“But you’re gay. Why not lesbian romances?”


“When was the last time you saw lesbian fiction on the New York Times best-seller list? My last book, however, sat there for eighteen weeks.”

“I’m sorry to seem so dense, but I’ve never actually...well, I’ve never read any of them.”

“What? Oh, come on. Everyone in the world’s read at least one. There are twenty-two of them. I’ve been churning them out since I was twenty.”


“Well...” Hobie thought about keeping her mouth shut. The voice in her head was screaming for her to smile and nod politely. She couldn’t do it, though. She couldn’t lie to BJ, not again. She wondered if she could manage to be vague enough to appease her friend. “I did start one once.”

“You started one?” BJ asked. “What did you think of it?” “What?” Hobie felt herself being backed into a corner. “The book you started. What did you think of it?” “Well...”

“Did you like it?”


Hobie cringed. “You know, I may not be the best judge. Romance isn’t really my genre. Plus, I didn’t even finish it.”

“Surely, you have some opinion on what you did read. Did you like it?”

“Huh?” Hobie seemed to have lost the ability to articulate as she scrambled for a way out of BJ’s inquisition.

“Like it. Did you like it?”


“I really don’t think I’m qualified to—”


“You don’t have to be a goddamn critic for the Times to know if you liked it or not. Did you like it?” BJ’s fingers drummed along the edge of the table.

Hobie saw that BJ was beginning to lose her cool. “Okay, I don’t think I like where this is going. Somebody is liable to get their feelings hurt.”

“Look.” BJ paused and took a deep breath. She lowered her voice in what seemed to be an attempt at restraint. “You’re my friend. At least the closest thing to a friend I have on this island. I would expect nothing short of honesty from a friend.”

BJ paused, and Hobie thought that maybe she was serious. Perhaps writers were used to this sort of criticism of their work. Hobie was still uncertain, but BJ appeared earnest.

“You really want my honest opinion?” Hobie asked in a timid tone.

“No, I want you to lie to me. Yes! I want you to be honest... brutally honest. Now,” BJ leaned back in her seat, “you’ve read more than just a bit of one of my books, haven’t you?”


Hobie nodded hesitantly. “My mother has all your books. Sometimes I would grab one off the shelf...” Her words trailed off as her fingers pulled nervously at the napkin in her hand.

BJ gave what appeared to be a smug grin. “And?” “Honest, right?”

“Brutally honest.”


“If you really want to know, I don’t read the novels as a rule because I find the characters shallow and unbelievable. The plots are weak and predictable, and the whole book seems like a cheap sex manual thinly veiled as literature. Frankly, I’ve always wondered why people spent good money on them.”

Hobie looked up and met BJ’s gaze. Once she saw her face, Hobie realized that she had made a huge mistake. Scarcely before she had started speaking, the voice in her head reminded her that when BJ asked for an honest opinion, it probably meant she didn’t want to hear the truth. Again, Hobie should have listened to that voice.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” “But you—”

“Who do you think you are—a critic for the Times?” “But you said—”

“No, I see how it is now.”


Hobie had been frightened, then nervous. Now she was at the limit of her patience. “Look, you were the one who said you wanted brutal honesty! I can’t help it if you can’t take it.”

BJ leaned in closer. “I had no idea you didn’t know what you were talking about!” she snapped.

“All right, I’ve had it. This conversation is over. I do not intend to sit here and be treated like this!” Hobie reached for her wallet and threw a few bills on the table. She gathered her leather satchel and slid out of the booth.

“I cannot believe you have the nerve to act like the injured party here!”

Hobie rose and turned in exasperation. “You were the one who asked me to be honest. I tried to beg off, but no. You just had to have your way.”

The people seated around them had stopped their conversations and focused on them. Even the waitresses halted their work to listen.

“I had to have my way? Jesus Christ, you couldn’t wait to blast me, could you?”

“You were the one who said you wanted my goddamn opinion!” Hobie shouted. The words echoed off the now silent diner’s walls. It was at that moment that she realized that every person in the Cove was looking at her. She closed her eyes and willed her blood pressure not to blow the top of her head sky high.

“I’m waiting for an apology,” BJ said as she folded her arms across her chest.

