Waterfalls Page 15

  Love like this is ours alone.

  When I touch you, that’s when you see

  Your lips were meant for only me.”

  “That’s pretty self-serving,” Meri muttered, switching to another channel. The next song was an oldie.

  “Girl, what you do to me is better than

  The perfect wave

  On the perfect day

  On the perfect beach,

  So come here, baby,

  And do it all over again.”

  “Good grief,” Meri muttered, dialing in a western music station.

  “You left me

  And here I stand

  Heart in my hat,

  Hat in my hand.”

  She couldn’t bear to listen to the rest. The way that song was unfolding, Meri was sure it would contain a tender reference to either this country boy’s truck or his dog before it was over, and those two items were at the very bottom of her list of favorites.

  Of course, she knew most songs were written about love. That’s what kept the whole industry going. It had never occurred to her how much those songs were based on feelings and selfish desires. She had never heard a song that said anything like

  “Even if you get hit by a semi

  And your face is mashed

  And you’re in a wheelchair,

  I’ll still love you

  Just like I love you now.”

  True, songs like that might not hit the top of the charts, but still, it made her think about how slanted the whole industry was toward romance. Subconsciously she had been influenced over the years by those songs as she formed her concept of love.

  She wondered if Jake and Shelly had more of a point than she wanted to admit. Suddenly Meredith felt more grown-up. It was more than turning twenty-five and seeing her parents move toward retirement, although both factors certainly played a part in what she was going through. It was also that her dream-world image of what it would be like to meet a movie star had been so shaken when she had met Jake. And her idealized view of love had taken a serious blow in the past few days.

  Meredith pulled up in front of her house and hurried into the cottage through the pelting rain. Inside, the air felt close and stuffy. The morning had been hot, but she hadn’t left any windows open. Now the rain had turned the air humid, and the house smelled of mildew. Meri left the front door open so the chilling breeze could run through and freshen up the place. She checked her phone messages and changed into sweats and her favorite slippers.

  Elvis was swimming contentedly in his bowl. He bobbed eagerly to the surface when she sprinkled his dinner on the water.

  “Would you like to go back upstairs with me, Elvis?”

  Closing the front door and heading for her office loft with Elvis under her arm, Meredith knew it was time to throw herself into her work. True, it was Sunday night, and she should finish her Sabbath rest from work. However, she couldn’t wait until Monday morning to read one particular manuscript.

  Digging halfway down through the pile of manila envelopes, Meredith came to the two packets bearing Helen’s New York return address. The first manuscript was from an author Helen had pitched to Meredith several times. She put that one back into the middle of the stack. With curiosity driving her, Meredith pulled out the other manuscript and skimmed Helen’s cover letter.

  Yes, yes, you told me it’s a honey, Meredith silently answered as Helen’s praises of Jake and his screenplay dripped off the cover letter. Now show me what he’s got.

  Turning to the three-page synopsis, Meredith carefully read Jacob’s own words describing the journey of Young Heart to the city called “Fullness of Joy.” Throughout the journey, Young Heart faced choices. How he responded at each crossroads led him on to the next challenge until he finally reached Fullness of Joy.

  Sounds like a video game.

  At the end of the summary, a Scripture reference was listed. Meredith reached for the hardback reference Bible she kept on her desk and looked up Psalm 16:11. She read it once to herself and then again, aloud.

  “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

  Meredith sat back and let the words sink in. Is this his philosophy of life? Pleasures are only to be found in heaven? Does he think life is nothing more than a journey of choices, commitments, and trials? So the joy doesn’t come until we go to be with the Lord?

  Meredith agreed with the concept. After all, the verse did emphasize the pleasure and joy we would one day experience in heaven if we trusted Christ and surrendered to him in this life. But something seemed to be missing. Other parts of the Bible talked about how wonderful life was … didn’t they?

  She felt like Pollyanna, ready to go on a hunt for all the “glad” verses in the Bible.

  “First things first,” Meredith told herself, moving from her desk chair over to her comfy reading chair. “Let’s see what you have to say, Jake Wilde. Or is this Jacob Wartman speaking?”

  Putting her feet up on a stack of manuscripts and settling in with the pages, she said with a smile, “Okay, you cold fish head, prove to me you have a heart after all.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Yes, Helen,” Meredith said the next morning on the phone, “you were right. I already told you you were right. It is a honey. Now I’m telling you, it’s almost there, but something is missing.”

  “I don’t see how you can say that,” Helen responded. “Gabriel Kalen is behind this project, and it’s going into video production in a few weeks. I told you I have a firm offer from Medina & Beckmann Publishers, but when I talked to Jake this morning, he didn’t want me to respond to them until after we had heard from you. He would rather be with G. H. Terrison, for obvious reasons.”

  Meredith flattered herself for a moment that she might be the obvious reason. Then she remembered Gabe Kalen’s close association with her publishing company.

  “Look,” Meri said diplomatically, “I stayed up until midnight reading the screenplay over and over, trying to figure out what’s missing. I couldn’t figure it out. It’s good, Helen, but it’s not great. Not yet.”

