There are only two other rooms on this wing, Jaxon’s and Millie’s. Both doors are closed. Sienna puts her ear to the wood of Jaxon’s door and strains to hear, but the room is quiet. She continues on to Millie’s, but halfway there, the typing stops.
She holds her breath again, waiting to see if it will start again, and then begins to feel vaguely ridiculous. She closes her eyes, drags in a deep breath, and catches the all-too-welcome scent of coffee.
Coffee—that’s what she needs.
Sienna ducks back into her room, where Malcolm’s still snoring, and swaps the ratty old sweatshirt for a more fashionable sweater—cashmere, a gift from him last Christmas. She pulls her hair up into a bun, swipes on mascara, and arranges her face into something that saysOh, I woke up like this, before starting out again, this time moving swiftly past the other bedrooms and toward the stairs.
She’s already at the top step when she sees Cate and Jaxon near the bottom. Her immediate instinct is to jump back, retreat into the hall, out of sight but not out of earshot. But Cate glances up, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug.
“Good morning.”
Foiled, Sienna flashes a casual smile and jogs down as they trudge up, Jaxon giving her an odd little salute as they pass.
“Like I was saying,” he goes on, and Sienna’s ears perk up. Her steps slow as she rounds the table with its bouquet of antlers. “You shouldn’t get in your head.”
“It’s just, I mean, the odds aren’t exactly in my favor.”
“Hey now, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a shot.”
Is Jaxon Knight seriously giving a pep talk? Sienna didn’t know he had it in him.
“It’s not fair, is it?” murmurs Cate. “That only one of us can win.”
Jaxon sighs. “Welcome to publishing. The land of the zero-sum game.”
As Sienna listens, she reaches out to touch a bony point and flinches, surprised by how sharp the antler is. She looks at her finger, half expecting to find a bead of blood welling up, as if she’d pricked herself on a thorn and not a gaudy, oversize sculpture.
“Of course,” Jaxon says, “there areotherprizes.”
Peering through the tangle of antlers, Sienna sees that they’ve stopped on the landing, their heads tipped back in twin relief as they study the roundel of stained glass over the gong. It must be a sunny morning, because light hits the colored panes, illuminating Julia Petrarch and her glowing golden book.
Which must bethegolden book, the one everyone was going on about last night. Sienna squints up at the image and wonders if it’s real, or just another bit of Fletch’s personal mythology. People forget that, don’t they? That the stories on paper aren’t the only ones we tell. That novelists can spin fiction well beyond their books.
Everyone lies, of course, but writers liewell. Some lies are small, like theimpressionof success—a cashmere sweater instead of a hoodie, photos taken in the only renovated room of an apartment in the city you can’t afford—but some are grandiose.
This house, this island, it’s all part of Fletch’s narrative, a revision, a rewriting of his lore, as if he wasn’t born to middle-class parents in Nebraska.
She can’t help but think of Arthur’s adage, the one written over the door.
He who holds the pen tells the truth.
Maybe it’s just a good story. Or maybe thereisa golden book, worth more than any deal. But Sienna Buchanan—formerly Wood, and soon to be Wood again—isn’t about to hang her financial hopes on the chance that it exists. She’s here for the real prize. A future. A fresh start.
“Here’s a question,” muses Cate. “If you got your hands on Fletch’s golden book, would you even care about getting the deal?”
“I’d take both. Of course, that would meanfindingthe book.”
“Might be easier than finding the end to Fletch’s novel. Or maybe that’s just how it feels right now.”
Jaxon laughs. “Speak for yourself.”
As they part ways on the stairs, he glances back, not at Cate but at Sienna, a crookedcaught yasmile on his face. She tries to act surprised, like she definitely isn’t lingering on purpose, like she’s forgotten they were even there.
Sienna turns and hurries from the foyer, and nearly collides with Priscilla in the hall. The romance author is dressed in a blush-colored jumpsuit and cradling a cup of coffee, a few blank sheets of pastel-pink paper folded into a makeshift notebook and tucked under one arm. She’s standing before a framed picture, head cocked slightly to one side.
Drawing closer, Sienna sees it’s a map of the island. There’s the jetty where they stepped off, the steep stairs and the house perched on the cliff. But as big as the house is—and itisbig—it only takes up a fraction of the land. According to the map, it hugs the sharpest corner, the rest of the island sloping down and away. There are hills and valleys, a handful of structures, little more than sheds, a copse of trees like a shadow in the middle map, and a handful of narrow trails crisscrossing the slopes before running down to a second, smaller dock.
“Huh,” she says, “it’s bigger than I thought.” She could spend the whole weekend exploring the island—if she had time, which she doesn’t. “Have you seen anyone else?” She looks around. “Those typewriters are so loud. I heard someone working.”
