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  Yvette said, "What if they'd met before the book started? And do we really need depression in a hero? Don't you think Fabiolino might be on Zoloft for that, or maybe have some other problem?"

  "Like what? A bad back? An ulcer? Gingivitis?" George's new diamond pinky ring sparkled.

  Yvette looked pained. "That way, the sexual tension could already be thick and they could start right off with finding the body.”

  "Gingivitis?" I said. Who had asked Yvette here anyway? She was making all the men crazy. So she was a published author with editing experience. And so she was probably right about this one scene. But surely James didn't need such a complete and painful rewrite after all the help I'd—we'd—already given him.

  George's dark-rimmed glasses drooped. "Be careful prescribing Zoloft to your characters, James. Those antidepressants do their job so well that you're too happy to chase girls. And your libido … trashed." He reddened and cleared his throat. "Um, rough draft, Rhonda. He needs to hone it.”

  "But not destroy it," I said. How dare George aid and abet the insect? And why was he even talking tonight? Usually, George's muse kicked in at meetings, and he wrote half of his work sitting right in front of us. But tonight, he just sat and memorized Yvette's fuzzy pink chest.

  "It doesn’t need as much honing as your second drafts, George." Marian said.

  "Break time!" Jackie Shawn, our curvaceous hostess, breezed in with a tray full of cookies, pumpkin bread, coffee and tea. Amber eyes gleamed above her generous mouth, and her low, breathy Southern drawl rivaled Marilyn Monroe's in sex appeal.

  "Wait, I have something to read," I said. "In case we haphazard chatterboxes don't get back on track after break."

  Marian smirked at her knitting.

  I pulled out four new pages of my work in progress and read them aloud while the cookie munching began. Then I looked up for comments.

  "Clarify your character's motivations," George said, inhaling pumpkin bread.

  "I got lost somewhere after the lab explosion," Marian said, "But I liked that cute lab tech.”

  "More sex, honey," said Jackie. "Make 'em sweat."

  "I think it's great." James's boyish smile made my insides go all squishy.

  Yvette smiled painfully. "Oh dear. The scene's a total madhouse. Too many characters.”

  My hackles rose. Nobody got near my characters without my permission.

  "Well. If there's no other comment for Rhonda," Yvette turned to James and touched his pages. "James, I have an idea. Editing's dead easy for me. What say we nip out to Nick's for lunch Thursday, maybe work on your book? And since you're a novice, I'll skip the consulting fee." She trilled this last. "This time."

  My fingers itched to snap a tiny wrist or two. My reading had gotten roughly two seconds of discussion while James got a free consult? And she'd wormed more charmed and confused looks out of him in one evening than I'd managed in the ten months since he'd joined our group.

  "Hey, Rhonda. Want to come, too?" James's hair lock bobbed invitingly before Yvette leaned forward to block our line of vision.

  "Sure, Rhonda," Yvette said before I could go all warm and squishy again. "We can thin out your cast of subordinate characters down from seven to three or four. Trim the fat."

  Was she eyeing my midsection? I'd just lost ten pounds. I checked my pockets for matches to set her hair on fire.

  She continued, "I mean, take your nerdy chem-lab sidekick with the four Ping-Pong tables, the pet gerbils, and the fear of nitrogen and spandex—not very 3-D. Is he necessary, Rhonda?"

  "Joe Chemlab?" I thumped the thick paper manuscript that Jackie had just returned to me. "In my first book, Memory Serves, he was the guy who found the cure. And in this new book, which is a sequel to that, he's a victim. Hey, everyone, cross your fingers. The whole Memory Serves manuscript went off to four interested agents on Friday.”

  "Yay!" they all sang, tea cups clinking. "Here's to Rhonda's bestseller!"

  Little pink talons glommed onto my copy of Memory Serves and Yvette stuck her nose inside. Hah. She'd see just how much our group could do without a "leader.”

  Memory Serves had been so easy to write. Although I knew a vast majority of books never made it to print, I could feel in my bones that this would be my breakout book, the real start of my paid writing career. My first two books, paranormal romances, hadn't been published. No editor or agent five years before had wanted a love story between a vampire and a mermaid, even if the hero became a shrimp-lover to please the fish-lady and she resigned herself to his guano trailing around the house. My first published book, a children's adventure about a warrior bat and his feisty female fish friend, sort of a Stellaluna Meets Nemo, was still finding its audience.

