Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,56
a juicy quote from her to make their update sensational and click-baity. She’d heard of trolls ganging up on an author they took exception to and painting the author’s book with dozens or hundreds of one star reviews with horrible, blood-drawing comments about the author and the quality of the book.
Maybe she had been targeted.
Her heart racing, Jesse waited for the page to load, while Aran strolled into the kitchen behind her and leaned against the island, watching with his brows together. He didn’t interrupt her with endless questions.
Not that she could answer any of them right then.
The page finally formed, and Jesse discovered she had been flagged, but not by trolls.
Her pulse froze. Her throat tightened. Her gut squeezed down into a fist-sized rock sitting in her middle and burning. “I’m number one,” she breathed.
“Really?” Aran straightened, sounding very pleased. “In which category?” It had taken hours to teach him the intricacies of genres and categories. He was a voracious reader, but he read non-fiction almost exclusively.
Jesse looked up at him. Her neck creaked. “All of them. The whole site.”
Aran blinked. “You’re number one for the entire store?”
She nodded, despite the stiffness of her neck. She couldn’t feel her fingertips. Her toes were tingling.
Aran crossed the room, pulled her to her feet and hugged her. Hard. “God, Jesse, that’s amazing,” he breathed, the warmth of his breath brushing her neck. “I’m so very happy for you.”
Jesse let him hold her. She didn’t know what else to do. Her thoughts careened off each other. Chief among them was the sensation that this was wrong, that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not with this silly little book, not when her back was turned, and she was busy falling in—
Jesse snapped up straight. She was trembling, now, too.
Aran shifted away from her. Just a few inches. His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
Her phone buzzed again, rattling against the little table.
They both jumped.
Jesse looked down at the screen once more.
“The Vineyard Gazette?” Aran said, over her shoulder. “Why would they be trying to reach you?”
Jesse looked at him, startled.
Aran rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s fantastic that the media want to speak to the author of the top selling book, but I don’t get why the Vineyard’s little paper would be one of them.”
Horror slammed into her. “Oh, god,” she breathed. “It can’t be…”
Aran was frowning again, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the laptop screen. “Who is Jerry Hale?” he said, his tone flat.
Jesse disconnected the call, then turned off her phone. It took twice as long as it should because her fingers were uncooperative. Her heart was slamming against her chest. It didn’t help her composure to have Aran peering at the book.
He looked up at her. “This is you?”
Jesse crossed her arms. “I didn’t tell anyone it was me.” Her tone came out sounding apologetic, for she could see the stirring of anger in his eyes. “No one, Aran. I don’t know why these media people are trying to reach me but having the Vineyard Gazette call makes me think…makes me suspect they’ve figured out that Jerry Hale is me.”
“What does Martha’s Vineyard have to do with it?” Aran demanded.
“That’s the snail mail address I use for everything. Veris said I could, because I’m itinerant.” She swallowed. “Your parents still own the house there, and Taylor checks on the house once a month and brings any mail that arrives there for me. But it’s only when I need a snail mail address, you see…”
Her phone buzzed again.
Jesse turned it over. “I thought I’d turned it off…”
“Take the SIM card out,” Aran said, his tone urgent.
She frowned.
“You’re not answering the phone,” Aran said. “How long do you think it will take them to give up calling and track the phone’s location, instead?” He glanced at the window. “They could already be on their way here.”
Fresh horror built in her. She cracked the case quickly and removed the card, feeling nausea swirl in her gut. “This is…how could I have slipped up? There wasn’t any connection between me and Jerry Hale. I thought I’d made sure of it. She doesn’t even have a website.”
Aran was back to reading the screen on her laptop. Reading the book blurb. He glanced up at her. “But there’s an email address in the author description,” he pointed out. “At Jerry Hale dotcom, so you bought the domain. Did you buy privacy for it, too, Jesse?”