Page 63 of Love to Hate You

“Which is why you and I are taking on the town’s smut coalition.”

“You and I?” Cleo had never participated in the podcast. She had always sat on the sidelines cheering Summer on. She’d said it was too mainstream for all her opinions.

“Girl, you didn’t think that I was going to let you take on your biggest podcast alone, did you? You need a cohost, and I need an audience. Plus, people love me.”

“Um, you’re more of an acquired taste,” Summer laughed.

“It’s called originality. You’re reliable and I’m controversial. And every great show needs some controversy.”

“I’m not sure thatJane Eyreneeds the oppression and imprisonment of women as a topic.”

“Of course it does, but that’s for another discussion. This one will be based on the love story, that your listeners will eat up,” Cleo said. “That doesn’t mean that I didn’t direct women toThe Wide Sargasso Seaso they can understand Bertha’s origin story.”

“Of course you did.”

“There has been such an interest, I was thinking that one of your podcasts can be on parallel books, where we read a classic and then a modern story, movie or book that used the original work as the inspiration for theirs, likeEmmaandClueless,SabrinaandThe Summer I Turned Pretty,and then compare them.There are so many to choose from.”

For the first time since the call started, Summer felt a beam of hope. “That’s a great idea.”

“I also think we should come up with questions for the guests.”

“Guests?”

“Yes, like guest authors or romance gurus. You can even bring on a matchmaker. Then we can come up with thought-provoking questions that really get the audience engaged and view romance in a new light.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Summer said, with so much apprehension in her voice it cracked.

“And I’m not going to let you shoot down another one of my ideas. Stop being a wuss and live a little.”

Was that how people saw her? As a wuss?

“Thank you so much for that insight.”

“Anytime,” Cleo said. “And to pay me back, you can start by getting your sister to pay you back.”

“She said she’d do it from her quarterly bonus.” That had been the deal, and in Russo tradition Autumn always stuck to her deals. Look at her and Wes. She’d promised to give his family a fair shot and she had. And what had come of that change of heart had been as nice as it had been confusing.

“Did she give you an actual date? What quarter she was even talking about?”

“She’ll pay me back,” Summer defended. “Autumn never breaks a promise over something so important. She knows it came from my wedding fund, and she knows how important that fund is to me. But if we’re short, I can always temporarily borrow from what’s left.”

“But you shouldn’t have to,” Cleo said, and Summer could tell her friend was exasperated. She’d never been all that pro-Autumn even if she’d never said anything overtly negative about her twin, but she didn’t know Autumn like Summer did.

“She’ll pay.”

“Well, I hope it’s soon, because things here are looking grim.” Cleo paused so long that Summer knew there was more to the story. “Did 007 tell you that BookLand has upped their opening date by a month?”

“What? Where did you hear that?” Because this was news to her.

Cleo turned her phone to the side window and aimed the screen toward a big banner that hung above the front entrance of the building next door. It read:GRAND OPENING, JULY1ST.

“That’s less than a month away. How are they going to pull that off. Before I left for Mystic, they were still putting in the shelves. Except for the window displays, there wasn’t a single book out.”

“They’ve hired another night crew. They’ve started pulling double shifts around the clock,” Cleo said, then her face came back into frame. “He didn’t tell you?”

“We don’t really talk about business,” she said. “We try to keep conversations on topics that won’t start World War III.” But she was still cut. His silence on something so important hurt her in places it shouldn’t.

“We need to come up with a retaliation,” Cleo added. “Something to piggyback on the crowd he’ll draw.”

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