But then Jo stuck out her hand, put it against Harvey’s chest. “Sit down, Harvey. I’m not going to ask you again.”

Harvey sat.

“I guess, from what you’re saying, is that you deny all these claims?” Underneath her calm tones, Jo’s voice vibrated with fury.

“Of course I deny it. You’d have to be an imbecile to think that I, of all people, would do that. I would never jeopardize my career.”

Jo narrowed her eyes. And then she employed her beautiful, razor-sharp sarcasm with just one word. “Right.”

Rinn had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Or snorting. Or both.

Brock Harvey turned a near purple shade of red.

Luckily for them all, the door to the break room swung open and in walked Maya. In her arms was a stack of Brock Harvey’s books. She was somehow still able to look down at her phone and continue clicking through it. “Look—I know you don’t want to sign any more copies than you have to, but most bookstores expect to have signed stock at the end of an event, and if you do it now you don’t have to stay—”

The room was so silent that Maya stopped talking immediately. She looked up. “Uh. What is going on?”

“These utter morons are treating me like a criminal.” This time spit really did go flying out of Brock Harvey’s mouth. He seemed secure in his audience—like Maya would be on his side.

But Maya’s whole face contorted into a series of embarrassed expressions that finally landed on a strange kind of determination that Rinn hadn’t seen before. “God. What happened now?”

“What do you mean what happened now? They attacked me. And now their manager. Is. Not. Doing. Her. Job. And. Protecting. Me. Or my career. Because of her”—and here Brock decided he really was a caricature of an angry man because he used scare quotes in the air with his fingers when he said the word—“employees.”

But Maya wasn’t buying it. The determination in her face really took hold. “First of all, that’s not how you use those, Brock. I’ve been telling you. They are her actual employees. You can’t scare-quote a thing that is actually true. Second of all, it was bad enough when you came on to me at BookCon, but how dare you go after these young women. They’re teenagers, Brock. Teenagers.”

Jo, as calm as ever, looked over at Brock and said, “I’m having a really hard time believing that you didn’t do these things, Mr. Harvey. My employees don’t lie. They don’t go around making things up. And Maya’s experiences seem to back up what they’re saying.”