The Romance Bet
Abby had always been a sucker for sexy voices, and the interviewee on the other end of the line definitely had one—which was why Abby had just missed half of what she’d said. “Uh, did you just say…?”
“One billion dollars,” Tamara Brennan said. “Romance is the bestselling genre worldwide. We basically finance the publishing of literary fiction.”
“Wow.” Abby couldn’t think past that unbelievable number. She spun in a circle on her office chair, causing the junior reporter at the desk next to hers to look up. “People spend one billion dollars every year on these…?” As she was about to add, trashy, clichéd bodice rippers, it occurred to her that Tamara made a living writing exactly that kind of drivel. Insulting an interviewee wasn’t in the Aurora Sentinel employee handbook. “Uh, these…um…”
“Cheesy, predictable, badly written stories?” Tamara supplied, sounding somewhere between amused and pissed off.
“Oh, no, no, that’s not what I was—”
“So now you’re insulting my intelligence on top of my chosen genre?”
Pain exploded through Abby’s leg as her chair spun around once more and her knee crashed into the corner of her desk. She took it as a well-deserved punishment. Whatever she personally thought about romance novels, she shouldn’t have let it leak through. As a journalist, she was supposed to be objective, no matter how boring she found the subject she had to write about.
“I’m sorry.” She rubbed her knee. “I really didn’t mean to—”
“It’s all right.” Tamara sighed. “Unfortunately, I’m used to it. Even my own mother is constantly after me, trying to get me to write a ‘real’ book. And most of my friends think they could easily pen a bestselling romance too, if only they had the time.”
Yeah, well, pretty much anyone could write a romance novel, couldn’t they? How hard could it be? All you had to do was to make up two good-looking characters with perfect skin, perfect teeth…perfect everything. The plot is a given. They meet; they fall in love; they have sex—amazing sex, of course—they have a misunderstanding and break up; they get back together…and voilà: happy ending!
Even Abby could do that, although—unlike most of her colleagues—she had never harbored the secret desire to write a novel.
Wisely, she kept her thoughts to herself this time.
“Let me guess…” Tamara’s voice filled the silence. “You think you could easily do it too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you thought it. Come on, admit it.”
Great. How could she talk her way out of this? Abby’s gaze flitted left and right, but there was no help in sight. “Well,” she said slowly, “I’m a journalist, so I already know how to write. I bet—”
“I accept,” Tamara said.
“Uh, accept what?”
“Your bet.”
“Bet?” Abby echoed. When had she so completely lost control over this interview?
“Yes. You bet that you could write a romance novel, and I accept that bet,” Tamara said calmly. “Or do you want to back out?”
Dammit. Abby usually had great willpower, but she had never been able to resist two things: a woman who knew what she wanted and an interesting challenge. Now she was presented with both.
“No. I’m in. One romance novel. What do I get when I win?”
“If you win,” Tamara said.
God, this woman didn’t give an inch. Somehow, Abby liked that. “All right. What do I get if I win?”
Silence filtered through the line for several seconds; then Tamara’s sexy voice was back. “You get to pick the next book I write.”
“Any book?”
“Any book.”
For some reason, erotica was the only thing on Abby’s mind right now. She shook off the thought. She was in enough trouble as it was. If her boss found out she had pissed off a source—and not just any source but award-winning author Tamara Brennan—and was now making crazy bets with her…
“Okay,” she got out, her voice husky.
“And what do I get when I win?” Tamara asked.
“If you win.”
“If I win.” A smile was evident in the author’s tone.
Abby twirled a pen between her fingers. “I’ll buy a set of your novels and donate them to the local library.”
“Nice try. You forget that I’m a local too, so the library already has a set of my books. Plus it’s hardly the same time commitment compared to what I’ve got at stake.”
True. So, what else could she offer?
A ping on her computer announced an incoming tweet. It gave her an idea.
“I’ll market your books for however long it takes you to write a novel. Social media, blog posts, press releases, whatever you want.”
“Deal,” Tamara said.
Oh fuck, what had she done? She didn’t have time to write a novel!
Then she tried to calm herself. Housewives did it while raising a gaggle of kids, didn’t they? So there was no reason why she couldn’t write a romance in her spare time. It wasn’t exactly rocket science.
“How do we decide who won?” Abby finally asked.
“Easy. NaNoWriMo starts on Wednesday. I figured you could just do that.”
Abby scratched her head. “NaNo…what?”
“NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. It’s a challenge to write a fifty-thousand-word novel in thirty days.”
Abby nearly swallowed her own tongue. “An entire novel in thirty days? Um, I have a day job.”
“Fifty thousand words is more like a novella, actually. I wrote my first five novels while working full-time too. If you put in a few hours every evening and do nothing but write on the weekends, it’s doable, especially since romance is so easy to write, right?”
Tamara’s tongue-in-cheek tone made Abby grit her teeth. “Right. No problem. I’ll send you my masterpiece by the end of November,” she said in the same tone. As a journalist, she was used to working to a tight deadline after all.
“We’ve got each other’s contact info, so you can call or e-mail me before that if you have any questions or need some guidance.” Now Tamara sounded sincere.
“Thanks.” But Abby already knew she wouldn’t need it. She could pound out one of these simplistic girl-meets-boy…or, in her case, girl-meets-girl stories, no problem. “So, to get back to the interview about the romance industry…”
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