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1

"Hello, Buttercup."

Most people panic that a jangling phone at 4:09 in the morning is a death call — the one in which a cop is about to tell you he's found your sibling or mother or father plastered like a bloody possum on the pavement of I-95. Instead, I uttered his name like a curse: "Michael!"

"Yes, darling, it's me."

I reached in vain for the lamp.

"I don't suppose there's any point in asking if you know what time it is."

"What would David have for breakfast?"

"Breakfast?"

"Because I think eggs indicates a surprising lack of concern about his health. After all, his wife has been nagging him for years about his cholesterol. His smoking. And this could be his lone act of defiance. His way of telling the world to fuck off, as you, my dear, would so eloquently put it."

"Or he could merely like sunny-side up and a side of bacon, Michael. Is it that important what your character eats for breakfast?"

My fingers found the little pull-chain on my bedside lamp. I squinted and reached for the glass of warm bourbon and water I keep on my nightstand for conversations precisely like this one.

"Vitally."

"Michael, you know I am not at my best until a good solid six hours from now. And that only after a pot of coffee. Can't this wait?"

"Be a love," he said, his English accent trying to charm me through the phone line. "Greet the dawn with me."

"Greet the dawn? Michael, I don't want to greet the dawn with you. I don't want to greet noon with you."

"Impossible! You don't want to enjoy the splendor outside your balcony with me? Your favorite author?"

"Favorite is not — most definitely not — the word that comes to mind right now." I sighed. "Those acknowledgments better drip with praise."

"To my dream editor, the love of my life, Cassie Hayes, without whom this book would not be possible and without whom I would curl into a fetal position and remain there. For life without the beautiful and witty Miss Hayes would, in fact, be life not worth living at all."

"That's a start."

"And she has a remarkable sense of the sublime and a true command of all dangling participles."

"And?"

"And she's simply charming before the dawn."

Stretching, I sighed. "All right. Let me grab my robe and start a pot of coffee."

"Are you naked, Cassie?"

Michael Pearton was, quite possibly, the best writer I had ever worked with or read. He was also faintly mysterious. His back cover head shots showed a man with black curly hair and a crooked smile offset by a long, ragged scar on his decidedly square chin. He was both movie-star handsome and bar-fight dangerous. We'd never met but indulged in flirtation bordering on phone sex. Because I wasn't getting any other kind of sex, I tolerated his predawn ramblings.

"Why, yes, Michael, I am," I murmured. "Stark, raving naked. My nipples are hard because you know I keep my house colder than a meat locker regardless of what the weather is outside. And I am now shoving said nipples into my robe and shuffling in my bare feet to the kitchen where I will start a pot of coffee."

I rested the portable phone on my shoulder, talking in my pre-coffee rasp as I tied my green silk kimono, a gift from another author's trip to Singapore.

"I do so love it when you talk dirty, Cassie."

"I do so love it when you call me in the middle of the day."

"So nasty when you haven't had that cup. You know you should switch to tea, love. Do you ever use the set I shipped you?"

I flicked on the kitchen light, shielding my eyes from the brightness as it reflected on my Florida-white tile and cabinets, and stared at the sterling tea set perched, never used, on my breakfast bar. He had bought it at a flea market of some sort and shipped it over to the States. It was tarnished, but the elaborate handle on the teapot was ornately baroque, and though it matched nothing in my condominium, I adored it.

"Yes. It's gorgeous."

"You're a horrible liar. But I know it probably looks lovely wherever you have it."

"Michael, why does inspiration only strike you in the middle of my night?"

My Mr.Coffee machine started making noises, and I willed it to brew faster.

"It's very odd really. I go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night absolutely certain of what must happen next. Oh . . . and showers. I get inspiration in the shower. And now, everyone else in London is getting ready for lunch, and I just have to finish this scene. It's sad, really. I have a twenty-thousand-dollar antique cherrywood desk good enough for the queen herself, and I never write a damn word sitting at it."

I knew he was sitting stark, raving naked in his bed, with his laptop and a hard-on for companionship.

"So your inspiration is that David is worrying about breakfast?"

"Yes. It's the morning after he's been denied tenure. He feels completely emasculated. And now, as an act of defiance, I see him having eggs."

"Okay, then. Let him eat eggs."

"What kind?"

"Michael, who the fuck cares what kind?"

"What kind? Would he eat poached eggs or scrambled?"

"I thought I mentioned sunny-side up with a side of bacon."

"But that was in offhanded comment. I don't think you really gave it much thought."

"Poached."

"You think so, really? What about eggs Benedict? Because then he would be eating all that wicked hollandaise sauce."

"I don't care, Michael. Give him hollandaise if it makes you happy. It's four-thirty."

"Is your coffee ready yet? You certainly are particularly crabby this morning."

"Michael, I don't know a single other editor who would put up with this kind of shit."

"Precisely. Which is why you have authors eating out of the palm of your hand, and Louis O'Connor has the most successful small publishing house in the States."

Eyeing the coffeemaker with lust, I smiled. "Coffee's almost ready. I'll be human soon."

