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Since my revisions on the After Midnight script had gone over so well, Marcus had insisted I do the bulk of the re-writes from now on, in exchange for a screenwriter credit when the movie was actually released and a decent salary. It felt nice to know I’d have such a hand in bringing my own work to the big screen, and made me confident enough in my own abilities again.

Of course, confidence wasn’t usually a problem, but the way Georgie had gone off on me over the pages I’d submitted, I was beginning to doubt my talent and my ability to do my job.

She called me a few days after I’d last talked to Orlando, and she was absolutely livid. I flinched as soon as I heard the tone of her voice, knowing this was one conversation I’d rather not have. Georgie was one of the few people I didn’t mouth off to, mainly because she held my creative future in her hands, and being an asshole probably wasn’t in my best interest. So I settled in for the coming storm, and oh what a doozey it was promising to be.

“You call these pages publishable?” she ranted after the preliminary greetings were out of the way, not that there’d been many.

“I thought they were,” I said quietly, trying to stay under her radar as much as possible, to make this easier on myself.

“Hell, they’re barely readable, let alone something I could put in print!” she stormed, and I could hear pages rustling briskly in the background. That meant she had a fistful of my work and was not being at all kind to the recycled paper she insisted on using. I grimaced inwardly. The fact that she’d printed them off meant she’d actually read them, rather than her usual ‘do it better’ routine of not even glancing at them. This could get really, really bad.

“What don’t you like about them?” I dared to ask, knowing it was my job to figure out exactly what she wanted and try to deliver it to the best of my abilities. The nerves that were rolling through my stomach made the idea of starting over seem that much less appealing.

“What I do like about them would be a shorter list,” she grunted. “Here I was, expecting a thriller, something gripping and fast-paced, with more action than emotion, and you turn in some piece of shit that’s better suited to Harlequin than to a respectable publishing house!” The emphasis she’d put on ‘Harlequin’ made it sound like she was choking over a bad word, something distasteful that she could barely lower herself to say. Oh the prejudices of the so-called ‘quality’ publishing companies. I rolled my eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little romance thrown in for good measure,” I argued, her comments cutting through me and setting me on the defensive. I had to take a few deep breaths to control myself, to make sure I didn’t blow a gasket on her and make this situation even worse.

“A little is fine,” she agreed, somewhat calmly. “But for Christ’s sake, Peyton, this thing is so sugary, it gave me a fucking toothache! Since when do you go in for the cheap thrills of the epic romance? That’s not your usual style, and your readers won’t appreciate it very much.”

“There’s romance in my other books,” I pointed out, thinking immediately of After Midnight, which in turn brought Orlando’s face to mind. I had to suppress a grin.

“Within the intrigue, yes,” Georgie sighed, getting more frustrated, as though she were trying to explain something long and complicated to someone who didn’t speak English. I hated the condescension that came from that tone.

“It’s within the intrigue here, too.”

“No, it’s shoving the intrigue to the back burner,” she snapped, more pages rustling loudly on her end. “No one’s going to care about a murder and the resulting investigation if they’re too caught up in worrying who Samantha will end up with! That’s not the kind of shit I pay you to write, so I expect a little more quality out of you. I don’t even know where your head is right now to come up with such tripe. You’re not usually the gooey romantic, which is why we get along so well. What the fuck happened?”

I sighed. The truth was, I knew which part of my manuscript she was referring to, and it was all Orlando’s fault. Although, that’s not entirely fair. The inspiration I’d had after I first started talking to him led me down a different path than I’d originally intended, but when I was writing it, I’d thought it was the best course for the story. Emotion and personal crap like that had gotten in my way, and apparently made me submit sub-standard work. I winced at the idea that this one man, who I barely knew, was already affecting my work.

“I’m guessing you want a re-write,” I said quietly, fighting back tears. I avoided her question, not wanting to admit that I’d let some guy get to me. I’d never hear the end of that. Georgie didn’t believe in the epic romances that so often dominated fiction, so to hear that I was having such dippy thoughts about some guy I’d never even met would send her over the edge on me. Lord knows, I didn’t want that.

“That’s a fucking understatement,” she snapped. “You have one week to re-do the last 70 pages or so, otherwise, I’m shelving this and we’ll have to re-think your contract with us.”

I blanched at that. The idea of losing my financial stability was not something I’d ever considered a possibility, no matter how bad she thought my work was. Once the bottom had sufficiently fallen out of my stomach, I felt a burning anger replace the nerves that had been jostling through me.

