I smile back, walking past the bestseller shelf.

When she smiles from the checkout counter, I think I’m in the clear.

Her brown hair’s up in a messy bun, her green nose piercing catching the overhead lights. She’s in her early twenties, not much younger than me. Doing my book buying online has been torture. I’ve pretty much given up buying books in public in the past three years, including from Forewords, where I’ve only been once despite the bookstore being fifteen minutes from our house in Los Angeles’s Hancock Park. I shouldn’t be surprised it looks different. Cute candles and Jane Austen tote bags occupy the front table instead of used books. They’ve remodeled, white paint covering the exposed bricks, light gray wooden shelves where there once were old metal ones. The bookstore is nothing like I remember. While passion and prose push them closer together in the Florida heat, Katrina and Nathan will learn that relationships, like writing, sometimes take a few rough drafts before they get it right. Working through the reasons they’ve hated each other for the past three years isn’t easy, especially not while writing a romantic novel. The last thing they ever thought they’d do again is hole up in the tiny Florida town where they wrote their previous book, trying to finish a new manuscript quickly and painlessly. They haven’t spoken since, and never planned to, except they have one final book due on the contract.įacing crossroads in their personal and professional lives, they’re forced to reunite. But on the heels of their greatest success, they ended their partnership on bad terms, for reasons neither would divulge to the public. The Roughest Draft: Three years ago, Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen were the brightest literary stars on the horizon, their co-written book topping bestseller lists.

The roughest draft emily wibberley