The Color of Love (2 page)

The Color of Love

© 2016 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-717-0

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: July 2016

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be
reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

Romances

Innocent Hearts

Promising Hearts

Love’s Melody Lost

Love’s Tender Warriors

Tomorrow’s Promise

Love’s Masquerade

shadowland

Passion’s Bright Fury

Fated Love

Turn Back Time

When Dreams Tremble

The Lonely Hearts Club

Night Call

Secrets in the Stone

Desire by Starlight

Crossroads

Homestead

Against Doctor’s Orders

Prescription for Love

The Color of Love

Honor Series

Above All, Honor

Honor Bound

Love & Honor

Honor Guards

Honor Reclaimed

Honor Under Siege

Word of Honor

Code of Honor

Price of Honor

Justice Series

A Matter of Trust (prequel)

Shield of Justice

In Pursuit of Justice

Justice in the Shadows

Justice Served

Justice For All

The Provincetown Tales

Safe Harbor

Beyond the Breakwater

Distant Shores, Silent Thunder

Storms of Change

Winds of Fortune

Returning Tides

Sheltering Dunes

First Responders Novels

Trauma Alert

Firestorm

Oath of Honor

Taking Fire

Wild Shores

Short Fiction

Collected Stories by Radclyffe

Erotic Interludes:
Change of Pace

Radical Encounters

Edited by Radclyffe:

Best Lesbian Romance
2009-2014

Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.

Erotic Interludes 2:
Stolen Moments

Erotic Interludes 3:
Lessons in Love

Erotic Interludes 4:
Extreme Passions

Erotic Interludes 5:
Road Games

Romantic Interludes 1:
Discovery

Romantic Interludes 2:
Secrets

Breathless:
Tales of Celebration

Women of the Dark Streets

Amore and More: Love Everafter

Myth & Magic: Queer Fairy Tales

By L.L. Raand

Midnight Hunters

The Midnight Hunt

Blood Hunt

Night Hunt

The Lone Hunt

The Magic Hunt

Shadow Hunt

Love comes in all
sizes, shapes, colors, and combos—of age, ethnicity, cultural heritage, gender
identities, sexualities, social strata, and more. The color at the center of
this book is green and seems fitting in a time when difference is feared, and a
great many people think building walls, physical and metaphorical, will cure
what ails us. Those of us in the LGBTQ community know a lot about breaking down
walls and out of closets and fighting to be visible. Preserving the rights and
freedoms of others is essential to preserving those same things for us. So goes
one, so go we all, sooner or later. This book is a love story about two women,
about home and family, and about the boundaries that must fall for us to
preserve our love and our lives.

Many thanks go to:
senior editor Sandy Lowe for the inspiration and hard work, editor Ruth
Sternglantz for endless attention and expertise, editor Stacia Seaman for her
unique skills, Sheri Halal for a super cover, and my first readers Paula, Eva,
and Connie for encouragement and aid.

And as always, thanks
to Lee for the best colors of all—green grass and blue skies.
Amo te.

Radclyffe, 2016

To Lee, for rainbows

At ten to nine, Emily settled into one of the
leather and mahogany captain’s chairs at the round oak table in the library on
the second floor of the Winfield Building and looked out the tall leaded-glass
windows into the Flatiron District. A light, late snow fell, delicate and
subtly powerful. So far the dusting was pleasantly picturesque, painting the
sidewalks and marquees in a fleeting lacquer of white, and not enough to snarl
traffic in Manhattan. She’d been in her office before six and hadn’t minded the
walk from her apartment in Chelsea. Spring was around the corner, snow or not.

She sipped her Earl Grey and waited for the
others, soothed as always by the faint lemony scent of furniture polish and the
seductive aroma of parchment. She never used the renovated conference room on
the first floor, with its bright lights, steel and glass tables, sleek modern
chairs, and absolutely no soul. This room had soul. The shelves were filled
with history—history she was part of now—books discovered, sponsored, birthed
by the Winfield Literary Agency for a hundred years. She hadn’t been born into
this world, but she’d been born with the love of words and she’d found her
home.

