"Then in their senior year Joe led our local high school team to its first state football championship. He was that boy quarterback you see in those movies Hollywood made in the 1940s. Katy was the cute blue-eyed head cheerleader. Everyone knew Joe Shanski and Katy O'Malley. And everyone loved them. Even their peers. The whole town got drunk celebrating. Katy and Joe got a little drunker, and continued their celebration in the back of his car. In the morning both admitted it was a mistake. They decided they'd forget about it, and went back to their old best-friends routine. They were both a little embarrassed by the whole thing, Joe has said." She filled her plate with eggs and sausages and sat down at the table with him.
"But then you came along," Devlin said with a small smile.
"Yep," Emily agreed. "That I did. When Katy realized, she told Joe, and then they told the grans. Grandpa Shanski was already gone, leaving Grandma a widow with two sons to raise. By this time it was March. Katy had a scholarship to Wellesley, and Joe had one to Princeton. They couldn't have gone to such wonderful schools without those scholarships, and both had serious careers in mind. So Katy hid her condition in order to avoid getting kicked out of high school, and the grans sneaked them off to another town for a nice civil marriage ceremony so I'd be born on the proper side of the blanket. After their graduation Katy was supposed to go off to Europe on a grand tour before college. Actually she went into a nice church home for naughty girls until she had her baby. I was supposed to be put out for adoption to a good Catholic family, but once the grans saw me they agreed they couldn't let me go, and took me themselves to raise."
"Your parents divorced then?" he said.
"Actually the civil union was annulled on the grounds that Katy was under the age of consent when they had married. The fact that their parents had arranged the marriage in the first place was conveniently overlooked. And this allowed both Katy and Joe to be married in the church when they finally chose mates one day, which of course they did. Katy went to Yale Law after Wellesley, and eventually married Carter Phelps the Fourth. She has two kids, Phoebe and Carter the Fifth. Joe's a doctor, a pediatrician, actually. He married a nice Irish girl named Mary Shannon, and they have three sons, Joe, Frank, and Sean."
"You don't call your parents Mom and Dad," he noted.
"I never thought of them like that," Emily said. "My mother and I never saw each other at all except at Christmas, when she came home because my Grandmother O'Malley insisted she do so. I don't think she ever even thought of me except when she had no other choice. Please don't misunderstand, though. Katy's a nice lady, and a good mother to my half brother and sister, but for her I was a mistake to be forgotten. Of course, when she married Carter the Fourth she had to tell him about her little slip from grace before the engagement was announced. They both knew Carter the Fourth would be going into politics. I was displayed most prominently at their society wedding with Gran O'Malley. Carter the Fourth had wanted me to be a flower girl, but Katy drew the line at that." Emily chuckled. "I was referred to as her child from a brief high school union that had been annulled. I like Carter and his kids. My half sister is actually quite a fan of mine. Katy is quite astounded by my career and by my success. Now and again you'll see a media piece referring to me as Senator Phelps of Virginia's stepdaughter. But not often. I prefer to be my own woman."
"I've discovered that," he said, reaching for another of her sweet rolls and buttering it lavishly. She was a senator's stepdaughter? Could he be deported for making wild love to a senator's virgin stepdaughter? "What about your father?"
"Oh, Joe's a good guy. I saw more of him as a kid than I did of Katy, but medical school takes up a lot of time. He always remembered my birthday, though. When he married Mary Shannon she wanted me with them, but the grans put their collective feet down. So she went and had three sons of her own. Joey and Frank are in high school now, and Sean's in middle school. I always get invited for the holidays, of course. Mary Shannon is a grand, bighearted Irish girl, and while Gran Shanski was a bit put off by her enthusiasm, she appreciated her loving nature. But you can understand why I never called them Mom and Dad. They gave me life, to be sure, but they weren't my parents at all." She stood up. "Are you through, Devlin? You're going to get sick if you eat another sweet roll," Emily told him, reaching for his plate. "You've had four already."
"We have work to do, Emily Shanski," he told her with a grin. "But first I need to get to a pharmacy for some condoms. Want to tell me where?"
She did, and then added, "Try not to attract too much attention to yourself, Devlin. I mean between the fact that you're a striking man, and that Healy." She sighed. "You don't want anyone at Stratford to know we're having a love affair. And I don't want anyone in Egret Pointe to know. It's a small town, Devlin."
