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He padded around the lobby. There was no sign of her. He surveyed the other guests, and picked the one most likely to have noticed Daphne—a middle-aged businessman waiting in the lobby while checking out the pretty desk clerk.
He asked and got a solid no, with a twist of the lips that said the guy wouldn’t admit it even if he had seen Daphne.
Next Chris tried the desk clerk, who determined that this might not be information she should give out. He was breathless, shoeless, and asking about a woman who seemed to have fled his hotel room. The clerk was right not to give him anything, damn it.
He went back upstairs and called Daphne.
No answer.
He hesitated, and then tried Sakura. No answer, and he decided not to leave a message saying Daphne had gotten upset and fled. Daphne was too private a person for that.
He’d screwed up. He’d wanted to stand firmly at her side, furious with Milner and anyone else who threatened her career because she’d recognized the potential for industry-based sexism and worked a loophole. He’d meant that she shouldn’t have to hide, and he wasn’t letting anyone make her feel otherwise. What he’d said was something different.
Milner had called Chris articulate, intelligent, and photogenic. Chris had pointed out that Daphne was all those things, and Milner steamrolled right over him. The guy’s attitude and suggestion proved that Daphne had been right sending out her book under a man’s name.
Did Milner realize he was a dinosaur, clinging to his old preconceptions? Chris suspected that explained the off-the-record phone call. Milner might be packaging his prejudices as marketing—believing people really did care whether the author was the guy on the cover—but he knew enough not to present his coauthor idea in front of others. For every reader who was disappointed that the author wasn’t the guy on the cover, someone else would be relieved that it was a woman writing Theo’s story. They’d had that discussion at the book festival.
Milner wanted to scare Daphne into accepting his coauthor idea. If Daphne said it was what she wanted, Lawrence wouldn’t argue. If the publishing company’s lawyers didn’t see an issue with the arrangement, then it saved them negotiating. Everyone would be happy. Except Daphne.
Now that Chris thought about it more, he realized Milner hadn’t even made an overt threat. Did he say they’d stop publishing Edge? Did he threaten Daphne’s future with the company? No. He preyed on a new author’s inexperience to frighten her.
The answer then was clear. Fight back. Daphne couldn’t see that because her mind was swirling with worry and dread. She was afraid to take this leap that he absolutely knew she could take.
That meant there was only one thing for him to do.
He picked up the hotel pen and writing pad and started a letter to Daphne.
DAPHNE
She’d spent the last hour swinging between the worry that she’d overreacted with Chris and the certainty that she had not. At first, she wanted to brand him a liar who’d said whatever she wanted to hear. That was her anger talking. Anger and old hurt over Anthony reignited by this new pain. She wouldn’t let that infect Chris until she was damned sure he deserved it.
Daphne had been upset over Milner’s call, and he’d handled it poorly. That wasn’t cause to throw a new relationship on the trash heap.
Yes, she said she was ready to start a serious relationship with Chris, but was she really? Or would she flee at the first sign of trouble and take it as proof he wasn’t the right guy?
She needed time to cool down and put her thoughts in order, and he needed time to realize he’d said entirely the wrong thing, and if he didn’t mean it, then he could take it back. Then they would talk this out.
She went up to her hotel room and opened the door. “Chris?”
The blinds were drawn, the room still. Seeing the adjoining doorway open, she slipped over to it, calling softly, “Chris?”
No reply. She found her phone and started a text. As she did, she noticed a folded piece of paper on the coffee table, with her name written across it.
One second she was moving and breathing and thinking, and the next, everything stopped. When she forced herself to cross those few feet, it felt like moving through deep space, pitch-dark, dead silent, and ice-cold.
The last time she’d come home to a note on her table, it’d been Anthony’s goodbye.
She shook herself. Now she really was overreacting. Chris had realized she didn’t take her phone and left a note to say where he’d gone.
She deep-breathed until her heart rate returned to normal. Then she unfolded the letter.
D,
I can’t keep doing this. I need to step off the stage you put me on. You belong up there. You wrote Edge, and it’s an amazing book. You need to take your place as its author, and that means I need to step aside.
You can do this. I believe in you.
Chris
