"You don't need the manuscript," Lance said.
"Oh, yes I do," Richard cried.
"No, you don't."
"Why?" Richard asked, tempting Lance to trump his hand.
Lance straightened. His voice was clear and steady as he said, "Because I'm willing to make a trade."
Then he sat down on the bed and gathered the scripts and told Richard Stone what he had spent five years hoping no one would ever find out.
Chapter Twenty Four
WAY #97: Choose very carefully the bridges you burn.
One of the challenges of being single is making major decisions without a sounding board. No matter how certain you are that you're doing the right thing, realize that sometimes you're going to need to turn around.
—from 701 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire
Good-bye chapter seven!" Julia cried as she tossed the pages into the fireplace and watched the flames lick at their edges, reducing Tomorrow's Temptation to dust. "Tell me how you got it again," she asked, pulling her legs beneath her, curling up like a child in front of the fire.
"I bribed a maid into letting me into his hotel room," Lance answered. "He was in the shower, so I grabbed the manuscript and got out."
"But not before you ..." she prompted.
"Took all his clothes," Lance obliged, biting back a smile.
"And ..."
"All the towels."
"And then you ..."
"Threw them in the swimming pool."
Julia threw both arms skyward, signaling touchdown with her hands, then fed another handful of pages to the flames. "The swimming pool part is my favorite. Nina's very proud."
"It felt very Nina when I was doing it. You know who else would have approved? The Georgias."
Julia agreed. "The Georgias would have loved every second."
"And Ro-Ro," Lance offered.
But Julia was shaking her head. "Ro-Ro would have taken the sheets, too."
Lance laughed. "I could learn a lot from Ro-Ro."
The light from the fire mixed with the sound of his laughter and seemed to wash over her old house. She held the next set of pages out to Lance. "Chapter eight?" she offered, but he shook his head.
"Count Sebastian rides into town in chapter eight. Without him, Isabella wouldn't have realized her true love for Philippe. Now, do you really want to do that to Count Sebastian?"
"You bet your life I do. He was a little vagrant. Burn, baby, burn!" she said, tossing the pages into the fire and watching the flames dance with fresh fuel. Julia rose to her knees and yelled at the top of her lungs, knowing there wasn't a soul for five miles in any direction to hear her, "Veronica White is retired! Veronica White is dead!"
She turned to him, prepared to laugh, but he was staring. Julia felt burned herself beneath his gaze, and her cheeks flushed. She felt bare, without any of the defenses she had spent years mastering.
"You're not really burning her, you know," Lance said. "You're still her."
"But no one can prove it," she said, praying it was true. He moved closer and said, "I can."
She looked at him, and things grew very quiet, the only sound the sparking of the fire. He grasped the loose pages of the manuscript. "A real woman wrote this," he said. "A person, not a made-up name and a black-and-white picture. It has your fingerprints all over it, Julia. You said that yourself. Don't pretend that Veronica's dead." He moved closer.
"Lance," she started, but the feel of his hands around her waist made her stop.
"Tell me I can kiss you," he said, moving his hands to the sides of her face. "Tell me I can do this. Tell me you can feel it."
But Julia's mind was completely blank, her body numb, until Lance tilted his head and moved closer and everything came back in a flood of emotion and thought. Her mind went from empty to overflowing. She got to her feet, almost stumbling under the weight of her own body. She knew she had to get away. She had to run. She had to flee this man before she dissolved completely and forgot her own name.
He grabbed her wrist. "Stop, Julia," he said. "Just stop."
Stop what? Stop running? Stop being myself?
"Talk to me," Lance pleaded. "Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what I have to do to fix it!"
Fix what? Julia wanted to proclaim. I'm not broken! But as she looked down at Lance, and at the last shreds of Veronica White that lay scattered around him like last fall's leaves, words failed her. She knew how quickly everything you know .can turn to ash. She couldn't meet his gaze. "Goodnight," she said. She pulled away and started for the stairs. "And thank you. For everything."
The next morning, Julia peeked down the stairs. She snuck into the kitchen, her sights set on a box of granola bars and a carton of orange juice, wondering how long she could survive on that alone, thinking she might grab some crackers while she was at it.
She'd made it to the pantry door when a voice cut through the early-morning stillness of the kitchen. "I called New York."
Julia stopped dead in her tracks, frozen mid-creep, terrified of turning around. How am I supposed to look at him?
"Things are starting to cool down there." Lance said simply. "I think I can leave."
"Oh," Julia said, turning, despite her best efforts otherwise.
"The heat's off," he said as if the night before hadn't happened at all. "You're probably ready to have me out of your hair anyway." He looked at her from the corner of his eye as he rinsed a cereal bowl and slid it into the dishwasher.
"You're leaving?" she asked.
"Well," Lance said coolly, "there's not much reason to stay. We got the manuscript back. The press has cooled off. I don't want to outstay my welcome."
"Fine," Julia snapped without meaning to.
"Hey." He stepped forward. "What's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?" she asked, stalling while she thought, What is wrong with me? "I'll tell you what's wrong with me. ..."
The phone began to ring. She picked up and said hello.
"Julia, it's your mother. I've got bad news."
Chapter Twenty Five
WAY #70: Be honest with yourself.
There will be times when you won't be happy with your life, and you'll start looking for people to blame. Don't. The choices we make are our own. That's both the blessing and the curse of being single: We have only ourselves to thank or ft blame for our decisions.