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“Right after I visit the little boys’ room.”
    Elisha looked at him, a little concerned. Rocky looked pale, but then, Rocky always looked pale. “Are you feeling sick?”
    He grinned at her. “You really do need a pet. Or a kid.”
    â€œAt this stage of my life, Rocky,” she told him, “a pet is all I can handle.”
    As he walked away, Elisha reached for another crab cake. It was her second, but then who was counting?

CHAPTER 3
    A t this stage of my life.
    The words she’d just uttered echoed back in her head. Elisha frowned.
    What did that even mean? Did it mean she was settling, resigning herself to something? That she felt she was drifting in her middle age and beyond and wasn’t even going to put up a halfhearted fight to remain in the game of life? Was this her subconscious saying that her life was set in stone and there was no point in attempting to create something different?
    God, what had they put into these crab cakes?
    Taking stock of herself, Elisha dusted her fingers off, then passed the tiny cocktail napkin over them to get the last of the residue. She didn’t usually get philosophical during the course of the day and certainly never at a party.
    Fine, she was doing fine, she silently told herself with as much passion as silence could muster. As for “this stage of her life,” well, life unfolded in stages. Lots of stages. This was just another one of them.
    Hell, she’d fought hard to get to where she was now and by no means was she going to just sit back on the sidelines.
    Like Carole Chambers wanted her to do.
    Elisha’s dark green eyes narrowed. Sinclair Jones had just entered the ballroom and from out of nowhere, the sexy, dark-haired woman who had been the overly attractive thorn in her side for the last six months materialized. Completely unfamiliar with the words subdued or understated, Carole wore a gauze-inspired red dress that brought new meaning to the word vivid. Elisha frowned. She’d seen tourniquets wrapped more loosely than Carole’s dress.
    Since when had cellophane become a fashion statement?
    Time for action, Elisha thought. Carole was heading directly for the author like a torpedo targeting a cruise ship.
    Elisha tossed aside her napkin. Over my dead body, sweetie.
    She made it across the room in record time, reaching Sinclair only two beats after Carole had joined herself to him. Sinclair looked a little startled. The statuesque younger woman had slipped her arm through the author’s and was looking up at him with the adoration of a true believer, as if he were single-handedly responsible for both finding the Rosetta stone and bringing the restored Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai.
    When it came to kissing up, the assistant editor she’d been plagued with had absolutely no equal.
    Someone should drop a house on the woman, Elisha thought.
    A tight smile on her lips, she nodded at Carole. But then the tight smile faded, replaced by a genuine one as she regarded the tall, portly man wearing gray slacks, navy jacket and a perpetual line of perspiration just beneath his graying hairline. The man whose hand she’d held through every bout of writer’s block over the last ten years.
    Warmth and affection washed over her as she asked, “How are you doing, Sinclair?”
    â€œSweating bullets,” Sinclair confided in response to her question.
    Taking out a perfectly folded white handkerchief, he passed it over his brow. Within seconds, another line of perspiration swiftly arrived to take its place. Giving up, he pocketed the handkerchief.
    Still hermetically sealed to his arm, the assistant editor’s eyes widened at Sinclair’s comment.
    â€œOh, Mr. Jones, you?” Carole declared in a syrupy voice that would have made Scarlett O’Hara more than moderately proud. “Why would you be worried? You’re one of the bestselling authors of all time. People just love your