Read Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy for Free Online Page B

fine, do your worst.”
    “I spent a little time Googling you this morning and charted the downward trajectory of your academic career. You were fired from some obscure college in South Dakota three months ago and I’d say your chances of employment are slim.”
    “I told you: I’m taking a well -earned sabbatical.”
    “And you’ve probably received a boatload of rejections already for Too Long the Night ?”
    “Nonsense, I’m weighing offers from three agents.”
    “I sincerely doubt that. Twelve-hundred page literary novels are not hot ticket items right now.”
    She shrugs.
    “I’m sorry Gordon, I’m being honest here.”
    “Am I meant to applaud that?” he says
    “I believe that you wrote Ivy as a little money-spinner under an assumed name. The alias is a dead give away.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Shakespeare’s Olivia was a woman pretending to be a man. Come on, Gordon, how hard is it to join those dots?”
    Gordon feels sick, realizing how he has hoisted himself by his own petard.
    The photograph of Maple Creek Bridge.
    The clever-clever nom de plume.
    Not taking care to disguise Suzie better.
    Jane is speaking again.
    “Look at the upside, Gordon. Ivy is making you a ton of money and if you sign with the Blunt Agency you’ll get to a do a print version which’ll make you even richer. Then there’ll be the fortune you’ll earn from the movie rights. And we’ll get you a monster advance when you write the sequel. We can do all this for you.”
    Gordon stares at her.
    “No, you can do it for Viola Usher. I am not she. I did not write that book.”
    “You’re going to be outed, Gordon. I have friends in the media who would just love to tell the story behind Ivy . Walk away from me and I’ll set them on you like a pack of hounds.”
    Gordon, his legs shaky, stands.
    “Ms. Cooper, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Good luck with finding the elusive Viola Usher.”
    He throws a ten dollar bill on the table and strides out of the eatery with as much dignity as he can muster.

10
     
     
     
     
    As Jane walks back toward the unspeakable B & B her phone rings and when she sees it’s Jonas calling she sends it to voice mail.
    She is in no state to speak to her boss now.
    To admit to him that she has been defeated.
    She’s certain that Gordon Rushworth is Viola Usher, but short of breaking into his house and stealing his laptop, she has no way of proving it.
    What worries her is that, sitting at the table after he departed, Jane had seriously considered burglarizing Rushworth’s home.
    Wow, the last couple of days have been tough, but come on . . .
    She’d played all her cards in the restaurant and played them well.
    She rocked Gordon Rushworth and got him close to cracking.
    But he rode it out and never broke.
    Her threat about the media was half-baked.
    She could speak to a couple of her journalist contacts and perhaps some of them would think it worthwhile to travel all the way up here in search of a scoop, but given that we live in a time of shrinking budgets, she doubts that editors would authorize the expense.
    And even if a journalist did unmask Gordon, all that would result would be an agent feeding frenzy, which Jane (or more likely Jonas) were not guaranteed to win.
    No.
    She was done.
    She was single again.
    And unemployed.
    A nd she knows that Jonas will poison all the publishing wells.
    There will be no job offers forthcoming.
    All that will be left for her will be the long road home to her parents’ house in Indiana.
    God, she’s as hopeless as Gordon Rushworth.
    At first she thinks her imagination has conjured his voice when she hears Gordon say, “Jane?”
    But when she turns there he is, dogging her heels, dressed in his baggy trousers and tweed jacket, his oatmeal-colored hair mussed—and not in a contrived, boy-bandish way, either.
    “Jane,” he says, “let’s talk.”
    “I thought we were done talking ?”
    “Please,” he says,