A Baby Changes Everything (16 page)

Savannah shook her head. “No, you're already too busy to breathe.”

He had been. Until he'd almost lost his very reason
for
breathing.

“You're always telling me that I should learn how to delegate.” Sitting down on the edge of the bed beside her, he threaded his fingers through hers. “Besides, with the money Vanessa is lending us, I can get the stable rebuilt and hire on an extra hand. That'll free me up to help you. And my mother and sisters all want to pitch in. You're not going to have to lift a finger—”

Her mind had stopped processing information when he'd casually dropped a key phrase in her lap. “Vanessa is lending us money?”

He realized that in all the excitement he'd forgotten to mention that. “Yes.”

The information was just not sinking in. This wasn't Cruz, this was some clone. “And you're letting her,” she said slowly.

Cruz nodded. “It's already a done deal.”

Savannah looked dubiously at the bottle dripping solution into her veins. “Are you sure I'm not dead?” She turned her eyes back to Cruz. “Or at least still unconscious? Because this is just the kind of hallucination I'd have if I were out of my head.”

He laughed softly, shaking his own head. “No hallucination, Savannah. I know I got carried away there for a while, but I realized something last night, sitting here beside you and waiting for you to open your eyes again. That it doesn't matter if I have the best ranch in Texas, not if you're not there to share it with me.” He shrugged his shoulders casually, letting them drop again. “Besides, I found out that I kind of like delegating.” He thought of the first phone call he'd gotten from his new foreman yesterday. “Hank got an even better stud fee for Maximillian than I was going to ask for. And Purdue is going to recommend us to his friends. We'll be able to pay Vanessa back with interest in no time, even if she doesn't want any.”

He was telling Savannah she wasn't dreaming, but it certainly felt like it. She tried very hard to make all the pieces fit.

“So you're really serious? You're going to start spending more time with Luke and me?”

He found it hard not to grin like an idiot. Savannah was talking to him, sounding just like she always had. She was going to be all right. “Never more serious in my life.”

Though it was getting clearer, her brain still felt rather foggy. “Were you here last night?”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, grateful to be able to do so. “I've been here ever since Vanessa called to say you were at the hospital. Why?”

Things began falling into place. “Then it was you I heard talking in my sleep.”

It was his turn not to understand. “What?”

“When I was unconscious, I thought I heard a voice. I used it to help pull me out of the abyss I was in. I thought it was the voice of God.” She smiled at him, her heart overflowing with love. “I guess I made a mistake.”

“Not God, just me,” he admitted. She'd been unconscious the entire evening and night. He looked at her in surprise. “Then you heard me?”

She nodded, loving him even more than she ever had before. “I heard you. I wasn't conscious, but I heard you.” Savannah reached up and touched his face. “I'm sorry about everything.”

Turning her hand, he kissed the palm. “You have nothing to be sorry about.” And then he amended his words. “Except maybe for marrying a jackass like me.”

“That is the one thing I am not sorry about. I love a jackass like you,” she told him with a grin.

Cruz moved in closer. “Hold that thought,” he advised as he leaned down to kiss her lightly on the lips.

She sighed contentedly. But then he drew back. Her eyes opened and she looked at him. “Is that the best you've got?”

He nodded, trying to appear solemn when everything inside of him was cheering. He'd gotten a second chance. In more ways than one. A second chance to make things right.

“For now, with all these tubes attached to you. Once I get you home, I'll show you my best.”

He loved the way her smile began in her eyes. “Something to live for,” she said.

Cruz ran his thumb along her lower lip, love shining in his eyes as he looked at her. “Definitely something to live for.”

For Savannah, this all felt too good to be true. “And no rain checks?”

He shook his head. “No rain checks,” he promised. “I'll show you my best the second you walk through the door.”

She longed to put her arms around his neck. For now, though, she had to content herself with the promise of things to come. “Then I guess we'd better leave Luke with your parents.”

“Good plan,” he agreed.

“Can I have just the tiniest sample?” She held up her thumb and forefinger, gazing at him hopefully.

“Just the tiniest,” he allowed. And then he leaned in again to kiss her one more time.

Everything you love about romance…
and more!

Please turn the page for Signature Select
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Bonus Features.

Bonus Features:

Behind the Scenes

The Birth of a Continuing Series

 

The Writing Life

 

Sneak Peek

IN THE ARMS OF THE LAW

by Peggy Moreland

BONUS FEATURES

 

 

A Baby Changes Everything

Recently Marsha Zinberg, Executive Editor, Signature Select Program, took some time out from her busy schedule to answer some questions about continuity books and how they are developed.

 

Who comes up with the idea?

