A Second Chance (The Publicist, Book Four)

Chapter 1

It was at these moments that MacDermott Ellis missed Kate Mitchell the most—when there was an author who needed “managing,” or had moved off the reservation and needed to be brought back into the fold.

Kate always had the answer.

Mac listened as his assistant, Elizabeth, or “Beth” as she preferred, told him about an author who was making trouble. She was thin and pretty with strawberry blond hair, and as efficient as any assistant he’d ever had.

“Mr. Ellis, there’s an author who’s, well, upset.” She began, somewhat tentatively. Mac knew that Beth wouldn’t bother him unless said author was threatening to burn down the building.

Mac leaned back in his expensive leather chair, his light blue eyes watching his assistant as she nervously fumbled with her pen. “First off, I’ve told you to call me Mac,” he threw her a disarming smile. “Second, have the editor on this email me the details and I’ll see what I can do.”

Beth hesitated, fumbling with her note pad, “Also, eh, the publicist on this project just quit.”

Mac almost laughed, of course she did. Most of them didn’t have the stamina of Kate Mitchell.

“We need to start drugging these people.” Mac smiled.

“Excuse me?” Beth blinked. She was slightly timid and still not used to Mac’s humor.

“I used to joke with K…” he stopped himself from saying her name, “well a former publicist I worked with, that all authors should be drugged from the moment we sign them.”

His assistant nodded, “Certainly, I’ll see what I can do.”

Mac laughed, “I’m kidding, of course. Though I’m not opposed to spiking their coffee when they’re in for a marketing meeting.” He winked at her and she blushed and then retreated back to her desk while promising an update on said author.

He raked a hand through his dark hair that was now slightly tinged with grey and looked around his new office. That wasn’t actually true, about missing Kate. He didn’t just miss her when some author reared their ego-driven ugly head.

He missed
her
.

He missed what they had until he royally screwed it up and she left him, rightfully so, for Nick Lavigne.

Mac looked around his big, impressive corner office. He didn’t need to work. Not really, anyway. He had enough money to keep himself, very, very comfortable for the rest of his life. And Mac, being Mac, and looking the way he did, had no shortage of women, either, but when his former publishing house, Morris and Dean, came to him with a deal he simply couldn’t refuse, he didn’t.

Morris and Dean had met a horrible fate several years back after his then boss, Edward, had botched one of the biggest books of their season. Well, technically Edward hadn’t botched it. The author had been caught trafficking children into human slavery and was sentenced to life in prison. Edward, however, helped cover it up, hoping the book would sell like crazy before the author was arrested.

No one could ever call Edward a man of high integrity.

The publishing house nearly went under and while the publishing industry was busy writing its epitaph, the board of directors had other plans. If anyone could bring the company back from near extinction, it was Mac Ellis, and when they offered him the job as head of M.D., he decided to take it.

Returning to the place that had been his stomping grounds for years.

Now he was CEO of Morris and Dean, though his caveat was that he wanted to be more than a CEO, he wanted to sign big books. Something Mac excelled at.

Even now, after a short fall from grace after Kate fired him from her publishing house, he was still the best in the business.

Mac swiveled his chair around and looked out the tall window. He was back; he had landed on his feet again. He had returned to trade publishing, heading up a once major house (and would be again), doing deals, and acquiring books. He was back, but the thing was, he didn’t feel back. He felt as though he’d returned to a shadow of a life he once had. A life he shared with Kate.

Although, she was married now, and happily so, from what he could tell. She and Nick had a baby boy who was almost a year old. Mac hadn’t talked to Kate in nearly two years. The thought hit him like a ton of bricks.

Two years since that crushing night he’d broken her heart. Something he was definitely an expert at. Love them, than break their heart. He didn’t do it intentionally, but it was, in a sense, his gift. He could ruin almost anything. Even something as amazing as what he’d shared with Kate.

There were publishing parties and of course, Book Expo, but she’d always managed to avoid talking with him or had just left the party when he arrived. Her finely attuned bullshit radar was apparently getting better with each passing year.

Now, he was here living this life he’d self-designed and he was alone. Well, mostly. Mac, being Mac, was never alone for long, but they were not relationships, they were hopeful encounters. Women he met who could get him through another night. He would call them again, set up another date, but they knew, even before they would meet up for a second time, that Mac’s expiration date was ticking away.

