Page 82 of Last Fall

My heart thudded harder. “And howisthat?”

“Like I’m right where I should be, Zo.” He dropped another kiss on my lips and gave me a good squeeze. “Let’s go hang with yourfriends.”

For the next two hours we sat on the back porch listening to the gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico while we grilled, ate Lindsay’s delicious cookies and polished off glasses ofbourbon.

The sun had set a while ago and Erik had his arm slung around my shoulder. “All right, so let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said. “The seven of you all write completely different stuff but you have the same goal, so itworks.”

“Exactly,” Julia said, holding up her nearly empty glass. “I know it doesn’t makesense.”

“No, actually it makes perfect sense.” Erik’s eyes got a little unfocused as he looked past Julia. “It’s kind of like a baseball team, actually. If we were all exactly the same we wouldn’t be a good team. Every position requires a different set of skills, and all the positions together cover the field of play. Our different talents are what make us a strong,dynamicteam.”

“Oh...wow,” I said. “Erik, we’ve been trying to explain why this works for over a year.” And here he waltzed in and figured it out inanhour.

The seven of us met at a conference and quickly became friends. The fact that we wrote very different types of books didn’t become a concern for alongtime.

And then we wondered how we ever made it work. I mean, how was someone who wrote about sex in explicit detail supposed to work with someone who never wrote about sex at all? We didn’t share readers. Our marketing looked nothing alike. It shouldn’t work, and yet we all loved each other so much, and we loved the process of writing so much, that we never let that detailstopus.

Eventually it all started to make more and more sense as we each began to stretch and write more diverse types of stories. The fact that we had already established a strong connection made that growth so easy for all of us. I jumped from romance to fantasy to historical saga and back again. Julia moved from contemporary romance to historical fiction. Lindsay seemed to write in five different genres but always with the same smartvoice.

Because our foundation was built on our love of reading and writing we could talk about anything from the business end of the publishing industry to the nitty gritty details of crafting a character. It simply didn’t matter what the story was aboutanymore.

“You’re a genius,” Alexandra whispered. “How did we never come up with an analogy like this? I like him, Zoe. He fitsrightin.”

“He can be our mascot,” Laura declared. “Oursexymascot.”

“He’ll be good for carrying things at conferences and signings and stuff,” Mary said. “Our husbands will be happy to have help for achange.”

“Hey,” Alexis said, “are you implyingI’mlazy?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “You have to admit the husbands do a lot forusall.”

She grinned. “They like feeling useful. Do you like beinguseful,Erik?”

Luckily he seemed to love my friends’ weird senses of humor and went right along. “I do. Did Zoe mention I have foursisters?”

There was a collective “Oh...” from the wholegroup.

“Well that explains why he doesn’t look like he’s two seconds from running for his truck,” Julianodded.

He squeezed my hand. “I feel most at home with a group of bossywomen.”

“We’re not bossy,” Laura said with a point of her finger. “We just know what we want and aren’t afraid todemandit.”

He held up his glass. “To badass women. May we know them, may we love them, may we never pissthemoff.”

And because my friends are never subtle, they all stared at me with a grin as they raised their glasses and said, “Here,here!”

* * *

While I did havea couple of celebratory drinks with my friends, I quit pretty early in the night. I noticed Erik did as well. I didn’t know his reasons but mine were clear. I wanted my head on straight for whateverhappenednext.

Mary and Julia had already headed off to bed. Alexis was asleep on the couch, as usual. She refused to go to bed when she was tired because she didn’t want to miss anything. One time she fell asleep on thefloor.

“Should we wake her?” Lindsayasked.

“No,” Alexandra said. “She looks comfortable. We’ll just throw a blanket over her.” Then she glanced at us. “You two look cozy. Maybe you should go to bed, too.Wink,wink.”

She also actuallywinked.