A minute or two later, I sat down at my kitchen table an ocean away from West Side Publishing's most valuable author. Michael clicked away on his keyboard, and I drank coffee and held his hand long distance as we worked through the scene. He'd been blocked. I knew he couldn't get past the fourteenth chapter. Every book was the same. Somewhere in the middle he lost hope. He gave up. He got sick of his book, its plot, of his own characters. And then he didn't work for a while until he had an epiphany — usually in the middle of my night — and called me and we talked for hours waiting for the sun to rise and, with it, the resolution of his crisis. Although I think it was an excuse to hear me talk about my nipples.

"Michael," I yawned two hours later, "the sun is rising."

"Tell me about it he whispered."

I stepped out onto my balcony, facing the view a Boca Raton condo can buy. "Well, the Atlantic's really calm this morning — a beautiful azure blue. I see a seagull gliding lazily and a pelican swooping down. The sun is just peeking — the horizon is pink and purple and still midnight a little. The crescent moon is sharing the sky with the beginning of the sun. And here it comes. . . . God, it's beautiful, Michael."

The salty breeze kissed my face.

"You give good sunrise, Cassie."

"Well, if it weren't for you, I'd never see them, so I guess I should thank you. But I won't. I'm going back to bed."

"You've had a pot of coffee. Aren't you wired?"

"No. Good night, Michael."

"Good morning, Cassie. You are the bloody best. Thank you."

"May the next time I hear your voice be after lunch."

I hung up and ran a hand through my bedhead of messy black curls. I padded back to my room, drew the blinds tighter and dropped my robe, crawling sensuously beneath my sheets. I loved the decadence of going back to bed. I picked up the phone and dialed the office, pressing extension 303.

"Lou . . . it's me. Michael Pearton had another pre-dawn meltdown. We were on the phone discussing his main character's menu choices 'til just now. It's 6:30. I'm exhausted. I won't be in until at least noon if you're lucky."

I shut my eyes and thought I'd skip the whole day at the office. My boss let me work three days at home, thanks to voice mail and e-mail, and his sheer adoration of me. I was supposed to go in on Fridays, but the hell with it. I turned the ringer off on my phone. Sleep returned quickly. I dreamed of swimming in pools of hollandaise.

At 11:00, the phone rang, muffled, out in the kitchen. I could hear the caller ignoring the fact that I wasn't answering. I heard four rings, a voice speaking. Hang up, Four rings. Voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings . . .

"Oh for God's sake, what do you want, Lou?" I, finally snatched the receiver next to my bed.

"How'd you know . . ."

"You're the only person stubborn enough to do that, Lou."

"I need you in here today."

"Sorry. I put in my hours with the ever-neurotic Englishman last night. Or actually, this morning, but you know what I mean. I'll be in on Monday."

"This is big."

"What do you mean?"

"Bigger than Stephen King, big. This could make me millions. Your bonus could send you into early retirement."

"So who is it?"

"Can't tell you."

"Lou . . . this isn't high school. Not that I think you ever went to high school. You were born eating your young."

Cassie, my dear, you come and go out of here as the diva you are. But this one time, I'm telling you to get up, get dressed, and meet me at the office. I will mainline you a pot of coffee."

"This better be worth it."

"It is. In spades."

I climbed out of bed, still far too early for my taste. In the kitchen, I dumped out the grinds in Mr. Coffee, the only man in my condo in the last year and a half, and put on my second pot of the day. After a hot shower, a dab of crimson lipstick, and a sort of shaggy-dog shaking of my hair, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, threw a linen blazer on, and headed down Florida's AlA ocean highway to West Side's offices.

I'm not sure how it is I came to live in a land of pink palaces and perpetual sunshine. It doesn't suit my personality. But when Lou moved down here from New York, he took me with him. He came for the fishing and the sunshine. He came to get away from New York after Helen died. And I came because he did.

I climbed out of my mint-condition Cadillac that I bought for a song from the estate of an elderly man who had died. His kids wanted cash. Bargains abound in Florida if you don't mind owning stuff that belonged to dead people, When Lou first saw it, he thought I was nuts, "A banana-yellow Caddy? You like driving fruit?" But I have claustrophobia. I drive luxury land tanks.

Pressing the elevator button for the seventh floor, I rode up in glass to West Side's offices.

"Morning, Cassie, "Troy, the receptionist/junior editor, greeted me.

"Mornin'," I mumbled.

"You look a fright."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Coffee?"

"Intravenous."

"You got it." He held out a mug. "Start with this cup, and I'll bring a fresh one in, as soon as it's brewed."

I opened the door to Lou's office without knocking.

"This better be worth it. I'm feeling very bitchy today," I said, putting the mug down on a mahogany coffee table covered with books West Side had published, and flopping onto a long, buttercream leather couch.

"And how is this different from any other day?"

"If I wanted insults, I would call my mother."

"Guess who called me in the middle of the night?"

"What is it with authors and the middle of the night, Lou?"

"Indulge me."

"John Updike?"

"Bigger."

"I have no clue," I leaned up on one elbow and took a swig of coffee.

He took the unlit cigar he had in his mouth and set it in his Waterford ashtray.

"Roland Riggs."

"Holy shit!" I said, as hot coffee sprayed out of my mouth.