Jerrie Oneshot Book

The Bet

A/N: It's been a little while since the previous oneshot, since I've been focusing on the multichapter book. If you haven't noticed I have an ongoing Jerrie book called Best Laid Plans, and I will be posting a new chapter a bit later today. Go check it out if you want to! But anyway, I thought I'd post this one I found in my drafts. ☺️

Summary: Reporter Jade Thirlwall prides herself on never having read a romance novel. She thinks they're predictable, shallow, easy-to-write drivel – until romance author Perrie Edwards challenges her to write one herself. Is it possible that Jade will find the outcome of that bet not so predictable after all?

Jade had always been a sucker for sexy voices, and the interviewee on the other end of the line definitely had one – which was why Jade had just missed half of what she'd said. "Uh, did you just say...?"

"One billion dollars," Perrie Edwards said. "Romance is the bestselling genre worldwide. We basically finance the publishing of literary fiction."

"Wow." Jade couldn't think past that unbelievable number. She spun in a circle on her office chair, causing the junior reporter at the desk next to hers to look up. "People spend one billion dollars every year on these...?" As she was about to add, trashy, clichéd bodice rippers, it occurred to her that Perrie made a living writing exactly that kind of drivel. Insulting an interviewee wasn't in the employee handbook. "Uh, these...um..."

"Cheesy, predictable, badly written stories?" Perrie supplied, sounding some-where between amused and pissed off.

"Oh, no, no, that's not what I was-"

"So now you're insulting my intelligence on top of my chosen genre?"

Pain exploded through Jade's leg as her chair spun around once more and her knee crashed into the corner of her desk. She took it as a well-deserved punishment. Whatever she personally thought about romance novels, she shouldn't have let it leak through. As a journalist, she was supposed to be objective, no matter how boring she found the subject she had to write about.

"I'm sorry." She rubbed her knee. "I really didn't mean to-"

"It's all right," Perrie sighed. "Unfortunately, I'm used to it. Even my own mother is constantly after me, trying to get me to write a 'real' book. And most of my friends think they could easily pen a bestselling romance too, if only they had the time."

Yeah, well, pretty much anyone could write a romance novel, couldn't they? How hard could it be? All you had to do was to make up two good-looking characters with perfect skin, perfect teeth... perfect everything. The plot is a given. They meet, they fall in love, they have sex – amazing sex, of course – they have a misunderstanding and break up, they get back together...and voilà: happy ending!

Even Jade could do that, although – unlike most of her colleagues – she had never harbored the secret desire to write a novel. Wisely, she kept her thoughts to herself this time.

"Let me guess..." Perrie's voice filled the silence. "You think you could easily do it too."

"I didn't say that."

"But you thought it. Come on, admit it."

Great. How could she talk her way out of this? Jade's gaze flitted left and right, but there was no help in sight. "Well," she said slowly, "I'm a journalist, so I already know how to write. I bet-"

"I accept," Perrie said.

"Uh, accept what?"

"Your bet."