“If you want my advice, you’ll move your vacation by a few weeks and get out of town. You need some sun, Juliet.”

“I need a list of approved hotels in Albuquerque for the Barrister tour.”

With a shrug, Deb gave up. “You’ll have them. In the meantime, look over these clippings that just came in on Franconi.” Looking up, she noted that Juliet had knocked her container of paperclips on the floor. “Coordination’s the first thing to go.”

“Let’s have the clippings.”

“Well, there’s one I’m not sure how to deal with.” Deb slipped a clipping out of the folder and frowned at it. “It’s not one of ours, actually, but some French chef who’s just starting a tour.”

“LaBare?”

Impressed, Deb looked up. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Just a sick feeling.”

“Anyway, Franconi’s name was brought up in the interview because the reporter had done a feature on him. This LaBare made some—well, unpleasant comments.”

Taking the clipping, Juliet read what her assistant had highlighted. “Cooking for peasants by a peasant,” she read in a mumble. “Oil, starch and no substance…” There was more, but Juliet just lifted a brow. She hoped Summer’s plan of revenge went perfectly. “We’re better off ignoring this,” she decided, and dropped the clipping in the trash. “If we passed it on to Carlo, he might challenge LaBare to a duel.”

“Skewers at ten paces?”

Juliet merely sent her a cool look. “What else have you got?”

“There might be a problem with the Dallas feature,” she said as she gave Juliet a folder. “The reporter got carried away and listed ten of the recipes straight out of the book.”

Juliet’s head flew back. “Did you say ten?”

“Count ’em. I imagine Franconi’s going to blow when he sees them.”

Juliet flipped through the clippings until she came to it. The feature was enthusiastic and flattering. The timid Ms. Tribly had used the angle of preparing an entire meal from antipasto to dessert. Carlo’s recipes from The Italian Way were quoted verbatim. “What was she thinking of?” Juliet muttered. “She could’ve used one or two without making a ripple. But this…”

“Think Franconi’s going to kick up a storm?”

“I think our Ms. Tribly’s lucky she’s a few thousand miles away. You’d better get me legal. If he wants to sue, we’ll be better off having all the facts.”

After nearly two hours on the phone, Juliet felt almost normal. If there was a hollowness, she told herself it was a skipped lunch—and breakfast. If she tended to miss whole phrases that were recited to her, she told herself it was hard to keep up with legalese.

They could sue, or put Ms. Tribly’s neck in a sling, both of which would create a miserable mess when she had two other authors scheduled for Dallas that summer.