“You’re wai—” Hobie clamped her mouth shout.


The entire restaurant appeared to hold their collective breaths, waiting for Hobie to explode.

“Here’s what you’ll get from me. I don’t want you to talk to me, Baylor Warren. I don’t want you to contact me in any way. If you see me coming down the street, I want you to cross to the other side! You are impossible! You were entirely self-serving and arrogant the first moment I met you, and if it’s possible, you are even more so now!” She headed for the double doors.

BJ appeared stunned, as if no one had ever talked to her that way, especially with nearly the whole town watching. She was so angry she couldn’t form a coherent thought. She turned red in the face and sputtered as she tried to come up with a response.

“Oh, yeah?” was the best that she could do.


Hobie stopped underneath the exit sign with her hand on the door. She spoke without thinking. When asked later, she admitted that she never thought about the consequences of her next words. “I would have expected something a little more articulate from the great Harriet Teasley!”


Hobie leveled her gaze on BJ. BJ’s gray eyes went round as saucers before narrowing to slits.

Hobie couldn’t believe that BJ had just been outed, but most of all, she couldn’t believe that she was the one who had announced it to the world. She had never feared for her life before, but for a brief moment, when BJ’s gaze bored into her own, Hobie felt that particular terror.


“Shit,” she muttered just before she pushed the door open and was gone.

BJ fell back into the booth, amazed at what had transpired. There was a miniscule part of her that knew she had brought the whole thing on herself, but being BJ, she was far from ready to admit to such a thing. She could hear the whispers around her. She hoped against hope that the patrons of Rebecca’s Cove hadn’t understood Hobie’s last comment. Her hope was short-lived, however, when she looked up and saw JoJo standing before her.

The proprietor of the Cove held a copy of BJ’s latest Harriet Teasley novel. “Is it true?” she asked, clutching the book to her chest.

BJ sighed. She wondered how long it would take before Oprah got wind of the news. She could have stalked out, left with some scathing words. Seeing JoJo holding the book as if it were her firstborn child, BJ didn’t have the heart. She later vaguely remembered thinking this wasn’t like her usual behavior.

“Yeah, it’s true.”


“Would you mind terribly, Ms. Warren?”


BJ sighed deeply once more. “Sure, fork it over.” She grinned at her own wit. “Get it? Fork? You know…a little restaurant-type humor.” She signed her name and muttered to herself. “Ha! I still got it. Don’t tell me I’m no writer.”



“Everyone, Tanti! I sat there and listened to her tell nearly everyone on the island that I was Harriet Teasley! Good God, what’s wrong with that woman? Is she brain-damaged or something? Everything in my life has gone to shit since the moment I met her.”

“All right, Baylor, enough,” Evelyn said forcefully. “Sit down, relax, and try to restrict your voice to a four on the Richter scale, especially if you’re going to use profanity.”

BJ slumped into the bedside chair and pulled at the top of her short dark hair, causing it to spike up at odd angles. “Sorry, Tanti. I didn’t mean to embarrass you with my behavior.”

“Baylor Joan, you could never embarrass me. I thought you would have realized that after all these years.”


BJ looked over with a weak smile. “Thanks. Why are you so easy on me?”

“I suppose because you’re so hard on yourself. You always have been, dear heart. Your father has been dead for over twenty years, yet you keep him alive.”

“What do you mean?”


“I mean, my dear, that my son’s abuse didn’t stop with his death. He continues to hurt you today.”

BJ knew her grandmother was right. As much as she would have liked to deny it, she couldn’t. Her father had been an arrogant, self-centered person. Until she had heard Hobie’s cutting remarks that morning, BJ never knew that her father had left her his greatest legacy. Jonathan Warren III had done in death what he had been unable to do in life: He had turned his daughter into a carbon copy of himself.

“That bastard made me just like him.” BJ covered her face with her hands. “I never had a clue. Did you know, Tanti? Did you see it?”

“I think anyone you let near you could see it. The problem is that you let so few people within the boundaries of your heart. You don’t let anyone get close to you.”

“I know. It keeps me safe. Keeps me from getting hurt.” “Keeping yourself safe isn’t the way life was meant to be