"Thanks, Carlotta," she said magnanimously, "but I have to work at Drake's tonight. Besides," she added before her mother had a chance to go off yet again about how Drake's was the biggest pond for fishing and how could Dorsey refuse to even sink a lure. "I don't think Hollis Barnett would be too happy about an uninvited guest showing up at her party."
"Oh, Hollis wouldn't mind a gate-crasher," Carlotta said. "That's how she met Mr. Barnett, by crashing his first wife's birthday party." She hesitated, then added thoughtfully, "Come to think of it, that's how I met Mr. Barnett, too." She shrugged the memory off quite literally and contemplated her choice of dresses once again. "But he ended up married to Hollis, didn't he?"
"Obviously," Dorsey replied obediently.
"It's just as well," her mother said with a quick wave of her bejeweled fingers. "He had terrible breath. I don't know how Hollis has managed all these years. She must have invested quite heavily in Binaca stock."
Dorsey chuckled. She was about to offer further commentary when the telephone on the nightstand purred with a delicate whir. Everything about Carlotta's room was delicate, from the rose-trellis wallpaper to the pink, poofy canopy bed, to the fringed ivory chaise longue, to the crystal lamps, to the floral, pastel rug. No one would ever accuse Carlotta MacGuinness of having anything even remotely resembling a Y chromosome, that was for sure. She was the very definition of femininity. Dorsey often wondered how they could possibly share the same strands of DNA.
Her mind still focused on the conundrum, she leaned over to answer the phone, muttering a perfunctory greeting as she pressed the receiver to her ear.
"Dorsey! Hi! It's Anita!"
Instinctively, Dorsey reacted as she always did when she heard Lauren Grable-Monroe's editor's voice coming through the phone line. First she shivered as cold fingers of terror began clawing at the back of her throat. Then she swallowed that terror until it ran amok as a cyclone of panic and discontent in the pit of her stomach. Then she battled a cloud of black foreboding and clung desperately with brittle fingers to what little composure she had left.
Then she told herself to stop being so melodramatic—unless she planned to have her option book be a Gothic romance—and switched on the speaker phone. Conversations with Anita Dixon, after all, always included Carlotta, too.
"It's Anita," she told her mother as she completed the action.
"Hallooo, Anita," Carlotta sang out as she reached again for the two dresses on the bed. She turned toward the mirror and held the green up before herself once more, her expression contemplative. "The last time you called," she said over her shoulder, "it was to tell us that How to Trap a Tycoon was going into its third printing. What delicious news do you have for us today?"
Dorsey could envision Anita Dixon sitting at her desk, a dark-haired, energetic waif furiously smoking a cigarette, having completed her lunch of Twinkies and espresso. She'd never met her editor in person and had no idea why she pictured Anita in such a way. The other woman simply sounded young, hyper, and brunette.
"Two words," Anita announced. "Book tour."
Book tour? Dorsey thought. Book tour? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. "I don't like those words," she told the editor. "Choose two more. Like 'good' and 'bye.'"
"How about 'network' and 'television'?" came Anita's response.
"No, I like those even less," Dorsey assured her.
"Get used to them, Dorsey," Anita told her. "Because Lauren Grable-Monroe is about to go national."
Oh, no, Dorsey thought. No, no, no, no, no.
Evidently taking her silence as a positive sign, Anita continued blithely, "The book is selling like crazy, and readers and booksellers are clamoring to meet Lauren. You wouldn't believe the mail we've received and the feedback our sales force is getting."
"But, Anita—" Dorsey cut in feebly.
So feebly, obviously, that Anita didn't even hear her. Because the editor continued quickly, "The American public wants Lauren. Badly. And Rockcastle Books wants to give her to them."
Give her to them? Dorsey echoed to herself. More like toss her to them. "Them" being not the American public, which actually connoted a rather warm, comfortable gathering of moms, baseball players, and grandmas holding apple pies, a fate that wouldn't be without its merits, actually. No, the "them" she visualized at Anita's assertion was a group more consistent with a pack of howling, rabid wolverines that were frothing at the mouth.
"But, Anita," she began to object, "how—"
"A book tour is the logical way to do that," her editor interrupted her. Again. "We want Lauren to speak and sign books in some of the larger cities, starting, naturally, with Chicago . And we're setting a place for her at Book Expo in the spring."
"But, Anita, how are you—"
"It's incredible, the response to this book, Dorsey. Good Morning America has already called twice. Twice. We can't put them off any longer. We don't want to put them off any longer. Do you know how hard it is to get time on national television? Yet they're calling us! It's phenomenal."
A wave of nausea rolled through Dorsey's midsection as she waited for Anita to come to a stopping point. The instant she heard her editor taking a breath, she jumped in, "And how are you going to manage this, Anita? Need I remind you that Lauren Grable-Monroe doesn't exist?"
Immediately, she regretted voicing the question. Not because she feared offending Anita, but because she feared the reply she just knew her editor was going to give her.
There was a thoughtful pause from the other end of the line. Then, softly, "No, Lauren doesn't exist," Anita agreed. "But, Dorsey … you do."
Aaaaaggggghhhh!
The silent scream unrolled in Dorsey's head, and it was with no small effort
