“It’s more than that,” he snapped. “It’s more than that to me. You saved my life, Taylor. I was sinking fast and you rescued me.”
Taylor felt her skin flush. “C’mon, Michael. You’re a talented guy. You were going to make it no matter what.”
“Bull. Lots of talented writers never get anywhere. You know that as well as I do. Talent’s about fifth on the list of things you need to have to make it in this business. Number one on the list is the right person to work with. The right person and the right place and the right time. You gave me that and I’m grateful to you. More than grateful …”
Okay, Taylor thought, give it up. Go ahead. Permission to blush granted.
“You’re blushing,” Michael said, grinning.
She held up her hands, palms out. “I know. I know.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “That’s all I wanted you to know.
And it won’t happen again.”
“Consider it forgotten,” Taylor said as the waitress brought their drinks.
“I think it’s just the pressure of the last few months,” Michael said. He took a long sip of the wine and closed his eyes. “Being on the road,” he continued. “Always moving, then working seven days a week when I’m not on the road.”
Taylor felt the Cuervo Gold warm her stomach as she set her glass back down. “I thought you said no excuses.”
He smiled. “Touche.”
Taylor smiled back and then unsuccessfully tried to stifle a yawn. “Excuse me,” she said.
“You are tired. So why the hard day?”
Taylor leaned back in her chair, pulled her hat off, and ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it loose and back over her shoulders. “I swear, prosperity’s going to be the death of me yet.”
“We should have those kinds of problems,” he said.
“I’m serious,” she shot back. “I need a vacation.”
Michael stared thoughtfully at her. “Maybe you’ll get one soon.”
She sighed, shook her head. “Not any time soon.” Then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Well?”
she asked.
“Well what?”
“Don’t you want to see them?” She raised an eyebrow.
“You mean you’ve got them here?”
“Why not? There’s no time like the present.”
“If I’d known I was going to sign an eight-million-dollar contract over dinner, I’d have taken us someplace nicer.”
Michael’s large blue eyes were clear, shiny and bright like those of a boy on Christmas morning. Taylor felt suddenly warm again, flushed all over.
“Want to see?” she asked. He nodded.
She reached down and pulled her briefcase into her lap, extracted a sheaf of papers, and handed them across the table to him.
“There are three sets there,” she said. “An original for you, one for my files, and one for their contracts department.”
Michael Schiftmann looked down at the bundle of paper in his hand, the stack of contracts that virtually guaranteed him everything he’d always desired: wealth, fame, the freedom to do what he wanted both creatively and personally.
For a few moments, he stared at them silently with a blank look on his face.
“I still can’t believe it,” he murmured.
Taylor leaned across the table and laid her right hand over his left. “Believe it,” she said. “It’s quite real.”
Then she sat up straight and pulled a small rectangular box out of her purse. The box was tied with a red ribbon. She handed it across the table to him.
“A little congratulatory gift,” she said. “I thought it might come in handy right about now.”
Stunned, Michael took the box, slowly untied the ribbon, then opened it. Inside lay a brand new Montblanc fountain pen.
“My God,” he said. “You remembered.”
“That first day in my office,” she said. “The day we met.
You said someday you wanted to be the kind of writer that signed books and contracts with a very expensive fountain pen. Well, buster, now you’ve got one. Let’s see what you can do with it.”
He grinned. “Has it got any ink-”
“It’s locked and loaded,” Taylor said. “Go for it.”
Michael pulled the cap off the pen. He folded back the sheets of the contract until he came to the last page, where a blank line awaited his signature. With a flourish, he signed his name to first one contract, then the second, and finally the third.
He lifted up his wineglass and clinked her offered margarita.
“You know,” he said. “I think we’re going to like being rich.”
Taylor smiled and took a long sip of the drink.
We? she thought.
Taylor stood in the back of the packed store and found herself suppressing the urge to shout. She’d done a quick, down-and-dirty head count of the crowd at the Barnes amp; Noble superstore at Eighty-second and Broadway and figured that Michael had to have drawn upward of two hundred and fifty people to his signing. And this, she thought, on a Monday night in February when it’s nasty as hell outside.
It was all she could do to keep from squealing. Not only were the numbers good, but Michael was as relaxed and as charming and as appealing as she had ever seen him at a book signing. He had bantered playfully with the audience and then, after reading one of the darker, more violent pas-sages from The Fifth Letter, had made a wonderfully self-deprecating offhand comment that broke the silence and got them all laughing when the reading was over.
As Taylor stood in the back of the crowd, leaning against a bookshelf with her coat folded over her arm, Michael was wrapping up a question-and-answer session that had now gone on for more than twenty minutes.
“Yes,” Michael said from the podium, pointing to a raised hand in the third row. The questioner stood up, a young woman in tight jeans, black turtleneck, long blond hair pulled behind her.
“How far along are you in the next book and when will we see it?”
Michael smiled. “I’ve just completed the manuscript for The Sixth Letter and I’m about halfway through the rewrite.
And I’ve started the research for number seven.”
The young blond’s hand shot up again. “How do you do research for these books?” she demanded. “How do you bring so much realism to them?”
“Well,” Michael said, leaning forward on the podium,
“the research, for me, is the fun part. I’ve read stacks of books on the psychopathology of serial killers, case histories, interviews with both the killers and the relatively few victims who survive these kinds of attacks.”
A chorus of murmurs erupted throughout the crowd.
“Okay,” Michael said, reacting to the crowd noise, “maybe
‘fun’ isn’t the right word. Some of this stuff is pretty grim.
But I find that it’s necessary to really get inside Chaney’s head. After all, this guy kills people, sometimes for fun, but always for what, to him, is a good reason.”
The young girl sat down as the bookstore manager stepped to the podium and announced that the line for signed copies should form to his left. Taylor looked down at her watch; between the introduction, Michael’s talk, and the questions, they’d been there nearly an hour. She eyed the crowd of eager buyers lining up for autographs and realized they’d be there at least another hour, maybe longer. She sighed wearily and turned around, searching for a comfortable chair, when she spotted Brett Silverman across the room.
Brett turned, caught Taylor’s eye, smiled a thin smile, and nodded. The two women began walking toward each other and met in the center of the large second-floor gallery where the signing had taken place.
“Well,” Taylor said, “so much for the reports that he’s drawing small crowds.”
Brett Silverman was dressed in a dark green business suit with a camel hair overcoat draped across her shoulders. Her eyes were tired, bloodshot, and Taylor guessed the hard-working editor had been in her office up until the signing.
“It’s amazing what adding the words ‘ New York Times Best-Selling Author’ will do for a crowd. I must admit,”