Page 50 of My Best French Wedding

He shrugged, not quite managing to sell it as a casual gesture. “It was time for a change.”

Hildy turned the words over in her mind, searching for a hidden meaning. “Tired of spreading scurrilous gossip?”

When he didn’t bite, she moved down the list of possibilities. “Are you dying? For the record, if this is a tragic-yet-vague deathbed confession, I will murder you myself. Although you don’t look sick. Or like you’re having a breakdown.”

“Try not to sound so disappointed.”

She hit him with her most penetrating stare. “You know I’m going to figure it out. Why don’t you save us both time and fess up now?” It came to her in a skin-tightening rush, like an allergic reaction. “Did you write a book?”

He shook his head.

The relief was short-lived, as a horrifying new possibility occurred to her. “Did someone poach you?”

He had the talent and the name recognition. Hildy would have tried to hire him herself if their history were less fraught. As things stood, Walter would assume she was recruiting him purely for the pleasure of laying him off the following week. Also, Corinne would have her committed the second Hildy floated the idea of bringing Walter Burns on staff.

Weird how she couldn’t stop gnawing on an idea that was so clearly a nonstarter.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I got a new job.”

She watched him stand, gripping the back of his chair before pacing to the bookshelf, as if he had a sudden urgent need to inspect the framed picture of Hildy at her friends’ wedding on Oahu.

“Food service?” she guessed. “You’d rock a hairnet.”

“Journalism.”

She should have known he wouldn’t leave the news biz until they wheeled him out on a gurney. Hildy picked up a stack of sticky notes, ruffling the edges with her thumb as she waited forWalter to spill. When he stayed stubbornly silent, her annoyance levels climbed. “How exactly is that relevant to me?”

“I thought you’d appreciate a heads-up. We might be seeing more of each other.”

Surely he didn’t mean that the way it sounded. “If you started a lifestyle magazine just to spite me—”

“I didn’t,” he cut in. “Not sure how you think I would have bankrolled that.”

“Whereas I just fished the loose change out of my couch.” She brushed her palms together as if it had been that easy, as opposed to a yearslong campaign of pitching their business plan to potential backers. “I guess I should be happy you won’t be spying on me from the shadows and following me around town anymore. Or digging through my trash.”

Walter sighed. “I never went through your trash, Hildy.”

“So you admit to the rest?”

“No, I—” He stopped himself there. “The attention doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.” Walter made a show of looking around her office.

She stifled the urge to throw a pen at him. How dare he suggest that Hildy owed even a fraction of her success to him? “Because I made it work. But that was never plan A. You forced me to play the game that way.”

“Sure. I’m the bad guy.” He dug a hand into his thick hair, rumpling the careful styling. “This was a bad idea.”

“Not your first.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope it’s my last.” He paused in the doorway. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

“Wait, what’s the job?”

“I changed my mind.”

“About the job?”

“About telling you. Why spoil the surprise?”

“That’s not funny. Walter!” she yelled when he didn’t turn back. Leaping from her chair, Hildy ran after him, garnering a curious look from Olive.