My fingers fly across the keyboard. “Need fresh eyes for your manuscript, screenplay, theatrical play, college essay, or corporate presentation? Lend me your voice and I’ll polish your pages until they shine. From proofreading to copyediting, rewrites, and more, I’ll go through your project backward and forward . . .”

There was a time when I’d have asked Mary to vouch for me so I could slap a big ol’ referral quote at the front of the site. That time is over. I don’t have her approval or her support for this, yet I’m doing it anyway. Maybe it’s a big mistake, but at least it’ll be my mistake to make.

I have a weird urge to walk down the hall and tell Miles, which is ridiculous (what was in that champagne?). Still, I can’t help being curious about when he’ll return from his trip and what he might think about my new venture.

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 25

MILES

The plane ride back home offers The Shop Around the Corner as one of its two dozen movie options and I can’t help myself. I mean, it’s a classic. And Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan are criminally charming as two rival store clerks who have no idea they’ve been romantically corresponding with each other as they banter and argue. I know I have a dopey grin on my face by the time the film ends and I don’t even care that anyone sees. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that Old Miles is creeping back in.

I get back home in the early afternoon and take a post-flight shower. Since I’m already clean, I think I’ll forego my daily jog. But maybe I could do with a cup of coffee.

I open the door and nearly bowl over someone in the hallway. In my haste to retreat, I trip over the doorstop and end up flat on my back, looking up the nose of a person who I quickly realize has starred in both my childhood comforter and childhood/ teenaged/let’s-face-it-adult dreams alike.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she says with an amused smile.

I scramble up. It’s Mary Clarkson. THE Mary Clarkson.

“You’re . . .” I stop and stare at Zoey’s door, which she apparently just came out of. “She’s . . .” I stop again. Then I try to gather my self-possession and figure out what a normal person would say to another normal person in a situation like this. “So sorry,” I mumble.

“Didn’t anyone explain the building rules to you? You gotta announce your presence every time you step out into the hall-way.”

“Er . . .” I’m getting flashbacks to hearing Zoey-before-I-knew-she-was-Zoey yelling “I’m coming out!” on a daily basis. “Right,” I say. “Sorry again.”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” she says. “You’re When Harry Met Sally, right?”