Emily was almost beet red in the face with Rina's blunt questions. 'If it was my first time, Rina,' she said, 'how would I know if he was good?'
'You'd know,' Rina replied. 'It's instinct.'
'Then he's good.'
'Why now? And why him?' Rina wondered. 'Oh, the sexy book.' She started putting fresh pillow slips on the pillows.
'Hey, he's my editor, and he's supposed to help me,' Emily responded with a little grin. 'And his career is just as much on the line as mine. He's not married, and he's not involved with anyone else, so why not him?'
'Well,' Rina said, 'he looks like a great first-timer. Why didn't you use the Channel?'
'It seems their reality and this reality have to be in sync for it to work,' Emily explained. She sighed. 'And my new hero looks just like Devlin. Go figure.'
Rina nodded. 'Then you wanted him right from the get-go,' she said as they tucked in the sheet and fluffed the down coverlet.
'It was the oddest thing, Rina. The second our eyes met I felt as though someone had hit me in the pit of my stomach. I felt like I knew Michael Devlin even though I had never before set eyes on him. Go figure that one out. Don't put the spread on.'
Rina chuckled. 'Okay,' she said, grinning. 'Then I had better get going. I'll go get you some birth control samples from Sam. Pills or the patch?'
'Devlin went to get condoms. It's okay for this weekend,' Emily replied.
'Unless he gotcha the first time,' Rina considered.
'Rina, you know women don't get pregnant the first time,' Emily told her.
Rina Seligmann looked both astounded and appalled at the same time. 'Who in the name of God ever told you that?' she wanted to know. 'Not your grans.'
'I guess I wasn't thinking too straight at that moment,' Emily muttered.
'Oy vay!' Rina muttered. 'When your editor goes home tomorrow you come right over and let Sam have a look at you, Emily Shanski. I promised both your grans on their deathbeds that I'd look after you, and I'm not about to break such a promise.'
'You mean I could have gotten… could be pregnant from that one time? Oh, my God, Rina! Then why the hell did my friends in college say stuff like that if it wasn't so?' Emily looked distinctly unhappy. 'God, I'm Katy O'Malley all over again, and I've tried so hard not to be.' She looked like she was going to burst into tears.
Rina put comforting arms about Emily. 'Sweetie, it's all right. More than likely you aren't pregnant, but you've got to be careful. Girls in school believe all kinds of silly things in order to justify behavior they know damned well they shouldn't be doing.' She laughed lightly. 'Come see Sam Monday after Hot Stuff has gone back to the city, but I'm sure you're okay.' She set Emily back a pace, and wiped a tear from her cheek. 'And you are nothing like Katy O'Malley. You are sweet and thoughtful and very dear. That woman who birthed you has none of those qualities.'
'You never liked my mother, did you, Rina?' Emily said.
'No, I don't like her. But neither do I dislike her. She just isn't my cuppa, sweetie. I guess it's that too-cool, too-sure-of-herself attitude that gets me. I remember when your gran died. Her own mother, and she didn't show up until the morning of the funeral. Came in a limousine, as I recall. And left immediately afterward. Didn't even stay for the luncheon you had arranged for the mourners.'
'She had to get back to D.C., she said,' Emily remembered. 'An important deposition, as I recall. Some big case she was working on.'
'She could have rescheduled it. It was her mother, for God's sake,' Rina said sharply. 'But your gran always said Katy let nothing stand in the way of her success. Not even having a baby.' She took up the sheets. 'I'll stick these in your laundry on my way out. I don't want to run into himself on his way back from the drugger.'
'Thanks,' Emily said. 'And Rina…'
The older woman turned. 'Yeah?'
'I love you,' Emily told her.
'Go on with yis,' Rina Seligmann said, using what had been a favorite expression of Emily's grandmother O'Malley. Then with a smile she hurried down the stairs.
Emily looked about the room. It looked the same, and yet she would never look at this room again in the same way. It was in this room that she had lost her virginity. She still felt a little sore, but she would live. She heard the front door open and close as Rina left. Well, she had better go downstairs herself and decide what to do for dinner. There was beef left over from last night. And gravy. Lots of gravy. Open-faced hot roast-beef sandwiches and a salad sounded good. And a dessert. She'd do a simple yellow cake with raspberry jam between the three layers and powdered sugar on the top.
Michael Devlin found her in the kitchen when he returned from his shopping expedition. 'Mission accomplished!' he told her, holding up a little bag. 'But before I take you to bed again, Miss Shanski, I want to know something about this book you are going to write. And I want to know if there is a wonderful restaurant in Egret Pointe where we may have dinner tonight. I'll book a reservation now.'
'I thought I'd do dinner for us. Just leftovers, and this cake I'm putting in the oven now,' Emily told him. 'But we could have it for tea.'
'No, I want to take you out,' he said firmly.
'Let me think,' Emily said. Lord, Saturday night was the night that everyone who was anyone in Egret Pointe ate out. If they saw her with a strange man it was sure as hell bound to cause talk. And she did not want to answer any questions. At least, not yet. 'I think the nicest restaurant around is the old inn up in East Harbor. It's a bit of a drive, but it's along the bay road, and quite pretty. Would you mind?'
'No,' he said. 'How long a drive?'
'About half an hour,' she told him, closing the oven door on the three cake pans and setting her timer for thirty minutes. She drew open a cabinet drawer and pulled out the local Yellow book. 'Here. Better call them now. Saturday night's a big night, especially at this time of year. Spring seems to bring everyone out again.'
He took the directory from her, found the number, and, using his cell, called to make a reservation. 'Eight o'clock all right for you?' he asked.
Emily nodded, then said, 'I'll go get my notes. With cake in the oven I'd rather do our work here, if you don't mind.' He didn't, and she was quickly back, carrying a wire basket and a pink file folder. 'Sit,' she told him, and took a chair for herself.
'You haven't written anything yet?' he asked.
'No,' Emily answered him. 'Only a couple of descriptions. I wanted to run some things by you first. I always did that with Rachel, and talking over the plotline usually makes everything clearer for me. Can we work that way too?'
'Of course,' he agreed. 'I'm not here to change your work habits. Just to help you to get back on track. Sex, as you've now discovered,' he said with a mischievous grin, 'does happen in real life, and so your plot should reflect real life too.'
'I don't know enough about sex yet,' she told him, 'so why don't we just start with the main focus of the plot?'
'Go,' he said with a nod.
'You know the story of the Scarlet Pimpernel?' Emily asked.
'I do. Great swashbuckling tales of Sir Percy Blakely by Baroness Orczy.'
'Same sort of thing, but with my heroine in the Sir Percy role,' she told him.
'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why is she traveling into France to rescue people from the Terror?' he wanted to know. 'There has to be a damned good reason.'
'Her mother is a French noblewoman, her father an English earl. Caroline is seventeen, and has been in Normandy with her mother for almost a year. They had gone the previous summer to visit her mother's family. The
