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would that be?”
    “But I didn’t come here to read Biff the Bunny’s Adventures in Carrotland ,” Abby protested, her own desperation growing. “I came here to read my novel.” She flipped the book in her hand around, hopefully displaying her literary equivalent of a glamour shot. “You know—the one I wrote.”
    Natalie shook her head disapprovingly and popped her gum. “I don’t think the rug rats would like that. Last week one of the parents threatened to sue Corporate because we let the story hour volunteer read Where the Wild Things Are . Claimed the Things were too wild.”
    The manager seized Abby’s arm, having saved her most persuasive argument for last. “If I could squeeze my ass into this thing, don’t you think I would?”
    Abby closed her eyes to escape the woman’s pleading look, but all she could see was a circle of hopeful little faces shining up at her. The little boy in the children’s section had been right. She wasn’t Biff the Bunny. She didn’t even seem to be Abigail Donovan the Bestselling Novelist anymore. She was nobody. But it was still within her power to keep the dreams of those children alive. To preserve their innocence for just a little while longer so they could believe a fey bunny who wanted nothing more out of life than to tend his carrot garden and have tea with his friends could actually survive in this ruthless world.
    Opening her eyes, she tossed her own book into one of the folding chairs, where it promptly slid facedown onto the floor, hiding Oprah’s seal of approval.
    “Where can I change?” she asked grimly, already knowing the answer before Natalie Who Was There to Help Her and the grateful manager began to wrest her cashmere sweater over her head.

Chapter Two
    Abby stabbed the lighted button for the ninth floor, then slumped against the elevator wall. The doors slid closed, making her wince as her reflection came into view in their polished brass surface. She looked exactly like a woman who had spent her morning trapped in the suffocating confines of a bunny costume being heckled, stomped on, and repeatedly groped by savage little hands. She’d sweated off every last drop of her artfully applied makeup and contracted a terminal case of bedhead.
    She’d received only the most cursory of glances while trudging up Fifth Avenue from the Fifty-ninth Street subway station in the bright April sunshine. She could have probably been hopping along still wearing the bunny suit and nobody would have noticed. This was Manhattan, after all. One sweaty, shell-shocked writer could hardly compete with a Kid Rock lookalike wearing nothing but a pair of tighty whities and a smile while he played guitar in the middle of Times Square.
    The low point of her day had come when an overzealous mother had plopped her chubby little girl down on Abby’s lap. Gawking at Biff’s exaggerated whiskers and floppy brown ears in abject terror, the toddler had screwed up her angelic face and let out a piercing wail. As a suspicious dampness began to seep through the fur over Abby’s knee, it was all she could do not to burst into tears herself.
    The elevator doors slid open and she went limping down the hall to her apartment. To add injury to insult, her new Stuart Weitzmans had rubbed a painful blister on the back of one heel.
    She fished her Robot Chicken keychain out of her purse and let herself into her apartment. She triple deadbolted the door, then collapsed with her back against it as if to ward off a horde of marauding preschoolers.
    Three years ago, when still riding high on the wave of her newfound fame, paying $6,500 a month to rent a 695-square-foot apartment in the glorious old building once known as the Plaza Hotel had seemed like a perfectly sane idea. After all, what kid who had ever read Eloise hadn’t dreamed of romping through the venerable halls of the Plaza while everyone else was asleep? And what writer hadn’t imagined penning their latest masterpiece while