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CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Outside Deja Brew, Lex took a deep breath before answering the call.

“Hello?” she said, hoping that somehow the number was showing up wrong and it was someone a little more friendly. Bryce, her old boss, maybe, using an employee’s phone for some reason known only to himself. That would have made more sense than the name on the caller ID.

“Hey, Lexie!” the voice on the other side came through, and Lex internally winced. The caller ID hadn’t lied. It was him: Matt Lang, the Young Adult editor at Fully Booked, who had always seemed to outperform her in every single metric of the job. His copper-brown hair and matching eyes were just another facet of his seeming attractiveness to every single person in the workplace, who flocked around him like he was the leader of a cult.

And, of course—always without quite seeming like he meant to—Matt always made Lex feel just a little bit less than. He always had a way of bringing up her dismal sales figures, usually with a backhanded compliment about how great it was she could focus on going after serious topics instead of worrying about actually turning a profit.

But that was all behind her now. Lex didn’t have to worry about impressing him. She wasn’t an editor anymore. She tried to remind herself of that and squared her shoulders for confidence as she spoke.

“Matt. To what do I owe this pleasure?” Lex was too much of a coward to allow sarcasm to dip into her voice on that last word, even if that was the way she really felt.

“It’s your lucky day,” Matt announced, with his characteristic swagger. “Because, Alexis Blair, I’ve been making some big moves. There’s a new publisher in Boston—a side project for one of the big five, creating their own presences out here. They headhunted me from Fully Booked, and they’ve given me my own imprint to run as Editor in Chief.”

“Oh, wow,” Lex said, trying to fight down a wave of jealousy that came over her. Matt had seriously moved up in his career—this was big. If it was as big as he was making out, then he’d probably been handed an even bigger job and salary than Bryce. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Matt said, his voice full of preening. “Of course, they recognized my potential. With what I was able to do with Young Adult at Fully Booked, it was obvious that I needed more room to spread my wings and bring that kind of success to a whole imprint.”

Lex cleared her throat awkwardly. “Right, well, well done. Um, why is that lucky for me, exactly?”

Matt burst into a peal of laughter that had Lex temporarily moving the phone away from her ear. “Oh, Lexie!” he laughed. “Why do you think? They’ve given me free rein to put a team together. I need some of the best on my side, and I thought, why not see about putting the old gang back together?”

“The old gang?” Lex repeated. Her heart was racing in her chest. The thought of being personally asked to come on board a new imprint was amazing—something she would have been ecstatic about just six months ago. Even less—three months ago, even. Back before she’d lost her job, changed her career goals, broken up with her long-term boyfriend, and left Boston. Before the plummeting sales of her nonfiction books had left her with a permanent knot of tension in her stomach, knowing that she was teetering on the edge of disciplinary action. But there was one thing that immediately came to her mind at those words: another of the editors from the Fully Booked team, whom Lex would have given anything to never work with again. “Does that mean Karen’s joining you as well?”

“Oh, Karen Johnson?” Matt laughed again. “No, not at all. We may well be doing something in the line of Celebrity Autobiography, but we’ll want better than

she’s

capable of bringing in. We want real celebrities—people who will actually sell books!”

Lex was momentarily stunned. For the whole time she had worked at Fully Booked, Matt and Karen had been inseparable. They were like the mean girls in high school, dominating the popular table and forcing everyone else to beg for their attention. And Matt had simply left her behind, just like that?

“What kind of work would you want me to be doing?” Lex asked, dreading the answer. The whole reason she had left Fully Booked was because Bryce had wanted to move her into Celebrity Autobiography, and she couldn’t stand it. Books were so important to her, and if she was going to be bringing them to life, she wanted to know that they were valuable—that they would make a positive difference to the world.

“Oh, you can still do your dry award stuff, I don’t care. I don’t read it myself, but those books have real value,” Matt said. “I mean, they make a difference to the world, don’t they? Even if no one reads them.”

