Filed To Story: The Things We Leave Unfinished Novel Free
“Noooo!” Hazel gasped, her mouth dropping open. “He’s engaged?”
“He is, according to the seventeen text messages I’ve gotten today. Thank God for do-not-disturb.” The future Mrs. Damian Ellsworth was now a twenty-two-year-old blonde with much bigger breasts than the ones filling my healthy C cup. I shrugged. “I expected it, seeing as she’s due any minute now.” Didn’t make it hurt any less, but it wasn’t like I could change anything that had happened.
“I’m sorry,” Hazel said quietly. “He never deserved you.”
“You know that’s not true, not at first anyway.” I wiggled my ringless fingers at her two-year-old, Danielle, who gave me a toothy smile in return. “He wanted kids. I didn’t give him kids. In the end, he found someone who could. Does it hurt like a bi-” I cringed but caught myself. Hazel would never let me live it down if her kids started swearing because of me. “That he didn’t exactly wait for our marriage to end before hooking up with his lead? Or that it was on one of Gran’s movies? Sure, but we both know she wasn’t the first girl in his trailer, and she won’t be the last. I don’t envy her that.” I’d been the launchpad for his career. I just hadn’t admitted it until the last few years. “Besides, we both know the love was long gone.” It had died little by little with Damian’s affairs that I’d pretended hadn’t happened, hollowing me out until all I had left to hold on to was my pride.
“Fine, you can be all zen about it. I’ll hate him enough for the both of us.” She shook her head. “If Owen ever did something like that…” Her expression fell.
“He never would,” I assured her. “Your husband is wild about you.”
“He might not be too wild about the twenty pounds I’m still hauling around from Danielle.” She jiggled her belly, and I rolled my eyes. “But in my defense, he’s working up to a dad bod, so we’re even. A sexy dentist dad bod.” She smirked.
I laughed. “Well, I think you look great, and the learning center turned out phenomenal! I passed it on the way into town.”
She grinned. “That’s been a labor of love made possible by a very generous donor.” She sipped her tea and looked over her sunglasses at me.
“We need more Darcys in the world,” I answered with a little shrug.
“Says the woman with a thing for Hemingway.”
“I have a thing for the broody creatives.”
“Speaking of broody creatives, you didn’t tell me that Noah Harrison is drop-your-panties gorgeous!” She swatted my shoulder with the back of her hand. “I shouldn’t have to web search him to know that! Details!”
He was exactly that gorgeous. My lips parted, remembering the intensity in those dark eyes. I’d probably spontaneously combust if he ever touched me…not that touching was even a remote possibility. I’d heard more than enough from Damian over the years to know Noah was also a cocky jackass.
“I was a little busy absorbing the fact that my mother tried to sell the manuscript behind my back,” I argued. “And honestly, that man is an arrogant know-it-all who specializes in emotional sadism. Damian tried more than once to buy the rights to a few of his books.” Though I should have probably started questioning anything Damian had told me at this point.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Can we at least agree that he’s a hot emotional sadist?”
A corner of my mouth lifted. “We can, because he is. So hot.” Heat crept up my neck just thinking about how good-looking that man was. “Add that to his career, and his ego is almost too big to fit through the door-you should have heard him in the bookstore-but yes, ungodly, impossible levels of hotness.” I wasn’t even starting in on the intensity with which he looked at me. The guy had the smoldering gaze down to a fine art.
“Excellent. Are you going to give him the goods?” She raised her eyebrows. “Because I’d give him whatever he asked for.”
I rolled my eyes. “If by goods you mean the manuscript and the letters, I haven’t decided yet.” I rubbed my forehead as a lump formed in my throat. “I wish I could ask her what she wanted, but I feel like I already know. If she’d wanted the book finished, she would have done it herself.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“She told me once that it was kinder to the characters to leave them with their possibilities, but she didn’t talk about it much, and I never pushed her.”
“Then why are you considering this?” she asked softly.
“Because it’s something Mom wants that I can give her.” I smiled when Danielle dumped a cup of water over my toes.
