The Color of Love by Radclyffe Read Free Book Online Page A

hours, and she was bone weary. The waiting, the worrying,
the remembering had taken her back, and the old sorrow had surged anew. At
first glance, this bustling, careworn city hospital seemed crude and unpolished
compared to the luxury and near-grand-hotel opulence of Mount Elizabeth’s, but
as she’d discovered after a few days’ vigil, hospitals were all the same
beneath the veneer of civility—impersonal, often cold places. And wasn’t she
just getting morose, when she’d long ago set that all aside. She gave herself a
mental shake. She’d be fine after she slept. Maybe had a cup of tea and a
package of those cookies she kept for emergencies.
    The idea of curling up under a blanket on the
sofa by the big front window of her third-floor apartment filled her with
longing, but Derian had asked her to wait. Or at least, implied that she wanted
her to. Really, would it be so rude to leave? Surely Derian Winfield was just
being polite. And when had she started thinking of her as Derian, as if they
were actually friends? How could they be anything but strangers—they’d met
exactly once before. She remembered the moment quite clearly, when obviously
Derian hadn’t.
    To be fair, she had been so much younger then, not just in
years, but in so many other ways. A newly minted master’s degree, the first few
months on the job as a real employee, pulling down a paycheck, and not just an
intern on temporary assignment—she’d made it, realized the dream that had
seemed so far away only a few years before. Here she was, in the land of
opportunity where she actually had carved out the life she wanted for
herself—researching, studying, making contacts, pushing to be noticed.
    Emily smiled, remembering the first emails
she’d sent to Henrietta Winfield, someone who had no idea who she was and
probably wouldn’t even be bothered to read the message. But Henrietta had read
it, and had even emailed her back. Emily had been a college student then, an
undergraduate at Harvard, double-majoring in English and creative writing,
filling her résumé with everything she could think of that
might make her more marketable in a world that could be viciously competitive
behind the sedate and cultured façade. Positions in literary agencies were few
and coveted, often passed along to those who had some kind of in—a friend or
relation who knew someone who was part of the age-old world of New York
publishing. She’d taken a chance and decided the only way to make an impression
on someone who undoubtedly received hundreds of hopeful applications and
queries every year was to demonstrate she understood what truly mattered. She
hadn’t written to Henrietta about her qualifications or her potential value as
an employee or even her desires and aspirations. She’d written instead about
one of her favorite books from an author Henrietta had shepherded from
obscurity to NY Times best-seller status, and what the book had meant to her and why. How better to
make a connection than to share the same passion?
    She hadn’t really expected a reply, but then
it had come. Henrietta Winfield had actually emailed her. With the door open a
tiny crack, she’d subtly, or so she’d thought, slipped her foot into it, and
volunteered to do anything that would keep her in Henrietta’s sight. And so it
had begun, a relationship that eventually flowered into a job and most
surprisingly, wonderfully of all, into friendship.
    When she’d gone to work for Henrietta, she’d
quickly become immersed in the other side of the literary agency, the politics
of acquisition and promotion and selling. She’d been trained to recognize good
writing, poignant themes, popular tropes, but she hadn’t any experience
negotiating the volatile waters of selling the manuscript to a publisher. Where
were the best places to position a contemporary romance, a time-travel
paranormal, a family saga? What was hot, and even more importantly, what would
be hot next year? What were