Lex could barely catch her breath. She couldn’t help but feel that this might be an opportunity. It was something she had never even really considered—going back into publishing. But it was possible, wasn’t it? It would certainly make her mother very happy. And if she wasn’t held to high expectations of sales figures, like she had been before…

“You mean I’d get free rein?” Lex asked slowly, wanting to be sure. “My own choices about what kind of titles I would publish, so long as I felt they would be good award candidates?”

“Oh, yes, why not?” Matt replied. “Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to provide the same budget for marketing that we’ll have reserved for the Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction sections. Not to mention any celebrity titles we do manage to acquire. But I wouldn’t stop you from taking on a book. Frankly, I have no idea what most of them are about anyway, so oversight would be pointless.”

Lex felt like she had been blindsided by a truck. She’d never seen this coming—not getting headhunted when she wasn’t even looking for a job anymore, and especially not by Matt. It was flattering. He could have brought in just about anyone he wanted to his team, and he was choosing her. A few months ago, Lex would have prostrated herself on the floor at his feet for this kind of opportunity.

But her life was on a different course now. She thought about leaving A Curious Bookstore for just a single moment, and it was like a jolt through her heart. This was her home now. She had never been happy with Fully Booked, but here she was.

And if she left now, she would probably never find out what happened to her father. She needed to follow that path, because if it led her to him, giving up any job would be worth it.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” she heard herself saying, as if from a long distance away. “I don’t think I could take the position.”

There was a sharp silence on the other end of the line, an intake of breath. “What?” Matt snapped a moment later, taken aback. His tone had changed abruptly. Lex had the feeling he had expected to have the deal wrapped up in all but signature by the end of the phone call.

“I’m sorry,” Lex repeated. “I don’t think it’s right for me right now.”

“Well, why?” Matt demanded. “This is an amazing offer. You of all people should know that.”

Lex chose to ignore the barb in favor of actually explaining herself. “It’s tempting, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “And I do appreciate the fact that you thought of me. But that’s not the career path I’m on anymore. It’s taken me a long time to get here, but I finally feel like I’m on the right track in my life. I don’t want to give this up, even if it would mean a better job. I want to give it a chance to work out. I’ve only been here a month.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Matt scoffed, leaving Lex to wheel around with the phone pressed to her ear, as if she could confront him in person for saying that. “Look, don’t be so hasty. You’re throwing away a massive opportunity here. No one else is interested in those dry, boring books you like. I’m not going to take your answer today. I’ll give you a week to think about it and make your mind up.”

“But…” Lex began. She didn’t need a week. She had already given him her answer.

“No buts,” Matt cut her off. “I mean it, Alexis. Think about this. You’re not going to get another offer as good as this one, and if you turn it down, I’ll get someone else to fill the position. It won’t be there six months down the line when you decide you want to come back to publishing after all.”

Lex had a bitter taste in her mouth as he ended the call, leaving her with no opportunity to argue back. She hated the implication: that she was just being a silly girl with a flyaway fancy, like her mother kept telling her. That she would give all this up in a few months and move back to Boston and beg for a job, as if this hadn’t been her dream for her whole life.

But at the same time, she had to admit that Matt’s words had cut her to the core. He could be right. What if she couldn’t make it here? What if she got lonely once the summer season was over and she realized she barely knew anyone here—or worse, got claustrophobic in this small town where everyone seemed to know everyone? What if she tried to start her own bookstore and failed, and ended up destitute, begging her mother for a room?

Lex sighed, looking through the glass-fronted café to where Noah was sitting, tapping away on his keyboard while he waited for her to come back. It felt like everything was just beginning here. Would it be better to cut things off now, before she got too attached to Incanton and everything in it? Or would that be giving up on her dream too easily?

Lex was just turning around to go back inside when her phone rang again, almost making her jump out of her skin. Resolving to change her ringtone to something quieter, or at least put the phone on silent in the future, Lex answered it without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Alexis! Oh, darling, I’ve just heard the wonderful news!” Miranda Black, Lex’s mother, screeched into her ear.

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