Julie Leto – Brazen & Burning (страница 3)

She’d made the New York Times list before, and had reaped the benefits. Her bulldog of an agent had manipulated her repeated appearances in the top fifteen of the bestseller list into a multimillion dollar contract—a contract Sydney had just fulfilled by turning in the last book. Making the list the first few times had been a rush—so much so that she had set debuting at number one as a goal to work toward for the rest of her career.

Who’d have known she’d succeed so quickly?

She felt like a fraud. A directionless, ungrateful fraud.

“I have no right to feel depressed, you know,” Sydney admitted.

“If the constitution had been written by the Founding Mothers rather than the Fathers, the right to be depressed in the face of good fortune would have been second on the list.”

Sydney grinned, even though the action made her cheeks ache. “I should be shouting from the rooftops! Please tell me I’m insane. I’d hate to think a sane person would feel so lost when they’d just achieved the one thing they wanted more than anything in the world.”

“Maybe if you had someone to share your victory with…”

“I’ve shared, sweetheart. With Devon—”

“—who was mostly too wrapped up in her wedding to really celebrate with you.”

“I called my mother.”

“And?”

“She called all her friends at the country club. They want me to speak to their ladies’ lunch group next month.”

“You haven’t spoken to them before?”

“They kept telling me I couldn’t mention sex.”

“Now you can?”

“I debuted at number one on the New York Times. I could talk about belching and farting in the fifteenth century and they’d think I was just charming. Oh, God. Please don’t tell me I just earned the right to be eccentric.”

“You’ve been eccentric since I met you. But when you’re under sixty-five, it’s called something else.”

“Don’t tell me what.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Value your life, do you?”

“As much as you value your Barbie Corvette.”

“Okay, so I shared with the people I care about most. So now what?”

“Pick a new goal?”

Sydney shook her head. What else was there? She already had the best job in the entire world. She spent long hours every day in her fantasy world, making up stories about hot sex and deep love, and someone paid her money to do it. Not that she needed the money. With her handy-dandy trust fund, she would have been set for life if she’d never typed a word. But when she’d received the first third of her legacy at eighteen, she’d started her foray into the world of stocks and investments. By the time she’d received the second third, not only was she earning a living as a writer, but she’d also doubled the investments she’d made the first time around. Sydney learned she had a head for three things—history, sex and money.

And as a successful historical romance novelist, she’d worked those strengths into a damned great career. She even enjoyed an ideal celebrity status, appearing at crowded book signings and on television and radio interviews, yet she could still go to the grocery store or the mall without being accosted.

To top it all, she served on the board of a foundation that provided literacy training in poor neighborhoods. Hell, she volunteered her time twice a month.

“What’s left, Cassie? God! I must be the most shallow woman on earth to have accomplished everything she wanted to do by the time she was thirty-two.”

Cassie shook her head. “Not shallow. Not really.”

Sydney cocked her eyebrow. She’d heard a “but” in there somewhere.

“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

Anyone with more sense would have shrugged and begged off pointing out Sydney’s shortcomings, but Cassie, in her youthful confidence and ignorance, settled into her chair. “On the surface, you have an ideal life. Money, friends, a great career.”

“The foundation. Don’t forget the foundation.”

Cassie grinned. “Yes, you even do charitable work. You’ve been very careful and calculating, organizing your life with precision.”

“Hey, let’s not get insulting. I don’t organize. I fly by the seat of my pants.”

At this, Cassie frowned. “You like to think so.”

“Think so? I’m famous for my haphazardness. Ask your aunt. She rags me all the time for being such a mess.”

“That’s because Aunt Devon has elevated organization and planning to a religion. Compared to her, you are a mess. But compared to the normal population of the world, you’ve mapped out your entire life, ending with debuting your novel at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Am I right here?”

Sydney couldn’t argue, not only because of her pounding headache, but because the kid made sense.

“But you don’t have someone to love.”

With a groan, Sydney folded her arms on the table and laid her forehead down. Gently. This verified her earlier suspicion. Young Cassie was in love and wanted to share her joy.

