Why, exactly, had she volunteered to do this again?
Priya reached for her phone. “Oh, that’s right. Isn’t his mom that gorgeous Black model?”
“Yeah, Nina Russell.” Izzy knew far too much about Beau Towers at this point.
Priya took a sip of her drink as she looked through the results of her Google searches. “These pictures of his parents together are so weird. They didn’t match at all. His dad was that director.”
“Jim Towers, director and screenwriter.” Izzy reached for her drink. “Anyway, the only response I’ve gotten to any of my dozens of emails was to the one I sent his agent asking for his mailing address so we could send him a basket of snacks at the holidays—that’s the only reason we even know where he is.”
Priya was still looking at her phone. “Oh my God. Isabelle Marlowe, I can’t believe you told me all this nonsense about Beau Towers before you told me how hot he is! Well, that’s if you like those big brawny guys, which I absolutely do. Who cares about a bar fight or two if he looks like that?”
Izzy laughed at Priya as she held her phone up. “You know me, Priya. I’m more into the skinny poet types.”
Priya got up and went back to the mini bar. “Yes, unfortunately I do know that, and look where THAT has gotten you.”
Priya had a point there. That skinny poet type Izzy had dated for a few months last summer spent most of his time playing video games and didn’t seem to write much poetry…or spend much time with Izzy.
Priya grabbed two more tiny bottles of vodka and handed one to Izzy. “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this.” She poured the liquor into her glass and added tonic. “You’ll have to tell me how Santa Barbara is; I’ll be there for my cousin’s wedding next month.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe that on Wednesday, when we all fly back to New York, you’re going to just drive up to Beau Towers’s house and knock on his door.”
Izzy laughed out loud. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? The man hasn’t answered a single one of the twenty-nine emails I’ve sent him—I counted—or any of the ones Marta sent, so why would he answer the door when I knock, if he’s even there? But honestly, I don’t even care. I get a whole extra day in California. Maybe I actually will get some time by the pool with a book.”
And another day of not being in the office. Just the thought of it made her happy.
“Exactly,” Priya said. “Plus, Marta might be just looking for some ammunition to make him finally get a ghostwriter. If he ignores—or even worse, yells at you—he’ll look like a monster. Maybe that’s just what she wants.”
“Good point,” Izzy said. “That sounds like the kind of thing Marta would do. I mean, obviously, I still want to surprise everyone and come back to New York waving a manuscript in my hand. You know, the one that Beau Towers has been hiding and decided to turn in only because I managed to talk him into it.”
Priya laughed and raised her glass. “Cheers to that,” she said.
So Wednesday morning, Izzy left the hotel to drive to Santa Barbara. At first, the journey was boring: freeways, traffic, etc. Whatever, she didn’t mind; she had her favorite playlist to keep her company, and her rental car had a sunroof that she took full advantage of. But then all of a sudden, the freeway went around a turn, and the ocean was right there, in front of her. She looked out at the ocean, sparkling in the sun, and smiled. This was the California she’d hoped to see.
She got off the freeway and followed the slightly confusing GPS directions toward Beau Towers’s address. There were palm trees everywhere, huge mountains in the distance, and all the buildings had terra-cotta tiled roofs, even the convenience stores. As she drove up into the hills, the houses got bigger, and had lots of cacti and other enormous succulents in their front yards. Later she should make sure to take pictures for Priya, who was obsessed with the three tiny succulents she’d kept alive on her desk for the past year.
Finally, her phone trilled, “You have arrived.” She pulled up outside a big pink stucco house and threw her car into park.
She checked the address, just to make sure she was in the right place. Yes, this was it. It didn’t look anything like she’d expected, though now she didn’t know what she’d expected. Maybe something forbidding, a little scary, surrounded by, like, a creaky gate and dying bushes or something. But no, this seemed like all the houses she’d driven by on the way here: huge and sprawling, with a terra-cotta roof, a green vine with bright red flowers growing over the gate, palm trees and succulents out front. It was even kind of…charming?
And now she had to walk up to that house, knock on the door, and just…ask for Beau Towers? She was suddenly nervous about this. She’d been fine up until now.
She took a deep breath. Okay. She was going to do this.
She got out of the car and walked along the uphill path toward the house and the red tile front stairs to the big wooden front door and rang the doorbell. When the door opened, Izzy steeled herself for Beau Towers to yell at her.
But a woman opened the door. She had long dark hair, a smile on her face, and appeared to be around thirty or so. Was she Beau Towers’s girlfriend or something? She looked too normal and friendly for that, especially given the models that Beau usually dated, but you never knew with guys like him.
“Hi,” she said. She glanced at the street, then back to Izzy. “Is it a delivery?”
Izzy knew she had only a few seconds before the woman closed the door on her. She talked fast.
“Hi! No, not a delivery. My name is Isabelle Marlowe, I’m an editorial assistant at Tale as Old as Time publishing house, and I’m here to talk to Beau Towers.” The woman’s smile faded, but she took the business card Izzy handed her. Thank goodness she’d brought them along with her to the conference. “I work with Marta Wallace; she’s the editor of his forthcoming memoir. He’s a little…behind on it, and Marta asked me to come here to chat with Beau about his book, find out what’s wrong, figure out how we can help.”
The woman shook her head. “Hi, Isabelle. I’m so sorry you’ve come all this way, but I don’t think Beau will talk to you.”
Izzy had expected that. “If you could just check, see if there’s a way I could chat with him for a few minutes? I just want to make sure he knows how much we care about getting this book out into the world, and that we’re willing to assist him in any way he needs. We’ll do anything we can to help him succeed.”
The woman looked at her closely, a faint smile still on her face. Izzy couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. For some reason, even though she’d thought of this whole mission as pointless, now that she was here, she wanted to win this thing. Granted, she didn’t think she could deliver an actual manuscript, like she’d joked to Priya, but she still wanted some sort of win. She hadn’t had a win in so long. She wanted to get into the house, talk to Beau, convince him to let them hire a ghostwriter so they could get the book done. If she could even just convince him to reply to one of her emails, it would be huge. And then she could go back to New York triumphant, and with something to show Marta.
Finally, the woman nodded. “Wait here,” she said, before she turned and walked down the long hallway.
She hadn’t closed the door all the way, which meant that less than a minute later, Izzy heard a loud “ABSOLUTELY NOT” from somewhere inside the house. Ahh, well, there was the mythical Beau Towers. As charming as she’d expected him to be.
The woman walked back to the front door a few seconds later. “I tried, but he says he doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Izzy smiled at her. Whoever this woman was, she seemed nice. If she was dating Beau Towers, Izzy felt sorry for her.
“Thanks so much for trying,” she said. “I really appreciate it. And no need to apologize, it was a long shot, but worth a try. At least I got a mini vacation in Santa Barbara out of this.”
The woman smiled back at her. “Oh, that’s good. How long are you in town for?”
Izzy laughed. “When I said mini, I meant mini. I got here just now from a conference in LA and I have about four hours before I have to drive to LAX to fly back to New York. But I’m going to make the most of it. Maybe eat some tacos, go to the beach—it’s about twenty-eight degrees in New York now, so I want to enjoy this weather while I can.”
The woman’s smile got wider. “I’ll tell you just where to go. There’s a great taqueria, not on the beach, but not too far away. Tell them Michaela sent you, they’ll hook you up.”