Veronica Benedict: I haven’t decided.
BookAddictedWhore: Well, I just decided for you, so get to it.
Veronica Benedict: Sorry, I need to get back to the chat.
She could see the tiny icon indicating that BookAddictedwhore was typing when she minimized the message so that it wouldn’t interrupt her time left with the reader group. A few seconds later, the notification tone for Skype dinged twice, and she looked down, noting that she had messages from two sources. Shit.
Another reader asked her a nicely put question regarding the hero of Bound at the Bonfire. She continued on, answering questions and giggling and laughing with the rest of the group members. This was one of her favorite groups to chat with, with the exception of a few asshats. The ones who talked dirty didn’t bother her nearly as much as the ones who sought access they had no right to. Like BookAddictedWhore, they mistook fun naughtiness for an opportunity to be rude and ask questions to which the answer was none of their damned business.
No, BookAddictedWhore, I’ve never had anal sex. Fucking bitch. Even thinking those words made the heat in her cheeks increase. She could still hear her mother’s superior tone of voice echoing in her head. You are much too intelligent to use such language, young lady.
She tried to focus on the chat. She smiled when she saw the next chat room message pop up.
Caressa MacFarland: I think that Veronica will blow us all away with what she writes no matter what genre it’s in.
Veronica smiled when lots of people chimed in behind her with the same sentiment. Leave it to Caressa to raise the standard in the group.
Veronica Benedict: Thank you, Caressa. Thank you, ladies.
Caressa MacFarland: No, thank you for sharing the sneak peek into your current work in progress, Bound at the River Bridge, with us tonight. I look forward to reading it and I know your readers are going to love it.
Caressa messaged her privately a second later.
Caressa McFarland: I hate when that bitch shows up at live chats. She was firing questions at you faster than you could answer them and then got pissy at you for not answering fast enough. There’s no pleasing some people. Is she still pestering you privately?
Veronica Benedict: Yes.
Caressa MacFarland: Ignore her. Both publicly and privately. She’ll find someone else to stalk eventually. Don’t respond to her because it just encourages her.
Veronica Benedict: I already have messages from her waiting for me on Skype. I know, I know…I never should’ve added her as a contact on Skype. I also wish I’d taken a pseudonym like you did.
Caressa MacFarland: Live and learn, honey. I’d delete her and block her everywhere I could. A lot of promoting in this business is trial and error, and your readers love you. Thankfully, most of them are normal.
Veronica couldn’t have known that BookAddictedWhore would wind up being such a toxic force until it was too late. She hated looking like the mean guy, but this particular “fan” had to go. She regretted not protecting her privacy by taking a pseudonym when she began writing sweet romance several years before. In her mind, she’d had nothing to hide and no one to hide from. But that was before she’d discovered firsthand that there was no such thing as privacy online.
She’d learned to protect her privacy in reverse, by changing her apartment lease and all her other bills and personal contact information to her middle name, Louise. The switch had been a huge pain in the ass, and hadn’t worked in a couple of instances.
The chat ended a few minutes later and she poured a glass of wine and returned to her messy desk in the study. Opening the messages in Skype, she prepared to delete BookAddictedWhore from her life. She wasn’t sure why she felt guilty about it. She’d thought that ignoring the rude comments would lead to BookAddictedWhore not saying such things anymore but the reverse was happening as though she was purposely seeking to see how far she could push Veronica.
In the distance, she heard the slamming of her front door, followed immediately by the sound of the shower starting down the hall. She sighed heavily. Brent’s home.
Mentally bracing herself for the confrontation with him, Veronica scowled at the computer screen. I’ve been bullied by better than you, bitch.
With a sigh, she put fingers to keyboard, and at the last second opened Grandma Kate’s message window instead. BookAddictedWhore and all her drama could wait. Her heart lurched at the purposeful avoidance, wishing she had the guts to take the world by the horns like Caressa.
She spent the next half hour shooting the bull with Kate, who was actually her great-aunt. As the Benedict family matriarch, Kate preferred to keep things simple for all the numerous relations and everyone addressed her as Grandma Kate. She lived in a quirky little town in central Texas. Over the years, she’d always been the one to visit Veronica’s family, whose branch of the Benedict family lived in Montana. After Veronica had moved out on her own, Kate had visited her regularly in Billings, Montana, where she leased an apartment.