His cell phone rang, he recognized the number, it was, Delia, an agent he knew well. Good agent, but with no edit button.

“Mac Ellis,” he said firmly, picking up the phone.

“Mac-y, how are you?” She crooned. God, how he hated when she called him that. She did it without provocation. They’d never been anything but colleagues, though Delia had often pushed for more.

“Delia, hi, I’m good. What can I do for you today?” Mac cradled the phone on his shoulder and reached for a pen in case he needed to take notes.

“I’ve got a winner for you. You’re going to love this one.”

Mac felt his impatience growing. It had been a long day and it was almost three in the afternoon. He didn’t have time or the bandwidth for a big sales pitch. He had dozens of emails to answer, a crazy author who was driving everyone nuts, and demands from the board to sign a big book. Admittedly, Morris and Dean wasn’t on anyone’s hit list per se. They weren’t The Darling of publishing they’d once been, and he needed to turn that ship around. And fast, or his triumphant return would be pretty short-lived.

“Tell me about it,” he replied, trying to gather every ounce of patience he could in case Delia really did have a winner and he’d have to sit through a twenty-minute sale pitch.

“How about this, one of the youngest female CIA recruits ever finally tells her story.”

Mac frowned, it couldn’t be the woman the press was dubbing Wonder Woman. She acquired some significant intel that virtually ended an entire ring of terrorists who had a plot underway to blow up various targets in the United States. No one knew her identity, but she was rumored to be one of the smartest and deadliest agents in the business. She spoke fluently in fifteen languages and possessed a significantly high IQ. She was so intelligent that the CIA had recruited her right out of college, after someone passed along her test scores.

“Who is it?” Mac said, trying to keep his voice even. He didn’t want to sound too eager, that was never good.

“Wonder Woman.” Delia said and Mac could hear the smile in her voice. Of course she was happy. Despite Delia’s flirty behavior and her sketchy reputation with men, she could often be counted on to nail the big authors. This was yet another example of her ability to do just that.

Mac set down his pen, there would be no note-taking. In fact, he knew from having dealt with high profile authors who needed to remain anonymous that he wouldn’t get a lot out of Delia on this call.

“Tell me more—is the book done?”

“Sort of, this woman is a lot of things but an author isn’t one of them. I have someone polishing it. The book is going to be fantastic.”

This could be the break they needed, the book that got MD back into the game instead of watching from the sidelines.

“Who else are you talking to?”

“You’re my first, but there will be others. My next call is to the new editor at Lavigne House.” Delia dropped that into the conversation as it if was nothing, as if she didn’t know, but of course she knew, everyone knew and her tone revealed that she was enjoying this just a tad more than Mac would have liked. Lavigne House was his former employer, it was Kate Mitchell’s publishing house, too. Delia had never quite gotten over Mac rejecting her at a writers conference a few years back. Then again, Delia wasn’t used to being rejected.

“I’d like a meeting, soon. I am sure you want to move on this.”

“How about dinner at Per Se?”

Mac drummed his fingers on his desk. Of course it would be one of the most expensive, most hard to get into places in Manhattan. He’d need to call in a favor or two, but he was pretty sure he could pull it off.

“Tonight, 7pm,” he said confidently.

“I’ll see you then, and I promise you won’t be sorry.”

“Send me an outline before then, Delia, and do me a favor, hold off talking to anyone else if you would.”

Delia chuckled, “Nice try, Mac, but you know I can’t do that. I have a client to serve. I’ll see you tonight.”

Mac hung up the phone and got up to go see the editor with the problem child author. He smiled at his assistant and walked past the various cubicles, ignoring several women who watched him stride by. His skin was perpetually tan, thanks to his mother’s Italian heritage. Even though Mac was almost fifty-one, he was one of those men who got better looking as he aged. He still had the body of a forty-year-old with a finely chiseled chest and arms with no sign of a paunch. He was lean and strong, and his jet-black hair was tinged with grey, setting off his cobalt blue eyes and at six foot four, he was a towering presence.

Mac pushed the door open to the editor’s office, “Let’s talk about your author.” He smiled.