  But my latest book idea, Memory Serves, was so great that I'd gone against my parents' advice and taken a month off work this last summer to finish it, and was now hawking it widely to agents and editors. Synchronicity had found four agents asking me for full manuscripts, all this very week. It had been a bit naughty to send all four at the same time, as most agents preferred not to waste their time on reading a manuscript when another agent might snap it up, but I was desperate. My work hours had been cut in half when I had returned to work from my month off, and now my savings were almost gone. I needed this book to sell, and quickly. Besides, how would the agents know I'd sent it to other agents? They were rivals, not friends.

  "Well, I'm not asking for a bestseller right off the bat," I said. "I just want a little book contract to help me with mortgage payments.”

  "On your half-million-dollar condo in Rancho Santa Margarita," George mumbled.

  Okay. So I was hoping for a bestseller. But even if this book had mild success, I could build on that and some day maybe live my dream: to write full-time.

  "Still dreaming about writing full-time?" George asked.

  I went red. "If I have to get some seventy-hour-a-week job, I'll never have time to write another word."

  Yvette looked up smugly. "The true writer cannot be stopped. He writes anywhere—in the lift or in the loo, if necessary."

  Marian nodded. "On paper towels and napkins."

  Jackie said, "I once wrote a poem on a sanitary napkin."

  Marian said, "And we sweat over this stuff for years and get thirty-nine cents per paperback and have to pay taxes and Medicare out of that. Only the big guns can make a living off it.”

  "James Patterson and Nora Roberts," agreed Jackie. "I've had several book contracts, but I still can't quit my day job or go live in Bel Air." Jackie sold solar heaters, and from the looks of her house, business was good. "But the point is we still do it because we love it."

  James changed the subject, making eye contact with me again around Yvette. "Come on, Rhonda. Lunch'll be fun,"

  What a sly dude, acting all innocent, like he hadn't emailed me that very morning, telling me he was lonely since his last breakup and asking me for a lunch date at Darya Delhi tomorrow, a full day before this proposed meeting with Yvette. Well, after what I had planned for this evening, James would only have lunch dates with me, anyway.

  I winked at him. "I don't know. Nick's is so far from the library. And I've already had three long lunches this month. Marla will take me off the reference desk and put me back in filing if I'm late again." Oops. Open mouth, insert foot.

  "Three long lunches?" Jackie said, bringing in fresh muffins.

  "Blueberry. Mmmm." I reached for one, but she pulled the tray away.

  Brushing cookie crumbs off her low-necked sweater, Jackie plunked her ample fake-blond self down between me and the food. She gazed at me over her reading glasses. "I need details, Rhonda. Who? What? When? Where? And what did you wear?"

  Deflect, deflect. "Are those new dishes, Jackie?" I pointed at the gold-rimmed fantasia of dishes displayed in a new cherry china cabinet.

  "Faberge Anais Palace," she breathed, like she'd just kissed someone. "Thirteen hundred dollars per place setting. My dre
am-ware.”

  "Where'd you get the new china cabinet?" I said, reaching around her toward a muffin.

  She slapped my hand away. "Good try, dear, but you got no details, you get no muffins."

  "Work it, Jackie." George grinned like a hyena. "You know how long it's been since that Peter episode. Rhonda's gotta be desperate for a boyfriend. Is this bread homemade? Mmm."

  Okay. It was true. I had been loved and left so many times that there were now neon ARRIVAL and DEPARTURE boards posted outside my condo. But since when was George authorized to keep track of all the trains leaving my station?

  Frowning at her yarn, Marian said, "No, no. Rhonda’s not desperate. A desperate woman would have kept Peter or Josh or—"

  "People!" I said.

  "Sam," George said, deadpan.

  "Yeah, Rhonda." Jackie shook her head. "Those science lab losers—Salami Sam and Peter Pan—with their heads lost in test tubes? Girl. You can do better."

  "Wasn't Josh a tuba player?" George said, waggling horn-playing fingers, the pinky ring twinkling outrageously.

