My eyes locked with Nadia's. She looked as alarmed as I felt.
"Research?" I asked, doing my best not to choke on the word.
"Character study, that’s all," said Lindsey, her tone suspiciously light. "There's nothing as useful for a romance writer as watching two people who are obviously crazy about each other spend six months pretending otherwise."
She then looked at us as though she'd won a bet. "The tension is extraordinary. I've been taking notes since August."
A spiky silence followed.
"I should go check on the cake," Nadia said, though she seemed incapable of moving.
"Of course," said Lindsey. "Though for what it's worth, and I say this as someone who's written forty-seven romances, the part where they finally stop pretending is always my favorite."
Then, as if she hadn't lobbed an emotional land mine between Nadia and me, she wandered off.
I looked at Nadia and found her staring at her tablet, doing her best not to react to what Lindsey had said.
"She's very direct," I offered, hoping to defuse the situation.
"She's a menace," said Nadia, drawing circles on her tablet.
Around ten, Lindsey's publisher gave a speech full of the usual platitudes and hints that this one might be made into a Hallmark movie. Then Lindsey cut into a book-shaped cake, its cover featuring a six-pack hero who'd apparently lost his shirt.
That done, she held the buttercream-covered knife aloft and promised spot prizes for anyone lucky enough to get a nipple. Given that incentive, there was no holding her readers back. It was a wonder no one lost an eye, let alone a nipple, in the melee.
After the prizes were handed out, the usual end-of-event rhythm took over. Lucky Break's crew started the breakdown while Nadia's team cleared the catering setup.
I was disassembling a lighting rig near the entrance when one of Nadia's team found me.
"Have you seen Nadia?" she asked. She had her coat on and her keys in hand. She'd already left, at least mentally.
"Kitchen area, last I saw."
"Can you tell her I took the van? Marco's got the other one, and I figured she'd get a ride with..." She trailed off, apparently reconsidering. "Tell her I took the van, will you?"
She was gone before I could confirm or deny, though there was no missing her broad grin.
I found Nadia ten minutes later, standing on the loading dock with her jacket over her arm, looking at the empty alleyway where her van had been parked.
She heard me and turned.
"One of your team took the van," I said. "The one with the pigtails."
"Yeah." She looked back at the space. "They just texted me."
"I can give you a ride home if you like," I said, fighting to keep the offer casual.
"That's unnecessary."
"Your van's gone, and it's late. My truck's out front." I kept my voice easy, because pushing had never worked with her, and I'd figured that out three months ago. "As friends. A ride. Nothing else."
She looked at me in the glare of the security lights. After a night of running a flawless event and one very direct conversation with a romance author, she looked tired and something else I couldn't name.
Something that hadn't been there before tonight. Or maybe it had been there all along, and she was weary of hiding it.
"A ride," she said. "That's all."
The truck cab was warm, and the streets of Coogan's Break were quiet at this hour. Nadia was quiet too, sitting in the passenger seat and looking out the window, her jacket in her lap and her hands folded.