“If that’s not a loaded statement…” Hazel muttered with a sigh. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” There was no judgment in her tone, merely curiosity.
“Yeah, I think I am.”
“I get why. Gran would get it, too.”
“I miss her.” My voice broke as my throat constricted. “There have been so many times I’ve needed her over the last six months. And it’s like she knew it, too. She set up all those little packages and flower deliveries for me.” The first had come on my birthday, then Valentine’s Day, and so on. “But everything has fallen apart since she died-my marriage, the production company, my charity work…all of it.” The production company had been hard, since Damian and I had started it together, but leaving it behind had been the only way to move forward. Losing the charity work, the foundation, now that made it blatantly obvious that I needed to find something to fill my days. A job, volunteering…something. There were only so many times I could clean the house, especially since Lydia had come back to help.
“Hey,” Hazel snapped, forcing my gaze to meet hers before she softened. “I get leaving the production company. You hated all the movie stuff, but the charity was more than his connections. The blood, the sweat, and the tears that went into it? Those were all yours, and now your future is yours to do whatever you want with it. Go back to sculpting. Blow some glass. Be happy.”
“The lawyers are drawing up papers so I can start putting that money to work.” The only caveat in her will when it came to her fortune was that I give it away to what charities I saw fit. “And it’s been…years since I did anything with glass art.” My fingers curled in my lap. God, I missed the heat, the magic that came from taking something at its melted, most vulnerable state and reshaping it into something uniquely beautiful. But I’d given all that up to start the production company when I got married.
“I’m just saying that I know Gran didn’t throw away your tweezers-“
“They’re called jacks.”
“See, it hasn’t been that long. Where’s the girl who spent a summer in Murano, who got into her first-choice art school and put on her own show in New York?”
“One show.” I held up a finger. “My favorite piece sold that night. It was right before the wedding, remember? The one that took me months.” It was still in the lobby of an office building in Manhattan. “Did I ever tell you that I used to visit it? Not often, just on days I felt like Damian’s life had swallowed mine. I’d sit on the bench and just stare at it, trying to remember how all that passion felt.”
“So go make another one. Make a hundred of them. You’re the only person who gets to put demands on your time now, though I wouldn’t argue if you ever want to come volunteer at the center.”
“I don’t exactly have a furnace, or a block, or a studio-” I paused, remembering that Mr. Navarro’s shop had been up for sale, then shaking my head. “I could definitely volunteer with the reading program, though. Just let me know when.”
“Deal. You know Noah Harrison is going to turn that book into a pain fest, right?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“I’m counting on it.” It couldn’t end any other way.
…
Three days later, the doorbell rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was time.
“I’ll get it!” Mom called, already clicking her way to the door-which was fine with me, since dread had my butt anchored to Gran’s office chair, debating my choice for the thousandth time since telling Helen to send the final contract.
Three days. That was all it had taken them to hammer out the details. Helen had assured me it was more than fair, and we didn’t give up anything Gran wouldn’t have, including the performance rights-those, she’d only ever sold to Damian, and he sure as hell wasn’t getting any more. In fact, it was the best contract of Gran’s career, which was one of the reasons my stomach churned.
The other reason had just walked into the house.
I heard his voice through the door-deep and sure, tinged with excitement. The more I’d thought about this deal, the more I’d realized that he really was the only one who could do it. His ego was earned in this department. He was a specialist in gut-wrenching endings, and this story surely had one.
“She’s in Gran’s office,” Mom said as she opened one of the massive cherry double doors that had closed Gran off from the world while she wrote.
Noah Harrison filled the doorway, but it felt like he consumed the room. He had that kind of presence-the kind that other men paid thousands of dollars in acting classes to try to pull off for Damian’s films. The kind those actors had to have because they were playing roles Gran had written in her books.
“Ms. Stanton,” he said quietly, sliding his hands into his pockets, his eyes seeing far more than I wanted them to.
I looked away, tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, and silenced the part of my brain that nearly corrected him. You’re not Mrs. Ellsworth anymore. Get used to it.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.