Carolina Blues Read Online Free Page A

the window seat with her laptop after dinner and try to get something done.
    E-mail. Free Cell. Candy Crush.
    The kitchen door swung open. Lauren stopped with one foot on the stairs as Meg Fletcher emerged carrying a plate of cookies.
    Lauren’s publicist was casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that cost more than Lauren’s entire graduate student wardrobe. Her dark hair was cropped in a short, chic cut that revealed her strong jaw and big diamond earrings. She sported another massive rock on her left hand that hadn’t been there when Lauren had hired her nine months ago.
    Patricia Brown, Lauren’s agent, had not approved of her choice.
So she went to Harvard. Big deal
, Patricia had said.
She doesn’t have any experience
.
    She was a vice president of marketing
, Lauren had pointed out.
    Patricia sniffed.
At an insurance company. For God’s sake, darling, when I said you needed help, I meant a psychiatrist or life coach or someone who understands the business. Meg Fletcher doesn’t know the first thing about publishing.
    But Meg had learned.
    And Lauren had felt comfortable with her from the start. Meg was as cool, brisk, and bracing as a breeze from the sea. When Lauren hit the wall last month, unable to leave her hotel room, Meg had flown to her rescue. Within hours, she’d reorganized Lauren’s schedule, cutting back on her speaking engagements and offering her parents’ inn as a refuge.
    “Lauren.” Meg flashed a smile, setting the cookies on the table in the hall. “How’d it go today?”
    It
. The writing? Or the panic attacks?
    Lauren made an effort to breathe. To smile. “Oh, you know. It’s going. Sort of. Nowhere.”
    “Well, you just got here. You need to give yourself some time.” Meg’s tone was encouraging, but her eyes were worried. “It’ll take a while for you to find your rhythm.”
    As if a change of pace or place would fix what was wrong with her.
    “I’m sorry,” Lauren said humbly. “I’m screwing things up for you, too. Did you hear back from that writers’ group in Maryland?”
    “Don’t you worry about that,” Meg said. “I’m handling your schedule. You concentrate on your writing. No pressure.”
    Lauren pressed her lips together to stop a hysterical bubble of laughter from escaping.
No pressure
. Except she was letting everybody down. Not just Meg and her editor and agent. Everybody. Including herself.
    For the last twelve years, ever since her dad died, Lauren had been the responsible one, the one Mom and Noah could count on. Dad’s life insurance hadn’t even paid off the mortgage on the house. And with Noah applying to colleges . . . And the other obligations she’d taken on . . .
    Lauren felt her chest tighten, smothered by the press of obligations. She was dying inside.
    “Oh, I almost forgot,” Meg said. “You got a letter.”
    Lauren froze.
A letter
. Not a bill. She paid those online. Reader mail went to a PO box, almost everything else to her mother’s house.
Thirty-one years old, and my permanent address is the house I grew up in.
The only person she knew who wouldn’t contact her by e-mail was . . .
    Meg emerged from the office alcove, waving a thin white envelope with the Illinois Department of Corrections prisoner number printed neatly in one corner. “Here you go.”
    Ben.
    Lauren swallowed and took the envelope.
    Meg continued to watch her with those too-perceptive, too-sympathetic eyes. “Everything all right?”
    Lauren forced herself to smile. “Fine.”
    If anything was wrong, Ben would have called. He had her number. She was on his approved list of contacts. She took a slow, deep breath.
    “Want a cookie?” Meg asked.
    She shook her head mutely.
    “Oxygen?”
    Lauren’s breath sputtered out on a laugh. “I’m fine.”
    “How about a glass of wine?”
    Alcohol, the drug of choice for self-medicated clients everywhere. The traditional antidote for writer’s block.
    She had a sudden vision of Jack Rossi’s strong,