Read Online Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy by Sally Mason - Free Book Online Page B

the train and by the wine he’s been consuming since lunch.
    He’s going to have to reign in this drinking of his during the next few days of what Jane Cooper, talking on the phone earlier, described as “a process of limited media exposure.”
    He hasn’t shared his suspicions with Bitsy, but he’s pretty sure that this means that his dowdy sister is going to be tossed to the slavering Manhattan media wolves.
    He’s done his best to prepare Bitsy, spending the last few hours of travel going through Ivy with her, getting her as familiar with the damned thing as if she wrote it herself.
    Bitsy may be an underachiever but she’s a quick study and he’s confident sh e knows the book well enough to fake being the author.
    But it’s her nerve —or lack thereof—that worries Gordon.
    How convincing will she be?
    Bitsy, back from the bathroom, sits down opposite him, looking even more wan than usual.
    “I’m terrified, Gordon,” she says, giving voice to his own fears.
    “You’ll be fine.”
    “No, I won’t. You know me, I can’t lie.”
    He stares at her for a few seconds.
    “Then why did you agree to do it, Bitsy?”
    She avoids his eyes, watching an ugly smear of passing suburbia.
    “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
    “You’re right,” he says. “You can’t lie.”
    He reaches across and touches her knee.
    “What’s going on, Bitsy?”
    She shakes her head, then she looks at him, a stricken expression on her face, and it all comes tumbling out about how she has pledged money to a bunch of New Age charlatans.
    “And if I don’t do it, ” she says, “the Quant Foundation will disappear. And it will be my fault.”
    Gordon bites back the venom he wants to spew.
    No, what business is it of his how his brainwashed sister chooses to spend her money?
    Keeping his face expressionless and his voice level he says, “So, overcome your trepidation and do it, Bitsy.”
    She hugs herself.
    “I’m really scared.”
    “This Quant person, didn’t he give you any . . . any techniques to deal with anxiety?”
    “There is a sequence of breath work. I tried to do it in the toilet, but I was quite overcome by the smell in there.”
    Gordon has to laugh and after a moment his sister joins him.
    “It’s a game, Bitsy, like we played when we were kids. Dress up, or whatever. It’s just pretence.”
    “I don’t remember playing many games.”
    “No, me neither. We didn’t exactly have that kind of childhood, did we?”
    She shakes her head.
    “No.”
    “Even more reason to make up for it now. Tell yourself that you’re Viola Usher. That you woke up one morning bursting with a story to tell.”
    “Was that how it was for you, Gordon ?”
    He shrugs.
    “I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
    “Please,” she says, “tell me. I want to hear.”
    So tells her about Suzie Baldwin appearing to him —his sister the only person in the world he could ever share this with.
    “Oh, Gordon, that is so wonderful,” she says.
    “Is it?”
    “Yes. You carried Suzie with you, in your heart, all these years. That’s so beautiful.”
    “Well, she did pretty much disappear when I hit thirty. I thought she was gone forever.”
    “That’s when you decided you were an adult, Gordon, wasn’t it? That you needed to put away childish things?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Well, Suzie was your muse. You should feel very privileged.”
    “I don’t know about muse, Bitsy. She was more a midwife, helping me to give birth to some misshapen bastard child.”
    She stares at him and shakes her head.
    “You don’t get it, do you?”
    “Get what?”
    “Get how good Ivy is?”
    “It’s crap, Bitsy.”
    “No, it’s powerful and engaging on an emotional level. Not everything has to be about grand ideas and philosophy, Gordon. You should be proud of it.”
    “ Well, I’m not.”
    She stares at him.
    “What?” he says.
    “Can I ask you something?”
    “Ask.”
    “Everybody’s in that book —all the people who had an affect on