Jane Bites Back (9 page)

She felt foolish speaking the thoughts out loud. It was a trick she’d learned during an est seminar in 1972. That was the year she’d decided to become self-actualized. Along with a perm and bell-bottom jeans, it was one of many things she regretted. The technique of getting rid of unhealthy thoughts by speaking them aloud, though, was actually helpful. It had helped her release some of the anger she’d carried inside her for so long.

She turned on her side and focused her eyes on the window. Beyond the curtains the lights of Broadway blinked on and off and the sounds of car horns broke the stillness. “That was the past, this is now,” Jane said. “That was the past, this is now.” Another trick she’d picked up during that long-ago weekend.

She repeated the phrase over and over, until the sound of her own voice drowned out everything else. When she felt her eyes beginning to close, she rolled onto her back. Across from the bed the cover for her novel still hung on the mirror. “I am Jane Fairfax,” she said. “I am Jane Fairfax.”

Repeating this new mantra, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, the room was filled with dirty gray light. A quick glance out the window showed that it was snowing again. Jane was tempted to pull the covers over her head and sleep some
more, but the numbers on the clock beside the bed showed that she was due to meet Kelly for breakfast in an hour to go over the rest of his editing suggestions. She was supposed to have looked through them, but the manuscript still sat untouched on the coffee table by the window

She forced herself to get up and take a shower. Then, dressed in the fluffy white robe provided by the hotel, she raced through the manuscript, adding words here and there and occasionally muttering her disagreement with something Kelly had written. But mostly everything he’d done made sense, and she finished with just enough time left to get dressed and pack her suitcase for the trip home.

Kelly had arranged to meet her in the restaurant in her hotel, so she had only to go downstairs. Still, she was five minutes late, and found Kelly already seated at a table.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized as he stood and kissed her lightly on cheek. “I was up late going through the manuscript.”

“I only just got here,” he reassured her.

As she sat down and placed the manuscript on the table, Jane couldn’t help noticing how put together Kelly looked. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and a blue striped tie. His hair was slicked back and he looked refreshed and impossibly handsome.
Meanwhile
, Jane thought,
I look and feel like the undead
.

“Did you sleep well?” Kelly asked as Jane accepted a cup of coffee from the waitress.

“Very well, thank you,” said Jane.

“And is there anything in the manuscript you want to discuss?”

Jane shook her head as she poured cream into her coffee. “It all looks good,” she said. “There were just a few little things. Nothing terribly important.”

“I have to tell you, so far you’re a dream author,” Kelly told her. “I almost hope the book doesn’t do well.”

“Why?” Jane asked, startled by the statement.

“I’m kidding,” Kelly said, noticing her reaction. “It’s just that often when new authors have a bestseller they become, shall we say …” He waved his hands around as he searched for the right word.

“Self-important?” Jane suggested.

Kelly nodded. “Self-important,” he agreed.

Jane raised her eyebrows and smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she said.

She and Kelly went over the final edits on her manuscript. When they were done, Kelly tucked the pages into his briefcase.

“We should get you to Penn Station,” he said. “Your train leaves in half an hour.”

Jane went upstairs to retrieve her bag. Then Kelly flagged them a cab and they rode to the train station.

“Have a safe trip home,” Kelly said, kissing Jane on the cheek again before she exited the cab in front of Penn Station. “I’ll call you in a few days to discuss what happens next.”

Jane waved goodbye and watched as the cab pulled away, her head filled with thoughts of Kelly, her book, and the new possibilities in her life. Had his lips lingered a bit longer than was strictly polite?

The train was not particularly crowded, and Jane had a row to herself. She settled into the window seat and opened the book she’d started on the journey down the day before. But she found herself unable to concentrate. She would have to tell people about her novel, of course. Lucy anyway. Perhaps Walter. Suddenly she thought of Walter. She saw his face, and imagined how excited he would be for her when she told him she was going to be published.
His congratulations would be genuine, not the insincere words of someone jealous of her success. Walter was incapable of insincerity.

Despite knowing it was foolish, Jane couldn’t help comparing Walter to Kelly. They were so different. Where Kelly moved in a fast-paced world, Walter was content with small-town life. Where Kelly was worldly, Walter was simple. Yet both were kind men. Most important, Jane reminded herself, Walter had already expressed his feelings for her. Kelly was just her editor.

And yet she couldn’t help wondering if Kelly might not become more. They were—at least as far as Kelly knew—roughly the same age. They shared many interests. And they would be working closely together. Wasn’t it possible that romance could blossom?

Jane felt guilty for even thinking such a thing. But there it was. She couldn’t deny that she found Kelly attractive. And part of her believed that he might accept the inevitable truth about her condition more easily than Walter would.
I imagine there are far more unbelievable things in New York than vampires
, she thought.

As the train left the station and began its steady crawl north, Jane continued to wrestle with the question of her romantic life like a dog worrying a bone. After two hundred years of romantic deprivation, it was time for a change.

“I won’t do anything rash,” she assured herself. “I’ll just take things as they come.”

It was a sensible decision, and she was pleased to have come to it. After all, she had made no promises to Walter. Until she did, she was free to do anything she liked. And at the moment she wasn’t doing anything but speculating. If she found that Kelly
was interested, then she would do the right thing and make a decision between them.

Having settled the matter, she returned to her book. She was trying, and failing, to make her way through Barbara Pym’s
The Sweet Dove Died. She isn’t a bit like me
, Jane thought as she finished a page.
I can’t imagine why anyone thinks we’re similar. She’s all tea and garden parties and ladies’ hats
.

