“Hold on.”

Another moment passed. “This is Adlina.”

“Adlina, hi. It’s Emily May. I just wanted to check on Pam.”

“Hello!” Adlina’s smile came through the line. “Let me get Yi Ling.”

“Thanks.” Emily smiled. No amount of money could be too much for this kind of personal care, from men and women she trusted with the person she loved most in all the world.

“Hi, Emily,” Yi Ling said brightly. “She had a good day. A heron mating pair built a nest by the little pond at the far edge of the back lawn. She sat outside most of the day, and you know how much she loves to watch the birds.”

“I do, thanks.”

“When will you be coming by again?”

“Not for a few months, I’m afraid. But will you tell her that I called?”

“Wait, wait.” After a pause. “Go ahead. Here she is.”

“Pam? Hi, Pam.” Emily pressed the phone harder to her ear, willing her sister to hear her voice in the silent world where she dwelled. Every time she called, she waited, breathless and frozen in place, for the sound of Pam’s voice, once so full of life and wild adventure. “It’s Emily. I’ve been thinking about you. I love you, Pam.”

Seconds ticked by. The sadness never eased.

“She knows, Miss Emily. I know she does.”

“I know, Yi Ling. Thank you.” Emily hung up, the memory of Pam’s voice undiminished after a decade.

Fifteen minutes later she was headed to the office, a sense of relief driving out the lingering sorrow. Strange, how work had become her safe place. She let herself in on the ground floor with her key and took the stairs to the top floor, looking forward to a free hour or so to review the month’s calendar and organize her agenda. No one should be in until at least seven thirty.

Vonnie’s desk was empty, but a light shone behind Henrietta’s partially open office door. Vonnie must have come in early, like her. She pushed the door open and stopped abruptly.

“Oh!”

A woman she didn’t know sat behind Henrietta’s desk. Midfifties, short jet-black hair cut in a sharp edge at jaw level, attractive in a thin, knifelike kind of way. Dark suit, white shirt, unsmiling eyes.

“Can I help you?” Emily said when the woman stared at her as if she were the one intruding.

“I don’t think so.”

“Might I ask what you’re doing in Ms. Winfield’s office?”

The woman smiled thinly. “I am Donatella Agnelli. I’ll be in charge from now on.”

Chapter Eleven

Emily sat behind her desk, a cup of tea she couldn’t remember making cooling in front of her, an untouched pile of manuscripts on one side and her laptop open and waiting for her by her right hand. She didn’t drink the tea, scan her emails, make a list of the manuscripts she intended to review that afternoon, or schedule the author calls she wanted to make before lunch. She didn’t pull up the latest marketing plans for the fall release schedule from their biggest publishing clients. She didn’t get to the proposals from the rights department on what titles to present at the International Rights Conference.

She didn’t do anything at all except gather her scattered wits and struggle for some kind of perspective. The panic ballooning in her chest, making her breath short and her head light, was totally unwarranted. The last twenty-four hours had shaken her world, but she could fix that—she’d been through far worse. She just needed to be rational and ignore the fear clutching at her throat. She’d survived the phone call that had destroyed life as she’d known it when she was eighteen years old. Of course she could handle a passing disruption now. She had to.

Emily sipped her cooling tea, pleased that her hand was not shaking. There. Better. The constriction in her chest eased and she mentally ticked off what she knew, and what she needed to know. First and most importantly, Donatella Agnelli’s reign would only be temporary. Henrietta would be back soon and everything would return to normal. Even as she thought it, wished it, she knew it wouldn’t be true. Henrietta would be fine, everyone knew that, but she wouldn’t be able to run the agency as she always had, with a finger in everything, working fifteen-, sometimes eighteen-hour days, regularly outpacing many of the younger staff. She’d want to, Emily didn’t doubt that, and any changes in her schedule would have to be subtle ones. Emily and Vonnie would have to wage a stealth campaign to shift some of Henrietta’s workload to senior people without her knowing it, but as long as Henrietta was at the helm, behind that enormous desk that could probably float Manhattan if a second flood of biblical proportions suddenly arrived, business would return to normal.

