‘I suppose it’s possible he’s been up front the whole time,’ Missy said slowly. ‘After all, Audra was able to stay hidden until she sprung herself on Laurence.’
‘Audra,’ Rosemary sniffed. ‘That woman is hateful to me.’
‘To be fair, she apparently has reason,’ I countered. ‘To hate you, I mean.’ You can take the cheated-upon woman out of the state, but you can’t take the state of being cheated upon out of the woman.
Rosemary, for her part, looked genuinely bewildered. ‘Me? Why?’
‘The affair?’ I knew I should drop it, but my list of things I should do had probably filled three volumes by then.
Still a blank look, then changing to comprehension. ‘Oh, you mean between her husband and me? There was never any affair.’
‘But why would people say it if it weren’t true?’ Missy, trusting girl that she was, seemed sick at the thought. ‘And his wife, even.’
‘It’s probably the percentage bet with Larry, though not in this case.’ Rosemary looked at her researcher. ‘Don’t worry, Missy. I know there are rumors about an affair and I truly don’t care. In fact, at the time I preferred that people thought that than the truth.’
‘Which was?’ I asked.
‘That my career was floundering and he offered to mentor me. I was supposed to be the “Next Great American Novelist,” with his help. And for a percentage.’ Rosemary was sitting on the bunk cross-legged, dress hitched up to her waist. ‘Instead he nearly ruined me.’
‘How?’ I was remembering what Rosemary had said earlier about Potter destroying her self-confidence. I’d assumed she’d meant more personally than professionally.
‘Oh, nothing horrible.’ With her short cropped hair, Rosemary looked like a little boy. ‘But Larry was relentless about my writing the book he had in mind, exactly the way he imagined it.’
‘Why didn’t he just write the thing himself?’
‘That’s what I asked him after the fourteenth or fifteenth draft. You know what he said?’
Missy and I both shook our heads.
‘He said, “Happily. And I’ll give you half the proceeds if you’ll allow me to publish it under your name.”’
‘Rather than his own?’
‘I’m a brand.’ Rosemary shrugged. ‘Or was, back in the day.’
‘You still are,’ Missy said staunchly.
‘What do you mean by “brand”?’ I asked.
‘As with products – or authors – that are “brand names,” in and of themselves,’ Missy said. ‘Like maybe James Patterson or Janet Evanovich. The public has a nearly insatiable appetite for anything they write. It’s hard for the author to keep up with the demand.’
‘Sounds like a good problem to have,’ I said.
‘I suppose it is – or would be,’ Rosemary said. ‘Not that I would know. Back in my day, ebooks hadn’t mainstreamed, so just the publishing and printing processes made it necessary—’
‘In your day?’ Missy scolded. ‘Your last novel was only five years ago.’
‘Might as well be five decades, given the pace at which publishing is changing.’ The ‘legendary lady of romantic suspense’ sounded tired.
‘I understand Breaking and Entering is doing very well,’ I said, although I had no idea whether that was true or not. The book was certainly being talked about.
‘That’s right,’ Missy said, with an approving glance toward me. ‘Before you know it, Rosemary Darlington will top the New York Times bestseller list again.’
Rosemary smiled. ‘Thank you. At the very least, I’m hoping it gives me a running start at it.’
Missy looked pleased that she’d been able to raise the woman’s spirits.
Me, I just wanted more dirt. ‘So you decided to end it with Potter? The collaboration, I mean.’ I’d taken Rosemary at her word about the affair. Or lack of one.
‘Yes, and none too soon. My work needs to be more … organic? It morphs as I go on and that gives me great pleasure – it’s what keeps me writing. Things fall into place and every day brings a new “aha!” moment. Larry, on the other hand, is the ultimate planner. Or maybe a better word would be controller. Pages and pages of outline. It felt like an unavoidable school assignment and nothing I did seemed to please the teacher. By the time he approved the outline, I hated the book. Worse, I hated writing, period.’
‘How long did you work that way with him?’ I was thinking the story might explain why there had been such a gap between books by Rosemary Darlington.