Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,47

and come clean with all those fans who, as he’d put it, had made me rich beyond my wildest dreams and who therefore I owed my identity to.

I didn’t think I owed them anything. They didn’t have to buy my books if they didn’t like how private I was.

“Honestly?” I set my coffee down and leaned back in my chair as the first drops of rain struck the sidewalk on the other side of the enclosed patio. “I don’t want the attention of a famous writer. I have no interest in book tours or promotions or interviews. I like the simple quiet life that my pen name provides.”

“It has to be more than that.” Briar rested her chin in her palm and waggled her eyebrows. “Tell me.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Well,” I said slowly, “I also don’t want who I am to cloud people’s judgment about me. Take how we met, for example. Had you known I was W. Parker that night in the pub when we first met, I doubt our relationship would have extended past that. You’d have asked for an autograph, maybe asked some curious questions about the books you’ve read that you’ve always wondered about, and then we’d have gone our separate ways, and you’d have called your friends to tell them you met a famous writer on your first night in New York City.”

She blinked at me.

“Am I wrong?” I asked.

Briar frowned. “No, I don’t think you are. That’s probably exactly what would have happened.”

“Celebrities can never turn off the fact that they’re a celebrity and the rest of the world treats them differently because they’re ‘someone.’” I used air quotes and Briar giggled. “I don’t believe in that nonsense. And I don’t want my status, for lack of a better word, to be the thing that stands between me building genuine and authentic connections with people. I just want to be a normal guy. I am a normal guy.”

“I understand what you’re saying. But to play devil’s advocate, do you truly think your desire for normalcy isn’t in turn doing your fans a disservice?”

“Perhaps it is,” I admitted. I’d weighed all sides of the coin on this matter. “But I’m a private person. The things I write about? Not so private.”

She snickered. “You could say that again.”

I smiled. “I suppose it’s a little easier for me to write about those kinds of intimate things and share them with the world when I can maintain some anonymity.”

“That makes sense.”

“Thank you.” I chuckled into my coffee.

Briar swirled the last few mouthfuls of hers around in her mug but didn’t sip it.

“There’s more you want to say,” I said.

She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re intuitive and wise. I’m doomed.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I just…” She trailed off and rolled her eyes at herself like she was being silly for not just coming out with it. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping but in my experience, ‘hiding’ and ‘easier’ are never the right things to choose.”

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. There was nothing funny in what she was saying. She was spitting hard truths at me. She was bold and clever, and deep down in my gut, I knew she was also quite right.

“It looks like my wisdom might be rubbing off on you,” I said.

“So you agree?”

“I don’t disagree.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” She smiled, sipped her coffee, and set down the empty mug.

I noticed the umbrella beside her chair propped up against the glass partition that made up half of the enclosed patio. Mine was in my car and it hardly seemed right to let a little bit of rain stop us from embarking on the afternoon I had planned.

I nodded pointedly at her umbrella. “Should we get out of here and head to Times Square and behave like proper tourists?”

“Sounds fun.”

Briar stood with her face practically crushed up against the glass wall caging us in on the observation deck on the top of Rockefeller Center. Tourists mingled around her, snapping pictures of themselves and the view, but she hardly seemed to notice them. All of her attention was fixed on the city below and all around.

My city.

I wondered how long before it would start to feel like her city, too.

I stepped up beside her but didn’t say a word. I recalled the first time I’d set foot up here. I’d been a young boy, maybe nine or so years old, and I’d come with my father, who brought me right up to