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?”
Tracy huffed. “Watch who you’re calling old there, Ms. I’m-getting-ready-to-turn-thirty.”
“You’re right behind me, Ms. I’m-getting-ready-to-turn-thirty-a-month-after-me.” Ellen forced a laugh, but she caught Lennon’s frown across the table.
“What else did you do on Bourbon Street tonight, besides pound Hurricanes?” Lennon neatly diverted the conversation.
“Visited a few sex toy stores to get ideas for our books,” Tracy said.
“And pinched a few cute butts.” Stephanie grinned.
“The usual Saturday night fare for horny women,” Susanna added. “You’ve been so busy that we haven’t had a chance to chat. How’s the family? Parents, siblings, all those aunts, uncles and cousins doing okay?”
Ellen nodded. “Everyone’s fine. How’s Joey making out?”
Susanna’s son had recently started summer session here in New Orleans at Tulane University, leaving Susanna, a divorcée of many years, with an unusually quiet house in Shreveport.
