Perfect Strangers

Setting her bourbon aside and turning to the beginning of the manuscript, Estelle puts her readers on her nose and references some notes she’s made in the margins.

“Let’s get to the important stuff first.” She peers accusingly at Olivia over the rims of her glasses. “When I gave you permission to put me into this book, I had no idea you were going to make me a seventy-year-old Jewish woman.”

Smiling, Olivia sips her bourbon. “You are a seventy-year-old Jewish woman.”

“Exactly!” says Estelle, exasperated. “Let’s take some literary license here and make me more like, say…Sharon Stone.”

Olivia laughs. “Oh, you want to be hot.”

“Extremely hot. In fact, Stone might be too old. A Charlize Theron lookalike’s better. No—who’s that youngest Kardashian, the billionaire? Make me look more like her.”

“It would be really stretching the bounds of credulity to make my agent be a twenty-something reality TV star, don’t you think?”

Estelle purses her lips. “I said look like her, not be her. And obviously we have to change my name. I’ve always wished I were named Seraphina. Let’s go with that.”

“Yeah, Seraphina’s a hard no, but I’ll think of another one. I just always use everyone’s real names as placeholders when I’m writing characters based on people I know. It makes the characters more real to me if their names match. I was going to change all the names after you’d had a look.”

“I realize that’s your process,” says Estelle, her expression sour. “But while we’re on the subject, you have to start naming your heroes something other than James. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is for me to read your first drafts knowing you’re writing about yourJames?”

“Why is that uncomfortable for you?”

“Hello? The sex scenes?”

“You can rest easy, because those are made up. I was simply using my imagination.”

Estelle looks unconvinced. “Oh yeah? Tell me that incident in the book store in Paris was made up.”

With a straight face, Olivia says, “The sex scene at Shakespeare and Company never happened.”

When Estelle narrows her eyes, Olivia smiles. “That actually happened at an indie bookstore in Queens.”

“I rest my case. And then there’s all the dirty talk. How am I supposed to look the man in the eye next time we have dinner knowing the kinds of things he says to you in bed?”

“I never should’ve told you I base all my heroes on my husband.”

“You don’t think I would’ve gotten a clue, considering all your heroes start out with dark hair, blue eyes, a cleft chin, and an Energizer Bunny dick? And they’re all named James? Be real.”

Olivia laughs. “Fine. I’ll change his eyes to green and give him a British accent. How’s that?”

“The British accent I like. Fits in nicely with the whole assassin thing. Very 007. What about his name?”

“How about…Edward?”

Estelle crinkles her nose. “Too Twilight. What do you think of Brock?”

Olivia nearly spits out her sip of bourbon. “Brock? Dear God. Where’d you come up with that?”

“I follow this hunky model on Instagram named Brock. The man has the most magnificent breasts.”

Olivia snorts. “I believe they’re called pecs, Estelle.”

“Whatever, they’re glorious.”

“Tell you what. I’ll write a Regency romance just for you with main characters named Brock and Seraphina. But I’m not putting either one in this book.”

Estelle waves a hand, ending that part of the discussion. “I know you’ll come up with something.”

She consults her notes again, flipping forward several pages until she stops and taps a manicured nail on a highlighted sentence. “Did you ever explain that tattoo on the hero’s shoulder? I’m assuming the black marks under the Latin phrase were a body count of all the people he killed, but I don’t think that was stated outright.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure. I definitely translated the Latin, but I don’t remember specifically clarifying about the marks. I’ll take another look.” Olivia sets her bourbon on the edge of Estelle’s desk, pulls her cell phone from her handbag, and makes a note about the marks.

Nodding, Estelle flips forward another few pages. “And the foreign language he spoke—once when they were having sex, and another time she overheard it in the background when they were on the phone—what was that?”

Olivia shrugs, setting her cell on the desk and picking up her bourbon. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s important? I was just thinking it was part of his whole mysterious vibe.”

“A sentence or two somewhere to explain it would suffice, just so readers know you didn’t forget about it. Maybe his assassin’s group only speaks Latin to one other, something like that.”

“Noted.”