Laurie's Painter (sweet Regency romance) (19 page)

She hung up and looked at
Betty Ann with a dazed, amazed expression.

“Well, Betty, it looks
like you have a job after all. Mr. Anderson is a publisher who wants to cheer
up one of his authors. Apparently the man hates winter. Mr. Anderson wants to
find him a
cheerful
secretary.”

“Thank you!” Betty Ann
clasped her hands together, a huge smile overtaking her face.

Miss Johnson gave her the
address, questioned her to be sure she would know how to find it, instructed
her not to be late, and with a perplexed frown growing on her face, watched
Betty leave.

Betty left her coat in the
agency cloakroom. It was ugly and worn and certainly wouldn’t make the best
impression at her new job. She hurried to the address Miss Johnson had given
her, checking the street signs, and following Miss Johnson’s instructions
carefully.

On the walk, she sniffed
the air, smelled the heavenly aroma of fresh baked bread. Maybe she could risk
spending nearly the last of her money. She hadn’t eaten yet today, and she’d
need some energy for her new job.

Her new job! Yes! She
clasped her hands together and grinned up at the clear blue sky.

She stopped at a bread
store, bought a day-old roll, and crunched it on the way.

Everything was going to be
all right, she realized, walking with a little skip in her step, smiling up at
the watercolor-blue sky.

The wind was brisk, and
she shivered. But it was only a short walk to the address, and she moved
quickly.

She spotted trees in the
city park, their tall, empty branches making dark lines against the sky.
Remembering something from her life on the farm, she headed over to them,
beginning to hum happily.

* * * *

Jake Watterson shuffled
out of his bathroom, bleary-eyed and scowling, one hand wrapped around a mug of
orange juice, the other scratching his chin stubble. He picked up the heavy
receiver on what must have been its twentieth ring and snarled, “Yes?”

“Jake, that you? Sounds
like I woke you,” said his editor with unwholesome cheerfulness in his voice.

And you sound really
apologetic about it
. “Well you didn’t. What do you want? I’m eating.”

“Hire a cook again? Good
for you. Listen, I just called to ask how your new book was com—”

With a wordless growl,
Jake slammed the receiver down.

Within moments, the phone
rang again. Jake ignored it for another twenty rings, by which time he had
finished his orange juice and was starting to feel more human. He picked up.

“What do you want, Matt?”
he asked.

“I want you to start
working,” said editor Matthew Armstrong. “And I have an idea that might help.”

“What?”

“Listen, don’t get mad.
I’m having a secretary sent over to help you.”

“Matt—” Jake ground his
teeth.

“Hey, don’t interrupt. Let
me fin—”

“You know I don’t like
giving dictation.”

“—ish. I know you say you
don’t like doing dictation—don’t interrupt—but I also know that for the past
three years you haven’t done a lick of work in the winter months. Why, you
haven’t typed a single word since October!”

That actually wasn’t true,
but Jake didn’t correct him, since none of his typed pages had gotten further
than the waste paper basket by his desk.

“Maybe a secretary is just
what you need,” said Matt. “Someone to break you out of your gloom. You can at
least try dictating something. You couldn’t do any less than you’re doing now
if you tried. This is for your own good, Jake, so don’t argue. I just called to
tell you so you know what’s going on. And remember to pull on some pants before
you answer your door. If I know you, you’re still in pajamas.”

Jake made a strangled
sound in his throat and hung up.

He glowered at the phone
and ran his fingers back through his hair.

Jake didn’t have many
friends—he was too much of a recluse for that—but he considered Matt one of
them. Usually. Right now he didn’t.

How dare Matt send him
some perfect little secretary? That was just what he needed, someone to sit at
his typewriter and stare pointedly at him as he searched for
something—anything—to dictate.

Winters were hard enough
for him. Every year since he could remember, he’d gotten depressed in the
winter months and hadn’t been able to think of a thing worth writing. He
installed sunlamps all through his home, the brownstone he inherited from his
parents, but it didn’t help. Nor did anything else he tried. Now, he just
resigned himself to unproductive, miserable winters.

He would prefer to be
unmolested by calls to hurry up and write something, too.

Surely Matt had other
writers to depend on in the winter. Even if it was a family owned small press.
Hadn’t Jake already written three books last year—two of them respectable sellers?

It wasn’t as though he or
Matt would starve if he didn’t work for a few months.

The mere thought of
working again made Jake want to curl up under his blankets and not emerge until
spring. When there were robins in the air, and a respectable amount of
emerald-green grass in the park, then he would emerge, and once again take up
the written word.

But right now he just
couldn’t.

Matt’s got a lot of nerve
. Maybe he should
disconnect his phone during the winter.

Jake shuffled to the
bathroom, running a hand over his jaw to check how badly he needed a shave.

Pretty badly, it turned
out. It was almost too late to shave.
Maybe she’ll think I always have a
beard
. He squinted into the mirror at his gloomy, tired expression. He
frowned at the few prematurely gray hairs he saw.

“He’s supposed to be an
editor, not a babysitter,” muttered Jake, as he contemplated pulling out those
three gray hairs.

He decided against it. It
smacked of vanity and primping. No one else would know, but he would know, and
then after he got started down that route, he would always feel he was lying to
the whole world. Instead, he ran a comb roughly through his hair, squinting as
it caught on knots. He didn’t try to cover the gray.

Let her see it and realize
she’s working for a washed-up has-been—and quit.

Of course, Jake was only
thirty-two, and aside from the hairs, he looked his age. But these were the
sort of thoughts he had in winter.

He finished dressing just
as the doorbell rang. He stalked slowly across the floor in his stocking feet,
glowering all the while. (He’d forgotten his shoes, of course.) If Matt thought
he was going to like working with a secretary, he was wrong.

Jake yanked open the front
door of his ancestral brownstone home and scowled out.

There on the front step
stood a pretty girl with curls so yellow they looked like bottled sunshine. She
held a few small broken tree branches and wore a flower-print dress—no coat.
Her cheeks were flushed pink, and she looked highly mortified, as if this were
the most embarrassing day of her life.

Behind her stood a stern
policeman.

End of chapter one. This
story can be purchased from MuseItUp Publishing or through vendors such as
Amazon.  Buy link from MuseItUp:
http://tinyurl.com/cp34gev

Other work by the author:

www.amazon.com/A.M.-Roelke/e/B00A2AV9BW

The Girl and the Dragon
(YA Christian fantasy)

The Space Station Murders
(science fiction mystery)

Those With Guns (science
fiction – short story)

Message to Mars and other
stories (space opera – short stories)

Thief's Life and other
stories (Christian fiction – short stories)

Dragon Bones (short story)

The Runaway Case (Robot
P.I.) – short story

Coming Soon:

Watch Over Me, a YA
fantasy romance coming-of-age novel, from MuseItUp Publishing