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Rule number one of Ellen’s sound business strategies: A strong offense was more effective than a strong defense.
“The real question here is, why did your great-aunt feel compelled to set me up with a man at all?”
“You’ll have to ask Auntie Q yourself. I can’t speak for her, and trying to second-guess her is always risky business.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Lennon’s diminutive great-aunt, the woman Ellen had come to know as Miss Q, was definitely an odd duck. A woman who believed in passion and crusaded for everyone else to believe, too. Ellen might have smiled if the memory of him hadn’t been quite so fresh.
“Christopher Sinclair is a romance hero incarnate,” Lennon said. “And he was perfect for you. Executive-level management. A talented businessman who’s sharp enough to appreciate a strong independent woman without being pushed around or intimidated. He’s from a respectable Southern family. Not to mention that he’s financially successful enough to keep up with your rather upscale interests.”
Ellen arched a skeptical brow. Okay, so it was no secret she preferred slumber parties at the Plaza Hotel to those in tents, art painted on canvas as opposed to lithographs, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was an expensive date….
“I also happen to know Christopher isn’t the kind of man to fawn or cling or crowd you, and he’s absolutely gorgeous,” Lennon continued. “His parents loved you, and not only did your family approve of him, Ellen, they liked him. Your mom told me so.”
Yes, her family had liked him, which had translated into awkward explanations. She wouldn’t share her real reason for breaking up with him and have them question her judgment, again.
“So what happened?” Lennon was saying. “I’m not buying that lame excuse you gave me. I’ve waited to hear the truth in person because I care about you, but be forewarned, Auntie Q wants answers, so you’d better have them handy. You’ll be a captive audience during this murder-mystery training. Think four days and five nights in an antebellum plantation with no escape.”
There usually wasn’t any escape when it came to Miss Q. Not even her own great-niece had managed to outrun the little schemer’s matchmaking. Her efforts to bring Lennon and her new husband together could have made a RAVE-winning book.
“It’s old news now. We dated…”
Three months where he could make me tingle with the slightest touch…and that one red-hot night.
“…and realized we were heading in opposite directions. We have different goals…”
Marriage? After three months? Was the man crazy?
“…so we went our separate ways.”
I ran screaming because he wouldn’t play by the rules.
A lifetime of dealing with the high-profile baggage she brought to a relationship had taught her the hard way to be careful. She’d learned to walk the straight and narrow. And to force her creative brain into remembering the rules, she’d devised a method of making lists just to keep them straight in her head.
Her latest rule for survival: No dating impulsive men.
Lennon frowned as though she wasn’t quite buying this explanation. “What do you mean ‘opposite goals’?”
“He wanted to get married.”
Lennon dissolved before her very eyes into one of those melting oh-how-romantic expressions Ellen was very familiar with after eight years of working with romance authors.
“And you turned him down?”
“Of course I turned him down, Lennon. Honestly.”
“But why? You were crazy about him.”
That was before she’d found out he was crazy. “Listen, Lennon, he’s past history and I’m looking to the future.” Plastering her smile back on, Ellen tried to look reassuring. Her cheeks stretched. Her jaw creaked. “I’m waiting to meet the one, and when I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
“The one?”
“The man who’ll love me for who I am, with no questions. The man who’ll respect my situation enough to play by my rules.”
Lennon looked thoughtful. “Unconditional love. Are you sure you believe that exists?”
“Of course. I couldn’t edit romances if I didn’t. But I’m not going to sit around waiting for it to happen. I’ve got things to accomplish and goals to reach. Worrying about whether or not a man fits into the equation is simply not something I’ll do. If I meet the one, so be it. If not, well, so be it.”
“You’re sure Christopher isn’t the one?”
“Completely.”
“What convinced you?” Lennon insisted. “A man that intense and that gorgeous has to be amazing in bed.”
“I am not sharing the details of my sex life, so don’t bother badgering me. You and Miss Q might discuss how much and how good over dinner, but I prefer to keep my sex life private, thank you. That’s the second rule of the Talbot family code of conduct—no discussing sex at the dinner table.”
“Note to self—” Lennon grimaced “—have a handy excuse to decline the next Talbot family dinner invitation. Just out of curiosity, what’s the first rule?”
