Page 14 of Driven Daddy

“Really? Oh, my God.” She rushed me again and I was enveloped in the scent of night orchids and some sort of spice as she hugged me. “Sorry! Sorry.” She stepped back. “This probably isn’t helping my case.”

I laughed. “I don’t know. It was the first time I was hugged in awhile.”

Her golden eyes went sympathetic.

“I mean, for work,” I blurted out. Lies—all lies there. It had been far too long since I’d been hugged. Hell, even touched. My whole world had shut down since January.

“Not exactly professional,” she muttered. “Sorry. I am failing all around with this one. I’m Colette Edison, and this is my place. I think the hug thing can stand in for a handshake.”

I laughed. “Nice to meet you.”

She bit her lower lip. “Is your real name Rita? I’m sorry, I just assumed. And I wouldn’t say anything. I mean, you don’t have to tell me. God, I’m being a headcase here. I’m so sorry.”

“It actually is my name. Too good not to use for romance, right?”

“Absolutely.” She moved next to me and looped her arm through mine. “Now I’m going to drag you downstairs and show you the shameful number of books I have of yours on the shelves.”

“Shameful? Sounds like a really good ego stroke to me.”

Colette laughed. “You might run screaming. However, there are a fair bit of fans in the Cove, to be honest. WhenDate With Disasterblew up on TikTok last year, I couldn’t keep it on the shelves.”

Thatbook.

Possibly the one that had actually killed my co-writing career.

Jenelle had changed so much after that. Why hadn’t I put two and two together there?

How stupid was I?

Maybe it hadn’t been about me, after all. The cold, immovable rock that had been sitting in my stomach for months shifted for the first time in so damn long.

“Good book too—but if I’m honest, theSara Springsbooks blow it out of the water. I actually got my book club reading Jonah and Marley’s book over the summer.”

“Really?”

She nodded, then she nodded for me to walk forward down the stairs. “Yeah, it was a hit. There was a lot of wine and hard cider going on at that meeting.” We got to the bottom step, and she steered me to the back of the store where a large picture window and huge leather couch sat. “We have them right here.”

“On the couch?”

Colette laughed. “No. The couch goes into the back room. I had fifteen women crammed up there with goodies and booze as we picked apart Jonah’s faults and…attributes.”

I blushed. I may have gotten a little extra steamy withWild Springs. It was the last book I’d written, and thankfully, it had done really well for us—not as well asDate With Disasterof course, but enough to carry me this year when I’d been so fucking useless.

Datehad gone so viral that we’d had to look for help with a distributor to get the print book in stores. Most of our earlier fame had been in eBooks with the side of print for the ultra-fans only. BookTok was a whole different animal. Those readers wanted special editions with gilded book jackets that were never actually read along with a soft cover version that they could annotate with highlighters, sticky tabs, and actual tears.

A whole new world that me and Jenelle were supposed to navigate together. Instead, everything had changed.

The stress of it had rocked me into uncertainty and lit a fire in Jenelle I’d never seen before.

She’d done interviews, podcasts, and signings this whole year without me.

I was the one who’d had to deal with the disaster with the model of our original cover. The logistics of recovers, reprints, and pulling the version of the book was still hanging over my head. BookTok had ripped us down off that shiny pedestal they’d put us on a mere six months before. All it took was one offhandcomment in public. If that had been all it was, we probably could have survived it. Instead, that jerk of a model had doubled down with her insanely vitriolic spewing at a massive author and reader event until we’d gone viral for a whole new reason.

Thankfully, we hadn’t been the only authors dealing with the fallout.

Plenty of us had raced to recover our books and distance ourselves from the spiraling idiot. I’d learned that all it took was one moment to rise and a single second to fall.

But it also meant we needed to resurrectDate With Disasterwith a brand new cover and special edition, which was why I’d traveled to Crescent Cove in the first place. When I’d done a little research, it had seemed like the perfect spot to try to clear my head.

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