The Accidental Bestseller Read online

  A former film and broadcast producer, Faye wrote novels for the increasingly popular inspirational market. She was also their group’s head cheerleader and chief organizer, planning their biyearly brainstorming retreats and keeping them all in touch with each other.

  Where, Kendall wondered, would she be without the three of them? Still standing on the outside with her nose pressed against the glass looking in, no doubt. None of them, not even Mallory, would be where they were without the others.

  “OK,” Mallory said, raising her glass. “I propose a toast to Kendall Aims, soon-to-be winner of the Zelda.”

  “Here, here.” They clinked glasses and drank, the wine sliding easily down their throats as the warmth of friendship wrapped its comforting cloak around them.

  “We better drink to that again. Because if I don’t win, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.” Kendall held her glass out for a refill.

  They drank in silent accord and ordered a second bottle. At that moment every one of them believed better things lay ahead, that wanting could make it so, and that the bonds of their friendship had already been sufficiently tested.

  2

  A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. . . . If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

  —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  Kendall came awake slowly, her subconscious aware of her unfamiliar surroundings before the rest of her. Her head pounded slightly and her mouth felt thick and wooly. Her jaw ached from laughing and talking.

  After too many bottles of wine, they’d come back to the suite and sat up talking until almost 3:00 A.M.—hours that had been remarkably good for the soul but not so good for the eyes and skin.

  Last night Kendall had felt optimistic, if not the master of her destiny at least a participant in her future. But that was when the awards ceremony was still a comfortable day away, when the one thing that might rapidly revitalize her career seemed attainable. They’d hashed out her odds last night, pronouncing them highly favorable, dissing her competition, and imagining the look on Plain Jane’s face when Kendall was called up to the podium to accept her Zelda. Which would, in an omen of good things to come, they’d decided, be presented to her by Mallory.

  But now the comfortable cushion of time had been ripped away and the fear had begun to steal in. Not winning was unthinkable, but the ceremony was tonight, the winner’s name already written and stuffed inside the envelope; no amount of positive thinking or deal making with God at this point would change the outcome.

  She lay still beneath the covers with her eyes tightly shut, wishing she could block out what was to come as easily as her eyelids blocked out the morning light.

  Sound sifted through the heavy drapery—car horns and construction, irate voices, the hum of a big city waking up and going about its business. At home she’d be hearing the neighbor’s sprinkler system, birds conversing over the feeders in the backyard, the hum of a lawn mower.

  She was going to have to leave this dark, safe, unexposed place. She was going to have to spend the day getting ready for an awards ceremony that could expose her in ways she could not let herself think about. Her heart beat too fast and fear churned in her stomach.

  The sound of hushed voices in the living room of the suite reached her, and Kendall knew she couldn’t hold off the day much longer.

  Forcing herself into an upright position, she opened her eyes. Perched on the side of the bed, she probed carefully inside herself for the courage she needed, but found only a pronounced sense of dread. Still she managed to draw on her robe and stand, then padded into the living room, where she found Faye curled up on the couch with her feet tucked up beneath her fuzzy pink robe.

  Tanya stood at the coffeemaker, already dressed, her back to the room. The garish flower arrangement Scarsdale had sent Kendall perched on the bar beside her along with the untouched bottle of champagne. Kendall had decided she’d open it tonight—but only if she won. She’d drink it to toast the bargaining chip that would finally force Scarsdale to invest in her.

  The sound of fingers striking a keyboard came from behind Mallory’s closed bedroom door. “She’s already working?” Kendall asked.

  “She said she had to do her twenty pages before we left for brunch.” Faye shrugged, clearly not feeling the flash of guilt at not working that immediately smote Kendall—not that Kendall had all that many twenty-page days even when she was writing.

  Faye’s face was devoid of makeup, her black-rimmed glasses stark against the white of her skin. She untucked her legs to reveal fuzzy slippers that matched her robe. “Some of us are obsessive compulsive about our work. Some of us are not. Some of us aspire only to breakfast and a day at the Red Door Spa.” She smiled warmly. “And a Zelda for a friend.”

  Kendall dropped down on the sofa next to Faye and laid her head on Faye’s fuzzy pink shoulder.

  “How are you feeling?” Faye’s tone was soothingly motherly.

  “Queasy.”

  “I told you you shoulda taken those two aspirin last night before you went to bed,” Tanya said, as she brought a steaming mug of coffee to Kendall. From a distance she could have passed for a teenager in her denim miniskirt and layered tees, her hair pulled back off her face with a wide headband. “It’s always better to head off a hangover at the pass. Otherwise you spend the whole next day trying to get rid of it.”

  Kendall took a tentative sip of coffee, welcoming the liquid burn on her tongue and the jolt of awareness it shot through her. “I was surviving hangovers when you were chasing boys on the elementary school playground,” she said, though she didn’t think her queasiness had anything to do with the amount of alcohol she’d consumed. “I’m fine.” Or she would be once she got through this day. She really should call Melissa and see how her trig exam had gone yesterday. And she probably should check in with Cal—she had a vague recollection of trying to reach him too late last night but there’d been no answer.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Tanya said. “I slept like a baby. The note in my room says those sheets are Egyptian cotton with a six-hundred thread count. When I hit the list, I’m going to buy two sets of sheets just like that. Though they might look kinda out of place in Mama’s double-wide.” She sighed. “Do you think there’s really a job where all you do is count the number of threads in a sheet? It sounds a whole lot easier than the Laundromat and the diner.”

  Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” rang out in the suite. Tanya reached for her purse and rooted around for her cell phone. “Oh, Lordy. I hate this thing.” She lifted the phone to her ear. “My number one fantasy is no longer stealing Brad from Angelina; it’s being completely unreachable.”

  “Somebody better be bleedin’ or on the way to the hospital,” she said into the phone. “I’m at conference. You remember I told you that’s the same as workin’.”

  Tanya sank into the wing chair across from the couch and crossed her long legs. Her feet were encased in strappy sandals with a heel that made Kendall’s feet ache in sympathy. Her wide mobile mouth turned downward.

  “No, Loretta, I told you, you could not go to the mall this weekend. You are supposed to be helping Granny with Crystal.”

  Tanya drew a deep breath. Her calf swung up and down in agitation. “Don’t call your little sister that, Loretta. How many times have I told you . . . Ret! Retta? No! Don’t put your grandma . . .”

  Tanya closed her eyes. Her leg stopped in midswing. “Hello, Mama. Yes, everything’s fine here.” The emphasis on the last word was apparent. “No, Mama. I have not had a chance to call Kyle to see if he can pick up the girls for the day. You know how unreliable he is. And you said you’d be fine. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  Tanya sat silent for a moment, her body still. Kendall was careful not to make eye contact.

  “Yes, I know how your migraines get. You go on and lie down for a while. Crystal is nine years old. She can make her own brea
kfast. All she has to do is pour the Cocoa Puffs into the bowl and add some milk. It’s not rocket science, Mama. They’re big girls now. No one expects you to do everything for them.”

  Tanya stood and walked away from them toward the window, her shoulders hunched in, her voice intentionally low.

  “I know, Mama.” The back of Tanya’s head went up and down. “I know. And you know I appreciate it. I’ll be back tomorrow in time to make dinner.”

  Tanya flipped the phone closed. When she turned to face them, her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Frustration filled her voice. “Everything is too much for my mama. Everything has always been too much for her.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “I swear, if I have to get a third job I will. And I am selling that proposal for a bigger book this year, you see if I don’t.” Her long-fingered hands smoothed the sides of her miniskirt. “And then the girls and me are going to move into our own place. One with an actual foundation. And a yard. And our own freakin’ bedrooms.”

  Faye straightened on the couch next to her and Kendall could tell she was dying to go offer comfort to Tanya, but Tanya smiled a wobbly smile and shook her head. “You two go get dressed now, OK? I’m going to go pull Miss New York Times away from the laptop that she had surgically attached to her fingers. I need food and then I need our day of pampering so bad I can taste it. Do you think we’ll get to ride in Mallory’s limo again?” She was already heading for Mallory’s door. “I want to be sure to get a picture of me emerging gracefully from it for the girls.”

  Somehow, she’d never be sure exactly how, Kendall made it through the day. Mallory and Faye and Tanya led her from one activity to the next, distracting her with a steady stream of chatter and laughter, pretending they didn’t notice her ever-increasing anxiety and decreasing levels of participation.

  It took everything she had to make it from brunch at Tavern on the Green to four hours of primping and prodding at the Red Door where they all had manis and pedis followed by massages, facials, and hair appointments. From there Kendall and Mallory had raced back to the hotel for the awards ceremony run-through, where Kendall had been forced to confront her competition—a formidable group of much bigger name authors who had all already won at least one Zelda.

  Now she sat in the reserved section of the grand ballroom, wedged between Faye and Tanya, her palms and underarms sweaty, her lips completely dry; an apparent trick of body chemistry in which her armpits and hands somehow sucked all the moisture from the other parts of her body.

  Her hair in its updo felt stiff and unnatural, the black evening gown too low cut. Her arms, which she knew were too heavy to be bared this way, were covered in goose bumps in the over-air-conditioned space. The body shaper—she wasn’t sure when they’d stopped calling them girdles, but she wasn’t fooled—was too short and bit uncomfortably into her crotch.

  There were quiet whispers and rustlings in the back of the ballroom while the video history of the founding of Wordsmiths Incorporated played out on a supersized video screen. But around her, in the section reserved for finalists and their “dates,” tension hummed like a high-voltage wire. A Zelda could do anything from attracting a bigger agent or better offer at another house to reaffirming your value with the ones you already had.

  Though many authors quibbled with the judging being done by potentially jealous or competitive peers, no one would argue the prestige of winning. Or pretend that they wouldn’t give their first-born child to carry a Zelda home with them on the plane.

  Kendall licked her dry lips and silently thanked God they didn’t have cameras on the waiting finalists like they did at the Oscars. Who but an actor could pretend to be comfortable waiting to find out his fate? Or happiness when someone else won?

