Molly gave him direction in between eating.

Dare kept nudging the water at her until she drank half the glass.

Pulling up certain brands she’d suggested, Chris found that she was very easy to please. With little fanfare she chose dark designer jeans, black ankle boots, a simple white blouse and a thick charcoal pullover sweater with a self-tie belt.

“Here’s a nice corduroy blazer that’d go with it. What do you think?”

“That’ll work, but get it a size larger so it’ll fit over the sweater. Maybe a scarf, too?”

“Not a problem.” When he was ready to check her out, she came over and, leaning around him, typed in her credit-card numbers.

“To stay on the safe side, I’ll have it delivered to our post-office box in town. But don’t worry. I can go pick it up as soon as it arrives.”

“You make an amazing assistant.”

Dare gave a rude sound over that. “He’s a pain in the ass, but I tolerate him.”

Grinning, Chris turned on the stool toward him. “I’d like to say that you’d be lost without me, but that would be a lie. However, I know for a fact that I make your life more comfortable.”

Lifting his glass, Dare saluted him. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one.”

Chris accepted his due with a nod. To Molly, he said, “Dare has many areas of expertise, only one of them being organization and a certain finesse at details. But I excel at comfort—my own and others’.”

Molly smiled. “Comfort is high on my list of priorities, too. It’s one reason I’m a writer. I can write from my own home, in my jammies, drinking hot cocoa and listening to the music of my choice.”

“A dream job. If only I had the talent to write…”

“But you don’t, so you’re stuck with me.” Dare focused on Molly. “Tell me why you think a reader could be responsible for your abduction.”

She waved off his question. “I didn’t really mean that. I was just being snarky.”

They both waited for an explanation of that.

She pushed away her mostly empty plate. “Well, the thing is, my last book garnered a lot of controversy. There was a vocal group of readers who really…” She looked from Dare to Chris, and shrugged. “They were really pissed off with a certain twist in the plot.”

“How do you know?” Chris asked.

“Trust me, readers make sure you know when you’ve let them down.”

Chris noticed that she didn’t look overly hurt by that.

“They reach authors through online reviews, emails, written letters. And that’s a good thing, just not so fun when there’s so much of the negative stuff.”

Dare sat back in his seat. “How’d the book do with all that reader disgruntlement?”

“Great, actually.” In an effort to explain to them, she leaned forward, elbows on the stone bar. “With every book, there are good reviews and bad reviews, rants and raves, readers who love it and readers who hate it, and a whole bunch of reactions that are in between those extremes. You know the old saying where you can’t please all the people all the time. The same goes for reviewers and readers.”

Dare didn’t look convinced. “So it wasn’t a big deal?”

“Well, it was a big deal to me, at least in some ways. Given the level of anger over it, I’m sure I lost some longstanding readers. No matter what, I hate to disappoint anyone, but I especially hate to let down loyal readers who’ve been reading me from the beginning.”

“Bummer,” Chris said.

“But…” She lifted her shoulders. “I also gained new readers and expanded my audience. Truth is, if I had it to do over again, I’d do it exactly the same way, because I have to write a story the way it wants to be written, not the way readers want me to. That’s how my muse works. If I fought that natural process, I’d probably never get a book done, and I probably wouldn’t be as successful.”

Still not entirely sure he understood, Chris told her, “Good for you.”

“The level of anger you mentioned,” Dare said, bringing the conversation back around to possible suspects. “Give me an example.”

A little embarrassed now, she glanced away. “There were threats, with people wanting to beat me up, people wishing terrible things would happen to me. But most of it was posted online for all the world to see, so I can’t imagine that anyone was serious. They were just letting off steam. In a way, it’s really a compliment.”

Chris stared at her. “How the hell do you figure that?”

“If the reader wasn’t so invested in my characters, it wouldn’t matter enough to get angry over it. Right?”

“If you say so.” Dare left his seat and headed for the computer. “Where can I find this stuff on the Net?”

Aghast, she said, “You’re going to look at it right now?”

“Why not?”

“Well…” Again she looked at both men. “Okay, call me vain, but I don’t really want you to see all the bad stuff said about me or my books.”

Chris couldn’t help but grin. “Think we’ll get the wrong impression?”

“Of course you will.” She left her seat to rush after Dare. “Seriously. There’s no point—”

They both stopped next to Chris. Dare touched her chin, lifting her face up and silencing her at the same time. “You promised to trust me and to do as I said.”