Page 129 of Smoke and Fire
She blinked.
“Oh.”
“I need someone to become me. I mean . . . my author pen name.”
Her brow furrowed into grooves. “What does that mean?”
“I want someone to be her. To show up for interviews and act like they’re the ones writing these books.”
Her lips turned down. “You want me to pretend to be a female author? Like at interviews and stuff?”
I hesitated. Priyanka had warned me that this was a bad idea over email, but I hadn’t listened. Dahlia’s open air had suddenly shunted to something far more suspicious.
“Well, maybe. Maybe not.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I just . . . this career can’t die yet. I need to give more to it, but I can’t. I don’t want to sacrifice my privacy and reveal who I am, but I also need the income that such a big launch would bring in. My publisher takes a cut and so does my agent, which means the royalties don’t go quite as far. I have very strong reasons to make as much money as I can.”
“You need money, okay. But . . . you want me tobeyou? That’s a lie. I’m no actress. I can’t just . . . what if my family saw? What if Jak—”
She leaned back, pushing away from the table. Panic coursed through me, but I kept myself from reaching for her.
“Then not that,” I said quickly. “If you didn’t want to act like her, then you could run my behind-the-scenes PR, basically. It’s all online, all text. Answer emails, watch social media, that kind of thing. No personal appearances anywhere.”
Her body relaxed back against the seat. I drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t bolted. That meant something.
“You want me to help you respond to emails and social media?”
“Yes. Even that would be so much better. Right now it’s all just a building disaster. I’ve been ignoring it for too long.”
She waved a hand in front of her.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re bright and bubbly and funny andhere.”
“We said maybe fifty words to each other before you proposed this. Clearly, you thought this out last night after meeting me for the first time. How could you even know who or what I am?”
“I stand by what I said.”
It wasn’t an answer to her question. At least, not really. But it was all I had right now. Her nose wrinkled in an expression I couldn’t hope to read.
Nor could I stand the silence.
“And,” I continued, “you read romance novels. If you can open a web browser and type on a keyboard, you could figure the rest out.”
I set that comment down as a test. She hadn’t been very excited about me knowing her love for Jess’s books yesterday. How would she react when Ireallybroke the news? If she’d giggled at me being a romance author, she might faint when she found out that I was Jess.
“Doesn’t mean I’d be good at what you need,” she said.
“Would you?”
She bobbled with a response before letting out a soft raspberry. “Yes,” she replied, with just a touch of arrogance. “I’d kill at it. Could I do it on my own hours?”
“Of course.”
“You would trust me to do it while you’re on a fire and probably out of reach?”
“Yes.”
She eyed me. “What do you pay?”
