Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC #8) - Anne Malcom Page 0,115

on a bottle of wine—especially now that I still hadn’t found a job, and finances were starting to get a little scary—I was not going to turn it down.

Amy placed a large stack of papers on the table beside the champagne as I came back with the glasses.

“We’re celebrating a very, very, lucrative offer from one of the top publishing houses in New York City!” she practically cheered, grinning wildly.

I stared at the paper. Back at her. “You got a publishing deal?” I replied, feeling extremely confused. Amy was someone who shared everything. So I found it hard to believe that she had been doing something like writing or getting herself a publishing deal without telling us all over cocktails.

“No, fuck no. Not me. Could you imagine?” She shook her head, opening the bottle.

A soft pop resounded through the dining room, then she started pouring.

“You, my talented friend. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

I froze as my hand fastened around the stem of the glass. “Amy, there is no way that I could’ve gotten any kind of deal, since I haven’t contacted any publishers or even told a soul about writing anything worth publishing.”

“Okay, so I might’ve been a little nosy.” She held her thumb and finger together.

I just gaped at her.

She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Okay, a lot nosy. I caught a peek at what you were tapping away at a few months ago. Liked what I saw. A whole lot. Now, my upbringing means I’ve been forced to read all sorts of bullshit written by long dead fancy English people. It’s okay. Whatever. But I don’t really care about all that. I like romance. Smut. Dirty stuff, you know?” She winked at me. “Brock likes it too. He takes it as a personal challenge to recreate every scene from my books.”

Sharing. That was Amy.

“Anyway. I’ve read everything there is to read, especially when you’ve got a baby on your tit for the first year of their life. So I was hooked by the snippet I glanced at on your laptop. So when you were getting ready, I emailed myself the file. Got even more hooked. Then totally pissed the book wasn’t finished. I also knew I couldn’t ask you to finish it and send it to me because you were all secretive about it in the first place.”

She sipped her champagne.

I continued gaping at her.

“I knew you wouldn’t take my praise without thinking I was just a friend blowing smoke up your ass,” she continued. “I also knew you’ve been pulling your hair out, trying to find a job that pays decent and doesn’t make you want to blow your brains out. Pretty slim pickings. I also know you wouldn’t take a job from me or Gwen or Mia or any of us gals. So I took it upon myself to contact some agents and publishers, sending them the first half of your book. They bit. Hard.”

Her eyes were alight with excitement.

“We’ve been in a fucking bidding war. I wasn’t going to bring this to you until I had a number that you deserved. That might prove to you that you are seriously talented.”

She tapped a red tipped finger on the stack of papers in front of me. “That is a pretty great number. Not what you deserve, because in my eyes, you are priceless, but it’s pretty fucking great. So we’re celebrating tonight. I’m getting you drunk. Then you can have hot, drunk sex with Kace, wake up tomorrow and have hot hungover sex, then open your laptop and write the rest of the story. If you haven’t finished it already. I suspect Kace has been a total muse.”

She was right.

He had been.

At first, misery and pain were my muse. Longing for Ranger. Memories. With Kace in the picture, I still had all of those things, but something else too.

Which only pissed me off even more.

“Okay, so you’re telling me that you invaded my privacy, read something that I did not want anyone reading, then, without my permission, negotiated some kind of deal?” I recounted, voice quiet.

Amy caught the fury in it. The girl wasn’t stupid. “Not some kind of deal. The deal. I knew you’d be pissed. Okay, I thought the champagne at the really big number might help with that, but—”

“No buts,” I hissed at her, slamming my glass down so the liquid sloshed all over the papers. “You had no right to go behind my back like that. To take something from me that was