  "George," I snarled, "is this payback for that comment I made last week about your scene reminding me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?"

  George grinned.

  Jackie said, "Tubes, tuba, whatever. Our Rhonda's an independent woman who deserves a real relationship, with real limousine-and-flower, multiple-karat romance, not that graduate student moped-and-ramen stuff. Living in some old garage—"

  "With some pimply guy gambling away all her savings," George stage-whispered.

  Ooh. That one stung.

  "Marian? Can't we give her any pointers?” George went on. “She can't pick a decent guy to save her life."

  "Enough, George!" Of all the nights for this group to start in on me. As the baby of my family, I had endured plenty of teasing in my life, but tonight, to win James, I needed to project Grace Kelly, not Paris Hilton.

  Marian came to my aid. "Like George knows anything about love. Check his latest love scene, people." She shuffled her papers, adjusted her bifocals, and read: "He took an armload of her outfield, looked meaningfully down toward his home plate and said, 'Babe, I think your batter's up.'"

  Snorts and snickers bounced off Jackie's new chandeliers. Yvette's lips puckered. How haphazard of us.

  Marian poured tea. "So who else wrote something this week?"

  "Not me." Jackie nudged me. "But Rhonda, back to your new long-lunch hottie. How big is his bat? Can I use him for my next hero? Pitcher, catcher, pirate or man about town?"

  Yvette smiled up from my book. "Our little Rhonda's a pirate's treasure?"

  I had to endure patronizing from Yvette now? "Look, there is no he." I looked to James for support, but the traitor was cozily reading my book over Yvette's shoulder. I narrowed my eyes at Jackie. "Hey. Has anyone tried the new George Bonner and Jackie Shawn Memorial Tollway yet?"

  Grins all around.

  I sighed. "Okay. Fine. My long lunches have all been spent in Sports of Call, looking for ska-sheets.”

  Crap. I'd almost said skates. I was skirting disaster here. This group knew James played street hockey and roller hockey. What they didn’t know was that I had recently run across my old inline skates from high school, when Harley and I had practiced speed skating against my brothers, who had competed statewide. We’d been good. Now, I'd started doing some outdoor skating practice to fight flab, and it was a blast, just wicked fun. It would be even more fun when James and I went rollerblading at Venice Beach, my dream date. But Venice Beach was a drive. The roller rink was closer, so at Sports of Call, I'd just splurged on a gorgeous new pair of quad roller skates, which were slower but maneuvered better for indoor skating. If this bunch found out about my skating practice or my new skates, they'd kid both James and me to death and surely wreck my chances with him.

  “Yeah, sheets,” I said, decisively.

  "Sheets for him? Scarlet silk or black satin?" Jackie drawled, mistaking my blush for an admission of guilt.

  "Us library nerds sleep on parchment," I said. "Uh. Care to read some pages, George?"

  "Rhonda, you don't go to Sports of Call for sheets," Marian said.

  I checked my watch. "Look, if no one else wrote anything new, I'll see ya." I rose and started to push past Jackie, who blocked my way.

  "But you might go there to visit a boyfriend," Jackie trilled. "Is he that guy at the ski counter? Or a mountain climber? No. I know. A surfer. Smoking hot in a Speedo with washboard abs. With your lifesaving skills, Rhonda, you could administer CPR daily.”

  George sang under his breath, "Help me, Rhonda.”

  Jackie chimed in. “Help, help me …”

  “Rhonda!” they all yelled at the tops of their lungs. My lips could have pressed pennies as the whole group broke into a bawdy Beach Boys cacophony, even James joining in, completely off-key. Only Yvette stayed mum, frown lines deepening in her forehead as she kept reading my magnum opus.

  Oh, to hell with my short skirt. I hoisted a knee to crawl right over Jackie just as Yvette broke in, in piercing tones. "Excuse me! Sit down, Rhonda! This is exactly why this group needs a leader.”

  The group ignored her, singing even louder.

  Yvette yelled, "Has anyone read the new Reynard Jackson book, Memory Wars?"

  Jackson was a reclusive genius who had rocketed to the bestseller list three years before, with four new titles out per year since then. His whereabouts were a state secret. His work was slick, predictable, shallow, uneven, and unaccountably beloved by millions of readers.