Ellen patted her purse. “Always be accessible, which means the cell phone stays on.”
Talbot family code of conduct rule number four: Don’t pry. Ellen could almost hear her mother explaining, Prying shows a decided lack of manners, and unless you’re interested in answering similarly private questions…
She wasn’t.
Unfortunately, Lennon wasn’t versed on Talbot family code of conduct rule number four. She sighed so heavily that Ellen knew she was in for a lecture about making time to have fun. Another conversation they’d had before.
She switched gears, fast. “I will tell you it’ll be a frosty Friday before I involve myself with another impulsive man.”
Lennon set her mug down on the table with a thunk, leaned back in her chair and smiled. And kept smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
“Finally.” She made a visible effort to curb her amusement, though not much of one, judging by her smothered laughter. “You are the most stubborn person I know.”
“I’m not stubborn. I just like stability and constants. He’s an adrenaline junkie who lives life to test fate. The press would have a field day, and that wouldn’t be fair to him. Or me, for that matter. I can’t handle living my life worrying about what sort of stunt he’s going to pull next and what the fallout will be. Marriage! We’d only dated three months.”
“I accepted Josh’s marriage proposal after three days.”
“Your decisions aren’t subject to public scrutiny. If I accept a marriage proposal after three days or even three months, my mother’s parenting skills come under fire. Her party spins my acceptance to mean she raised a confident daughter. The opposing party spins it to mean she has no control over her wild child. I prefer not to start the debate. I don’t enjoy the spotlight in my face, and the media loves writing about guys who flaunt the rules.”
“Christopher is one of the neighborhood kids, Ellen. I’ve known him since I was ten years old.”
She might have laughed at Lennon’s casual description of “neighborhood kids,” which brought to mind a motley gang riding bikes or playing ice hockey on frozen ponds in the winter. But like Ellen’s own, Lennon’s upbringing hadn’t exactly been traditional. She’d been raised in the exclusive Garden District of New Orleans, where kids lived in mansions and toured the continent during summer breaks.
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that I’ve known him a long time. Christopher may enjoy adventurous hobbies, but he’s no adrenaline junkie. He just likes to have fun—which is something you could use a little help with, I don’t mind saying.”
She should have known Lennon would drag her back here despite evasive maneuvers. “You call driving a car in circles at a hundred miles an hour fun?”
“He plays hard, but that’s only because he works so hard. He’s incredibly driven. Just like someone else I know.”
Her pointed stare left no doubt that she considered Ellen guilty of the same crime.
“Well, I don’t spend my weekends jumping out of airplanes, or scuba diving for sunken treasure.”
“I don’t always go into the Gulf with Josh on his week-long fishing excursions—and we make out just fine. A couple can enjoy individual interests. What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t equate the risk factor of deep-sea fishing with rappelling down a mountainside in the Rockies.”
“It could be dangerous if Josh was caught in a hurricane.”
“Josh won’t be caught in a hurricane unless he’s an idiot. They have meteorological satellites that track storms.”
Lennon was still battling that smile when Ellen slugged back the last of her latte and set the mug on the table.
“He thrives on breaking the rules,” she said. “I was just his challenge du jour.”
“You don’t believe Christopher cares about you?” That wiped away the last of Lennon’s humor. “Ellen, the guy’s crazy about you. I know because he told me.”
He told me, too.
With a sigh, she decided to make the argument she’d intended to reserve for herself. “If he was so crazy about me, then why couldn’t he compromise and do things the right way? Why did he just let me go? He made a few token phone calls and that was it. I haven’t heard from him in three months.”
“You wanted him to chase you?”
Ellen winced at how petty that reasoning sounded. And yes, she would even consider that her need to know he was the one might be petty in some regards. But she’d spent most of her life trying to prove herself—to her family, to the press, to her supervisors, to herself. Was it really so much to ask to be reassured that the man she married would always, always believe in her, no matter how rough-and-tumble life got? No matter how much baggage she came with?
“If he’d been the one, he would have been willing to compromise, Lennon, willing to find some way of accommodating both our needs. He wasn’t.”
It was her most fundamental rule of sound business: Choose your battles and only fight for what you believe in.
She obviously hadn’t been worth fighting for.
