Page 94 of To Hate Adam Connor

“That’s around what agents take. Every book deal, audio deal, foreign rights, or whatever you get in front of me to sign, you’ll get twenty-five percent of it, both from the advance and the royalties.”

Feeling uncomfortable, I shook my head and shifted in place. “No way.” No freaking way, that was too much money. “Twenty-five is too much. Don’t give that much of your money to anyone.”

She shrugged as if I was the one who was talking nonsense. “You’re my agent. You’ll look out for me and get me the best deals possible. You already did it. I don’t know why we’re still talking about this. I would never even think of suggesting that I could narrate the book with Jason. Even if I did think of that, I could hardly get them to say yes on it. Also, Jason already played Isaac, are you sure his contract wouldn’t be a problem?”

“Way ahead of you. I already talked about that with his agent. Tom said it would be a good promotion for the movie when it’s out on DVD. And he checked the contract to make sure, too. Everything is okay on that front.”

“See?” She pushed my shoulder with her index finger—a little too hard. “You already thought of everything. You’re my agent.”

“Yeah,” I relented and rubbed the spot she had just poked. “I’m an agent who doesn’t even have an ARC of your next book. What an agent. Maybe you should ask Jasmine to be your agent.”

Was I still a little jealous about that? Yeah, maybe. So what?

Olive extended her hand and gestured with her chin for me to take it. So I took it.

“Twenty-five percent.”

I sighed. “Ten percent.”

She gave me a bored look. “Twenty-four percent.”

I think you can guess how long it took us to agree on a number, but in case you’re not sure, a long, long time. There was a lot of handshaking along with nodding and some more headshaking. At the end of it, we agreed on fifteen percent and that was it.

“Now can we go to sleep?” she asked with a hopeful look. “Maybe a short nap?”

I tackle-hugged her, and we fell onto the pillows. “We’re working together.”

She laughed. “Yes. I can already hear the distant sound of you cracking the whip.”

I let out another long sigh. “Always thinking the worst of me. I’m being very nice to all the publishers.”

“I love it when you crack the whip, so it’s all good. Wouldn’t want anyone else to be my agent. You know what you should do?”

“What?”

“You should call Catherine and let her know you got a job.”

I gazed at the ceiling, my stomach turning. “I don’t think she’d be happy to hear that at all. She really wanted me to take that accounting job.”

Feeling Olive’s eyes on me, I did my best to look unaffected, but she knew me enough to see through it.

“Okay. I shouldn’t have even brought her up. My bad.”

I made a noncommittal sound and tried not to think about any of the bad stuff. “All right, are you ready for the second piece of good news?”

“No napping, then? Fine. Hit me.”

“No napping because we’re going out to celebrate the audiobook deal.”

“Mimosas?”

Alcohol…I wasn’t sure I could do that. I wanted to drink all the alcohol, all the tequila I could get my hands on, but I was very afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to do that for quite some time. I nodded anyway and thanked all my stars that Olive didn’t question my silence and left it at that.

“Now before a celebratory breakfast, the second piece of good news is that I have a much, much bigger, like a humongous-ly big deal I’m trying to finalize before I tell you about it, and the third piece of good news is that I found an apartment!”

Olive propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me with a pouty mouth, looking all sad and heartbroken. “What? You’re leaving?”

I turned onto my side to face her. “Did you hear what I said about the humongous-ly big deal? No?”

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