  “Aren’t you being a little too rigid here, Meri?”

  “All I know is that Terrison doesn’t pay me to find good books. They pay me to find great books.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want this project?” There was such an edge to Helen’s voice that Meri was sure Helen had dyed her hair jet black today and was wearing black high heels to match. The two of them had dickered well in the past. This was not uncomfortable for either of them. This was business.

  “I don’t know yet,” Meredith said.

  “And when do you think you will know?” Helen asked. “You’ve had the manuscript for well over a week, and as I said, we have another offer from Medina & Beckmann.”

  “I know, Helen. Just give me two more days. I want to think about it. Can your client wait two more days?”

  Helen let out an exasperated sigh. “Wednesday morning you will receive a call from me at eight o’clock sharp.”

  “I don’t get to my office until nine,” Meri said with a playful chime in her voice. “Why don’t I call you?”

  “If you don’t call by nine, I’ll call you,” Helen said.

  “Okay,” Meri agreed.

  “Fine,” Helen stated. Then, changing her tone, she said, “So how was your weekend?”

  Meri told her about her dad’s forced resignation and how he had made the announcement from the pulpit on Sunday.

  Helen fired up again. “See? That is why I am a nonpracticing Protestant. Things like that happen all the time in the church, and I can’t stand it. It’s so unfair to your parents after they’ve given their whole married life to that church. What are they going to do now?”

  “They don’t know yet. There was some uncomfortable talk about my inviting them to live here if they had to sell the house.”

  Meredith expected Helen’s sympathy.

  “That’
s not such a bad idea.”

  “Tell me you’re not serious, Helen.”

  “Sure. Let your parents have the cottage in the woods. They can sit on the porch and watch little bunny Foo-Foo hop through your vegetable garden. And you—” Helen paused for effect—“you come to New York to get a real life.”

  “I’m going to hang up on you now, Helen.”

  “It’s a thought,” Helen said.

  Before Meri could think of a witty response, the call-waiting click sounded in her ear. “I have another call. I’ll talk to you Wednesday morning.”

  “It’ll be afternoon by the time you call, but to keep my client happy I’ll wait for you.”

  “Good-bye, Helen.”

  Meri was on the phone all morning with a string of business calls. When she took a break to get something to drink, it was almost noon. Then she realized she hadn’t checked her e-mail yet today. Since she normally had several messages, she decided she had better look right away. A memo was awaiting her from one of the editors at Terrison announcing a publications meeting the next morning at ten o’clock in Chicago. It was not the usual monthly meeting at which the acquisition editors presented their most promising projects. Shawn was calling this unscheduled meeting because he had found something he really liked and wanted to zip it through the committee immediately. Such meetings didn’t happen often. The company policy was that if the manuscript was great, it would be great a month later when the committee held its regularly scheduled meeting.

  Meredith decided to take advantage of the opportunity. She went to work sending her own e-mail memo to the committee members stating that she had an urgent project and time would not allow them to wait for the June meeting. She faxed copies of the summary and proposal to all the committee members and then made a call to Helen.

  When Helen’s voice mail picked up the call, Meri said, “Look how good I am to you, Helen. It’s not even Wednesday, and I’m phoning you. I put my neck on the line for this honey of a project, and I slipped it into an emergency pub meeting tomorrow. It has to get past this bunch anyway. I thought we’d take advantage of the situation to speed up the process. You may tell your client that I’m going to give this project my best pitch at the meeting tomorrow, and if they go for it, we can talk numbers tomorrow afternoon. Are you happy now? Oh, and by the way, something is still missing, and I intend to discover what it is and fix it as we go along.”

  Meredith hung up and set to work doing her least favorite part of the job. She had to make up a budget sheet. What would the length of each book be? What would the paper cost be? How many books would be run in the first printing?

  It took her all afternoon. She typed up everything and faxed it off to her associates so they would have the proposal first thing in the morning.

  To Meredith’s surprise, when the conference call came the next morning, the committee wanted to discuss her project before Shawn’s. She sat back in her desk chair and listened to the others enthusiastically approve the project. Only one editor had a concern, and that was the timing of the release. Could they finish the books to launch them alongside the videos? Would the producer be willing to hold the videos, if need be, to get the books ready?

  “I can find out,” Meri said. “The biggest concern I have is that we find the right assistant or ghostwriter for this project. As I mentioned, it’s in screenplay form now, and some basic elements are missing for it to work as a book series.”

  “Why don’t you ghost it?” suggested a voice over the speaker phone.

  “Because I’ve never done ghosting before,” Meri said.

  “I’ll do it!” a female editor offered. “I’d love to meet Jake Wilde and work side by side with him late into the night.”

  “Me too,” another woman chimed in. “Maybe we could make it a group project for all interested female editors.”

  A rumbling of spicy comments and some laughter sounded in the background. That was the part Meri liked least about these conference calls. She could never catch all the innuendos and side jokes. It especially bothered her today because the comments were about Jake. None of them knew he was a real person who embarrassed easily. They thought of him as an unattached movie star, which made him fair game. What would they think if they found out this icon had left a grape on her pillow?