"I grew up in one," he said as he headed out the back door for his car with a wave. He knew just what he wanted: the thinnest rubber on the market, lubricated. He hoped the store she was sending him to would have them. And she had to get on the pill. He didn't want to wear those damned rubbers any longer than he had to. He wanted nothing coming between him and Emily Shanski's wet, hot cunt. He backed slowly out of her driveway and headed down Founder's Way just as Rina Seligmann was turning her Lexus onto the little street. They waved at each other.
Where was he going? Rina wondered as she pulled up in front of Emily's house. She called out as she entered the front door, "Emily, it's Rina."
"I'm upstairs making the bed," Emily called down. "Be right with you."
"No, I'll come up and help you," Rina said, hurrying up the stairs. "Why are you changing the sheets in the guest room? This isn't the Grande Hotel, sweetie, and I'm sure Mr. Gorgeous has slept on the same bedsheets a couple of nights in a row." Then something caught Rina's eye. "Oh, my God," she said dramatically. "You screwed him! Was he wearing a condom? I'll tell Sam to give you a prescription. No, I'll have him give you a couple of months of samples. You don't want everyone in town knowing you're screwing your editor. I never asked before, but it was your first time, wasn't it?"
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 th
eir 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 earl learns that his wife and daughter have been caught up in the arrest of his wife's family. They have all been imprisoned in her grandparents' cellar. Her father is pulling every string he can to get them released. Meanwhile in France, his wife and daughter are struggling to survive. Caroline catches the eye of their jailer, but her mother saves her by submitting to the man, who afterward hands her over to several of his men because she hasn't given him the pleasure he anticipated from raping a hated aristo. Caroline's mother grows mortally ill from her harsh treatment just as the order comes through from Citizen Robespierre, who has accepted a large ransom from the English earl for the release of the two women. The mother swears her daughter to secrecy about what has transpired, and then dies as their ship is in sight of the English coast. I may make some changes, though, before I even begin to write it."
"Great opening!" he said. "Dramatic, poignant. I like it. Okay, so how does she end up rescuing others? I mean, if she's seventeen she's hardly in a position to do something like that in Georgian England."
"Her father is so distraught by his wife's death that he commits suicide. But before he does he makes certain provisions for his daughter. The earl's heir is his wastrel brother, and while he is going to inherit the title, the earl's estate isn't entailed upon an heir. The earl makes a will that gives his daughter the bulk of his fortune, leaving the rest in the form of a trust to care for the estate and provide his younger brother with a small income.
"Then he goes to a friend of his, the Duke of Malincourt, who is an elderly man with no children. He arranges with the duke to marry Caroline so her fortune will be kept safe from his brother. The marriage, of course, is in name only. The fortune will be hers when the duke dies, so she will, as a young, beautiful, and wealthy dowager duchess, be an excellent marriage prospect for the man she will eventually fall in love with. Without a husband for Caroline, her uncle would have had access to her monies, and probably would have gambled them away, leaving her impoverished. Caroline knows nothing of her father's plans, but as an obedient daughter, and still in shock over what has happened in France, she accepts his decision to marry her off to the duke. The day after the wedding the earl puts a pistol to his head.
"Grief-stricken, Caroline is horrified to learn the truth from her kindly old husband as to how her father has protected her before taking his
own life. She vows then and there to get back at the revolutionaries in France for destroying her family. She seeks out others among her class who are like-minded, and begins her operations. She is known to her enemies as Lavender, for she always leaves a sprig of the flower behind when she has snatched someone from the clutches of Madame la Guillotine."
"Very nice," he said, "but where are we going to fit the sex in, m'dear?"
"The old duke dies when Caroline is twenty," Emily continued. "His heir is his nephew, and the nephew wants to make Caro his wife, a fact known to the old duke, who fully approved. He even suggested to Caroline that after a proper period of mourning she marry his heir. But of course, Caro fears a young and alert husband will discover what she has been doing, so she resists. But the new duke, Justin Trahern, seduces her. She tells him she will be his wife, but she will be answerable to no one but herself. He agrees because he is deeply in love with her.
"By accident-and don't ask me how because I haven't decided yet-he learns what she is doing. At first he is outraged that a woman would behave so. Then he becomes frightened for her. He tells her he knows, and in an effort to make him understand why she does what she does, Caro tells him the truth of what happened to her mother. Trahern realizes the only chance he has of stopping the woman he loves from putting herself in constant danger is to find the jailer and the men who raped her mother, and see them dead."
"I like it," Michael Devlin told her. "I like it very much. It's clever, and we should be able to make the love affair between Caro and Trahern sizzle. Women who have had tough times will identify nicely with the heroine. She's suffering survivor's guilt, of course, and that does make you do things you might not otherwise do."
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