Free The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax Page B

drawing a great big blank. Faye wrapped her dripping hair in a towel and wiped steam from the mirror so that she could apply her makeup and dry her hair.
    She could hear Steve moving around the bedroom, getting ready. The phone rang and the sound of his murmuring reached her though she couldn’t make out the words. It was barely 7:00 A.M. and already she could feel him slipping into full Pastor Steve mode. Drawers opened and closed and she imagined him cradling the phone against one shoulder while he tied his tie and strategized with one of his personal assistants.
    But Faye’s thoughts were already circling back to Kendall. She’d left numerous messages and while she’d tried to give her friend some space, enough was enough. If she had to, she’d get on a plane and fly down to Atlanta.
    But first she’d check in with Mallory and Tanya. Surely someone had heard from Kendall by now.

7
    I’m not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.
    —A. N. WILSON
     
     
     
    The offices of Scarsdale Publishing occupied all ten floors of a glass and limestone skyscraper on West Thirty-sixth between Fifth and Sixth Avenues midway between the Empire State Building and the New York Public Library.
    The massive marble lobby, like the rest of the building, had been built to impress. A burled walnut security desk sat exactly in the center of the space, elegantly blocking access to the bank of elevators behind it. The wall to the left was dotted with elaborately framed portraits of the publishing house’s most famous authors. On the right Plexiglas-topped pedestals displayed first editions of those authors’ releases dating back to Scarsdale’s inception in 1922.
    Scarsdale’s beginnings as a family-owned company whose fortunes were built on western dime novels and true confession romances were well documented, but the company had been gobbled up early in the cannibalization of New York publishing and had changed hands too many times to count. It was now owned by the media conglomerate American Amalgamated and was operated by people who knew a lot more about the cost of paper and the color of the ink on the bottom line than the art of publishing.
    An uneasy truce existed between the editorial and business sides, but the days of buying a book based solely on literary merit or an editor’s gut reaction were long gone.
    Lacy Samuels was blissfully unaware of all of this on the Friday morning following her conversation with Kendall Aims. Lanky and somewhat awkward, Lacy had deciphered her first written word at the age of four and had spent the last eighteen years inhaling every one she encountered, from ad copy on cereal boxes to leather-bound editions of the classics.
    Having graduated at the top of her class at Smith, she took her English degree very seriously. Despite her worship of the written word, she had recognized early on that she was not a writer herself, but was certain that her destiny was to discover and nurture into print the next Great American Novel.
    Toward this end, in between the grunt work and coffee runs, she had begun to work her way through the mounds of unsolicited manuscripts, referred to as the slush pile, that she had originally believed would yield at least one undiscovered gem that might propel her out of the bottom of Scarsdale’s editorial heap. Unfortunately, despite six months of concerted effort, she’d barely made a dent in the constantly replenishing piles that littered the editorial offices and had been forced to concede that the quality of the work, even to her inexperienced eye, was appalling.
    Which was why she had been so excited when Jane Jensen had assigned her to work with Kendall Aims, who as a mul tipublished author should provide a much speedier and more enjoyable route to an editorship.
    Except, of course, for Kendall’s worrisome reaction to her call.
    Lacy sat at her desk, worrying her lip, trying to figure out whether or not she should bring