Page 79 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Get yourself some coffee,” suggested Jess sympathetically. “We’re all set up. It’s a sell-out, by the way.”

“Yay!” responded Petra without energy.

“I thought you’d be bringing Ross,” Jess added anxiously, looking behind Petra as if she might be concealing him. “Tell me he’s on his way?”

Petra shrugged, furious with herself that Jess’s innocent enquiry caused fresh tears to well up. She turned away, clearing her throat furiously. “He—he didn’t come home last night.”

Registering Jess’s shock, Petra thought about relaying Ross’s five a.m. message too, but she didn’t seem to be able to make the words come out. What did his message even mean, anyway? “Sorry” for what? Sorry that he left her alone at dinner (rude)? Sorry that he was leaving her forever (devastating)?

Maybe he was now going to do a disappearing act for another five years. It wouldn’t seem like the Ross she had gotten to know, to let people down. But did she ever really know him anyhow?

“He’ll be there,” she told Jess firmly. “Who else is on the panel again?”

Jess looked apologetic. “Um, well, there’s lovely Gordon from last night,” she said, and then Petra guessed the rest.

“Henrietta,” she said.

“I had no idea,” Jess told Petra miserably. “She was a last-minute replacement for a really quite junior editor who works on their crime imprint. I actually couldn’t believe it when I got the message just yesterday that it was going to be Henrietta instead. I was thrilled to get someone so senior. I honestly had no idea she was Ross’s editor before, or I would have said something.”

Petra shrugged. A reply seemed pointless.

“Did she? Did they . . . ?” probed Jess, her face a mask of sympathy.

Petra shrugged again. She couldn’t speak.

“Petra?” came a deep and familiar voice just behind her.

Great.

“Ross?” she said, turning. He looked—if it were possible—even worse than she did.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Petra replied, unable to meet his eyes.

She was thankful when the guy Jess had found to do the techy stuff popped up and wanted to fit the three people taking part in the panel with microphones so he could do his sound checks.

At the other end of the room, he had already set up the projector that was showing the Portneath Literary Festival banner and logo.

Not long to go now. Just long enough for Jess to put in another call to Alistair, who—she noticed—had been trying to get through.

“We have a pre-empt,” he announced without ceremony as soon as he answered.

“From?”

“Henrietta at Hamilton House.”

“You. Are. Kidding,” Petra said, angry now. That bloody woman! No wonder she was so confident she had a hold over Ross, even though he was absolutely not under contract to her.

“How much?” she asked warily.

When Alistair told her, it felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. She doubled over and then straightened, forcing herself to take a breath.

“That’s ridiculous,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” said Alistair happily, “you don’t see pre-empts like that these days.”

“So we advise him to accept it then,” said Petra. “Professionally, we can’t say anything else, I imagine.”