2
“THERE YOU ARE,” a familiar female voice called across the lobby, shattering the tense moment and buying Ellen a welcome reprieve. “You guys should have come with us. We had a blast.”
Blast appeared to be the equivalent of a rip-roaring time on the town, judging by the size of the tumblers the trio of women held. Hurricanes, if Ellen correctly identified the color through the plastic.
“Looks like we should get the waiter to bring espresso,” Lennon whispered as the women started toward them.
“It’ll only wake them up and make them even louder.”
Lennon grimaced. “Can’t you control them? They’re your authors.”
“They’re your friends.”
“I’d never have met them if you hadn’t taken us all out to that show at the Reno convention.”
Ellen’s rebuttal was lost when the trio descended, plunking down sweating plastic tumblers and dragging chairs around the table amid a chorus of hellos.
Susanna St. John, Tracy Owens and Stephanie Kondas were all successful romance authors at very different stages in their careers. Industry-savvy women, when they weren’t indulging in mobile Hurricanes, they hosted a Web community with Lennon, a place where readers could chat on bulletin boards, enter various contests and generally keep tabs on author news between book releases. Ellen enjoyed working with each of them.
“Oh, Stephanie pinched some man’s ass. I am so telling her husband,” Tracy, a die-hard glamour girl, informed them as she swept around the table, as dramatic as ever in a pale gold chiffon that swirled around her ankles.
Stephanie, the newest author of the group, was a slim, athletic-looking woman who admirably held her own with the three more experienced authors she’d embraced as friends. She plopped down with a scowl. “You dared me. I do not back down on a dare.”
Tracy winked slyly. “She had a death grip on his biscuit.”
“Well, he had some mighty fine biscuits. What can I say?”
“Save it for the husband.”
Ellen chuckled at the thought of sweet Stephanie trying to explain her antics to her equally sweet husband and kids.
“We’ve been drinking,” Susanna stated unnecessarily while arranging her black taffeta gown and maneuvering unsteadily into a chair. “Hope we’re not intruding.”
Screwing her smile back into place, Ellen ignored the way her jaw ached and decided she’d make out better by just leaving the smile on until the convention ended. “Of course not. Shall we order coffee?”
“And ruin this divine buzz?” Tracy asked incredulously. “I’ll just keep sipping my too-sweet alcoholic beverage, if you don’t mind.” Then she swept an unfocused gaze around the table. “Do you all realize this is the first chance we’ve had to talk privately? Between the publisher’s functions and the awards ceremony tonight, I’ve moderated three author discussions. Can you believe it?”
Actually, Ellen could. “Don’t you know how to say no?”
“Say no? You’re kidding, right?” Susanna shook her head. “Tracy’s been schmoozing the convention committee for months to be invited to fill these slots. She’s a glutton for attention.”
“My name looks good printed on the program.”
Lennon laughed. “With all your promotional efforts, I don’t know when you find the time to write. You put us all to shame.”
“That’s my job, dear.” Tracy glanced at her manicured nails, preening.
Ellen laughed, another one of those heartfelt, liberating chuckles that she hadn’t enjoyed nearly often enough of late. That was, of course, until she found herself the recipient of Susanna’s button-black stare.
Susanna St. John had been in the romance industry for years, writing for various publishing houses before becoming Ellen’s author. She routinely enjoyed a place on the New York Times bestseller list, and Ellen considered having acquired her a major feather in her cap.
But Susanna was also older than Ellen by almost a decade, had been in the business longer and possessed an unsettling knack for calling a spade a spade.
She wore one of those no-nonsense looks now. “What’s been up with you lately?”
An innocuous question in itself, but there was something less than offhand in her tone that caught Ellen’s attention. “Nothing much. Swamped as usual.”
Silence. A trio of tipsy gazes fixed on her, waiting…
“You’d tell me if I wasn’t living up to expectations, wouldn’t you?” Stephanie asked, a not-so-innocuous question.
As she was currently revising her third contracted book, Stephanie’s curiosity about her editor’s expectations was natural. But this question came out of left field, reinforcing Ellen’s impression that this conversation was headed somewhere.
“Of course I would. But wretched title aside, your latest book is coming along beautifully. You’re not letting these jaded old hacks worry you with their war stories, are you?”
