“Yes,” she answered.
“Going to Blanca’s after?” I asked.
“For a little while.”
This meant she’d show her face, leave a present and get the hell out of there.
Let’s just say Jane wasn’t social.
“You write those Rock Chick books?” I went on conversationally, and her eyes went huge.
She took a step back.
Fuck. My gut feeling was right.
She did.
Holy crap.
I followed her. She took another step back and we kept going, but as we did it occurred to me she would think I was on the attack. So I reached out, grabbed her hand and held it just as her shoulder hit a shelf.
“It’s okay,” I whispered.
“It’s… okay?” she asked incredulously.
I nodded. “I’m not mad.”
“You’re… not?”
I shook my head. “I’m not. But, if I’m gonna have your back, I gotta know why you wrote them and why you didn’t tell anyone you did.”
“You’re going to have my back?”
This was going way too slowly. I had to speed things up.
I squeezed her hand. “Yeah, Jane. I’m gonna have your back. But you gotta talk to me. We don’t have a lot of time and we don’t wanna get caught talking.”
“No one ever comes back here,” she spoke mostly the truth.
“Duke does, and he’s here and avoiding me, so that’s a possibility.” I squeezed her hand again. “Chickie, spill.”
She stared at me.
Then she licked her lips and said softly, “You probably know, since I was a little girl, all I ever wanted to do was write.”
When she stopped speaking, I nodded encouragingly and kept hold of her hand.
“Romances,” she went on.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ve written a lot of books, Ally,” she told me.
“I know, honey,” I replied.
“All romances,” she stated.
“Okay.”
“Well, mostly romances, some mysteries.”
“Right,” I said with waning patience, while struggling with not showing my patience was waning.
Her eyes drifted beyond me and she whispered, “And those romances are the best kind ever.”
I knew what she was seeing in her mind’s eye and I knew she wasn’t wrong about that.
She looked back at me. “Real,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“But they’re more. They’re about love of all kinds. They’re about family. Family of all kinds.”
She wasn’t wrong about that, either.
I felt a tickle in my throat and repeated, “Yeah.”
“It’s extraordinary. So I had to share it, Ally.” This time her hand squeezed mine and she leaned toward me. “I had to.”