At Harlequin, we use a team approach for generating ideas that can evolve into continuing series. Usually, a group of editors will sit down and put their heads together. They are always on the lookout for ideas that seem “big enough” to be developed into a continuity series. Our inspiration comes from current television shows, films, news stories, magazine articles…anything is fair game! The most promising ideas are given some development by a team, and once we've fleshed out several ideas we're excited about, we test them with our readers to see if they're excited, too. After a decision is made as to which concept to move forward with, the Continuities Team does more work
to further develop and refine the concept. Then we're ready to turn it over to our talented authors!

 

Who chooses the authors?

We select a group of authors to participate in the series, each of whom brings a unique set of creative skills to the project. Since a continuing series is a group effort, it offers a different dynamic for many authors, who are used to working in isolation and nurturing their books very much on their own. Writing is usually a very lonely business! So the authors we select have to be comfortable working as part of a creative unit consisting of other authors and the editorial team. In addition, the editorial team tries to match the subject matter and genre of the particular book within the series to the authors' individual writing styles, habits and areas of expertise. We would not ask an author beloved for her Western stories to participate in a series set in the glitzy New York City social scene, nor would we ask an author known for her romantic suspense stories to give us a big family drama!

 

Are there guidelines? How can the authors keep everything straight?

In order to avoid total chaos, we create a document known as a bible (just as they do for the writers of television series), which gives the authors the characteristics of the major players, as well as their history and the main story threads everyone will be working with. Everyone then understands the pace
at which the stories must unfold, which characters will be featured in each story, and what plot twists and turns must be present in each book in order to move the main story forward. The bible is distinct for every project, and provides descriptions of buildings, maps, etc., so that all the authors are working with common material. As authors begin to write their stories, adjustments sometimes need to be made. Those changes are cleared with the managing editor and communicated to the other authors, in order to avoid inconsistencies developing between the stories.

 

Who checks the facts for consistency?

One of the most complicated elements of a limited continuity is that, while the main story unfolds step-by-step in consecutive books, the stories are actually being written simultaneously. The authors are in constant communication with one another to ensure that their facts and story lines are consistent as each writer moves forward, infusing the individual stories with her own imagination and bringing it to life in her own distinctive way.

In order to ensure consistency, one editor edits all twelve books consecutively and is responsible for checking that the characterization of the continuing players does not change from book to book. The editor makes sure that the story lines follow logically, building to a climax and satisfying ending.

 

How long does this take?

There is usually a span of at least eighteen months to two years between the time that a concept is first proposed and when the first book of a continuing series appears in your bookstore.

USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella has written more than 150 books for Silhouette Books. Here's the inside scoop on how she comes up with ideas and develops her characters.

 

E
veryone always asks, “Where do you get your ideas?” The simplest answer is, they come when I call them. When I'm lucky, something will just occur to me out of the blue when I'm going along (the old lightbulb-going-off-over-your-head syndrome). Very quickly, one incident knits itself into another and before you know it, you've got a bare bones skeleton begging for skin, for muscles, for hair color, nail polish, etc. Most of the time, however, it's a matter of my sitting down before that dreaded empty white screen and trying to come up with a viable idea for a story. You start with an idea. Follow: A guy comes back to attend the funeral of an old friend. Staying in his old room at home, he relives some of the feelings, the thoughts he had once when he was
younger. He opens his closet, sees his old high school jacket and on a whim, puts it on. When he puts his hands into his pockets, he finds a letter from his ex-girlfriend in one of them. And off we go.

I find that I have just the barest of ideas, and as I begin to write, things happen. Magic. There's no better way to describe it than that. Friends, neighbors, quirks I never knew about my character suddenly come up as if they were there all along—except while I was writing the outline. The magic of a story is in the telling of a story, and the trick is to always keep an open mind. For instance, I needed to fill out a story I was working on. I happened to see a human-interest story about a woman who decided to begin a career in stand-up comedy when she was seventy. And just like that, an eccentric neighbor for my heroine was born.

Happily, I don't live in a vacuum (my dog would bark at me all the time). Life is going on all around me. I cannibalize everything I can if it'll make a better story because readers can identify with these common, everyday occurrences and it makes them more sympathetic to my hero or heroine. My first draft is always to have two people in a vacuum, naked, talking. With each pass, I add more until they're dressed, have attitudes and back stories. Then they move forward. As to any research that might be necessary, I do that as I go along, relying on the simplest paths to get my information. Readers don't want to read a definitive history about the development of the airplane, they just want to see
my heroine fly the plane and then they want to move on with the story. And so do I. Because there's always another story waiting for me in the wings. Not bad for someone who only thought she had two stories in her.

 

Be sure to look for
The Best Medicine
by Marie Ferrarella and
Searching for Cate
by Marie Ferrarella.