FIRST AND FOREMOST, I’d like to say a with-cherries-on-top sort of thank you to my agent, Tara Gelsomino, and my editor, Allison Carroll. These two brilliant people not only helped me fine-tune this manuscript, but they also helped me chop out twenty thousand words. I can’t even begin to describe how much patience, how much muscle, that requires. I can’t thank you enough. Thank you to Michele Bidelspach. If Allison was the person who helped me get this book on the highway, you’re the person who helped me parallel park it. Thank you to Gina Macdonald, your attention to detail is unmatched. I’m so grateful to you! To the entire team at HQN, you’re a radiant and gorgeous group of people. You’ve got vision! Talent! You’ve got the juice!
As always, a huge thank you to my family for being so unstoppably supportive. To my husband, thank you for pretty much single-handedly moving us to a new apartment so that I could have an office to write this book in. How much I love you is in every page of this book.
Thank you to Jeanne and Vivian, the two people who have taught me what it means to see beyond the obvious, the physical, the proveable. You two have made my world so much bigger. Fin would not exist without you!
And finally, thank you to the reader. For so long, I wrote without knowing you, without ever expecting you to be a part of my books. And now that you’re here, all I can do is step back, throw my arms out, and thank you for letting me into your life.