  I sat down and squinched my eyes shut. If I didn't look at the group, maybe they'd all stop bawling at me to get her out of their hearts.

  Over their cackles and bawls, Yvette shrilled, "People! This is disturbing. I read constantly for my job, but this is really bad." She pointed at my manuscript like it was rat droppings.

  "Could we get a muzzle for her?" I said to Jackie, who elbowed me hard.

  The room sullenly quieted down. This woman was such a wet blanket.

  Yvette smiled in triumph. "You see, I've already read this exact story. Last week. In a published work. The chubby strawberry-blond main character here?" She held up my manuscript. "Well, Reynard Jackson's latest protagonist is a chubby strawberry-blond—"

  "Oh, strawberry-blond characters are a dime a dozen," George said, still feeling his oats. "And Rhonda always writes 'em chubby … Takes one to know—Ouch!"

  Marian of the steel-toed pumps smiled.

  Yvette slammed my manuscript down on the table. "But wait. Jackson's strawberry-blonde neuroscientist, Dr. Amelia Steele, discovers a memory serum that will cure not only her great aunt's Alzheimer's, but also her handsome, shell-shocked army captain with amnesia who can only be saved by knowing the truth about his dark past.”

  I looked up, my stomach sinking.

  She went on. "Dr. Steele and Captain Russell Bonner work against an evil drug company, Sinbad Pharmaceuticals. It sells expensive anti-Alzheimer's drugs and will stop at nothing to keep Dr. Steele's permanent cure for the disease off the market. The heroes nearly get killed in the process of saving old people's memories everywhere.”

  Silence in the room.

  Jackie looked sick. "Oh, my God. If you change the names, that's Rhonda's book!"

  CHAPTER 3

  A longer silence fell, during which my world tilted and a trap door opened under my feet.

  "What the hell?" I yelled, shooting up from the table to challenge her. "What are you talking about?" Jackie put a hand on my arm, but I shook it off. "Ms. Winkler, this is just mean. You've said nothing but nasty things about everyone here all night."

  Yvette looked stunned.

  Marian said, "Ms. Winkler. We respect your ability as an editor, but you can't be right. We've watched Rhonda develop her plot and characters over several months.”

  Yvette, leaning back toward James, said the unthinkable. "Since the beginning?"

&nbs
p; Carb gluttony in the room had stopped. Sympathy? Or relief that it wasn't them? Horror stories of plagiarized manuscripts ran rife among writers.

  I turned purple and grabbed Yvette's arm. "Where is this book? Let me see it!"

  Jackie put her arms around my waist and pulled me off Yvette, who ran behind James and hid.

  "Now calm down, Rhonda. When did Rhonda join us, Marian? Last summer?" George said.

  "In December, right before James," I said, smoke curling out of my ears. Jackie kept hold of my skirt to keep me in check.

  George frowned. "Yeah. Rhonda had her first draft done already, and I introduced her to my daughter's friend in neurobiology at UCI to help her with the science terms.”

  "Stop talking about me in third person!" I yelled. "I'm not a baby. Show me this other book! NOW!"

  Yvette shrugged. "I didn't buy it—I skimmed it in the bookstore."

  Marian ventured, "Ms. Winkler. Rhonda's protagonists are Lieutenant Russ Boone and a plump redhead, Dr. Amanda Steale, who nearly get axed by Eastern Drugs.

  Jackie added, "Whose grandmother is sick."

  Yvette rolled her eyes. "Don't quibble. The two books are too close, although Mr. Jackson's version is, in my opinion, miles better written than yours. Put the same plot in more capable hands …"

  I wrenched away from Jackie and launched myself at Yvette, but James caught me by the arms and pulled me into his lap, becoming my living straitjacket. In other circumstances, my body would have melted right into his like a cat in a cushion, but now I fought him in a blind panic, seeing only months of my hard work, my first winning series idea after years of trial and error, my soul-felt hope for a place in publishing, washed down the sewer in a freak flash flood.

  "Hey," James tried for levity, while keeping a painful grip on my wrists. "Remember Rhonda's professor character named Dr. Robert Einstein who studied gravity? Bet he's not in Jackson's book.”