she didn’t have this tidbit of information.
“What for?”
“He came on behalf of the board to offer me the GC position.”
Kim squealed with delight.
“Before you start re-decorating the corner office for me, I haven’t made up my mind yet.” Sarah couldn’t help but laugh at Kim’s deflated expression. “You know me. I have to think about these things. Weigh the pros and cons.” At this point all she could see were cons.
“Okay. Well, let me say this . . . you’ll be the greatest boss ever, and I’m not just saying that because we’re friends.”
“Sucking up already?” She laughed. “I knew there was something I liked about you.”
The waitress came to take their dinner orders. Watching her walk away, Sarah leaned over the table, and asked, “So, these pictures . . . just how naughty were they?”
“Let’s just say they involved lots of bare skin with a hint of leather.”
The phone rang as Sarah jiggled her key in the lock. Dashing into the kitchen, she dropped a bag of groceries on her foot. “Ouch!” Grabbing the phone, out of breath and moaning, she said, “Hello.”
“Um, Sarah, did I, uh, interrupt something?”
“Sam! What? No. I hurt my foot running for the phone.” Oh God. Her heart thudded in her chest like a pile driver. This was it.
“Sarah, I’ll just get to the point, since I know waiting isn’t your strong suit. I’ve found a publisher for your book, or I should say Elizabeth Bouchier found a publisher . . . and I found someone who wants to option the screenplay.”
Sarah felt the blood drain from her face, and her ears began to ring. She thought she might actually faint.
“Sarah. Sarah. Are you there?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m here. Can you . . . can you say that again? I think I might have misunderstood you.”
“No you didn’t. I said what you thought I said.” Sam laughed. She loved giving this kind of news, especially to her dear friend. “You did it, kid. Congratulations!”
Sarah’s legs finally buckled, and she sank with a thunk to the kitchen floor, where she finally noticed the broken eggs among the pile of groceries she’d dropped.
“Grandmother, I’m home!” Alex shouted to the house as he stepped into the vast foyer.
“Lord Rutherford, welcome home.” The butler, Mr. Fletcher, greeted Alex. “Lady Clara is out, but I expect her back soon.”
“Oh, Fletcher.” Alex responded with pleasure. “How are you? How are the grandchildren? Timothy still tearing up the turf playing polo?”
“Yes, sir.” Fletcher blushed. “He’s doing me right proud.”
“Good, good. I’ll wait for my grandmother in the library, if you wouldn’t mind letting her know when she returns.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alex strode down the hall in high spirits for the first time in months.
Since Sarah left, the months of work on location had kept him busy, but they’d been dismal nonetheless. Once the project was completed, loneliness, something Alex had never experienced, had descended with a vengeance.
In search of companionship, he’d gone out with a couple of starlets, but they’d seemed such shallow, vapid creatures compared to Sarah’s rich intellect and depth of character.
When other previous relationships had ended, he’d look back on them with fondness, but never with the desire to renew them. Sarah was different. He looked back on their relationship, as short as it was, with longing. Longing to tell her how he felt, longing to feel her in his arms again, and longing for what the future could have been.
After pouring himself a snifter of brandy, he sat in his favorite chair in the library and looked around at the vast collection of books. To his shame, he’d avoided Rutherford. That one day when Sarah was there, that one day when he thought he could see the future, their future, and her subsequent absence, made what had once been a refuge, a prison instead.
But quite by happenstance, an opportunity to get her back just dropped in his lap. His agent had called to sing the praises of an unpublished novel for adaptation to the screen. Alex had been looking for a contemporary novel to produce, and possibly to star in, one that would reach a larger audience than the literary adaptations he’d previously undertaken.
At first Alex wasn’t too keen on the idea of an unpublished novel, but when his agent mentioned the author, Alex requested the manuscript immediately, reading it from beginning to end in one sitting.
Sarah had written her novel, and what a novel it was. He was enormously proud of her, not only for accomplishing her goal, but