Read Online A Dangerous Fiction by Barbara Rogan - Free Book Online Page A

crush if our intern became a staffer.
    â€œYou were saying, Jo?” he said.
    â€œI could use a good assistant. Lorna’s wonderful, but she’s strictly secretarial.”
    â€œYou’re offering me the job?”
    â€œI am.”
    His face shone. “I accept.”
    â€œHang on, we haven’t talked about salary yet, or what you’ll be doing.”
    â€œWhatever it is,” Jean-Paul said, “I’ll take it.”

Chapter 6
    T he next day Max drove up to Westchester to visit Molly. That evening, with no further sign of Sam Spade and with many exhortations to contact him immediately if anything happened, he flew home. We followed his orders like good little soldiers. The office door was kept locked; visitors and deliverymen had to buzz to get in, and with Lorna on the gate I could not have felt safer. We all changed our computer passwords. Max had said to use random digits and letters, but I knew I’d never remember such a password, so I changed mine from Hugo’s birth date, which was ludicrously obvious, to a date that was equally meaningful but only to me: 7/10/1996, the day we met.
    I changed my schedule, too. Instead of running in the park, I ran on a treadmill with a manuscript propped up in front of me. I went to work late, came home early, caught up on reading. Life in the agency returned more or less to normal. On Wednesday I e-mailed the Keyshawn Grimes novel to Marisa Deighton at Doubleday; she sent back a lovely note thanking me and promising a quick read. On Thursday, I received an unexpected offer on a book, a combination memoir and how-to book on dog training. I don’t normally handle either genre, but this one came with a unique voice and a story worth telling. The author, Gordon Hayes, was an ex-Marine and former monk who now bred and trained protection dogs. The journey of a man with such an eccentric résumé was a big part of the story. Everyone liked the book, but no one had a clue how to market it, and after twenty rejections I’d nearly given up hope. Now I got to do my favorite part of my job: I called my client and told him we had an offer.
    On Friday, Teddy Pendragon called the office. I’d finally read his
Vanity Fair
profile the night before, lying in the big brass bed that I’d shared with Hugo and had been unable to fully colonize in the three years since his death (even if I managed to fall asleep in the middle, I invariably woke up hugging the left edge). Molly had called the piece flattering and it was, in a smarmy sort of way. Teddy wrote almost worshipfully of Hugo’s work, which he’d discovered as a precocious, lonely adolescent, the age when we are most susceptible to seductive voices. In the piece, he idolized Hugo and romanticized me, quoting writers I’d worked with and altogether portraying me in such a flattering light that the cynic in me wondered if he hadn’t written it with a biography of Hugo in mind. Still, it was a promising start, if start there must be.
    To Lorna’s surprise, I took his call.
    â€œI read it,” I said. “I liked it; how could I not?”
    â€œI’m relieved to hear it,” Teddy said, and he did sound relieved.
    â€œMolly thinks I should cooperate with you on a bio.”
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œI won’t lie. It feels like a damned intrusion. But I’m convinced that if it’s not you, it’ll be someone . . . else.”
    Someone worse, I meant, and he seemed to know it, for his dulcet voice hardened to the consistency of cold maple syrup. “I gather you’ve heard about Gloria Vogel’s little project?”
    â€œNever happen,” I snapped. “No one who knew Hugo would give her the time of day. It’s a pipe dream.”
    â€œOf course,” he said soothingly, but I felt, as he surely did, a sudden, slight pitch in the balance of power. He knew why I needed him, and that gave him