Chapter 15: Lark Ellery

Twenty phones were pointed at me.

I looked down at the page in my hands.

It was chapter four of my sixth book, the one where the heroine locks the hero out on a balcony in the snow.

Tansy had printed it in a font she liked better than mine.

"Shall I read it?" she asked, loud enough for the whole lobby. "Or would you like to tell everyone what you do on your lunch breaks?"

"Tansy," Maud said, "I will personally drag you out of here."

"No, Maud," I said. "Let her."

I put the envelope under my arm.

I turned around to face the lobby.

My heart was going hard, but my voice came out steady.

"I write novels," I said. "Romance, mostly. I've done it under the name Lark Ellery since I was a sophomore in college."

Nobody said anything.

"Nine books. About four hundred thousand readers. It pays my rent, and some years it pays more than my day job."

A man near the coffee cart lowered his phone.

"Hugh knew about it for years," I said. "He thought it was embarrassing. Tansy thinks you'll think so, too."

I turned back to her.

"I'm not embarrassed. Post it. Print it on a billboard."

Her smile cracked at one corner.

"You're lying," she said. "You don't make that kind of money."

"You'd know. Hugh let me pay for dinner for five years, and I never once said how much I made."

Somebody in the lobby made a sound, and then Maud made a bigger one.

"Lark," Maud said. She had both hands pressed to her cheeks. "Lark Ellery. Joelle. LARK ELLERY."

"Maud..."

"I read the one with the lighthouse on a plane and cried so hard a flight attendant gave me a blanket!"

"That's book three. Thank you."

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