Free The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax Page A

really wanting to talk about it.
    “Just all right?”
    “Yes.” Any other time this week Faye would have been grateful to discuss the subject, but right now she wanted to turn off her brain and enjoy the feel of Steve’s hands on her body. “Kendall didn’t win and she got some other bad news she was too upset to share with us.”
    “That’s too bad.” Next to his looks, Steve’s voice was his biggest asset. It was warm and soothing, the perfect register for communicating conviction and concern. Faye sometimes had to listen closely to separate the true feeling from the professional sympathy.
    Once he’d realized Faye wasn’t going to join his religious bandwagon, Steve had supported Faye’s writing—in fact, being his wife had certainly boosted her inspirational romance career, but he’d never really understood her attachment to Kendall, Mallory, and Tanya. “She’s the one in Atlanta, isn’t she?”
    “Yes.” Faye didn’t want to ruin the moment with irritation over his lack of interest in the details of her life. Between his speaking engagements and television production schedule and her book deadlines, their time alone had become increasingly rare. There’d been a time when they talked about everything; now it seemed like they had to pencil each other in and work down an agenda to cover the most important topics.
    Subtly Steve lifted his arm to check the wristwatch he was never without and Faye noticed that his fingernails were newly manicured and his palms felt smoother than hers.
    “Do you have any other books due out?” Steve asked, running one smooth palm across her hip. “The ladies of the congregation love your inspirationals; I thought we might look at cross promoting on the website. Maybe I should have someone call your publisher to see if we can work out some kind of agreement.” He rested his palm on the no longer gentle swell of her abdomen, his fingers splayed. But now Faye was thinking about the book she was working on and whether it was a good idea for anyone from Clearview to contact Psalm Song.
    Faye’s amorous mood began to evaporate just as Steve’s seemed to be kicking in. In real estate it might be location, location, location. In lovemaking it seemed keeping one’s mouth shut might be the key.
    “I don’t think I have time for this right now.” Faye began to pull away. “I really should get up and get to work.”
    There was a long silence, and then with obvious reluctance, Steve withdrew his hand and pillowed it with the other beneath his head. “Right,” he said, as Faye pushed the sheet aside and stood, smoothing her nightgown back down. “Me, too. I’ve got to be at the church for a meeting at 9:00 A.M. And I’m doing a radio sermon at noon.”
    Despite his reasonable tone, Faye could tell that her refusal had irritated him. He had the same wounded air the children used to get when she criticized their dishwashing technique, or lack thereof. Or refused to take them somewhere they’d asked to go.
    She padded away from him toward the bathroom aware that her rear view was a whole lot “fuller” than it had once been. For a brief moment she wondered if she should have just gone ahead and given in. After all, he was, as he sometimes liked to put it, one of God’s quarterbacks. There were probably scores of religious groupies just dying to give their all for the team.
    Faye turned in the bathroom doorway to find him still studying her from bed and a part of her acknowledged that she should probably be grateful that her husband still found her desirable. But Faye didn’t like the idea of feeling obligated. And she really disliked the fact that he didn’t know who Kendall was and that he seemed to see her writing as something that might please his parishioners or benefit his ministry rather than something marvelous that she alone had created.
    Shampooing her hair, she tried to picture where Kendall was and what she was doing at that exact moment, but she kept