Page 65 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

She and Ross had walked up there together once during a summer storm, laughing as the wind gusted fiercely, stealing their breath, and then gazing silently out to sea together for a long while, with Petra wrapped safe in Ross’s arms.

The lines of a Shakespeare sonnet came to her. What was it again? Something about a little boat being guided by the constancy of true love . . .

(love) is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark . . .

And yet, she just couldn’t convince herself that Ross saw their love in the same way as she had started to. For her it was truly a “marriage of true minds,” that never “alters when it alteration finds.” What if—for him—their relationship was a summer fling that would make him look back fondly on her, and Portneath, long after he had moved away and moved on with his life?

Time was ticking steadily on, whether she wanted it to or not. The months had flown past, and her time in Portneath was coming to a close. In just a few days, Jules and Roman would be returning, and as soon as their party was over, the literary festival would be racing toward them. The thought of it reminded her—in a moment of practicality—that she must follow up with Alistair over plans to announce Ross’s return to the literary world.

And after the news was out, what then? She dreaded the announcement. Realistically, Ross coming out into the open—and with a new book too—would immediately destroy this private, special, magical time they were enjoying. Was their love an “ever fixed mark”? Or would the spell be broken?

Who was she kidding? Of course it would.

Could she ever convince herself that handsome, supremely talented Ross McCloud would settle for plain little her, when he was being feted by the entire literary world? With all those glamorous, clever groupies gathering around him, as of course they would be, he would instantly be tired of her.

No, she couldn’t assume their little affair was ever more than just that for him.

He wasn’t cruel, though, and she knew he cared for her. He called her his muse, after all. His Miranda. No. She flattered herself that he might refer to her obliquely in some of the many interviews he would inevitably end up doing. He wouldn’t mention her by name; he was too classy for that. But it would be a sop to her, to their little summer fling. What happens in Portneath stays in Portneath. That’s what he would say. They would both give a little smile at the secret message, designed to soothe her pain as he inevitably moved on. Hell, she might even find he dedicated this new book to her! Could she hope for that at least? Perhaps . . . She had done more than enough to make sure he finished it.

It was good to rehearse these thoughts, she told herself as she turned away from the window, an icy shaft of regret settling in her chest. At least this way she could practice the pain of loss and prepare for its intensity. The main thing for her dignity—which was all she would have left—would be to hide her distress.

She could do that by focusing on the professional stuff. It had always worked for her before.

“We need to time the announcement so The Bookseller can break the news first. We’ll go to the culture pages on the nationals simultaneously. If we do it before, someone’s bound to leak it,” Alistair told Petra on the phone.

“Sounds like a plan,” replied Petra, trying to match Alistair’s brisk professional tone.

“Yes, and you know the second it goes out we’ll be fending off interview requests,” he warned her. “I suggest we use Louise. She’s pricey, but she’s the best publicist in the business.”

“Agreed,” said Petra. “And they’ll all want an exclusive, but I say we go wide. With their long lead times, we will have sold the manuscript by the time they go to press. They’ll be announcing the lucky publisher and probably a publication date for the book at the same time, if they haven’t done it already.”

“And how do you see the literary festival sitting in all this?” asked Alistair. She could hear him tapping away on his keyboard, making notes.

“Well, Ross is keen that the festival gets a boost out of the story breaking,” Petra reminded him, “so I thought we could promise a press conference with Ross on the first day of the festival, down here in Portneath. In the bookshop, probably. That way, everyone gets what they want in public and at the same time, which seems fair. Plus, they have to come down to Portneath in person to do it. Fingers crossed, that way the festival will get a mention.”

“Smart,” said Alistair. “Right! Well, we haven’t got that long really, so if you could please put together some copy for us to use in our email to acquisition editors, you can leave briefing Louise to me, okay?” suggested Alistair.

“So I’ll be . . .” hazarded Petra.

“You’ll be dealing with the editors yourself,” he confirmed.

“And it’ll be an auction?” she asked.

“Almost certainly,” said Alistair. “Unless we get the mother of all preempts. You know the drill. And we’ll help here in the office too, of course. As I say, your baby but with full agency support.”

It was kind of cool, Petra had to admit, having these conversations, when so much of her job in the past had involved desperately trying to get acquisition editors to take her calls.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Don’t get a big head,” Ross teased when she relayed Alistair’s conversation to him that evening.

“If anyone’s going to get a big head . . .” she shot back pointedly. “Although, I suppose this is all same old, same old for you?”

“Ah, but no,” he reminded her. “You’ve clearly not read the ballad of Ross McCloud,” he told her. “First off, it was a tiny deal—a sink or swim number, far from a lead title. Although, yeah, it was from a respectable publisher. Then—somehow—it went viral on TikTok. We hit the literary festivals too—God, that was exhausting—I was turning up to bookshops lucky if I sold and signed one book at first . . .”