ten years, it’s that you never really hear of the good ones.”
I roamed my gaze across the shelves—the Christina Laurens and the Nora Robertses and the Rebekah Wetherspoons and the Julia Quinns and the Casey McQuistons—until my eyes settled on the most familiar spine. I took it out for him. There were only two on the shelf. I wondered how much longer Mrs. Holly would be able to stock it before she couldn’t find it anymore. Ardently Yours.
I smoothed my hand across the cover, across the embellished font and the laminated gloss. I remembered how much I loved this book. How every word sounded like a heartbeat, how every turn of phrase was a love song.
“You said you read mine—was it one of those you never hear about?” I asked quietly. “One of the good ones?”
He didn’t answer at first. I glanced up to see if he’d even heard me, and to my surprise he wasn’t even looking at the book. He was looking at—at me, with this soft, quiet sadness that made my stomach twist.
“Yes,” he replied, as sure and certain as a sunrise. “It was.”
My eyes burned, and I quickly looked away, and wiped the tears with the back of my hand. They were words I didn’t think I needed to hear. Lee Marlow had never said as much—he said it was fluffy, it was lighthearted. It was candy, though even candy could be good—sweet and flavorful and exactly what you needed exactly when you needed it. But he never said as much.
Rose never understood why I was so wrapped up in what Lee thought of my books, but didn’t you want someone you loved to respect what you wrote? Lee was supposed to be the closest person I had. He was supposed to tell me it was good, that it was worthy—and that I was worthy of that praise.
But instead it came from a stranger I barely knew.