A Novel Seduction Read Free

Black said. “I’m curious as to why so many women love those books, aren’t you?”
    She flicked her eyes to Phil, like a runner looking for a sign, but got nothing but the faint whiff of embalming fluid. This was like some weird, otherworldly experience. Buhl Martin Black wondering why women liked romance novels? The man who could give you the name and theme of every short story that had been published in the
New Yorker
since 1972 and who had cried when John Updike died? “Well, I mean, I guess.”
    “Good,” Black said. “Because I want you to write a piece on it.”
    “Me?” She felt the world shifting under her feet. “I don’t know the slightest thing about them.”
    His eyes shone like round, hard nuggets of coal. “Really? You seemed to have formed quite a clear opinion.”
    “But—”
    “I want three thousand words,” he said. “A real ode to the subject. Why don’t we try for the upcoming issue?”
    She blinked. They had moved from the absurd to the impossible. “The issue being put to bed next Monday, as in ‘one week from today’?”
    “That’s the one.”
    Three thousand words? On a topic she neither understood nor could tolerate? “In
Vanity Place
?”
    “Are you under the impression, Miss Sharpe, that understanding what makes women tick is somehow beneath our notice? As far as I know, they still make up half our readers, though I am only the publisher, so perhaps I’ve been misinformed.”
    This from a man who had nearly drummed her out of the editorial room for once professing a small liking for
Bridget Jones’s Diary
? “But—”
    “But nothing. I want the article to be in essay form. Your personal journey, discovering the marvelous world of romance novels.”
    “I—”
    “You will be the literary critic who convinces the non-romance-reading public they’ve been wrong all along. You will be credited with the Great Awakening. You will go down in history as the Pied Piper of Romance.”
    She supposed it wasn’t the best time to remind Black that, at least in the story she read, the people the piper cast his spell over followed him into a river and drowned. She cleared her throat. “You know I was supposed to be doing the John Irving interview.”
    “Does John Irving have something to do with why women like romance novels?”
    She shook her head slowly. “Not as far as I know.”
    “Then Irving can roll up his wrestling mat and pound salt.”
    At this, Phil emerged from the dead and hopped to his feet. “We’ll make it happen.”

C HAPTER T HREE

     
    “He said ‘an ode,’ Phil—an effing ode!” Ellery rubbed her temples and wondered whether a jump from her managing editor’s third-story window would be enough to kill her.
    “I know it seems like a challenge—”
    “A
challenge
! An undercover piece on Colombian drug trafficking would be a challenge. A first-person report on sexual discrimination aboard the Space Station would be a challenge. This is…”
    “A chance to really show your range?”
    “An intellectual impossibility. What the hell was going on in there?”
    Phil made a slightly embarrassed cough. “I’m not definitively sure, but a good guess is that Black is bedding Bettina Moore.”
    “Oh,
crap
.” Now her head really started to ring. Why did sex have to get in the way of good writing? “Really? Bettina Moore?” A vision of Jack Sprat and his wife sprang into her head and—thankfully—raced out again. “I can’t think of two people less suited for one another.”
    Peck shrugged.
    Eight years of increasingly challenging roles in the magazine world. Two years of strong work as literary editor at
Vanity Place
. Ellery’s goal, to run her own literary-themed monthly by age thirty, was within reach, and in fact she knew she was one of two candidates being considered for just such a role with Lark & Ives Publishing, one of Buhl Martin Black’s biggest competitors—big in the bottom-line sense, for of course no one could outdo Black in the