Every Note, Translated

Ishbel Vranagh has spent six years turning other people's words into safety — for touring musicians who don't speak the local language, for hosts who don't understand why an orchestra needs three encores and a hot meal by nine, for a Maestro who found her at a rail platform with nothing and never once asked why. She's the best interpreter in her profession because she hears everything: the lie under the compliment, the threat under the toast, the tremor in a voice trying not to shake. It's a gift. It's also the reason she has never let anyone hear her all the way back.

When the touring orchestra's new manager arrives to clean up a scandal his predecessor left behind, Ishbel expects another suit who'll last a season and go home. Brogan Dunmuir isn't going anywhere. He reads contracts twice, asks the questions no one else bothers to ask, and within a week he's noticed what six years of easier men never did: her papers don't quite add up.

She needs him to stop looking. He needs her to stop hiding — because the tour's opening night depends on the one skill only she has, and the city they're about to play has a custom of putting its guests' honesty on public, unscripted display.

Station by station, the tour will carry them somewhere Ishbel swore she'd never go again. But first, she has to get through the first stop without either of them finding out how much the other already suspects.