Page 6

He holds out the sheet, still expressionless.

Dumbly, I take it. “Oh. Thank you.”

For a moment there is silence.

“Nothing,” he calls over his shoulder at last and turns on his heel. “Just some paper on the floor. Now,” he says, raising his voice once again to executive status as he paces up the aisle, “as I was saying . . .”

I watch William Pennington stride back to the front of the room, his voice distant and commanding as he continues to forecast dire numbers and the tragedies that will ensue if we don’t up our game. I creep back to my position beside Lyla and, after several seconds, glance down to the sheet he has read.

The second I see it, any lingering hope that he didn’t recognize it for what it was bursts into flames.

My eyes graze along the header splashed across the top center of the page in neat Times Roman type: WORKING TITLE: PINING FOR YOU. The name in italics along the top right corner: Holly Ray.

My jaw tightens intuitively as I read the paragraph beneath it: “Time slowed as he slipped one hand to her shoulder, then cradled her neck as they stood there beneath the maple tree, the whisper of passing cars all around . . .”

There is no doubt about it.

William Pennington knows.

Chapter 2

“There’s no way he knows.”

For the first time in our lives I am outstriding Lyla as my heels make their wobbly way down the hall. Up another layer of stairs, and we enter the second floor with its own set of plush carpeting—royal blue this time—and wallpaper alternating between men in caps pushing ladies on swings and maidens dancing round and round to what must’ve been quite the lively jig.

I round the corner.

“It was just one page—”

“One page is enough,” I interject.

“He barely looked at it. Not to mention we work in a publishing house, and every other sheet of paper in this building is a manuscript.” Lyla levels her gaze. “C’mon, Sav. You don’t even use your real name. You’ve just exercised the whole point of a pen name—”

“That’s not the issue,” I say without slowing. “The issue is he read enough to know it wasn’t Pennington Publishing material. He knows it’s romance.” I lower my voice to a meaningful hiss. “Romance.”

This must be what it feels like to be a criminal. I’m about as straitlaced as the Keds tucked inside my lower desk drawer waiting for the second the clock ticks to 5:00 p.m. Never skipped a class. Never cheated on a test. But now, harboring . . . fiction? And not just fiction, but romance? And not just romance, but my romance—my romance that I was not only reading, not only writing, but working on during work hours?

If Ms. Pennington had picked up that sheet, that would’ve been it.

I’d have been chased out the door, dodging copies of Medieval Limericks for Lovers and The Practical Houseplant chucked at my head.

I need to get this somewhere safe—now.

We pass doorframe after doorframe of entrances to various offices. There’s a hum in the distance of people downstairs, the shuffling of bodies slowly moving outside, everyone with a job—picking authors up from airports and hotels, heading to the conference center to set up.

The hallway up here is unusually quiet.

I’m going about fifteen miles an hour, easily toe-to-toe with any Olympic walker, when Lyla grabs the tote strap across my shoulder and yanks. My heels tangle in the carpet.

I stop. Turn around, careful to keep a protective hand over the bag.

“Ooooookay, dearie,” Lyla says. “I hear you. You don’t want to lose your job to domineering overlords. I get it. But if you want to keep it, that means you actually need to follow directions. Which, at this moment, is going outside.”

“I have to find a place to dump this,” I say, hearing a creak and darting my eyes over her shoulder, then behind. “If I get rid of all the evidence and act nonchalant, maybe he’ll forget what he saw. Or I can insist he didn’t see what he saw.”

Lyla raises a brow. “So . . . you want to . . . gaslight . . . your new boss. You do hear yourself?”

I can tell by her eyes. I know it. I know I look like I’ve lost it. But anyone would if they’d spent every spare minute of the past three years talking to imaginary characters in their heads, dreaming about the story they’d created, staying up late on more nights than they could count putting that story onto paper.