Home. A flood of melancholy washed through
her even after all this time. Almost ten years since home had become a place of
sorrows and loss. She brushed the fleeting sadness aside, even while knowing it
would return. The past was never truly gone, and she didn’t want it to be. She
had forged a new life, but memories, even painful ones, could still bring
moments of joy. She did not regret hers.

Right now she had a very busy day ahead of
her, and she looked forward to it. She sipped more tea and scanned the agenda
on her tablet. Acquisitions, launches, marketing and ads, budget, contracts.
Business items to some, but excitement to her. Behind every bullet point a book
was waiting.

At five to nine, Ron Elliott arrived, looking
neat and polished as he always did in an open-collared, blue button-down shirt
and flawlessly tailored black trousers. His chestnut brown hair draped over his
forehead in a subtly artful accentuation of his dark brows and piercing blue
eyes. He was handsome in the way some men could be beautiful and masculine at
the same time. If she’d been interested in men in a personal way, and if he
hadn’t been gay and happily married, she would have picked Ron as the perfect
match. He loved the work the way she did—as more than a job. He hadn’t even
complained when she’d been moved ahead of him into the senior agent position
when she was younger and had less time in than him. He claimed he really only
wanted to spend his time on acquisitions, and she believed him. Some days she
envied him, when her carefully scheduled half-day of reviewing the slush pile
went to hell in a handbasket with an unanticipated fiscal crisis, a frantic
author with a missed deadline, or an impossible publisher request to advance a
pub date.

“New haircut?” Ron sat opposite her at the
round table.

Emily fingered the loose curls that just
touched her shoulders and feathered back from her face. “Just a few inches
off.”

“Looks good. Now you could almost pass for
twenty instead of twelve.”

“I do have a mirror, you know. The twelve
thing hasn’t been true for at least five years. And you’re the only one who
ever thought so anyhow.”

Ron grinned. “Just make sure to have ID if we
ever go out clubbing again—or, miracle of miracles, you say yes the next time
someone asks you for a date.”

Emily shook her head and concentrated on her
tablet. Ron was just about her best friend, but he was also one of those people
who thought everyone should be as happily married as he was. She couldn’t
convince him she was far too busy and had too much to accomplish to need
anything else. Anyone else. Maybe someday, when she was sure Pam’s future was
secure. Right now, her life was going according to plan—
her
plan, and that was
all she wanted. No more surprises, no more disappointments.

At 8:59, the senior members of the agency
arrived. Her team—two acquiring agents in addition to Ron, their interns, the
marketing director and his intern, and the budget supervisor.

“Morning, everybody.” Emily received a chorus
of
morning
s
and one barely audible groan. Clearly, one of the interns was not a morning
person, but that would change if they wanted to make it in the rapidly
transforming and ever-competitive world of literary discovery. Greetings
completed, Emily jumped in.

“Okay, we’ve got three months to the launch
of the summer season—so where are we in terms of ads, promotions, and tours?
Ron—why don’t you start.”

Ron ran down his six forthcoming titles with
reports from the corresponding publishers’ marketing divisions, recaps of
conversations with the authors, and summaries of his agenda for pushing his
titles out to reviewers and bloggers ahead of release. Emily listened but
didn’t take notes. Ron was always on top of his list. For nearly an hour, the
other agents in turn reviewed the forthcoming titles of the authors they
represented, strategies were revised, and projected costs were approved,
amended, and revised.

“We should be in good shape,” Emily said,
scanning the notes she’d made and projecting the timelines for the intersecting
campaigns in her head. “Ron, Terry, you’ve got to keep on top of Heron—they’re
going to let the Emery and Rosen titles fall to the bottom of the list if we
don’t push, especially now that they’ve moved up the release of Baldwin’s
mystery.”

