carpet. “So have you not figured out how to be good enough to come or are you avoiding telling Tristan how you’re feeling?”
Then his grin widened. “Oh, or are you deliberately disobeying so he tells you that you’ve been naughty and can’t come? That’s fun too.”
“I hate you.” Standing, I stomped over to the doorway and picked up my pen cap. “I’ve been talking to Tristan. I haven’t been hiding from what I want. That’s how I got in this mess to begin with.”
Well, that and staying up too late and forgetting to set my alarm, again…and whining about how long it was taking him to decide to let me come.
It’d been a long few days and he was trying to kill me with denial.
Jonah giggled again. “Suuure, talking to him is what got you so turned on you can’t focus?”
I sighed and went back over to flop in my chair. “So maybe I complained…just a bit…but he didn’t appreciate that since I’d already not followed the rules.”
“How much? Like stretching them a bit for attention or completely obliterating them?” When all I did was sigh at his question, he laughed again.
“Okay, that explains why you’re so horny you can’t think.” He cocked his head. “Did you get anything done today?”
I shrugged. “I murdered three people. That poison you found is fun and gives all kinds of crazy side effects while they’re dying. They were robbing a house and picked up what they thought were pot brownies on the counter just to be assholes. But the chocolate hid the taste and the pot made sure they weren’t thinking clearly enough to realize what was happening.”
Jonah laughed. “You’re evil when you’re horny.”
“Well, it’s not like I could give them an orgy.” I rolled my eyes when he started to laugh again. “And I got my word count in for the day. I just have to weave that scene into the plot I have so far.”
It was going to be good, but just a little more gruesome than my readers were used to, so I might have to tone it down a bit…once I wasn’t distracted.
And I still had to figure out who was supposed to have gotten poisoned to begin with.
Jonah shook his head, but instead of fussing or teasing he just started tinkering with the computer and putting things away. “I made a lot of headway with the beta read for Rose’s book. There are a few things I think you need to work on before it goes to your editor. Oh, and he sent the edits for the first few chapters of the other book. So far I like some of the changes he suggested.”
Then he gave a small sigh. “Just not all of them. The new guy hasn’t read enough of your stuff to get the side characters right. He kept changing the yappy dog in apartment three to a cat for some reason. She’s never owned a cat in any of the books. He’s got some comment about a cat feeling more right for the character. It’s ridiculous and you need to talk to someone about the idiot wasting time on weird shit. But some of the other things he pointed out might work.”
Aside from the issues with the new editor, Jonah always had a good feeling for what would drive my publisher nuts, so I’d stopped arguing with him and just redid things when he told me to. It’d saved a lot of time over the past year alone, but we were both having to get used to the new editor. “Okay, once you're done with Rose’s, we’ll go over the notes for the other one and when he’s done I’ll make some calls.”
The mysteries had so many layers to them, I knew I couldn’t obsessively defend every decision, but he couldn’t just change animals mid-series because he didn’t think that crazy old bat was a dog person.
Actual plot issues were another issue altogether. Sometimes what felt right in the moment left a plot hole Jonah could drive a truck through. That was one of the reasons I loved my romance and erotica books. I just knew the characters and there was only so much I could fuck up.
My biggest problem with those was making sure someone still didn’t have his pants on after they’d made love. My biggest problem with the mysteries was the wrong person getting killed. Just a little bit of a difference there.
“Great. I think I’m done for the day, but I