Great. Just great.

“God, please save me from being the clichéd heroine of a romance novel!” Sydney wailed dramatically before skewering her inexperienced friend with a powerful glare. “You know, that line in Jerry Maguire was written by a man. I do not—I repeat—I do not need a man to complete me. If you really subscribe to such thinking, you’ve set feminism back to the days of Susan B. Anthony.”

Sydney managed to keep her head lifted long enough to watch Cassie laugh, but she didn’t see the humor. This wasn’t funny.

“Call it the new feminism. I’m not saying you need a man to complete you. But you could use a shot of something deeper, don’t you think? An emotional experience to challenge you and your status quo. Someone to challenge you and your status quo.”

Ah, so this mystery boy had shaken up Cassie’s life. Bully for her. Sydney was long past such a beginning-of-life discovery.

“No such man exists,” Sydney concluded.

“Have you looked?”

No.

“Of course I have.”

“And no guy ever rocked your world a little, shook you up so badly you had to walk away or risk losing your heart?”

Damned if Adam Brody’s rugged face didn’t pop right back into Sydney’s brain again, causing an electric charge to spark low in her belly and shoot to the tips of her breasts. The man had been an incredible lover. Selfish when it suited him, yet giving at the core. So incredible, in fact, that while with him, Sydney had broken so many of her self-imposed dating rules that she’d done more than risk her heart—she’d risked her very soul.

Yet, when he’d asked her to make their affair about commitment and love rather than just sex, she’d walked away. Actually, ran was more like it. Scared and out of her element, like a second grader enrolled in high school calculus. Sydney had mustered her cool enough to exit with style, but she still couldn’t get the man off her mind. Not on the eight-hour flight to London the day after she’d left him, not through the month-long tour through Scotland, or the seemingly endless three weeks in New England with her parents. When she’d finally returned and had decided to give in and take a chance on his offer, he’d disappeared off the face of the earth.

He’d sold his condo, deactivated his cell phone, closed his business. He’d once told her he was considering relocation to Baltimore to partner with his former mentor, so she’d assumed that’s what he’d done. And being a woman who never announced her regrets—rarely even to herself—she’d simply moved along, writing her books, playing poker with Devon on Tuesdays, traveling for autographings and research, and taking a handsome lover whenever her body needed release.

But maybe Cassie was on to something. Maybe she needed a male-female relationship less predictable than one based only on sex. Orgasms she could give to herself. She needed an affair equal to a cache of fireworks—haphazard, chancy—a true risk that might rock her world back into the tumble of chaos she so enjoyed.

And who better to fire her wick than sexy Adam Brody?

“Know any good private investigators?” she asked.

Cassie lurched forward, her young eyes alight with intrigue. “As a matter of fact…you remember Jake’s best man? Cade Lawrence? His wife, Jillian, is a P.I. A darned good one from what I hear.”

Sydney nodded, sat up straighter and downed her orange juice, finishing the entire tumbler. She tried to comb her fingers through her hair, but a mass of tangles stopped her progress. Oh, yeah. She looked like crap.

That, at least, she could fix.

“Get me her number, then make yourself comfortable. I’ll be down in twenty.”

“Dare I dream you’ve taken my advice to heart?”

Sydney grabbed a pad of paper from a drawer beneath her telephone, then tossed it and a pencil at her young friend. “After you write down Jillian’s number, call the spa and throw some weight around. I’m in desperate need of a facial.”

Cassie’s chuckle followed Sydney out of the kitchen and through the living room, toward the staircase to her bedroom. She wondered if Adam would be excited to see her, or was he still angry? He’d been fairly pissed the night she’d walked out of his condo, shamelessly sticking to her rule about not getting emotionally involved with any man. She’d insulted him to the core, just by telling him no. And she hadn’t explained. Why should she? She’d been up front with him from the moment they’d banged into each other while jogging around a corner of his building. One bang had led to another, and she’d been clear about the fact that she wanted nothing more than sex and maybe a few laughs from their affair.