“On it,” Terry said.

“Already talking to them about it,” Ron
echoed.

“Good. Any author issues we need to know
about?” Acquiring books and promoting them was only part of their job. Once the
manuscripts were contracted and handed off to the publishers, a great deal of
hand-holding was required to get their authors, especially the new ones,
through the long, arduous process of editing, cover design, and advance
promotion before the books went to press.

“All my chickens are happy,” Terry said.

“Race Evans doesn’t like his cover,” Ron
said. “I can’t say I really blame him, but it’s right for the market and we got
Sellers and Saylor’s art department to come as close as we could to what he was
hoping for.”

“Hopefully he’ll be happier when he sees the
sales.” Emily cast one more look around. Everyone seemed satisfied and on
point. “All right, then. I’ll see you all Wednesday for production.”

She stayed seated while the others left,
adding a few more notes. She had fifteen minutes before a phone call to a
client about acquiring their manuscript, her favorite kind of call. The author
was usually excited, and she was happy to be adding another new title to their
list.

When her cell rang, she checked the number
and answered immediately. “Hi, Vonnie.”

“Hi, Emily,” Vonnie Hall, the president’s
personal secretary, replied. “Can you come on by? She wants to talk to you for
a few minutes.”

Emily frowned and checked her watch. “Is it
urgent? I have a phone conference in five.”

“I’ll let her know you’ll be half an hour.”

“Thanks.”

Thirty minutes and one about-to-be-signed
contract later, Emily tucked her phone and tablet into her shoulder bag and
climbed the winding wooden staircase to the fourth floor and made her way down
the plush carpeted hall to the office at the far end. The top floor housed the
senior agents’ offices and looked as Emily imagined it had a century before
with its vaulted tin ceilings, ornate hanging light fixtures, and recessed
alcoves framed in dark, carved wood. Above the gleaming walnut wainscoting,
framed portraits of generations of Winfields adorned the pale green,
floral-patterned wallpaper. In the muted light, the eyes of the men and one
woman followed her. With each step, she felt as if she moved back in time, although
there was nothing outdated or antiquated about the woman she was about to see.
Like Emily, Henrietta Winfield simply appreciated history.

Vonnie Hall, a trim, flawlessly presented
woman in a red suit with thin ribbons of black along the collar and cuffs,
guarded the door to Henrietta Winfield’s inner sanctum with the ferocity of a
she-wolf and the smile of an angel. She greeted Emily with genuine pleasure.
“She’ll just be a minute. She’s finishing a phone call.”

“Sure,” Emily said. “How are you? Is Tom on
his way home yet?”

Vonnie’s smile blazed at the mention of her
husband, still deployed with the National Guard. “He’s in Germany, thank the
Lord. He ought to be home in about ten days.”

“I’m so glad.”

A light on Vonnie’s phone blinked and she
gestured toward the closed door behind her. “Go on in.”

“Thanks.” Emily shifted her shoulder bag a
little higher, skirted Vonnie’s desk, and stepped into Henrietta Winfield’s
domain. The room was twice the size of the library she’d just left but
resembled it with its filled-to-capacity bookshelves on two walls, the
comfortable leather sofa and chair in the seating area, and the big wooden
library table that served as a desk. The president of the Winfield Agency sat
behind it now in a dark brown leather swivel chair.

At five-four and a hundred and ten pounds,
Henrietta should have been dwarfed by the size of the table and the
expansiveness of the room, but she filled the space—any space—with a palpable
energy. When Emily had first met her seven years before, she’d been twenty-two
and fresh out of school, and had felt as if she’d walked into the path of a
hurricane. Despite being five inches taller and nearly forty years younger than
Henrietta—HW, as everyone called her in casual conversation—she still sometimes
had to run to keep up with her. Henrietta was energetic, trim, and formidable.
She was also Emily’s mentor, role model, and closest friend.