  Were all the other finalists as nervous as she was? She stole a glance around her, but Kendall didn’t know any of them well enough to tell whether they were as engrossed in the ceremony as they looked. Or silently screaming the words “Freak out!” from the Chic song “Le Freak” in their heads like she was.

  Kendall gnawed her lip again and contemplated the ramifications of pulling out her purse to reapply lipstick. If she did actually end up on the stage, magnified on the pounds-adding, pore-revealing screen, she didn’t want her lips to look like the cratered surface of the moon. On the other hand, any move to primp now could be construed as an indication that she believed she was going up on that stage to receive a Zelda soon. Which would appear foolishly overconfident and totally pathetic in the event that she didn’t.

  Worse, it might tempt fate to decree she not win in the same way that washing your car could bring on rain.

  Kendall drew another deep breath and tried to stem the tide of her thoughts. Which even now in her panicked state she recognized as completely pointless and stupid.

  The winner was already determined, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Nothing she did—or thought—now was going to change the name on the card that Mallory was going to read.

  As one, Faye and Tanya each took one of her hands in theirs.

  Looking up, Kendall saw Mallory’s name flash across the screen. Music swelled and a deep, prerecorded voice began to recap Mallory’s astounding ascent from debut author to permanent resident on the New York Times list.

  Pictures and video flashed on the screen: Mallory looking beautifully coiffed and elegantly dressed on a television talk show set; Mallory signing books for a line of avid fans that snaked out the front door of a Barnes & Noble; Mallory with the publisher of Partridge and Portman himself; Mallory at her computer in her tastefully appointed home office, conspicuously overdressed for writing, presumably pounding out yet another bestseller.

  Kendall forgot about her lips and everything else. Faye and Tanya squeezed her hands so tightly that her fingers went numb even as her heart began to pound much too quickly.

  Then the video screen filled with the real-life Mallory St. James.

  There was Mallory, striding out onto the stage with her deep brown hair swept into a sophisticated French twist; Mallory, whose bare shoulders in the strapless dress were white and lovely and whose sinewy arms were perfectly toned.

  And who Kendall knew did not need to wear a crotch-splitting body shaper beneath the full length white Grecian gown.

  Kendall braced herself as Mallory cleared her throat and flashed her megawatt smile into the camera lens. She offered a silent prayer as Mallory began to read the names of the finalists for Best Mainstream Women’s Fiction, beginning with her own.

  3

  Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

  —A. A. MILNE

  Kendall held her breath as her air-brushed face filled the mammoth screen, making her immensely grateful that she’d spent the money on a makeup artist and photographer to ensure that her head shot made her look like an assured professional writer, and not her everyday self.

  The cover of her book, Dare to Dream, appeared beside her screen photo, its stylized bold black-and-gold stepback cover and her name in twenty-four-inch point across the top, the best cover art she’d ever been given, a gift from the publishing gods, which apparently, based on her latest cover, was never to be repeated.

  The four other finalists received the same exposure and then a hush of expectancy filled the room—a potent form of silence that was as pulse accelerating as a drum roll.

  Kendall wanted to hide her eyes behind her hands as Mallory lifted the envelope, but managed to keep them in her lap.

  Her mind raced from thought to thought at speeds so dizzying she could barely keep up with them. Maybe she should have written a speech after all so that she struck the right tone between deserving and appreciative and didn’t forget to thank anyone in the event she actually won. It was always so embarrassing to hear a writer ramble disjointedly—it made you wonder how focused his work could possibly be. Kendall often spent hours polishing a paragraph or a phrase in a manuscript, but it was hard to sound
eloquent extemporaneously, especially in front of a live audience.

  Kendall sighed. Writing a thank-you speech had felt even more jinx inducing than applying lipstick during the ceremony. She simply hadn’t been willing to take the risk. It mattered too much.

  Mallory’s hands encasing the envelope shook slightly; her manicured fingernails fumbled with the seal.

  Please God, Kendall thought, as she clasped her own hands together, don’t let me trip on the way up there if I win. And don’t let me humiliate myself too badly if I don’t.

  So much for allowing only positive thoughts and energy.

  Mallory managed to get the card out of the envelope and Kendall stopped trying to feign nonchalance and began to pray in earnest. She realized as she did so that she hadn’t addressed God in any way since her father’s fatal illness five years ago. And if God hadn’t responded to that life-and-death situation, what were the chances that He was going to bother with a matter as small as Kendall Aims’s career?

  “Just this one award, God,” Kendall prayed silently. “I know you have all kinds of things to deal with, but please just let me win. I won’t ever ask again, I promise. Just this one thing tonight. To save all I’ve worked for.”

  Mallory pulled the oversized card free of its envelope and lowered her gaze to read it. Her eyes skimmed the card and then she glanced quickly down at Kendall, but Kendall couldn’t decipher the message in her eyes.

  The praying, begging, and negotiating going on in her mind coalesced into a single desperate “Pleeeeeaaassssseeeee!” that echoed in her head and filled her very soul.

  Mallory leaned into the microphone and her lips began to move. “And the winner of the Zelda for best mainstream women’s fiction is . . .”