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Cam stepped outside to meet the idling car. Izzy rolled her back seat window down.

“Hop in,” she said. “I’ll have the driver get your luggage.”

Cam opened the door to the other side and got in.

She turned toward Izzy. “Can I talk freely in front of him?” she asked, motioning to the chauffeur.

“They’re like priests,” Izzy said. “Only better paid. Go ahead.”

“Look, I know that I signed a contract for a full ghostwrite of this cookbook,” Cam said. “And you know that I need that paycheck. But if I actually help you through this interview, I’m going to change the terms.”

A tiny wrinkle that had managed to evade Izzy’s artfully administered Botox formed on the actress’s smooth brow. “To what?” she asked.

“I get a ‘with,’” Cam said. “On the cover. ‘With Cam Parker,’ it’s going to read. You can call me a ‘collaborator.’ You can say that we came up with the recipes together. But my name is going to be on that book.”

“But I’m writing the cookbook!” Izzy said. “It’s mine! That’s what people want to read. They want Izzy Jones’s recipes! They don’t care about Cam Parker!”

At the dismissive sound of Izzy’s words, Cam’s ears began buzzing with anger. In some weird way, Izzy probably did feel like she was writing the cookbook. She had been relying on other people’s work for so long she probably didn’t even see the very real distinction between being the face of something and doing the actual work. Over the last week or so that Izzy had spent in Silver Cove, Cam had seen another side of the actress—or at least glimmers of another side. Izzy’s entitlement wasn’t completely her own fault. Plenty of people had helped her arrive there, too, herself included. And Cam knew that Izzy was right. The general book-buying population probably didn’t care about Cam Parker. But at least one person did, and that person was getting the hell out of that leather-upholstered Mercedes back seat, to hell with a payday.

“Fine,” Cam said over her shoulder. “Then I’m out of here, and you’re on your own. Good luck with the interview!”

Out on the cold street, Cam was making her way back to Birdie’s door when Izzy called from the window.

“Okay!” Izzy said, throwing her hands up as if to underscore the fact that she was making a huge concession. “It can say ‘with Cam Parker.’ But the font is definitely going to be way smaller than the one for my name.”

Cam walked back to the car and leaned down to stick out her hand. “And no more jerking me around on the recipes. No going MIA on me. No changing directions again. Let’s get this book done by February first. I need that check.”

“Okay,” Izzy agreed, and her feline eyes narrowed. “But if this interview doesn’t go perfectly, you and I are done. No cookbook. No money. I can always find myself another ghostwriter.”

“Deal,” Cam said, and the women shook on it. “I’m going to make People magazine—and the entire world—think that you are a genius chef.”

Izzy rolled her eyes dramatically. “Ugh, can you get back in already? We have to get on the road.”

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Cam said, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m not going anywhere. You—or rather, I should say, we—are going to do the interview here.”

Izzy’s perfectly groomed eyebrows shot up. “Here?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Cam spent the next few hours in a fog, trying in moments of downtime to grasp what she had just done. It was so unlike her. Even Russell hadn’t believed her when she told him the deal she’d been able to extract from the notoriously self-serving starlet. But he’d gotten the paperwork drawn up for the new contract and had seemed rightfully impressed.

And after a volley of texts with Izzy’s publicist, personal stylist, and hair and makeup artist, the plan—which Cam suspected could very well end in disaster—was set. The crew from People was set to arrive on Monday morning. Izzy’s glam squad would get there early to prepare her, and her publicist, Rawley, would be there for the day as well. That gave Cam less than forty-eight hours to make vegetable-burning, can’t-boil-water Izzy Jones look like an accomplished cook. Oh, and to trick out the cafe kitchen—which Cam adored for its utility, if not its charm—to look camera-ready.

On that last point, at least, she knew who to call.

“Hey, Francine,” Cam said, relieved that her friend had picked up. It was, after all, a Saturday night.

“Cam!” Francine answered. “I’ve been dying to know how things went with Ada’s clue! We had more mimosas after you left, which meant I took an afternoon nap, or else I would have been in touch sooner.”

Cam realized that she needed to relegate Ada and her quest to second place, at least for the moment. But Ada could wait, she figured. The dead weren’t going anywhere. “I’ve been a little busy today anyway,” Cam said. “I have something big on the ghost-y front, but at the moment, I’ve got a more immediate problem on my hands, and I’m going to need your impeccable sense of style to fix it.”

“Mmm, compliments are the surest way to get me to do something,” Francine said. “Well, tequila shots, too, but that’s another story. What’s up?”

Cam gave her the rundown of what was happening with moving Izzy’s shoot to Silver Cove. Now that she was going to be a named collaborator with Izzy, she could speak more freely than when she was a ghostwriter bound by an ironclad NDA.

“Where you come in is making the cafe kitchen look decent enough for a photo shoot,” Cam said. “I thought about the magic you worked gussying up the plain old town hall for the fete, and I thought you’d be perfect.”

“I have to say, Cam, things around Silver Cove have gotten much more interesting since you arrived.” Francine sounded excited. “First you summon an actual ghost, then uncover a possible literary heist, and now you’ve got Izzy Freaking Jones doing a photoshoot at the cafe? This beats trivia night at Captain Jeb’s by a mile!”