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“We’re here for the book festival,” Lauren declared. “We’re going to go to every single one of your events!”

Will seemed about as thrilled as if she’d just informed him that she was an oral surgeon about to give him a dental bone graft.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s... brilliant.”

And of course he saidbrilliantinstead ofgreat. Because, as if Will weren’t hot enough looks-wise, he was also from some small, picturesque village in England somewhere, and had an accent I’d heard more than a few women (and men) swoon over as “the sexiest author voice ever.”

“Such a shame,” someone in publishing had once lamented to me, “that Will Price doesn’t narrate his own audiobooks! We’ve asked and asked him, but he won’t do it. He says he hates the sound of his own voice. Can you imagine? He’s so modest!”

No one had ever askedmeto narrate my own audiobooks. I had offered many times, feeling pretty confident that I could do a good job, seeing as how kids seemed to love it at school visits when I readKitty Katzout loud. I even did different little voices for all the characters: a high-pitched one for Kitty and a low-pitched one for her boyfriend, Rex Canine, as well as the popular “Kitty Katz claw” hand salute that symbolized pawsitivity. I wasgood!

I had, however, been gently but firmly told by my publisher that it was better to “leave such things to professionals.”

Unless you were Will Price, apparently, with a deep, manly voice and a British accent that pronouncedbutterlike “buttah,” as in “buttah wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

Barf again.

“Can we get a selfie?” The girls crowded in around Will, their cell phones raised like battle-axes. “This is so cool!”

Will was wincing those dark, expressive eyes of his as if he were in pain. He was evidently not usually met in airportterminals by throngs of adoring teenaged fans... or at least, not his hometown airport terminal.

And poor Will! There was no publicist nearby to stop the assault. Certainly this hadn’t occurred to the girls’ mothers—who I assumed were the attractive, well-dressed women standing nearby, their own phones raised in amusement to film their daughters leaping around their favorite author. They weren’t doing a thing.

I supposed that if Molly the librarian had been there, she’d have stepped in to intervene. But she was still occupied in the restroom.

Honestly, though, how was what was happening to Will so terrible? No one was telling him that theyused tolove his books. No one was saying that heused tobe their favorite author. He should have been happy that he even had fans, given how deeply unsatisfying his books were.

But of course he didn’t realize this, because he was Will Price.

“I really think we ought to save the selfies for the festival, don’t you, girls?” he said in the condescending tone of voice people usually reserved for toddlers or golden retrievers.

“Noooo.” The girls kept snapping away with their phones. “Just one more?”

He looked so uncomfortable and dismayed that I couldn’t help laughing out loud. This was almost as good as if I’d wiped his name off the whiteboard.

Unfortunately, laughing was a mistake. Because somehow he’d heard me—don’t ask me how, considering the din in theterminal, with the clanking of the baggage carousel and the excited buzz of the rest of the passengers snagging the keys to their rental cars—and looked my way.

That’s how I was able to witness the exact moment that Will Price recognized me—despite my hair color, which I’d changed so dramatically since the last time we’d met.

And that’s how I saw those dark eyes go wide as his gaze went from my face to the whiteboard and then back again.

That’s when his skin, beneath the days’ old beard, went pale, and the heavy backpack he’d been carrying slid off his shoulder like he’d lost all muscle control. It landed with a solidthunkon the terminal floor.

Wow.

Well, I’d expected him to feelsomethingupon seeing me again. A little embarrassment, maybe (if he actually had any feelings, which, after what he’d done to me, I’d always doubted).

Butthis?He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Er,” I heard him say, his gaze still riveted to my face. “Listen, girls. I don’t have time to chat right now. I have to—”

Go?Do you have to go now, Will? Oh, why is that? Because the woman whose work you maligned to theNew York Timesis standing in front of you holding a sign with your name on it and you’re too much of a coward to go up to her and say you’re sorry? Is that why? How purr-fectly claw-ful for you.

But to my surprise, he didn’t head for the exit. Instead, he took a step toward me—

“Will? Oh, Will,thereyou are!”

I raised my eyebrows as a lithe blonde tore through the crowd, then launched herself at Will. Dressed in a barely there white bikini over which she’d thrown a pair of cutoffs and a gauzy red beach cover-up, she hit Will like a rocket.