June 1962.

Sucking in a breath, I stared at the calendar for a hard moment, then rubbed at my eyes. I wasn’t seeing this.

I wasn’t.

“Miss!”

Shaking myself, I focused on the man standing next to me. It was a joke. Had to be.

1962.

Sure.

“Where’s Daniel?” I asked, trying to smile.

“Who?” He looked confused and shook his head. “I don’t know who Daniel is, but you better stay out of Miss Woods’ private quarters. I don’t care if you’re part of her crew or not. She needs her own space to decompress.”

He frowned at me and shook his head, before turning on his heel and walking away.

“Miss Woods,” I muttered to myself once I was alone.

Turning, I looked around the room and bit my lip. It was the room I’d been in just a few minutes ago—or at least it seemed to be. Just a lot cleaner. Brighter. Less abandoned. And of course, that calendar on the wall was weird.

Weird.

A laugh that bordered on hysterical escaped me.

No. It wasn’t weird. It was a calendar from over fifty years ago—that wasn’t weird. That was fucked up.

“Uncle Daniel?” I called out quietly.

He had to be somewhere. This was a trick or something. A prank. It was…it was…

Something on the table caught my eye and I blinked, a wave of dizziness washing over me. The diary. I’d just been looking at that diary. Nervous, I picked it up and flipped through it.

There were a few days missing, I realized.

“This is crazy,” I muttered. Rubbing the back of my neck, I went to put the diary down, but stopped, and flipped through it again. It wasn’t the same as what I’d seen before. Several pages were missing.

The ones I’d seen at the end had been…sad.

Full of despair and loss, hopelessness.

These pages though…they were happy. Hopeful. What in the world had changed in the span of a few days? A few weeks?

Oh, man…I sound like I’m actually…I didn’t know what to think.

The diary, though. The diary. How could I explain all this craziness? The diary. The difference in the rooms. The difference in the diaries? Like…why were there days missing?

A strange little voice in my head murmured, Maybe they just hadn’t been lived yet.

A shout outside the door had me jumping, and I looked around guiltily. I had to get out of there.

With every passing second, I stopped thinking it was likely that Uncle Daniel would show up and tell me this was some kind of prank for a reality TV show. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the money, or the resources, but why would he do this?

The sharp edge of the heart’s point cut into my palm as I slid outside, my grip on the locket getting tighter and tighter.

Outside the room, there was a flurry of activity. A few people looked at me, their gazes bouncing off me for a moment, then returning. Blood rushed to my face as I realized how much attention I was attracting, although it wasn’t hard to figure out why, not once I looked around.

I was Latina, but that wasn’t really what had people looking at me.

My darker hair and pale skin didn’t stand out all that much, really. However, the skinny-strapped tank top and my low-riding jeans seemed to draw some attention—probably the top more, although I didn’t see anybody else in jeans. Most of the women were wearing skirts or dresses, the men in dapper suits that would have looked right at home on Wall Street.

“Miss?”

I glanced over at a man standing just off to my right, and realized he had probably been trying to catch my attention for a minute or two. “Yes?”

“You’re in the way!” He flapped his hands at me, and automatically I stepped aside. A split second later, a heavy rack of clothing was pushed in front of me.

I stared at the pretty dresses for a long moment, then looked down at my clothes, acutely aware of how out of place I looked.

Really, I wasn’t showing that much skin, but my clothes were so…casual. The jeans that had seemed perfectly acceptable earlier made me stick out like a sore thumb now.

I rubbed at the back of my neck and shot another look at the rack of clothing.

My head was spinning.

Too many voices. Too much to see. To process.

“Have you seen Miss Woods?”

The voice came from nowhere.

I looked around, trying to figure out who’d asked.

“Anybody know where Miss Woods is? Her lunch is here.”

Miss Woods. Miss Woods.

The necklace in my hands seemed to burn hotter and hotter, pulsating in time with my heart.

“Miss Cruz!”

I spun around and gawped at the man in front of me.

He was trim and handsome, though probably in his early fifties. But that wasn’t the reason I stared. It was because he looked at me like I was really there.

“Miss Cruz?”

Okay, this was getting really weird. How did he know my name?

“Yes?” I said cautiously, shooting another look around and hoping to see Uncle Daniel lurking in a corner, although how could he have pulled off something like this? Unless he had David Copperfield or somebody like that on standby, there was no way he could have pulled this off in the split second I’d gone and blinked. Maybe I’d hit my head when I’d fallen…

The man was either unaware of how preoccupied I was, or he didn’t care, because he planted himself in front of me and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m going to need an answer, Miss Cruz. Were you able to get one?”

“Excuse me?”

He looked put out. “I understand this is your first day and you’ve been thrown into the thick of things, but if you want to survive being an assistant here, much less an assistant to one of the biggest up and coming stars in the business, you need to focus.”

His brows beetled over his dark eyes, and he shook his head at me.

“I…”

His mouth drew tight. “Didn’t you speak to Miss Woods? Did she give an answer or not?”

“Miss Woods…” I glanced over my shoulder at the door to the dressing room. “She…um…yes.”

“Yes? Perfect.”

Yes? “Wait!”

He scowled, but I didn’t think it was at me precisely. Shooting his watch a look, he cocked a brow. “I’m a busy man, Miss Cruz.” Then, to my surprise, a smile softened his face, making him look even younger than I’d first assumed. “Although, maybe I’m too busy if I’m trying to rush out on such a beautiful woman. By the way, I know you’re new in town. Did you have plans for the night?”

“Plans?” Yes. I wanted to wake the hell up from this crazy dream. But I was starting to think it wasn’t a dream. I was starting to think it was real—very real.

Somebody bumped into me, and I glanced over just in time to see a man in a blue jumpsuit dip his head at me. “Apologies, miss.”

Miss.

Everybody was calling me miss.

The clothes.

This was all beginning to feel far too surreal—and far too real.

“Why don’t you be ready at seven as well?” His eyes flicked over me, and he smiled. “I assume your luggage has arrived? If not, we can see about finding you something to wear.”

“No. No…” I shook my head, then plastered a smile on my face. I needed to just go with it, I decided. If this was a joke, I’d figure it out soon.

If it wasn’t…the bottom of my stomach dropped out, but I kept the smile firmly in place. “I’m fine. I’ll be ready.”

Ready for what, I didn’t know.

“Here. My card. In case you need anything.”

I held out a hand and accepted it, happy to have at least one thing that felt familiar.

He nodded at me and turned to go as I looked down to study the card.

Peter Hammond and Associates.

There was an address and something that looked like a phone number on it—though no phone number I’d ever seen—but beyond that, it was startlingly simple. Nothing like the flashy business cards I was used to seeing. More like something off of a movie set.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yes.” I managed a weak smile, but by the time I looked up at him, he’d already lost himself in the crowd.