“Wait a minute,” I said, probably more forcefully than I should have. “You can’t just drop my contract because of a few less-than-perfect pages.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m contracted for ten books with you, and am entitled to be paid for them, even if you don’t want me to write them,” I said, mentally reviewing the contract Olivia had insisted I read before I signed it. I felt a stab of admiration for her in that moment, realizing she actually knew what she was doing, when I didn’t always give her credit for it.

“There are ways around that,” Georgie said gruffly, though I could tell my words had made her think.

“Not only that,” I continued, as though she hadn’t said anything, “You’ve made a lot of money off my work, and if you drop my contract, I’ll sue to have my books removed from your company and released elsewhere. It’s within my legal writes to do so. So before you get up on your high horse with me, you’d better really think about what you’re doing and saying.”

“Attitude is not helping this situation, Peyton,” she said, sounding eerily like my mother. The fact that she didn’t go off on me told me she knew I was right, but she didn’t want to admit it.

“I never said it was,” I agreed slowly, trying to calm myself down. “But the fact is, just because you don’t like a particular genre, and just because it’s not what I usually write, that doesn’t make it bad, and it certainly doesn’t make it something you should be talking about dropping my contract over. What good would that really do anyone?”

“I just can’t stomach the ooey-gooey crap you’ve plopped in here,” she said, in a more reasonable voice. “It doesn’t really make sense with the rest of the piece, with the pages I’ve already read. The continuity is interrupted, and you’ve added a whole new sub-plot halfway through the book. It just feels really disjointed, and makes it seem like the book was written by two different people.”

I knew who those two different people were: Pre-Orlando Peyton and Post-Orlando Dominique. I felt a wave of disgust roll through me at the idea that this one insignificant person could bring about such a change in my attitude. I couldn’t be one of those women who changes their whole life for a man, and yet I was slowly starting to become one. First my work started to change, then there was my sudden urge to get out of my sheltered existence to meet him somewhere for coffee. What next? Would I be using make-up and prancing around my flat in baby-doll dresses and high heels? I shuddered at the very thought and suddenly had a new-found appreciation for the black track suit and white trainers I was currently wearing. They may not be beautiful or stylish, but they were me, more so than he or anything in his world would ever be.

I sighed heavily into the phone.

“Okay, Georgie,” I conceded, a new-found sense of myself burning brightly in my mind. “Give me a week to re-do the last 70 pages, and we’ll go from there. Fair enough?”

She seemed pleased. “I can do a week, Peyton,” she said, all the nastiness gone from her voice. “I’m not trying to be a bitch about this, but there are legitimate concerns with the way this book has turned, and as your editor, it’s my job to pull you back to your original outline.”

“I know,” I replied, sighing again. “There’s been some stuff going on here that’s distracting me, and I apologize for turning in something you’re not happy with.”

“Is there something you’d like to talk about?”

I froze. There was no way in hell I could tell her about Orlando, but I’d already said too much to keep her from asking questions. I frantically wracked my brain for something else that had been going on in my life that would inspire such a change in my creative output. Luckily, I had an idea.

“The thing is, my mom’s getting re-married,” I said, trying to sound like I cared even a little bit about her and her stupid fiancé. “She’s totally in love and I guess the enthusiasm was catching when I wrote the last part of my book.” In actual fact, the idea of my mother’s marriage turned my stomach and made the idea of romance even less appealing than it had already been, but Georgie didn’t need to know that. If I could blame my less-than-stellar pages on my mom, so be it.

“Why didn’t you just ask for some more time?” Georgie asked, sounding a little frustrated. Part of our mutual respect was that we were so much alike, and I could hear the same disgust in her voice that I was trying to keep from mine.

“That’s the sad part,” I admitted, my tone sheepish. “At the time, I thought those pages were good, that I was coming up with some sudden inspiration that I hadn’t had before. It was such a crock of shit, though, and I’m kind of glad you red-flagged it before I embarrassed myself by putting my name on that mess in print.” Okay, that wasn’t exactly true, but the reality check she’d so swiftly dealt me was actually much-appreciated. I didn’t think my writing was bad, but I could see how the direction I’d gone in could be misconstrued and cause me problems down the line.

“Well, at least you’re coming to your senses,” Georgie said, relief clear in her voice. “I’ll let you get back to work, then. I’ll expect the new draft in a week.”

“Thanks, Georgie,” I said, my words meaning more than she knew.

We hung up, and I went back to work on my new book, with a fresh outlook on where I was heading with it. Orlando Bloom be damned, I thought as I winced at the words that had so effortlessly come out of me. I wouldn’t let him affect me, or my writing that way, not now, and hopefully not ever again.