Chapter 2

Mac had managed to get reservations at 7pm. Though it had taken most of the afternoon to do it, he’d gotten a table for two. True to her word, Delia had sent over an outline and five rough chapters. Mac had read them eagerly and even in their pre-edit and rewrite stage, they did not disappoint, it was going to be sensational. The book was going to land in an auction, going to the publishing house that could bid the highest. Mac knew that Kate would break the bank to get it and it’s likely she wouldn’t be the only one Delia offered this to. Random House and Simon and Schuster were both probably in the running, too.

Summer had just given way to an early fall and though it was barely September, it already started to feel cooler. Mac shoved his hands into his jacket and continued to walk up 51
st
Street, toward the restaurant in Columbus Circle. He resisted hailing a cab because he needed the fresh air and a chance to think about how he would approach Delia for this book. He stopped at 51
st
and 8
th
and waited for the light to change, and that’s when he saw her.

Kate.

She was across the street, on the phone walking toward the intersection that he was just about to cross. She was smiling. His heart flickered. His heart remembered her, of course it did. He wished he could be unfazed by the sight of her, but part of him still remembered what it was like to be loved by Kate Mitchell. A breeze caught her hair as she walked and played with the strands. Someone walked in front of her and he lost sight of her for a second. The light turned and he pushed past the others in the crosswalk to get to the other side of the street. Mac watched as she hung up the phone and raised her hand to hail a cab. Mac reached her, and as Kate turned, she saw him.

“Hello, Kate.” Mac said as traffic sped by. Kate blinked. He could tell that she was surprised to see him.

Kate put her arm down. “Mac.” was all she said, as if that was enough. The sound of his name hung between them. Something glinted on her hand. Ah, yes, her wedding ring.

His loss.

His stomach twisted.

“It’s good to see you.” He smiled, “I left a message a few weeks ago, hoping we could get together for lunch.” He had in fact called her, in a moment of wanting to bridge this awkward gap between them. They were in the same industry, after all, why wouldn’t they try to be amicable? But his call had gone straight to voicemail. Of course it had. If she wasn’t busy running her company, taking care of her one-year-old, or being with her husband, she probably spotted his number and didn’t feel like talking. Why would she? What was left to say?

Kate nodded and slipped her phone into her purse, “I got the message. I’m just so busy, and I also didn’t think it was a good idea.”

Mac blinked, of course she was right. Of the two of them, she’d always been the more level-headed one.

“Of course, I didn’t mean to…well,” Mac fumbled his words. Damn it, he hated himself right now. This wasn’t who he was. At all. He took a deep breath and continued, “Kate, I get it. I mean you’re right. I just figured that, you know. We’re in the same industry and maybe it’s just time to try, and, I don’t know, put, what happened, behind us.”

Kate narrowed her eyes, “Mac, I’m married and I have a son. I have put it behind me. I just don’t think it’s a smart idea or fair to Nick.”

Nick, of course. Her husband. The last time he’d seen Nick, was at the party for his sister’s book launch and Mac had slugged him. A fight had ensued. Not his most shining moment.

“Kate look, I-“

Kate held up a hand, “Mac, before you go on, let me say that I forgive you. If that’s what you’re looking for, absolution for cheating on me, then I forgive you. Yes, you broke my heart and yes I was devastated, but I’m beyond it now and I have a really wonderful life. I don’t want to drudge up the past or try and make nice with you. I’m not mad; I’m just over it and you.”

Kate held up her hand to flag the approaching cab. “And congratulations on heading up Morris and Dean—if anyone can turn them around, it’s you.”

Mac just looked at her. There was something different about Kate.

A glow. A euphoric glow that he’d never seen before. She was truly happy. Something inside him shifted, it was time to let it go, he released any notion of ever winning her back. It was the memory of her that was hard to shake, but now, seeing her like this, he realized it was over.

Mac nodded, “Good to see you, Kate. Glad things are going well.” The cab she’d hailed came to a smooth stop and Kate opened the door and smiled. There it was, the glow of her smile and something else. Being a mom. Finally living for herself, not just her authors.

“Your life suits you, Kate. Being a publisher, a wife, and a mom. It was what you were always meant to do.” Mac turned and walked away, not waiting for her answer.