How To Host A Seduction

She needed a good diversion right now.

A quizzical lift of dark brows hinted that Vittorio wasn’t turned down very often. Ellen would have felt bad, but the man appeared to have enough women fawning over him. So technically she was saving him from disappointment—because she didn’t fawn. Ever.

“Right. Okay.” He eyed her as though something had taken place and he hadn’t yet figured out what.

His groupies obviously recognized the power shift, though, and stopped glaring long enough to console him, enveloping him in a press of bodies and a cloud of expensive perfume. Vittorio took his cue to leave, with a dashing smile and a jauntily delivered “Good night.”

Ellen watched him go, marveled that not one of those women had objected to him asking her out in their presence. No, they’d glared at her, instead, like she’d forced him to flirt.

“Why me?” she asked.

The question had been rhetorical, but Lennon obliged her, anyway. “It’s your hair. That swingy new style.” Her gaze shot straight to the hairstyle in question. “I love it.”

“My stylist gets the credit.” Ellen sat back down and reached for her mug. “He promised me something different.” She shook her head, still enjoying the way her shorter, fuller style swung around her face when she moved.

“What made you decide to cut all your hair off?”

“A change to celebrate my upcoming thirtieth birthday.”

She wouldn’t admit that he’d been attracted to her long hair, but a line from an old song echoed in her memory.

I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair….

Well, Ellen had cut him right out of hers.

“Your new style makes your face softer somehow,” Lennon said. “And it’s amazing how the change draws attention to your skin. You’ve got this whole creamy Snow White thing going on. No wonder Vittorio is smitten.”

“I hope I didn’t put you in an awkward position,” Ellen said, though she didn’t feel the least bit repentant.

“He doesn’t need my help to get a date. Besides, his ego is rock solid. I don’t think he even realized he was in over his head.” Lennon sank back into her chair and grabbed her latte. “So what didn’t you like about him?”

“You know my family. Can you see me bringing home a man who uses more cream rinse than I do?”

Lennon burst into laughter, drawing the attention of a nearby bartender. “That’s not difficult with your new hairstyle. But you’re selling Vittorio short. He may have an ego the size of the Southern Hemisphere but he’s got a heart of pure gold.”

A heart of pure gold would not make the difference. Her family was already tolerant enough of her foibles. Bringing home a man with whom the media would have a field day would cast doubt on her sanity. She could already see the headline: Senator’s Daughter Plays Fantasy Games with a Hero From a Trashy Romance Novel.

Her mother, of course, in an effort to help, would likely direct her wayward youngest to the nearest psychiatric facility.

It’s for the best, Ellen, really. Let’s give you a chance to take a deep breath and clear your head, reassess your priorities and reexamine the objective. We’ll tell the press you’re suffering stress from your bohemian career….

All for Mr. Muscle-Butt?

She’d pass, thank you.

Sometimes Ellen thought that as an infant she must have been left in a basket on the front doorstep. In a family of high achievers, she always seemed to be a step behind. Her siblings had all gone into law, yet she’d chosen publishing. They were all still scratching their heads over that one. Perhaps if she edited more literary fare, or even better, nonfiction…

Her parents had assured her long ago that she hadn’t been a foundling they’d taken in as a charitable publicity stunt for some campaign. And given that she resembled other family members, Ellen was forced to take them at their word.

But she still didn’t feel like she’d ever make the cut.

None of her siblings had ever been questioned about whether they were the “right fit” for the fancy private schools the Talbot children had attended while growing up. But Ellen had.

She’s very creative, the administrators had said, not sufficiently goal-oriented. Perhaps she’d be better suited to a school with a less ambitious curriculum.

With the clarity of that twenty-twenty hindsight, Ellen thought the administrators might have been right. Especially after the summer debacle when her older sister Leah had been chosen student ambassador for their school. Their parents had decided the family should accompany Leah on her tour of the continent to support her in her new duties. A great plan that the whole family had quickly embraced.

Until Ellen’s report card had arrived.

Her grades had nosedived so much during the previous two semesters that the school had considered retaining her. Of course, her grades had only nosedived because she’d been struggling so hard to grasp pre-algebra and she’d only gotten so far behind because she’d been determined to solve the problem herself….

The choices had been to leave Ellen home with her grandparents for a stint in summer school or to hire a tutor to travel with the family. Believing in always keeping a united front, her parents had opted for the latter solution and amended their travel arrangements to afford Ellen time to study in the hotel rooms during the mornings.

That was just one example. Unfortunately, the list went on and on. And after this latest episode with him…

Lennon peered at her over the rim of her mug. “I want you to have fun while you’re in town. What was it Mr. Bingley said to Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice? ‘I wouldn’t be as fastidious as you are for a kingdom’?”

“Humph.” Ellen dismissed her with a laugh. “Spoken by a woman who just married a hero straight off the cover of one of her books.”

“A man you said existed only in books, incidentally.”

“So you found the only one who didn’t, lucky girl.” Ellen managed to keep a straight face. Josh Eastman was a doll, definitely the perfect man for Lennon—but a hero? Well, Lennon thought so and that was all that counted.

Lennon’s smile faded. Leaning forward intently, she tapped her manicured nails on the tabletop, and her sudden intensity put Ellen on red alert.

The subject of romance heroes and whether such beasts actually existed off the written page was a topic much debated, and one that would logically lead to…

“Auntie Q found you a hero, too, but you threw him back,” Lennon said, right on cue.

Ah, here they were, at the place Ellen had been sidestepping for three months. Only, this time she couldn’t hang up the phone. She would finally have to face the subject of him.

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?”

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.

“Great. Except that life without mom-the-maid is coming as a shock. For me, too. I’m astounded at how much I’m not running the washing machine.”

Susanna laughed, but Lennon eyed her narrowly. “Don’t let her fool you, Ellen. I happen to know she just dropped big bucks on a laptop so she can still work when the urge to hop in her car and visit Joey strikes.”

Ellen guessed this might have something to do with Lennon’s invitation for Susanna to participate in Miss Q’s murder-mystery training. “A laptop is a good idea with your tight schedule.”

“My schedule,” Susanna said, “wouldn’t be nearly so tight if I hadn’t forgotten how to write a decent hero. But alas…” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I have, which means I’ve been riding my deadlines because I’m rewriting half my books.”

“You, too?” Tracy chimed in, peering at Susanna with what had to be feigned astonishment. “I’ve forgotten how to write a decent hero, too. I don’t know what’s going on. If I’d turned thirty already, I might worry about senility, but as I’m still in my twenties—”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Stephanie covered her eyes with a shaky hand. “I thought I was the only one having this problem. The rewrites on this book have been so extensive that I’m completely off schedule with my other projects. And if I miss my deadline, I’ll never sell another book.”

“Try not to let revisions undermine your confidence,” Susanna suggested pragmatically. “Revisions are just part of the process. Right, Ellen?”

Ellen stared at the three tipsy faces, recognized high drama at its finest, and knew this scene had been staged, rehearsed and fortified with alcohol.