“I’m sorry for the offensive language,” he said.
“No offense taken,” I said.
The door to the drawing room opened. Spike exited and closed it quickly behind him. I could hear Melanie Joan bellowing from within. “This cannot be happening! I will not allow it!”
“What took you so long?” Spike said. “It’s bad in there. I had to physically hold her back from strangling her editor.”
I nodded. “I can’t really say I blame her.”
“He was a true advocate for Ms. Hall when Mrs. Scepter was alive,” Harold said. “His opinions seem to have changed with the regime.”
“When they change that easily, they aren’t worth much to begin with,” I said.
“Indeed,” Harold said.
Rosie reared back onto her hind legs and placed her front paws on Spike’s shin. He scooped her into his arms. I was beginning to think he was Rosie’s emotional support animal, too.
I followed Spike back in. Melanie Joan had redone the TV room since I lived there. There was emerald-green silk wallpaper, an antique chandelier. No TV. At the center of the room was a large polished mahogany table. It was all very Founding Fathers, save the miserable woman at the far end of the table in head-to-toe St. John, her forehead affixed to the mahogany. Evan Woodrow was on one side of her, Tony Gault on the other. Both seemed to be trying, in vain, to keep her from exploding into tiny pieces. “This can’t happen,” Melanie Joan kept saying, over and over. “This can’t happen. It can’t happen. It cannot.”
“Melanie Joan?” Spike said. “Sunny’s here.”
She looked up at both of us. Her eyes glistened. “This can’t happen,” she said.
“I’m afraid it can,” Evan Woodrow said. He looked at me. “Help me out here, Sunny.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
I moved toward Melanie Joan and put my hand on her back, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Tony. I glanced at Spike. If he remembered my extended fling with Melanie Joan’s agent, it wasn’t registering at the moment. He was too busy staring at Evan Woodrow like he wanted to kill him.
“Evan,” Tony was saying. “I think there’s a very real chance we can fix this, especially with Sunny on board.”
“Fix it how?”
“Melanie Joan publicly apologizes, Book Babe publicly forgives Melanie Joan. We do a press conference. You resume publication—and sell even more copies ofStronger Alone.”
“None of that sounds likely,” Evan said. “No one knows who Book Babe is. And beyond that, I don’t make the rules.”
“Why not?” I said. “Why not make the rules, just this once?”
“Sunny can find Book Babe,” Spike said.
Evan looked up at him. He started to say something, then stopped. Probably out of fear.
“Evan, Sunny was the one who put John Melvin behind bars,” Tony said. “If she can do that with a psychopath, imagine what she can do with some…random librarian.”
“We don’t know that she’s a librarian.” Melanie Joan said it into her hands. “She might be a failed actress.”
Tony looked up at me. Unfortunately, he’d aged very well. “Is that true, Sunny?”
“There’s a strong possibility,” I said.
“See?” Tony said. “She’s already got a lead.”
Evan let out a heavy, whistling sigh, like a balloon deflating. “I’ll try and buy a few more days off Greg,” he said.
Melanie Joan stopped sobbing. Her spine straightened. She plucked a Kleenex out of the box in front of her and dabbed delicately at her eyes.
“Thank you.” She said it to me, not to Evan Woodrow.
