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She nodded, unable to form words, and he pushed her to the floor, where she fell in a heap.

He opened the door and stepped over her, then turned and looked down at her in disgust. In a low voice, he added, “You’ve made things very difficult, Emmaline.

If you run, I will find you. And it will be deemed an accident.

I’ll make sure the payout happens quickly and efficiently.

” He smiled coldly. “You’ll have a lovely funeral.

Not that anyone would show up. I’m all you ever had. ”

He pulled the door shut, and Emma lost her stomach.

Emma was shocked back to the present when someone knocked on the conference room door. “I have this booked for a client meeting!” a voice called apologetically.

Emma swallowed hard and stuffed the incriminating images back into the envelope. She would get them to the shredder immediately.

Ben had been sentenced to a year and some months in jail, and Emma had hoped when he came out she’d have a plan.

A glance at the unexpected envelope in her shaky hand had her wondering if she might want to start planning.

At some point, her wineglass emptied itself.

Emma gave it a small frown. It had been doing that all night, but she refused to be bothered by it. She just refilled it from the bottle that was sitting obediently next to her on the small table on her tiny little terrace, in her tiny little corner of New York City.

She squinted at the bottle before she put it down. It was mostly empty—when did that happen? She must’ve swigged—er, sipped —more than she thought. She couldn’t bring herself to care, though. After the day she’d had, coupled with not taking a night off in forever, she deserved some down time.

Her clients’ social lives had replaced her own years ago.

She put every ounce of herself into being a great publicist. She could smooth over any situation her clients found themselves in.

Her years of dedication (okay, not taking a vacation or a full weekend in the entire seven years she’d been at Price Publicity) gave her contacts all over the city—reporters, journalists, magazine editors, restaurant owners—but her biggest successes came from social media.

Her coworkers always turned to her for the best ways to spin something in 140 characters or less, inventive hashtags to offset negative press, and clever social media statuses that made light of serious situations.

And she also possessed a good ear for warning bells, which helped her notice the bad vibes before a disaster struck.

However, as she sat on her little terrace, looking out over the crowded street below, she wished she were anywhere else, for the first time since she had arrived in the city years ago.

It was a never-ending barrage of busy lives, all colliding in a few square miles.

And her job never let her go—“regular business hours” was code only for one’s physical presence within the Price building, because the clientele at Price Publicity tended to make rather serious mistakes at all hours of the night.

She took another swig of wine as her phone rang.

“’Lo?” she answered, peering into the wineglass.

“Emma—we have a crisis.”

Emma took another swallow of her wine before answering. Her tongue felt a little fuzzy. “Josh, I’m not working tonight.”

“Are you drunk?” her boss asked. Emma could almost see his brow furrow, as if he couldn’t possibly fathom the prim and proper Emma Perkins getting drunk. By herself.

On a Wednesday night.

“Nooo,” Emma snorted.

“Oh my God. You are drunk.”

“Why are you calling me, Josh?”

“Because you need to be in the office tomorrow morning at seven. I was checking my email—”

“You really do work too much,” Emma interrupted.

“So says the pot to the kettle,” Josh snickered. “Listen, a hi-pri came into our inboxes almost an hour ago. We’ve all been waiting for your response.”

Emma’s fuzzy brain tried to snap to attention at the mention of a high-priority email, but it just wasn’t working right. “From who?” The only client who would warrant a high-priority email was the one in the incriminating photos.

She took another large sip to block out the memory.

Josh’s voice was serious. “Mr. Price.”

Emma stood up quickly, choking on her wine. Putting a hand over her eyes to stop the spinning, she managed, “Mr. Price, as in, Mr. Price, the CEO?”

“That’s the one.”

She swallowed hard. Mr. Price gave everyone a smartphone loaded with at least two email apps so he wouldn’t have to call them. In his opinion, every employee at his firm was on call for him all day, every day, through email. He reserved the phone calls for his clients.