Until then, where exactly Donatella Agnelli had come from and what her agenda might be were the critical questions. Vonnie might know who she was, and if she didn’t they had to find out. Perhaps she didn’t have the power she seemed to claim. Her proprietary occupation of Henrietta’s private space rankled. So disrespectful, so unfeelingly arrogant. Emily drew a breath. Perspective, she needed perspective, especially now when her emotions were riding roughshod over her reason. She didn’t know the woman, and she was probably being unfair. Usually she was far more methodical and clearheaded when faced with a challenge.

Now she was tired and frightened and a little bit angry. More than a little. Fury simmered so close to the surface her skin itched. Henrietta should not be ill. Some stranger should not be sitting at her desk. Her sister, the one she’d always looked up to, admired, envied for her bravery and reckless joie de vivre, should not be locked inside her own broken body, forever sentenced by a quirk of nature to silence. Emily’s eyes stung.

For the first time in many years, her safe haven no longer felt safe and she wanted—needed—someone to blame. Derian Winfield’s rakish face flashed through her mind and her swirling anger pointed at her. Derian was Henrietta’s niece, one of the Winfield heirs, and where was she in all of this? Betting on cars and cards and, in all likelihood, women. Why wasn’t she here to hold back the storm, to make everything solid and safe again?

Emily drew up short.

Oh. My.

She was not thinking straight. Derian was no more responsible for what happened here at the agency than a hot dog vendor on the corner. She’d chosen not to be part of Henrietta’s world, Emily’s world, and she had every right to do that. Derian and Henrietta obviously had an understanding, and it was none of Emily’s concern. Expecting someone else, especially a woman she didn’t even know, to solve her problems was not her way. She damn well solved her own problems, and she would solve this one. Straightening her shoulders, she reached for her tea, only to discover the cup was empty.

As she started to rise, Ron rushed in, his normally perfectly coiffed brown hair windblown, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes wide and unblinking.

“Who is that?” he stage-whispered, tilting his head almost imperceptibly in the direction of Henrietta’s office two doors down.

Emily motioned him in. “Shut the door.”

He pushed the door closed with one loafered foot, shrugging off the quilted down parka he would wear until daytime temperatures stayed above sixty. His Florida blood, according to him, was too thin to accommodate the Arctic temperatures of New York City.

“She said her name is Donatella Agnelli. I don’t know who she is.”

“Never heard of her, and I would have remembered if I’d seen her.” He mock shivered. “She looks like Maleficent in Versace. Why is she in Henrietta’s office, and she’s going through Henrietta’s papers.”

“I don’t know that either, except she said that she’s in charge now.”

He stopped midway across the room, his mouth agape. “What? In charge as in…WTF?”

Emily shook her ahead, as frustrated as Ron at being in the dark. “I don’t know what that means or what she intends to do, but I suspect we’ll find out soon. Is Vonnie here yet?”

“I didn’t see her.” Ron dispiritedly dragged his coat behind him and slumped into one of the leather-backed guest chairs facing her desk. “How’s Henrietta, really?”

“I don’t know.” Emily closed her eyes and sighed. “God, I don’t seem to know anything.”

When Emily opened them again, she read anxiety and compassion in Ron’s gaze and regretted making him worry. Time to leave the pity party behind. “All the tests weren’t in last night, but the ICU doctors seemed to think her condition is very treatable. The last word I had, she was doing well.” She looked at her watch, even though she knew what time it was. Past time she should have been working. “That was last night about seven. I’m sure if anything had happened since then, Derian—”

Ron pounced. “Derian? The Derian? Derian Winfield?”

“Is there more than one?” Emily asked calmly.

He crossed one leg over his knee and rested his elbow on his bent leg, eyeing her with speculative interest. “Derian. First names already. How did that happen?”

“I met her at the hospital,” Emily said, not at all sure why she felt like she needed to explain. “She and Henrietta are obviously really close. She was very kind and I’m sure she would let me…us…know if there were any worrisome changes.”

“What’s she really like?” Ron asked. “I’ve only met her a couple of times, brief introductions, and she wasn’t exactly friendly.”

“She’s very gracious and very…polite.”

“Polite? What does that mean, polite?”

Emily could feel her cheeks heating. That was a stupid thing to say. Of course, what she’d wanted to say was chivalrous, which would’ve sounded even more inane. “Never mind. I just meant that she was very kind, and very helpful. She was clearly worried about Henrietta and nice enough to recognize that I was too.”