Nora took her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it off. She reached out and locked Zach’s door. She walked over to the wall and unplugged his landline phone. She stood in front of the sofa and grinned dangerously at him.

“Okay, Zach. Let’s do it.”

31

“Okay, here—” Zach shifted his laptop so Nora could look at the screen. “I’m shifting the order of the paragraphs. Caroline would think about his feelings first before she’d allow herself to think about hers. But I need some sort of transition.”

Nora reread the page.

“She could look down and notice the bruises on her arms. He gave the bruises to her. It would help her shift perspective.”

“Good. Write.” Zach passed her the laptop. He went to his kitchen and dug through a box until he found his wineglasses. He opened his almost empty refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of chardonnay and poured two glasses.

“Thank you.” She took the wineglass from him with one hand while she kept typing with the other. “Very good,” she said after the first sip. “This is fantastic. What’s the occasion?”

Zach reddened a little.

“I bought it over a week ago. I thought we should have some wine to celebrate when we finished your book—”

“And when we started sleeping together?” She finished the sentence for him. Zach looked at her and sighed. She’d taken off the suit jacket and loosened her tie. How could a woman look so feminine, so tempting in such masculine attire?

“Something like that.”

Nora shook her head, took another sip of wine and finished the paragraph. She started to pass his laptop back to him but she paused and grabbed his wrist instead.

“Your knuckles are scraped.” Nora looked up at him.

Zach gave a rueful laugh.

“I clocked my office prankster at my going away party today.”

Nora’s eyes widened and she burst out laughing.

“That’s fabulous. I’m sure he deserved it.”

“He called you a whore and I called him a hack. In my defense, he threw the first punch.”

Nora nodded her approval. “You punched out a guy defending a woman’s honor. You’re a real man now, Zach. L’chaim,” she said and raised her wine.

“L’chaim.” They clinked wineglasses.

Zach took his laptop back and sat next to Nora on the sofa again.

“I’m proud of you, Nora. You finished the book without me, despite me.”

“To spite you,” she said. “What can I say? A writer writes.”

“And you are a writer now. My writer. You can still be my writer even in L.A. We can still work together.” Zach smiled at Nora and she smiled back.

“Work together or sleep together?”

“Is ‘both’ the wrong answer?”

“Both is negotiable.”

He tried to resume his reading but he knew there was more he had to say to her.

“I tried to call you.” Zach tore his eyes away from the screen. “Last Sunday. I called every number, emailed you.”

“I was working and didn’t want to be interrupted. Why did you call me?”

“To try to talk things out with you. Mary gave me what for about you.”

“I like that girl. She’s one of us. She got me to sign her copies of my books the first day I went to see J.P. She told me my books were her favorite one-handed reads.”

Zach laughed and rubbed his face.

“I don’t want that image of my assistant in my head, Nora.”

“What do you want, Zach?”

Zach studied her face, wanting to memorize every line of it. Who knew how long it would be before he saw her again, if he saw her again? Her green-gold eyes glimmered strangely in the lamplight. What did he want? He knew but wouldn’t say it aloud.

Nora tilted her head and gave him a slight smile. She brought the glass to her lips and drank slowly.

She lowered the glass and her lips shimmered wet with the white wine.

Zach reached out, laid a hand on the side of her neck and kissed her. She didn’t seem the slightest bit shocked by the kiss. She opened her mouth to him and he tasted the wine on her tongue. The Chardonnay-sweetened kiss was more intoxicating than the alcohol. She kissed back…slowly, deeply and with breathtaking expertise. She bit his bottom lip, teased his tongue, drew him in farther and faster. And then she abruptly stopped and pulled away. She crossed her legs and picked up the hard copy of her novel.

Breathless and aroused, Zach sat next to her and panted a little.

She glanced at him and opened her book to the same page he was on.

“What’s next?” she asked.

Zach swallowed and glanced down at his screen.

“Page three hundred and eight,” he said still a little breathless. “We need to cut this scene down.”

“Swollen, is it?” Nora asked without the slightest hint of irony although he knew now nothing had a single meaning with Nora.

“Quite. We should take care of that.”

“Yes, sir,” she said and flipped to that page. “I’ll chop that scene right off.”

* * *

Zach yawned and checked his computer clock—

3:37 a.m. He blinked and stretched out his neck. Next to him on the sofa, Nora lay curled up and sleeping. Zach closed his laptop and reached for Nora’s hard copy of her book and flipped to the last page—William’s goodbye to Caroline—and read it for the first time.

My Caroline,

If you’re reading this endnote then I can assume you’ve suffered your way through the story, our story once again. I suppose having you relive our time together is the ultimate proof of my sadism, as if you of all people needed further proof.

At the end I find myself surprised by how easy it was to write this book about us. I found I missed you so much that a terrible vacuum had formed; all the words came and filled it and for a little while you were home with me again. I didn’t want it to end but a story must have an end, I suppose.

I have no secrets to reveal on this final page. I loved you. At least I tried to. And I failed you. I failed you with great success. Forgive me if you can. I will not apologize anymore.

I’m done writing now. I may go into the garden and read until evening. It isn’t quite the same without your head on my knee and your ill-informed criticisms of my reading material, but I shall carry on alone, page by page, until the end. And when evening comes and the sun is sitting on the edge of the earth, I will look out, searching for a break in the horizon as that father did once so many thousands of years ago…the father waiting for his prodigal child to return.

I hope you are happy. As for me, I…continue. If you ever miss me, miss… But some things are best left unwritten. Just know I have kept your room for you. I’ll say no more. I know I sent you away. I know it was the right thing to do. But I also know that perhaps not every story has to end.

Love,

Your William

Zach turned to look at Nora’s sleeping form. She looked so young right now, so defenseless. She looked like a child sleeping on her stomach, her arms tucked under her. What a fool he’d been. First he’d pushed her away out of grief for Grace. Then he’d pushed her away out of anger at himself. Adrift and unmoored, she had tried again and again to throw him a rope to save him from the raging waters. And now he no longer felt like a drowning man at sea. Nora…the siren and the goddess, the ship and the wine-dark sea. She would either save him or end him. Right now, with her words singing in his ears, he didn’t really care which.

Standing slowly so as not to wake her, Zach found his messenger bag and dug through it. He pulled out her contract and returned to the sofa. He knelt beside her sleeping form and flipped to the last page. Taking up his pen, he laid the contract on her back and with a sure hand and absolute certainty that the book would outsell anything Royal had ever published, he signed his name, Zechariah Easton.