And Kate standing off to the side. She hadn’t stepped into the picture, but the girlfriend of the dreadlocks kid must have kept the zoom angled wide enough to capture Kate too.
“Maybe the clients won’t figure it out?” Kate said, but her voice was high and tenuous.
Before Angie shook her head, Kate knew the horse had already escaped the barn, and it was too late to think they could keep the secret. “Loretta is pretty well known, and you know how things spread on social media. I already have a call from Gerard, wanting to make sure no one is going to put together that you wrote his book, and three other people’s messages on my voicemail.”
“This is going to ruin my career.” Kate’s body began to shake, and flashes of heat and cold ran through her. All these years, she had worked hard to be circumspect and to not disclose the identity of her clients. One blog post from Loretta, and all that was gone. “What am I going to do?”
She thought of Trent’s company, which needed stability and good publicity ahead of the IPO. How hard he had worked to build GOA from the ground up. And maybe a little selfishly, she thought of the two of them, how they’d reconnected and just now had started to build something special. All of that was at risk of disappearing because of this one moment.
“What about the NDA?” Kate asked. “Like, could Trent sue me?” Would he sue her? She’d like to think not, but this exposure could seriously damage his company and his reputation. Those kinds of stakes could change…everything.
“We’ll worry about that when we get to it, if we get to it,” Angie said. “I think we can make a pretty valid case that you didn’t do anything that exposed the connection.”
“Still…” Kate buried her face in her hands. “This is a disaster. It will destroy my career, at the very least.”
“Well, maybe you should look at it as an opportunity,” Angie said as she gently took the tablet back and turned off the screen. “You could finally send me those chapters of your novel and see where that goes.”
Hadn’t she procrastinated on finishing her novel long enough? All those hikes and the day working at the nursery and the chances she had taken in the last few weeks had done one thing—it had taught Kate that she was stronger and more capable than she had ever believed. “I did make enough money from finishing Trent’s book to cover my bills for a few months.” Finishing that novel, without the parachute of another ghostwriting contract, was still a risk, but if not now, when? She was tired of waiting for her life to be everything she dreamed of. Tired of being the one on the sidelines, not the one in the middle of the conversations. “All right. I’ll send you what I have as soon as I get home. If you think it’s good—”
“Of course it will be. You’re an amazing writer.”
“Then I’ll finish it.” Kate glanced at the now-dark tablet sitting on Angie’s desk. Nerves and regrets rolled in her stomach, an angry storm that left her nauseated and scared, despite her brave statement a minute ago. There would be fallout yet to come from Loretta’s blog post, which meant this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. There was still a possibility Loretta wouldn’t figure out the identity of the other authors Kate had ghosted for, but it didn’t matter.
This earthquake in the middle of her career, Trent’s company, and their relationship had thrown them all into a deep cavern. Somehow she needed to find a way to climb out and fix what had happened.
Fourteen
If there was one thing Trent loved about social media, it was how quickly news could spread. If there was one thing he hated…
It was how quickly news could spread.
Sarah had stormed into his office first thing that morning, showing him a stream of connections from some author’s blog—an author who claimed to be his friend from college, but he didn’t remember her at all—to another author’s Twitter feed, to another and another, until an online tabloid got ahold of the story about Kate being the real author behind his book. The tabloid blasted it across their homepage, calling Trent a fraud. In a matter of hours, the entire thing had gone viral and was undoubtedly making its way into the feeds and inboxes of his investors. As they were wont to do to up ratings and readers, the tabloid turned the story into a doubting taunt about the irony of a title with the word True, because Trent was lying about writing the book. They peppered the article with lots of questions about what else Trent might be lying about. Like his profits. His sales. His future.
The worst kind of rumors any company could have just before it went public. This had the makings of an epic disaster.
His stomach knotted. He’d spent so much time with Kate, had opened his heart and past, and paid her to write to keep this confidential. Had she betrayed him? The thought that she could have done this on purpose—either for her own career or for money or for some other reason—drove a fist into the nausea churning in his gut.
“We have to do something, Trent,” Sarah said. Dark shadows dusted the space under her eyes, and her lips were set in a grim line. Everything Trent needed to know about the cost of this story was written all over Sarah’s face. “We can’t afford bad publicity. Not now.”
“I know. I know. I’ll figure something out.”
“The irony is that you can’t be honest and tell everyone you used a ghostwriter. If you do, then people are going to doubt the authenticity of the book, especially because there is a proven previous relationship between you and Kate,” she said. “You’ve built this company on a premise of being a hundred percent open about your life, your adventures, your struggles.”
“That was about hiking and cycling tours, Sarah. Not writing. People shouldn’t be surprised I had help with writing the book. This—” he waved around the office, “—is my specialty, not words.”
Sarah worried her bottom lip, something she only did when she was nervous. “That’s not going to be enough. This is a major blow to the company, the book, everything. There are going to be questions and doubts for years to come, so we need to do damage control right now. We’ll figure out something you can say to minimize this story. But before I work on some kind of a statement…”
“What?” he prompted.
Sarah shifted her weight and averted her gaze. “Do you think there’s any possibility that Kate sold the story about the ghostwriting to maybe make some extra money? I mean, I know you trust her, but some of those tabloids pay an awful lot for gossip and rumors.”
“Kate would never.” Would she? He hadn’t seen her in almost fifteen years, and he had to admit, the irony of being paired with his ex-girlfriend as his writer was an awfully convenient event. Had Kate somehow arranged to be the writer for his book? He thought of the woman he had once known and the one he had met again last month. Sure, she lived rather cheaply, in a one-bedroom apartment that could use an update or ten, but nothing about Kate gave him the sense that she was a mercenary person.