Love Unscripted

LOVE, UNSCRIPTED

CHAPTER 1 :The Review That Started It All

The review dropped at 6:02 AM on a Tuesday, and by 6:05, Olivia Hart's phone was blowing up with notifications. She knew before she even looked. That sinking feeling in her stomach, the way her fingers suddenly felt too cold against the screen. Nathaniel Carter struck again. "Hart's 'Midnight in Manhattan' Shines Bright as Times Square, Which is to Say, Overdone and Full of Hot Air". Olivia's breath hitched. The New York Times Book Review lay open on her kitchen counter, the print still smudging under her trembling fingertips. She read the line again, then again, until the words blurred together. "While Hart's technical skill is undeniable, her latest offering proves romance novels are becoming as interchangeable as the street vendors selling 'I ❤ NY' t-shirts. "One can't help but wonder if the author has ever experienced real passion or if she's simply repackaging the same tired fantasies."*

The mug slipped from her hand. Shattered. Coffee bled across the floor, another bad metaphor for her morning. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Carter was likely sipping single-origin pour-over somewhere, smug as hell, unaware that his words had just lit a fuse in Olivia's chest. She grabbed her phone, thumbs flying across the screen before she could stop herself.

**@OliviaHartWrites:**

*Funny how the man who wrote 400 pages about a depressed academic staring out windows thinks he's qualified to judge passion. Maybe try feeling something besides superiority, Carter.

*TheLastManuscriptWasBoring*.

She hit send.

Then she saw it. The little blue check mark next to his name in her mentions.

**@NathanielCarterNYT:**

*Ah. Someone woke up and chose violence with their morning coffee. Pity about the cup, though I'm sure you'll turn its tragic demise into a metaphor in your next novel.*

Olivia's pulse roared. Let the games begin.

Olivia's phone exploded like a literary grenade.

**@RomanceReads4eva:** *OH s**t OLIVIA HART JUST @'D THE DEVIL HIMSELF*

**@BookishThoughts:** *Nathaniel Carter's last novel put me to sleep faster than melatonin but this feud? 5 STARS*

**@NYCPublishingInsider:** *This is the most excitement the book world's had since that Oprah sticker mix-up.*

Her agent's call came through before she could even process the chaos.

"Liv." Miranda's voice was equal parts panic and perverse delight. "You didn't."

"I did." Olivia crouched to pick up the ceramic shards, her pulse still hammering. He called my book a Times Square knockoff. Like his pretentious. "

"You need to delete that tweet. Right now."

"Absolutely not." A sliver of porcelain nicked her thumb. She barely felt it. "He's been shredding romance novels for years like they're "

"Literary fast food?"

Olivia froze.

A voice came from her doorway.

Nathaniel Carter leaned against her door frame, holding two steaming to-go cups. He had the audacity to look perfectly rumpled dark hair slightly damp from the morning chill, wire-rimmed glasses catching the

sunlight. For a split second, his smirk faltered like he’d rehearsed this moment and suddenly forgotten his lines. Then the mask slid back into place.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. Your door was open. "I came bearing peace offerings." He lifted the cups. "Though judging by the casualty count..." His gaze dropped to the broken mug at her feet. "... I might be too late.

Olivia's body went from zero to fight-or-flight in half a second. His fingers lingered a beat too long on the linen, as if remembering another time he’d handed it to her in the dark, three years ago, when neither of them could see the irony coming.

"You" She stood too fast, ceramic fragments scattering from her grip. "How do you even know where I live?"

Nathaniel had the nerve to smirk. "You tweeted a photo of this brownstone's stoop last fall. #Brooklyn Writer Life." He stepped inside without invitation, setting the coffees on her entryway table. "Though I'll admit, stalking your good reads would've been more subtle."

The scent of dark roast and something dangerous like sandalwood filled the space between them. Olivia's traitorous lungs drank it in.

"Get out." She wiped her bleeding thumb on her pajama pants. "Or I'll use your pretentious blazer as a bandage."

Nathaniel's gaze caught the crimson smudge. Something unreadable flickered across his face before he reached into his pocket.

"Here." He offered a monogrammed handkerchief because, of course, the man carried linen like a Victorian duke. "Before you ruin another first edition."

Their fingers brushed. A spark. A flinch. Olivia snatched the clothes. "Why are you really here, Carter? Did the Times run out of debut poets to eviscerate?" He adjusted his glasses, a nervous tell she'd noticed in his author interviews. "Actually," he said slowly, "I came to offer you a job." Olivia's laugh came out sharper than the ceramic shards still littering her floor. "A job ?" She pressed the handkerchief to her thumb, watching a red blossom spread across the pristine linen. "Let me guess you need someone to translate your pretentious prose into actual human emotions?" Nathaniel didn't rise to the bait. Instead, he pulled a folded contract from his messenger bag and slid it across her kitchen island. The header made Olivia's pulse stutter:

**THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: "MUSE & CRITIC" COLUMN**

"Weekly feature," he said, his voice carefully neutral. A classic romance novel analyzed by both of us. You defend the genre. I..." He hesitated.

"Tear it to shreds?" Olivia flipped through the pages, her coffee-stained fingers leaving faint brown smudges on the pristine paper. Nathaniel removed his glasses, polishing the lenses with his tie in a gesture that seemed oddly vulnerable. "I was going to say 'provide literary context.' But sure. Your version sounds more dramatic."

A notification buzzed on Olivia's phone. Miranda. Again.

>> MIRANDA: CHECK YOUR EMAIL NOW.