Josh continued, “Emma, stop drinking and get yourself together. Mr. Price wants to see us in his office at seven tomorrow morning. There’s a potential new client—he’s so wealthy he eats money for breakfast. And he’s demanded you and only you, and he’s refusing to deal with anyone else… even Mr. Price.”

“Oh, God,” Emma groaned.

“Exactly.”

Mr. Price loathed when clients refused to deal with him directly.

Especially the exceptionally wealthy ones.

And if they requested someone outside the top tier of management, Price wanted detailed, in-person reports three times per week for the length of the contract.

If she didn’t deliver results in the form of a contract extension, there would be hell to pay.

Who was she kidding? Her life was already a living hell; it wasn’t like it could get much worse.

“Okay, respond to that email for me? I’ll be there. Tell him I’m with a client right now or something.”

“Done,” Josh replied, the tap-tap-tap of a keyboard audible over the line. “I’ll meet you outside the office at six thirty.”

“Okay,” Emma said with a sigh, ruefully pouring the contents of her wineglass into the plastic potted palm on the terrace. “I hope I’m not hung over tomorrow.”

“Tonight, take two aspirin and drink an entire glass of water before you go to bed,” Josh instructed. “I need you alert, Perkins. In the morning, you’re going to drink a small glass of orange juice. No coffee.”

“What?!”

“Trust me, Emma. Keep it simple, right?”

Emma smiled a little. That was her mantra for her clients—keep it simple. Simple press releases, simple statements, simple truths—or lies, as the case warranted.

If only real life worked like that.

“Good night, Josh. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Six thirty, Emma.”

Emma hung up, morose. Work always came first; everyone always needed something from her.

But that was how her world worked—she gave, everyone took, and she was paid for it.

Emma squared her shoulders and reminded herself that she didn’t need anything else from anyone.

She had herself, and that was enough. It had been that way for years before Ben, and she was committed to being that way for years to come.

She had her job, her health, and her true passion.

When Emma was small, maybe seven or eight, her father had given her a giant toy castle.

It was enormous, one of the spectacular dollhouses they sold in department stores, and it sparked her imagination like no other toy.

Her mother gave her a tiny princess doll, and an entire garrison of knights to protect it.

Emma usually made the princess rescue the knights, which made her mother laugh.

The tinkling sound was full of joy; she always said how proud she was that her daughter was willing to save herself from any evil princes.

It was Emma’s clearest memory from her childhood, aside from the day her teacher led her into the principal’s office, where a police officer told her that her parents had been killed in a car accident.

When the time came for her to move into her grandparents’ house, she left the castle and the toys behind.

But in college, something propelled her to take a medieval studies class, and in it, she found peace and a rediscovered love of knights in shining armor, which led to a major in Medieval Thought and Antiquities.

It was her passion, and even though her job was demanding, she made time every month to write an article or two for various obscure publications.

Articles that she told no one about, and even wrote under a pseudonym.

It was her last shred of that girlhood dream, and she didn’t want reality to ever intrude.

She blinked back the prick of tears. Her reality was anything but valiant knights. No, hers only included the evil princes. She was grateful her mother wasn’t alive to see how the princess rescued such underserving knaves instead of knights.

Emma shook herself from the direction of her thoughts, refusing to start a pity party that would no doubt have her reaching for another bottle of wine.

She couldn’t go down that path, not when she had an important meeting in the morning about some hotshot client.

She looked up at the sky, wishing she could see the stars, but in the city, all she ever saw was the kind of star who demanded more and more of her.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Josh, reminding her to take the aspirin. Emma headed inside the empty apartment, trying to ignore the loneliness that threatened to overwhelm her.

“Ms. Perkins.” Paul Price clasped his hands tightly in front of his protruding belly.

Although she tried to avoid looking directly at it, Emma always found herself staring at his shirt, her eyes locked on the bottom button as it strained against the hole.

She wondered, if it did pop off, whether she’d have to dodge left or right.

Mr. Price cleared his throat, and Emma’s eyes snapped up to his. Caught. She mentally chastised herself and resolved to pay better attention.

“You’re certain there’s no prior connection to this client?” Mr. Price asked.