But then it seemed to vanish, and it was replaced by a firm nod.
He sat back in his seat, big arms crossing over his chest.
“Figures you would think that,” he said, as if he’d secretly known that things would go this way all along. And really, her only regret was that she hadn’t known, too. This was the way things were, forever and ever, amen.
Two
She had a good idea what he had been angry about, and fearful of—both then and now. There was no one in the world who liked being known less than Caleb Miller. Even Professor Dunderson had called him a clenched fist. A closed book.I haven’t the foggiest how you can read him, Daisy, he had once said to her.
But even her reading had been a thin sort of thing.
Fumbling in the dark, instead of her usual laser-like precision. She could tell what most people needed from twenty paces, know what they were going to ask for before they even thought of it, guess their next move before they made it.
Just not with him, never with him.
This was the closest she got.
Vaguely recognizing fear when exposed to it a second time, ten years after the fact. Then shakily joining the dots to arrive at the most obvious solution: that she knew him too well, and he didn’t like it. And even that wasn’t something she was completely sure about. She lay awake going over and over it, searching for holes, things she’d missed. Then almost ended upmessaging Beck some really weird nonsense at four in the morning.
Like:In the eight years you and Harchester have worked with him, have you ever known him to be afraid, and if so, what was he afraid of?But she managed to contain herself enough to be practical. Very annoyed, but practical.BECK YOU SAID HE HAD AGREED, she messaged. Then instead of refreshing a thousand times to see how sweet, soft Beck had taken this, she got up. Went out onto the sort of porch that wrapped around the motel, and let the frosty Bangor air cool her down.
She even grabbed herself a Twinkie from the humming vending machine next to her room. Then ate it, cross-legged on the starchy-sheet-covered bed, while going over the itinerary again. Seven stops, in a variety of venues, from convention centers and theaters designed for him to have apologetic chats in front of sizable audiences, to independent bookstores big enough to meet the demands of a man who had never toured before. Starting with Salem, New Hampshire, then on to Hartford, Connecticut; Paramus, New Jersey; Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; and finally ending in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Planes to catch between most destinations, cars arranged at all points, hotels booked so nothing was back-to-back.
All of it meticulously timed and planned and plotted.
She’d even made sure there was a full week between her arriving in Bangor and the first stop they needed to get to—something that had seemed very sensible of her at the time. Though she had to admit, it was now startingto seem a little less so. And a little more like a razor-thin margin.
Not to mention far more annoying than she had let herself believe when Beck—or rather Harchester, the publisher he edited for—hired her to do what she did best: handle the talent. She’d imagined herself doing just as she had for celebrities like Alfie—which was mostly sourcing sudden items they needed, and arranging last-minute details.
Breezing in and out of their lives, and always at a distance.
But that had broken down. And not just because Caleb had spent twenty minutes getting an eyeful of her humped butt on top of a fence. Or because they’d fallen right back into arguing like no time had passed at all.
She was already obsessing over the sheer maddening mystery of him. Even as she ate her Twinkie, and went over all her contacts for every venue, and primedI need backuptypes of messages for the publicity team he had previously refused to really work with at Harchester, on the inside it was all questions about everything he had done.
Despite the fact that it had only been a half hour of contact.
What would it be like after an hour of him? Maybe even days of him, if they missed a flight, or had rooms too close together in the hotels she’d booked? A dozen arguments about nothing, all ready to go round and round in her head. A million gestures and foibles and quirks to obsess about over the course of a whole month.
It was undeniable that she hadn’t really thought this through.
Which was very odd, because shealwaysthought things through.
She was known for it. Her business—Emmett Solutions—reliedon it. She was a fixer, an assister, a celebrity polisher. Hell, she wasn’t even just that anymore. She was a woman with ten employees working under her, being things like assistants to whole actual former members of One Direction, and PR disaster solvers for movie studio heads. In truth, she was now so important that she had actually assigned someone to keep things running smoothly in her absence. A cool person, too—Kelsey Yates, owner of fifty-seven colorful jumpsuits, sharp as a tack, and so cool it made her quail a little to think of this woman reporting to her.
But she did.
Kelsey had reported to her an hour ago, in fact.Just wanted to make sure I have the go-ahead to tell this comedian that we work with disasters, not creeps, she had emailed. Then on the end:boss. She, Daisy Emmett, was the boss. And she was damn good at being the boss, too.
Yet somehow she was suddenly frazzled and unable to sit down. She paced, waiting for a reply from Beck. Saw Caleb’s face every time she closed her eyes. That sulky lower lip, so often pinched into a disapproving line. The grizzled fur along his killer jawline, now more salt than pepper. That roll always ready in his dark eyes; that line perpetually between his thick brows.
Everything so strangely the same.
Even the clothes—the denim shirt, the jeans, the boots.
And worst of all: the things he said. Because Christ, the answer Beck gave her.Well jeepers Daisy, he DID agree to this, he had written.I mean maybe not as wholeheartedly as I suggested, but I swear it was there.Then below it, he had pasted the actual thing Miller had said.Well I suppose if my contract says it I really should, shouldn’t I?she read, and came fairly close to hurling her laptop.
She had to take deep breaths, go get another Twinkie, cram it all into her mouth in one go. And only after she had could she sit back down on the bed, cross-legged in front of her laptop, and address the situation.