Olivia tapped her inbox to find a forwarded message from her publisher with the subject line:

"URGENT: Career Opportunity (DO NOT IGNORE)"

Attached was an identical contract. With one glaring addition, a six-figure advance. She looked up to find Nathaniel watching her, his expression unreadable. "Before you say no. "

"I haven't said no."

"You haven't said yes either." He stepped closer, the morning light catching the flecks of gold in his stupidly intelligent eyes. Think of it as a chance to prove me wrong. Publicly. With..." His lips quirked. "...actual human emotions."

Olivia's thumb throbbed in time with her racing thoughts. The contract's clause on page seven burned into her vision:

"Collaborators will share a weekly co-working space at The Pen & Page (45th & Madison) for the duration of the project." She nearly crumpled the paper. "You expect us to sit in some pretentious writer's den together? For *how long*?"

"Twelve weeks." Nathaniel tapped the espresso machine on her counter three precise beats. "Unless you're afraid of being near me might. "

" What? "

"Affect your creative process." His gaze dropped to her injured hand again. "You should really run that under cold water."

The concern in his voice threw her more than the contract. Olivia turned toward the sink just as her phone rang. Miranda's caller ID flashed like a warning light. She answered on speaker. "I'm not signing anything until. "

"Your sales numbers have just dropped 30% since that review hit." Miranda's voice crackled with tension. The *Times* column is your lifeline, Liv. "And Carter?" A dramatic pause. "He's your only byline that matters now."

Nathaniel had the decency to look away, studying Olivia's bookshelf with sudden intensity. His reflection in the window showed his jaw tightening as Miranda continued:

"Sign the damn contract. Or your next book gets pulped before it hits the shelves." The line went dead. Olivia's bloodied handkerchief fluttered to the floor. Nathaniel crouched to retrieve it, his shoulder brushing her bare knee. When he stood, he was closer than she'd anticipated. Close enough to see the faint scar bisecting his left eyebrow. Close enough to smell the ink-and-bergamot scent that clung to his clothes. "You don't have to " he began. Olivia snatched the pen from her breastpocket. "Where do I sign?" The pen scratched across the paper like a declaration of war. Olivia shoved the signed contract back at Nathaniel, her knuckles brushing against the surprisingly warm wool of his sweater. "Happy?" she snapped.

Nathaniel studied her signature with an unreadable expression. "Not yet." He reached into his bag again and produced a battered paperback its spine cracked, pages dog-eared. "But I will be when you explain why this is the greatest romance novel of the 21st century." Olivia's breath caught. Her own well-loved copy of The Last Letter stared back at her, its cover worn soft from countless re-readings. The novel that had gotten her through grad school, her mother's illness, that soul-crushing winter.

No.

She crossed her arms. "You expect me to believe you read Rebecca Lin's work?"

"Cover to cover." Nathaniel flipped to page 213, her favorite page, where the heroine finds the love letter hidden in a library book. The edges of the page were frayed from too many turns, the ink smudged in places where his thumbs had brushed the words. Over and over. The margin bore a handwritten note in faded ink: "This. This is why we keep breathing."

Olivia's pulse stuttered. That wasn't just any copy.

It was hers. The one she'd lost three years ago at the Strand during...

Her head snapped up. "That storm. The power outage." The memory surfaced like a bruise: rain lashing the windows, dark shelves bumping against her shoulders, a stranger's steadying hand at her elbow as the emergency lights flickered. Nathaniel's glasses had gleamed in that half-light too." You." The word escaped like an accusation. "You kept it?"

He smoothed a thumb over the underlined passage, his voice quieter than she'd ever heard. "I tried to return it. "You vanished before the lights came back on." Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked. Olivia became acutely aware of three things:

The coffee between them had gone cold. Nathaniel Carter's hands did shake. This entire project just became infinitely more dangerous.

The apartment air grew thick with the weight of unspoken words. Olivia's fingers trembled as she reached for the book, their hands brushing again—this time lingering a heartbeat too long.

"You read my marginalia?" Her voice came out uneven. "That's a violation of the Geneva Convention."

Nathaniel's lips quirked, but his eyes remained serious. "I particularly enjoyed your footnote on page 146. Real love doesn't announce itself with thunder; it arrives in the quiet moments between heartbeats. He paused. "You were wrong, by the way." Olivia's breath hitched. "Excuse me?"

"Thunder is necessary." Nathaniel stepped closer, the scent of rain and old paper clinging to him. "Sometimes you need the storm to clear the air."

A notification buzzed on Olivia's laptop, an email from the Times editor with the subject:

FIRST COLUMN CONFIRMED: "Defending

"Romance" (Hart) vs. "Deconstructing Desire" (Carter)

Attached was Nathaniel's original review draft of her first novel.

The document opened to reveal a sea of red track changes and one glaring anomaly. The published version had been brutal. But this draft...

"Hart's prose doesn't just simulate emotion, it conducts it like lightning. If the literary establishment ignores this voice, we deserve our irrelevance." Olivia's vision is blurred. "You "

"Changed my editor's rewrite back three times." Nathaniel adjusted his glasses, the morning light catching the silver at his temples. "They stopped letting me review romance after that."

Outside, a cab honked. Somewhere in Brooklyn, a barista started a new espresso shot. But in Olivia's kitchen, the world narrowed to the space between them three feet that suddenly felt like both too much and not enough.

Nathaniel reached for his bag. "Our first column meeting is Monday. The Pen & Page. Noon." He paused at the door. "Bring your thunder, Hart."