glass.
Kane raised his own glass in salute to the other man. “Now that my vanity has been soothed, what do I write?”
“Well, BDSM ménage, of course. Oh—”
“Yes. They all have at least two men for my pretty little lass. It is a very popular formula, and one I would caution you to consider.” He sounded much firmer now.
“Right. Two men it is, then.” She made her voice contrite. “Since that’s settled, what about our heroine?”
He gave a morose sigh. “She’ll have to be either very inexperienced, very insecure, or very angry—or all three.”
“What? I thought women wanted to read about strong female characters,” Dante protested.
“They do, but there are two problems with that,” Kane said with the air of someone who was going to ask for a blackboard and start lecturing. “One is that she needs to become strong and confident but she can’t start out that way. Two, she needs to be relatable, so she needs to have some of the same failings as the readers. Most women can relate to insecurity, for some reason.”
Dante looked at Nikki. “Why is that? Women never seem to think they’re pretty enough, or thin enough, or something. It’s silly.”
Her face went hot as she stared back at him. How the hell could she answer a question like that? “I don’t know,” she said finally, as both men seemed to be waiting for a response. “People always seem to expect women to be perfect. Look at television. No matter how ugly or fat or old the guy is, the wife is always a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old with perfect hair and a size-zero figure. How can we compete with that?”
“There is some truth there,” Kane admitted. “Maybe we can work with it. Let’s take you, for example. How much pressure do you feel to, say, wear the right clothes or have perfect hair?” He looked appraisingly at her pony tail. “Now, see, I like the fact that you’re comfortable the way you are, even though—”
“Even though I’m not perfect?” Her voice was harsher than she intended. Both men reared back a little, as if she’d threatened them.
“I was going to say even though you’re dressed casually,” Kane went on in a calm tone. “See, that’s the problem. Now, personally, I would say you’re pretty close to perfection the way you are, but you seem to think I just insulted you.”
“Sure you do.” She gave a little snort of derisive laughter. “I think we’re getting a little off-track here. Maybe we should go back to the story.”
“Absolutely, but that was where I was going. If we take a woman like you, who’s gorgeous but doesn’t believe it, what kind of situation can we put her in where the guys will need to convince her of it?”
“Maybe she could be doing something undercover,” Dante suggested. “You know, like in Miss Congeniality .”
Nikki smiled. “She couldn’t be like me.”
“Why not?” Dante sounded genuinely curious.
She gave him a pitying look, debating whether or not to ask him to please not bother flirting with her. It was no doubt a conditioned habit with him, but there was no point here. She just wasn’t going to buy it.
“I’m way too old and overweight to carry off something like a beauty pageant,” she said.
Both men exchanged an eye roll. Nikki stood up. “Look, there’s no point in this discussion. I’m going to get some more—” She stopped, eyeing her tea mug. “Actually I’m going to have a glass of your wine, if you don’t mind. Then we need to stop with the fake flirting and really get down to business. We’ve only got a month to get this written. We don’t even have the plot started yet.”
“Sure we do,” Kane said, pulling the cork back out of his bottle and waiting for her to bring over another glass. He filled hers and then topped off Dante’s and emptied the rest into his own. “We’re getting a feel for our heroine. The plot will come from her. All the best stories are told by the characters themselves.”
“Oh,