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“What’s so great about the Dopplebok other than the fun name and the”—I leaned a bit closer to eye the label—“Rudolph the red-nosed Viking gracing the bottle?”

He turned slowly, lifting his face, using one hand to push his hair back and the other to slide the beer toward me. “See for yourself.”

The stranger’s irises were a striking, glacial blue.

I followed the line of his nose down to full, unsmiling lips and a jaw that was as strong as it was sharp.

At first glance, he was exactly the kind of man I might like to engage with for the evening, if it hadn’t been for the defeated expression and shadowy half-moons beneath his eyes that screamed of sleeplessness.

It was odd, but he almost looked like someone I’d seen before, I just couldn’t think of where.

I spent enough time trying to place him that the bartender cleared her throat.

I picked up the bottle and lifted it to my lips.

The beer he recommended tasted of malt and chocolate, with a smooth, rich finish…

and I wasn’t even much of a beer drinker.

“That is delicious,” I said to the guy. “You are good.”

He took the beer back from me. “Thanks. You might be alone in that particular sentiment, though. I can think of literally thousands of people who wouldn’t agree, including several book reviewers.”

“Can I get two Doppleboks as well?” I asked the bartender. I handed the extra beer to the man. “You look like you could use a refill. What’s this about a book reviewer?” I asked.

“You heard that?” He cringed.

“Afraid so.”

He was silent for a beat, his expression pensive. “I’m a novelist.”

“Really?”

“Well, I’m not sure I still am, but I was once. Is that so unbelievable?” he asked.

I shrugged. “It just seems like the kind of career that everyone has in movies or books, but no one actually really does. What do you write?”

“Adventure fiction, mostly.” He paused. “Currently, I’m doing everything but writing.”

“Anything I might know?”

This stretch of silence was longer than the first. “The Casablanca Chronicles.” He said the series title so nonchalantly that I almost missed it.

This guy could not be serious right now.

Did I know it? It was only my favorite series of all time.

When I found out that it was over and I’d never learn the fate of the main character, Clark Casablanca, I’d spent an evening drowning my sorrows in too many gin gimlets—Clark’s drink of choice—and contemplating ways to compel the author to write one more book.

That’s why this guy looked familiar—I had seen him before, in his author photo on the back of his book jackets, but he’d had a beard and worn glasses in the picture.

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. Then, playing it cool, I added, “What’s your name again?”

“Huck Sullivan.” Huck Sullivan. Frenetic energy filled me. I stretched out a trembling hand to shake his. I was sharing a beer with Huck-freaking-Sullivan. I was about to have actual human contact with Huck Sullivan. I resisted the urge to pinch myself.

“I’m Stella Moore.” Huck wrapped his fingers around mine, and that strange longing I’d been feeling in my fingertips dissipated in an instant, replaced by a light tingle on my skin. His hand was warm and his grip strong, but not overly firm.

“So, Stella who thinks being an author is unbelievable, what do you do for work?”

I lifted my shoulders a fraction. “This and that,” I said, which was true, but really I was trying to sound intriguing.

The fact that I spent my off seasons doing property maintenance and moonlighting on fishing boats wasn’t the first impression I wanted my favorite author to have of me.

Besides, I’d learned that it was safer not to share too much of myself.

“Very mysterious. What brings you to Iceland, then?”

“You first,” I challenged.

I expected him to counter, but instead, he pulled at the corner of the bottle label. “I guess you could say I’m searching for inspiration,” he said. “I’m supposed to be working on a new book. Easier said than done after the way the last one went down.”

I wanted to say something encouraging, but I didn’t have any idea what.

The final book in the Casablanca Chronicles had been beautiful, but the ending…

it was like driving down a gorgeous, winding highway, wind blowing in your hair, warm salt breeze on your skin, and then suddenly the road is gone and the car simply plummets into the sea.

I remembered buying a second copy because I was sure that mine had been a misprint and was missing the last fifty pages or so.

The critics had hated it. Literary legend to epic letdown, the rise and demise of the Casablanca Chronicles.

It’s like Huck Sullivan just gave up , the New York Times had printed.

It seemed unnecessarily mean, but then, they hadn’t been wrong. Ostensibly, he had given up. He hadn’t had a book out in three years.

“Everything I’ve written since then is awful, trite bullshit.

Or some knockoff of a classic, done worse, mind you.

I can barely even look at my laptop, let alone open it.

I guess I thought a change of scene to someplace wild and completely different would shake me out of my funk—well, my agent did.

I’m not exactly here of my own volition… ”

“How’s that going?”

“Super. So far, all this trip has done is make me strongly consider switching my profession to sheep farming.”

“The sheep are pretty cute.”

That won a smile from him, and it was just as warm and inviting as I anticipated. “Right? I went over to the Westman Islands and I was standing in a field near this cliff, high above the ocean, contemplating my place in the world, and one waddled over to me and booped me on the leg with its nose.”

“Sounds life-changing.”

“Oh, it was. Didn’t cure my writer’s block, but I felt much less inclined to hurl myself into the sea, so there’s that. Anyway, I’ve told you my story, Stella Moore. Now it’s your turn.”

I wondered if I should tell him. What the four of us do on our expeditions is something that we keep to ourselves—after all, treasure hunting has its dangers—but there was something about Huck Sullivan that made me want to spill my soul.

Maybe it was because I’d read his books and that made me feel like I knew the kind of man he was…

someone brave and trustworthy and authentic.

Someone who had just been totally vulnerable with me.

Someone who would find my focus compelling instead of thinking I was a stupid dreamer.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to hold back the way I normally did.

I wanted to tell him.

Because the Huck Sullivan I knew from reading every word he’d ever written was going to eat this up. I hoped. And not just because I’d been fantasizing about him since book two, The Einstein Endeavor .

I took a breath and tried not to think about the number of times I’d pictured an innocent book signing event ending with us entangled in the back room of Barnes in the process, his knee glanced my thigh and practically turned me into molten lava.

“And how’s that going?” he asked, his voice low and full of intrigue.

“Are you also contemplating a life of sheep farming…or have you found it?”

I took a slow sip of my beer, a smile playing on my lips as I lowered the bottle between us. I waved him toward me until our faces were only a whisper apart and made my voice quiet. “So far the only thing I’ve found is you.”