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