Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,30

did that so cleverly in your book about the spoiled dyslexic supermodel heroine." She touched Nana's shoulder, making her a captive audience. "What a story, Marion. The heroine was marooned on a desert island with a playboy rodeo cowboy who was trying to fly to Fiji to see the son he didn't realize he'd fathered by her blind sister. Uh! A real tearjerker. And I did not agree with the Kirkus Reviews critic who said it should have been entitled, Dumb and Dumber. How unkind."

Hunh. I wondered if Jack had read that one.

Gillian refolded the map into an origami lump that resembled Texas...minus the panhandle. "It's so nice of you to say that, Marla. The critic certainly ended up eating her words, didn't she? Who would have guessed that A Cowboy in Paradise would go back to press twenty-six times and sell over two million copies?"

"Imagine." Marla clasped her hands to indicate amazement. "I bet you have a good chance of matching my Barbarian's Bride sales. You only have a meager -- what, two million to go? And I'm sure you'll succeed, especially when the New York Times Book Review describes your writing as 'vibrantly pitch-perfect.' "

"Don't forget 'deceptively accessible and luminous,' " Gillian added.

"Luminous. How could I have omitted luminous? Not to mention, 'a deft portrayal of the human condition.' " Marla placed her hand over her heart. "Well-deserved praise, which just goes to show that the Amazon.com reviewer who said your heroine was 'too stupid to live' was way off base."

Gillian's mouth lengthened into a stiff smile. "Do you suppose she was the same woman who gave your Barbarian's Bride that blistering one-star review?"

Marla stopped breathing for an instant. Her eyes lasered on Gillian. "That's the trouble with Amazon. Too many uninformed people handing out opinions. Take your one-star review, for instance. The reviewer blasted you for allowing your cowpoke to boink a woman six thousand times and not get her pregnant. I thought the criticism was completely unfounded, and very mean-spirited."

Gillian heaved a breathy sigh and wadded her map into a new shape that looked suspiciously like a headless crane. Obviously no subliminal implications there.

"If the reviewer had bothered to read to the end," Gillian sputtered, "she would have understood that Spur had contracted a mysterious disease years earlier that had left him with a low sperm count. He couldn't have children. That's why he was so hot to find the son he did father."

Spur? The hero's name was Spur? I cringed. Who'd name a baby Spur?

Nana tapped Gillian on the arm. "Might not a been the mysterious disease what caused Spur's condition. Mighta been his underwear. If it's too tight, it can cause a fella's privates to heat up somethin' fierce and to kill off all the little buggers. I seen it on the Discovery Channel. You recollect whether your cowboy wore boxers or briefs?"

"I can answer that," Marla piped up. "Gillian is so inventive. Spur wore a palm leaf the size of an elephant ear. It was the only thing on the island big enough to cover his 'ten inches of flaming virility.' I thought it was quite masterful how he avoided setting fire to the whole island. Every time he whipped off his palm leaf, I wasn't sure if the heroine was about to get ravished or incinerated!"

Gillian crushed her city map into another shape. I pondered the result. Euw! Now that was uncalled for.

Gillian regarded Nana. "Marla is much too modest to tell you herself, Marion, but she's known as the queen of the sensuous love scene. Although...her continued use of the cliche 'throbbing manhood' has provided grist for many a romance chatroom. People have actually done surveys, and the consensus is, it doesn't throb!"

I clutched my throat, sucking in an astonished breath. It didn't throb?

"Throbbing is the industry standard," Marla said offhandedly. "It always throbs."

Gillian's smile hardened into ice. "It doesn't."

"And how would you know that?" Marla challenged.

The ice melted into a smirk. "Because I conducted the survey!"

I cleared my throat and raised a tentative finger in the air. "If you ladies don't mind my asking, if it doesn't throb, what does it do?"

"Maybe it quivers," Nana said thoughtfully. "You know, kind of like a handheld blender. I'm pretty sure your grampa's quivered."

"Where's Sylvia?" Marla bellowed. "Is Sylvia here?"

"I want Philip," Gillian demanded. "Would somebody please get Philip for me?"

I looked from one diva to the other. Oh yeah. These two were the best of friends.

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