Page 1 of In Case You Didn't Know
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FRANCIE
“You can’t wear jeans to a sex club,” Charlie says to me, like he’s the bastion of all knowledge when it comes to all things carnal.
“It’s not a sex club.” I roll my eyes. My twenty-six-year-old cousin – who happens to be younger than me by all of ten months – is scrolling through his phone the way he always does. He’s almost certainly either checking stock prices or his dating app. “It’s an exclusive, luxury adult intimacy venue,” I remind him, parroting the description they put on their members only website.
Technically, Charlie isn’t my cousin. He’s my nephew. Well, half-nephew. The son of Myles, my eldest brother. But ‘cousin’ is so much easier when talking about our relationship.
We’re sitting at a table outside the coffee shop below my apartment building. It’s a tad too cold to be sitting out here, but the sun has come out and it’s like all of Manhattan has decided this might be our only chance at summer. Like snakes shedding our skins, we’ve removed our thick parkas and replaced them with thin jackets.
And of course, I’m shivering. Thank goodness for coffee.
Charlie looks up from his phone, smirking, and I roll my eyes, because this whole situation is his fault.
“Okay,” he drawls. “You can’t wear jeans to anexclusive, luxury, adult intimacy venue.”
“I’m not wearing jeans to the club,” I say, exasperated. I love my cousin to bits, but I wish I’d never confided in him. “But really, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m not going there to do anything.”
“Voyeurism is doing something,” he says.
“I’m not avoyeur. It’s research.” He’s enjoying this situation way too much. From the moment I confided in him about the meeting with my potentially brand-new book editor, panicking because I have to take my writing from zero to sixty in about five seconds, he hasn’t stopped grinning.
“You should have just gone out and gotten laid,” he says. “It would have been so much easier. And you could have worn jeans.”
“Shut up.” This is the problem with growing up so close to somebody. They know you far too well. “And women can’t have sex in jeans. It’s a physical impossibility,” I point out.
He finally puts his phone down. A girl at the next table is batting her eyelashes at him, despite the fact thatI’m sitting right here.He grins at her, and it makes her blush.
“Hello?” I say to him. “Am I interrupting you?” He has this amazing ability to get along with everybody. Man, woman, child, animal. They’re all drawn to him.
“Nope.” He brings his gaze back to me. “Where were we? Oh yeah, you were going to tell me what you’re wearing to the sex club.”
“Exclusive, luxury adult intimacy venue. And I’m wearing a dress.”
“Please tell me it doesn’t have flowers on it.” He wrinkles his nose like there’s some kind of etiquette list I have no idea about.
“It doesn’t. It’s white and it’s tight and I won’t stand out like a sore thumb.” It’s one of my only “going out” dresses. Truth is, I’m a bit of a hermit. I’m more often at home interacting with characters I’ve made up in my head than with real life people.
“Virginal. Nice touch.”
“You’re not helping.” I shake my head, even though a smile pulls at my lips because Charlie has the same effect on me that he does with everybody else. It’s impossible to be annoyed with him for long. But the truth is, I’m terrified about going to this place. It’s so far out of my comfort zone it’s not funny.
But if I get this contract, I’ll have to write the most spice I’ve ever written in a book. Until now I’ve been self-published, and though it’s had challenges – trying to write, work with editors, cover designers, and bloggers has always been a juggling act – the only person I’ve had to please with my first draft has been myself.
But Alice Duchamps, the CEO and Publisher in Chief of Twisted Publishing is a tour-de-force in the industry. She’s swept in like a summer storm, turning the whole traditional book publishing model upside down.
She knows exactly what she wants in a book. It has to be supremely marketable, with all the characters, tropes, and hooks that modern readers love. And she’s not afraid to work with authors from the very beginning, pushing them to write their best work, and in return she markets them so hard they hit the top of every chart available.
This opportunity is huge. It’s also very scary, because if this book – which I haven’t written a word of yet – works, it’s going to catapult me into the limelight. Which isn’t the most appealing thing to an introverted, pen named author like me.
But still, I’m concentrating on the story, which we workshopped together over the past few weeks. It’s a romantasy – since that’s what I’ve been known for in the self-publishingbook world – but it has more of everything. More tropes, more buttery scenes.
And way more sex. Including this one spicy group scene that has me shaking in my boots. Alice Duchamps knows this too. She’s been completely upfront regarding the steam level she wants, and has suggested I send her a first draft of the first five chapters before we sign any contracts. We both have to be comfortable that I can deliver the kind of book she needs.
Which is why, when Charlie offered to hook me up with his friend who’s the concierge at an intimate venue, I agreed for the sake of research.
Charlie’s phone starts to vibrate – reminding him that he hasn’t checked it for at least five seconds – and he lifts it up, wrinkling his nose. “My car is here,” he says, looking up. Sure enough, a black town car is pulling up to the sidewalk next to where we’re sitting. “I gotta go.” He looks at the carry-on bag beside our table. “Listen,” he says, leaning in. “It’s going to be okay. Simone is great. She’ll take care of you.”