Chapter 10

“S
OMETHING’S DIFFERENT
,” J
ANE SAID, LOOKING AROUND THE
store. “You moved something.”

Lucy gave Jane a big hug. “Welcome home,” she said.

“I was only gone for forty-eight hours,” Jane said. “It wasn’t as if I went off to war.”

Lucy, who went to hang up her coat in the office, called back, “It’s okay to say you missed me, you know.” She emerged from the office and came to the front desk. “So, did you bring me a present?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Jane said. She reached into her bag and brought out the little gift she’d picked up for Lucy at one of the numerous tourist traps surrounding Times Square. It was a snow globe containing a replica of the Empire State Building. A plastic King Kong was climbing up it, one arm outstretched as he roared in fury. Lucy shook the globe and the tiny pieces of plastic snow swirled around.

“It’s beautiful,” Lucy told Jane. “Thank you. I didn’t have New York in my collection. Now I’m missing just South Dakota, Arkansas, and Maine. Oh, and I broke Florida, so I need to replace that one.”

Jane’s eyes suddenly locked onto an area to the left of the checkout counter. “What on earth is that?” she demanded, pointing to a spinning rack containing what looked like dozens of tiny bodies.

“Aren’t they great?” Lucy said, smiling mischievously. “They’re finger puppets of famous authors. I ordered them ages ago, but they came yesterday.”

Jane walked over and picked up one of the tiny puppets. Its gray hair was done up in a bun, and the expression on its face was solemn.

“Virginia Woolf,” Lucy said. She picked up another puppet and placed it on her finger. This one had wild black hair. “Dylan Thomas. We’ve got practically everybody. Well, everybody who’s dead. I’m guessing they didn’t want to pay anybody, so there’s no J. K. Rowling or John Grisham. But we’ve got James Baldwin, Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Pepys, Poe. Of course there’s Shakespeare, and this is the one I think will be our bestseller.” She held up a puppet with brown hair and a white dress gathered at the chest.

“Jane Austen,” Jane said, looking at her puppet self.

“I ordered fifty of her,” said Lucy. “We’ve already sold five.”

“Lovely,” Jane said, trying to sound chipper. “I don’t suppose we sold any actual
books
yesterday?”

“It was pretty good for January,” Lucy answered. “But let’s not talk work. Tell me about your trip. Was it fun seeing your friend?”

“It was,” Jane said. She badly wanted to tell Lucy the real reason for her New York visit, but she didn’t want to reveal her news too soon. Despite Kelly’s enthusiasm for her book, part of her still feared that something might go wrong. “We saw
Gypsy.”

Lucy sighed. “I’d love to see that,” she said. “I’d enjoy seeing anything in New York.”

“Maybe we’ll take a trip this spring,” Jane said, surprising herself. “Just you and me.”

“Really?” Lucy said, looking almost shocked. “I’d like that.”

Jane took out the receipts for the previous day and started looking through them. She trusted Lucy completely, but she needed something to distract her. Now that she was once more surrounded by books, all she could think about was her own novel. She imagined piles of it sitting on one of the display tables. She pictured customers picking it up and recognizing her name. She thought about ringing up copies and putting them in bags. She was so preoccupied by her daydreams that she only barely noticed the sound of the bell as someone entered the shop. A few minutes later someone approached the counter and set a book down. Jane glanced at it and saw that it was a copy of
Emma
. Instantly the joy she’d felt while thinking about her new book disappeared as she was reminded of how long she’d been forced to keep her secret.

“It’s my favorite of all your books,” said a man’s voice.

“It’s a very good one,” Jane said as she rang up the purchase.

Only as the scanner read the bar code and beeped its acceptance did she realize what the customer had said.

Her eyes jerked up. The man standing before her was striking, with pale skin and a face that could only be described as beautiful. His dark eyes were matched by the darkness of his hair, which was cut slightly long, so a lock of it curled over one eye. Jane’s heart seemed to have stopped, and she found it difficult to breathe.

“You,” she whispered.

The man smiled, and his eyes sparkled. “Me,” he said.

Jane fumbled with the book in her hands and it fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up, hoping that when she stood up the man would be gone. But he wasn’t. If anything, his smile had grown more intense.

“I see you’ve met.” Walter’s voice drew Jane back to the moment. He was standing beside the man.

“You know him?” Jane asked, looking at Walter.

“Brian is my client,” Walter answered.

“Brian?” Jane repeated.

“Brian George,” the man said.

“You know how I’ve been restoring the old Roberts place?” Walter said.

Jane nodded. Walter had done a wonderful job of bringing the neglected Victorian back to its former glory. He’d told Jane that he’d bought it for practically nothing and was going to sell it as soon as he was done with the work.

“Brian is the one who hired me to do the work,” Walter said.

“I asked Mr. Fletcher to keep my purchase of the house a bit of a secret,” said Brian.

Jane very much wanted to ask why Brian George wished to
keep his move to Brakeston a secret, but fortunately for her, Walter began speaking again.

“Brian is a writer,” he said.

Jane looked at the man. “Is he?” she said.

“Well, I
try
,” said Brian.

“Oh, yes,” Jane said. “Now I remember. You wrote that book about the … um … those …”

Walter, watching her search for the answer, became clearly uncomfortable. Jane knew he was embarrassed for his client, although Brian himself seemed not the least bit ruffled.