My eyes widen in surprise. She’s not pulling her book. Those little bubbles of pride grow so fast, I’m afraid they might burst. And as I look around the table at the eyes trained on her, I know I’m not the only one feeling this way. Trina’s clearly in on this—her smug satisfaction makes sense now. Casey is trying to cover a smile with his hand. Even Meri looks impressed.

She’s going to do this the way she always wanted.

“You want this book.” She says it with a well-earned arrogance. “It will sell. We all know that. Everyone will love—or, at least, be interested in—my comeback story, even if we don’t shove it in their faces on every major network. In fact, people might be even more curious if we leave a little to the imagination, right, Meri?”

“It could work,” the publicist admits.

“It will work, because I’m good at this.” She flashes her sparkly interview smile with a sassy tilt of her head. Casey stifles a chuckle, and Meri huffs, amused. Scarlett turns serious again. “So, I am here to present my terms. They are nonnegotiable. First, we will not rush the release. You have free rein to publish any teasers or reveals you want or do whatever preorder campaigns you think might work, but the timeline remains. We take my pen name off the cover and use my real name from the start. No sense in playing that game anymore. And make it a good cover this time. I’m not an inexperienced author you can push around. Leverage my name in whatever way you choose. I will do one month of pre-release events and one month of post-release events. Two per week, sixteen total. Whichever events, wherever you want, but that’s my limit. After that, I’m coming home”—her voice cracks on the word, but she straightens her shoulders and carries on—“to write the next book. We can see how this goes and negotiate press for that one, but I have to tell you upfront that I won’t be willing to do much more than this.” She looks at me then and smiles. “I have other things I need to focus on.”

“I think we can work with that,” Meri chimes in. “In this case, if we pick the right events, more might not necessarily be better.”

“You’ve made your terms clear, Ms. Frye,” Anastasios says with no little amount of irritation. “We will need to discuss this.”