Susanne rubbed her chin. That was a problem. She wanted to have at least a dozen blog articles ready to be posted by the time the website would go live next month. While she could edit them to make sure they had good search-engine-optimized keywords, she couldn’t write them. She needed Anja for that. “What about…?” She hesitated. “After hours? Or maybe an hour or two on the weekend? I know it’s a lot to ask, and you’re under no obligation to—”

“I’ll do whatever I can to save Paper Love. If that means giving up a few hours in the evening or on the weekend, then so be it,” Anja said without a hint of hesitation. “We can start right now.”

Wow. The passionate fire burning in Anja’s brown eyes made Susanne speechless for a moment. “Right now won’t be possible.”

“Oh.” Anja glanced away. “Of course not. It was stupid of me to assume you don’t have any plans either.”

Susanne shook her head. “I don’t. Have plans, I mean. But I need to walk off some of that cake before we get started on the first blog post.”

The smile returned to Anja’s face. “We could take a walk around Fischerau,” she swept her hand toward the area along the broad canal, “stop by the store and tell Nobby not to wait for us, and then come back here.”

Susanne emptied her cup. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Let me guess,” Miri said when Anja called her on Thursday during her lunch break. “You’re not going to be home in time to join me and Gino for a walk tonight either.”

Anja paused next to the do not feed sign someone had put up in front of the stone crocodile that lifted its head out of the rushing water of the broad canal. She felt a bit like a beast too. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Miri.”

Miriam sighed.

When silence stretched between them, Anja tried to cheer her friend up with a joke. “Aren’t you glad we decided to be friends instead of girlfriends? I’d make a horrible partner at the moment.”

“Well, if you put as much energy and passion into lovemaking as you put into these overtime projects you’ve been doing…”

“No offense, but ew.”

When Miri laughed, Anja smiled but then sobered. “I really am sorry. It’s not that spending time with you is no longer important to me. We’re just under a lot of pressure to get everything up and running by the first of March, when we’re hoping to have the webstore go live. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

“Oh yeah, you will—and a lot sooner than March. All you’ve been doing lately is working, and that can’t be healthy. I’ll be dragging you up to the Schlossberg this weekend, and lunch afterward will be on you.”