  “Let’s get back to the business at hand,” the managing editor stated firmly. “We are in agreement that you should proceed with this series, Meredith. Make sure you budget for the ghostwriter and have Jake’s agent contact the producer so we can work with them on the release of the books and videos.”

  “Okay. Great.”

  Shawn’s project didn’t meet with as much interest, and he was asked to put it on hold. When she hung up, Meredith realized how timely and unusual it was that Jake’s project was given the go-ahead so quickly.

  Helen was, of course, delighted. She promised Meri a box of Godiva chocolates for all Meri’s extra efforts.

  Meredith went to work on the project. In the busy days that followed, along with her regular workload, she championed and babied Jake’s books through all the necessary hoops and loops. Helen remained their go-between until the day before Meredith was to leave for the writer’s conference in California.

  She was in her room packing for the trip when the phone rang.

  “Meredith?” the rich voice asked.

  “Yes?”

  “How are you? This is Jake.”

  She sat on the edge of her bed, crumpling her stack of blouses and not caring a bit. “I’m doing great. How about you? I hear from Helen that everything we’ve done so far in negotiations has been okay by you.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s all fine.”

  She wondered if that was a hint of nervousness in his voice or if it was the poor phone connection. Meredith tried to relax and keep the conversation light. “You caught me in the middle of packing for this conference. Are you ready to go?”

  “It’s practically in my backyard, you know, so that means I don’t have to pack the way you do.”

  There was a little pause.

  “It sounds as if it’s going to be a good conference,” Meri said. “Are you teaching some workshops? Or are you the keynote speaker for one of the dinners and I should know that already?”

  “I’m only doing one workshop,” he said. “I still haven’t figured out why they asked me to come. I’m a novice myself in this field.”

  “Yes, but a famous novice, and I’m sure that counts for something.”

  Again, a pause.

  “How are the videos coming along?” Meri asked. “I haven’t talked to Shelly lately. She was keeping me updated on your plans to film at Camp Heather Brook. Is everything still on schedule?”

  “More or less. We’ve run into some difficulties with our cast.”

  “Oh?”

  “We need a Maiden of the Waterfall,” he said. “We had an actress all set, but she received a better offer and left to do a film in Spain. So we’ve begun some of the studio work, and we have the film crew in place for the next month and a half. I’ll feel better when we have all the parts cast.”

  “I can’t imagine how much work that must be,” Meredith said, walking over to the dresser, where she balanced the phone on her shoulder and started pulling out her shorts to see if any of them would be worth packing for Los Angeles.

  “It’s a lot,” Jake agreed. “But you’ve been doing a lot on the book end of the project. When Helen sends me updates I’m amazed at how much goes into book production. Thanks for all your hard work.”

  Meredith smiled. “You’re welcome. Thanks for thanking me. It seems those are words editors rarely hear. I appreciate your saying something.” She wasn’t sure if she should bring up her concerns about the missing element in the books. Helen hadn’t indicated that she had said anything to him. Still, was it fair for him to think that everything was fine the way it was?

  “I was wondering,” Jake said, “if you had some free time during the conference
. I’d like to have a chance to talk with you about the books.”

  “Sure,” Meredith said. “I think it would be good if we could talk through a few things up front. As Helen, I’m sure, told you, we’ve hired a terrific ghostwriter who has had experience in transforming screenplays into novels.”

  “Yes, that’s what Helen said.”

  A pause. This time Meri waited for him to speak first.

  “So, we’ll get together, then.”

  “Yes. That will be good.”

  “Maybe we should set a time,” Jake suggested. “If this is like other conferences I’ve attended, time can get away.”

  “Good idea. I guess evenings would be the most open time.”

  “Evenings are fine.”

  “How about Tuesday evening?” Meredith suggested. “My workshop ends that day at four thirty.”

  “I won’t be free until around seven,” Jake said. “Would you mind if we met in the hotel lobby a little after seven? I’ll treat you to cheesecake.”

  Meredith smiled. He must have remembered she liked cheesecake.

  “Sounds scrumptious,” Meri said. “A little after seven in the hotel lobby.”

  “Great.”

  A pause.

  “Well,” Meredith said, not sure why he wasn’t ending the conversation, “I’ll see you then, unless we run into each other before.”

  “Okay.” Jake paused again. “I just thought of something. It might be a little easier, you know, if I could pick you up in front of the hotel. If I come in …”

  “Good thinking,” Meredith agreed. She could see him being swamped by autograph seekers in the lobby. The two of them might never make it out for cheesecake.

  “I know that’s pretty tacky, asking you to wait out on the curb.”

  “Don’t worry. It doesn’t bother me. I’ll be there a little after seven, then.”

  “Terrific,” Jake said. He sounded relieved, as if he had just asked a girl out to the eighth-grade dance and, beyond all his wildest hopes and dreams, she had agreed to go with him.

  “I’ll see you in a couple of days, then,” Meredith said brightly. “Thanks for calling.”