Pup Fiction by Laurien Berenson

Author:Laurien Berenson [Berenson, Laurien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“Your next book?” I sputtered.

“Yes.” Vanessa was amused by my response. “I write romance novels. Mostly contemporaries, but the occasional historical romance too.”

My jaw dropped. How had my internet search missed that?

“Really?”

She nodded.

“I’m impressed. I’ve never met an author before.”

Vanessa shrugged. “Mostly we’re not that interesting.”

“That’s not true.” I found her chosen career fascinating. “Are you successful at it?”

She glanced around the beautifully appointed room. “I make a living.”

I took that to mean yes. It seemed a shame I had to change the subject.

“I wanted to ask you about Will Grace,” I said.

“Go ahead,” Vanessa replied. “I’ve already spoken to the police, and I’ll tell you the same things I told them. Unless you manage to come up with better questions than they did—which you might, considering you told me over the phone that you’re a friend of Emily’s. How’s she doing, by the way? Please don’t tell me she’s playing the role of the grieving widow.”

“No, she’s very clear about the status of their relationship,” I said, surprised Vanessa would care enough to ask about her predecessor. “Although Will’s death has been problematic for her.”

“I’m guessing Emily portrayed me as the Jezebel that stole her husband?”

“Actually, she referred to you as old news.”

That made Vanessa laugh. “Well, I guess that puts me in my place. Sugar cookie?” She lifted the plate and offered them to me. “They’re homemade.”

“Thank you.” I slid a cookie off the plate and popped it into my mouth. “Are you the Jezebel who stole Emily’s husband?”

“No way. My going to Las Vegas with Will was all his idea. And let me be perfectly clear—at the time, I had no idea he was married.”

That was a point in Vanessa’s favor.

“You must have been quite young then,” I said. “How did you and Will meet?”

“In a bar, how else?” She stopped just short of rolling her eyes. “I’d just graduated from college with no idea about what I wanted to do with my life. So yes, I was young and probably stupid. When I met Will, he seemed like a sophisticated older man. Someone who knew things I didn’t. Will bought me a drink, and things developed from there.”

She frowned, thinking back. “Three months later, Will asked me to elope with him. It all sounded incredibly romantic and exciting—until we arrived in Las Vegas and I found out that he had to get a divorce first.”

“Once you found out about Emily, why didn’t you leave?”

“I thought about it. But I’d given up the room I was renting and spent all the money I had on my plane ticket. So where would I have gone? Besides, at that point, Will still seemed like a decent guy. I decided to stay and see things through—like maybe I’d turn out to be the only person in the world for whom two wrongs would turn out to make a right.”

Vanessa paused to chuckle at the naïveté of her younger self. That made me smile too. Before meeting her, I’d been prepared to disparage the woman and her actions.

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