Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [2]
The remark flicked right over the raw, open wound of that afternoon’s letter from Empire Publishing. “It doesn’t matter,” Miranda wailed. “No publisher is ever going to buy my book.”
“That’s simply not true,” Claire stated, as if being decisive about it would make it so. She succeeded in manhandling Miranda to a standstill in a shadowed alcove.
Miranda felt a wall at her back and leaned gratefully. “The room is spinny,” she told Claire.
The older woman laughed and said, “I’m sure it is. Whatever has gotten into you tonight?”
“I got another rejection on the book,” she confessed.
“Oh! You poor dear.” Claire was instantly sympathetic, and Miranda smiled at her. “What was the reason this time?”
The highlights from the letter were emblazoned on her brain. “They thought my publicity platform wasn’t strong enough for a nonfiction proposal, and the part about the restaurant culture didn’t feel believable. It just wasn’t ‘authentic.’ ” She made sarcastic air quotes with her fingers, still burning with frustration over that particular comment. “I mean, I know I haven’t worked in a restaurant, but I reviewed them for three years, freelance, before you hired me. And Jess has been waiting tables since high school!”
“How is your adorable brother, by the way?”
Claire was awfully quick to leap onto a new subject, Miranda noticed. It was possible she was getting tired of commiserating over the stack of rejection letters Miranda had piled up as she shopped her idea for a book examining the rise of celebrity chefs and modern restaurant culture.
Unfortunately, the topic of Jess was a minefield all on its own.
“Funny you should ask,” Miranda said. “Not funny, ha-ha, though. More like funny, oh, crap.”
“What has happened at that godforsaken college of his?”
Claire had sniffed disdainfully when Miranda was proud that her younger brother had been accepted to Brandewine University in Brandewine, Indiana, on a full visual communications scholarship. Claire distrusted pretty much all the states in the middle and had a hard time believing anything good came from them.
The thought of that scholarship was enough to bring some of the room back into unpleasant focus. Where was a waiter bearing rose-vodka-berry things when you needed him?
“Jess is home,” she said.
Claire brightened. “But that is marvelous! Now you’ll have all summer together.”
“It is,” Miranda said. “But it’s not just for summer break—he quit Brandewine. Showed up at my apartment this afternoon, about ten minutes after I opened that rejection letter from Empire Publishing. Jess brought three duffel bags, his camera, and not a single word of explanation.”
“And you took him in without a murmur.”
It wasn’t a question, but Miranda nodded. “He’s my brother. Even if I’ve got no idea what’s going on with him, what would induce him to leave a full-ride scholarship—even if he refuses to tell me what happened? It doesn’t matter. I could never turn him away. But he’s damn well going back to Brandewine next semester, or I will know the reason why!”
No matter what was going on with Jess, Miranda would take care of him. That was her job. It had been her job since their parents died in a car crash when she was eighteen, leaving a heartbroken ten-year-old son and a daughter who’d had to grow up overnight.
“I guess we’re not as close as we used to be,” she said, and the words tasted like ash in her mouth. Like failure.
Claire shrugged with Gallic fatalism. “But that is normal, no? How many younger brothers tell their sisters, especially a sister who has been both mother and father to them, what is happening in their lives?”
“Well, it’s not normal for us,” Miranda insisted. “At least, I don’t want it to be. He’s all I have.”
Claire frowned at her. “Nonsense. You are becoming maudlin. Stay here.” Muttering something about Americans being unable to hold their liquor, she left Miranda leaning against the wall.
Miranda