idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you write by the seat of your pants? Or do you know every detail ahead of time when you sit down at the computer?”
Right this minute he wished to be a plotter but was pretty sure the first one described him best. “That’s really hard to say.”
“Okay.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Then let’s talk about your characters.”
Oh, boy. He could really use an interruption about now. A phone call, package delivery, or a little rocket attack. “The thing is, I don’t have all the characters set in stone yet. Still trying to flesh them out.”
“You have Mac,” she pointed out.
Good old Mac. “I do have him.”
“What’s happened to him in the time since we left him at the end of book one?”
“That’s a good question. I’m glad you asked.” Not.
She waited for him to elaborate. So it was safe to say she wasn’t an interrupter. Boy, did he wish she was.
“So,” Jack said. “He’s been kicking around.”
“In Los Angeles? Or has he gone to Dallas, Topeka, or Micronesia?” The perky, trying-to-be-helpful tone was missing in action from her voice.
“He hasn’t moved.” And that was Jack’s fault because he hadn’t moved his main character.
“In the last book he had just left the army and had no plan for his life before being pulled into that case involving his dead buddy’s younger brother, who was married to his ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” Funny how the no-plan-for-his-life part sounded a lot like Jack.
“How is he supporting himself?”
“Odd jobs. This and that.” And in a military operation when you wanted to avoid direct confrontation with an enemy that had superior firepower, a good soldier created a diversion. He took a piece of paper from the printer tray beside him. “I put together some things for you to research.”
Erin’s eyes narrowed as she took it from him, then scanned the list. “Meteors? Dinosaurs?” She met his gaze. “You probably already know that Jurassic Park has been done.” She looked down again. “Jet Skis?”
“All things I’m considering incorporating into the story.”
With careful, precise movements she folded the single sheet several times before slicing him with a look. “What’s going on, Jack?”
“I need you to look stuff up.”
“No, you don’t. You’re trying to distract me and it’s time for you to cut the crap.”
“Is that any way to talk to your employer?”
“Technically I work for the publishing house, specifically your editor. So, yeah, it’s a very good way to address a man who is not forthcoming.”
“What makes you think something’s going on?” Besides the fact that he kept dodging her direct questions?
“Classic avoidance. And to quote Shakespeare—‘let me count the ways.’” She held up her fingers. “You won’t talk about the story, characters or what your hero has been doing. I’m pretty sure that means you have no idea. And every time I push for information, you come up with a distraction. Some ridiculous research stuff that has nothing to do with your genre. One hundred and one ways to be romantic—really, Jack? You even threw me out of my room and kicked me downstairs.” She took a breath. “So call me paranoid and neurotic—”
“Don’t forget punctual,” he added helpfully.
“—but I’m suspicious,” she continued without missing a beat after his interjection. “Your editor would welcome an outline of the project. Not details, necessarily, just the beginning, middle and end of the story. Possibly a one-line characterization of the hero.”
Jack met her gaze, stare for stare. Her perky, cheerful interrogation might have given him a sense of her being a pushover. Now he saw the error of that assumption. She was sunshine and steel.
Still, he couldn’t resist trying one more time. “There’s nothing to be suspicious about. I’m in the process of pulling all the threads together.”
“Then let me see your pages.” She suddenly stood and moved around the desk to look at his computer monitor. “It’s not even turned on.”
“That’s easy to rectify.”
“Okay. Let me see the work you’ve done so far.”
This time Jack did squirm, and Harley had disappeared down the hall so there was no way to keep Erin from noticing. “The work needs editing—”
She held up a hand. “There’s something wrong and I want to know what it is. I’m here to help you finish this manuscript and I can’t if you’re hiding something.”
Her relentless questions were like water dripping on a stone, wearing away the outer protection. Jack was at a crossroads. He knew what it looked like because he’d seen it before in the heat of battle when there was no wiggle room left. Almost always a course of action revealed itself and this situation was no different. Her counteroffensive left him no choice. He had to tell the truth or lie to her and he couldn’t do that.
“So quit stalling and turn on the monitor, Jack. Let me see your work.”
“I haven’t started it.”
“Of course not today. The laptop isn’t even on yet. I want to see what you’ve got so far,” she stressed.
“You don’t understand.” He met her gaze.
“Then enlighten me.”
“I have nothing. There is no book.”
Erin blinked several times, letting the words sink in, while slowly lowering herself into the chair. “What do you mean there’s no book? What do you do up here all day?”
“I write pages. Every single day. Then I delete them because they’re all crap.”
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. The chant went through her mind as she desperately tried to think of something helpful to say. “Is everything deleted?”
“I have about twenty pages.”
“Let me see them.” Was her voice even and unemotional? She hoped it didn’t show the panic that was slowly creeping in as the magnitude of this situation became clear.
Jack turned on the computer and pulled up a file, then hit the print button. When the last page came out he handed them to her.
Erin started reading and with the turn of every page her heart sank a little more. There was nothing wrong with the writing and there was a wry, masculine voice to the work, but it was all internal dialogue from Mac Daniels’s point of view. Nothing particularly exciting was going on. Quite frankly there was a very high boredom factor but no way could she tell him that. His instincts, however, were right about the quality of these pages.
She looked up and met his gaze. “I have to agree with you. This isn’t your best work.”
“Since you showed up we’ve disagreed on almost everything. I was hoping that streak would continue.” His mouth pulled tight for a moment, then he rubbed Harley’s head when the dog jumped back into his lap and looked at him. The animal apparently felt his tension. “So you think it’s crap, too.”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t panic.”
Jack looked the opposite of panicked—cool, calm collected. And she needed to be that way, too. This was why she was