Bowled Over mkm-6

  Bowled Over

  ( Maggie Kelly Mystery - 6 )

  Kasey Michaels

  "Ay me! For aught that ever I could read,

  Could ever hear by tale or history,

  The course of true love never did run smoothe."

  —William Shakespeare,

  A Midsummer Night's Dream

  "If I had as many affairs as you fellows claim,

  I'd be speaking to you today from a

  jar in the Harvard Medical School."

  —Frank Sinatra,

  Life magazine, 1965

  Once upon a time ...

  ... there was a girl named Margaret Kelly, who longed to grow up, leave her New Jersey home, and become a Famous Author in New York.

  Of the three hopes, the leaving home part often ranked right up there at Number One.

  Very often. Exceedingly often. Depressingly often.

  And one day Maggie—now known only to her mother and her shrink, Doctor Bob, as Margaret—achieved two of the big three.

  She grew up.

  She left home.

  The Famous Author part didn't naturally follow.

  Maggie began her fiction-writing career in Manhattan as Alicia Tate Evans, employing her mother's first name, her brother's first name, and her father's first name, all to make up what she thought would be a whiz-bang, romantic-sounding pseudonym. Maybe even an important name, one with the power to impress the hell out of publishers and hint that maybe she'd majored in English Literature or Quantum Physics, or something, and would thus be Taken Seriously and given promotion and her own twenty-four copy dump in the front of the chain stores.

  After all, publishers, by and large, have to be told you're marketable, and worthy, and all that good stuff—they can't seem to figure that out on their own just by looking at your work. If you'd slept with Brad Pitt, you were in. If you'd murdered your lover, you were in. If you'd scaled Everest in your skivvies, you were in.

  But if you were just an average person from an average background, had average looks, an average bust size, an average head of brown hair, and you sat down and wrote a good book? Even a bordering-on-great book? Well, that was iffy ...

  Maggie knew all of this. She'd joined a writers group, We Are Romance (WAR—something nobody considered when christening the group), and she'd heard the horror stories. The quality of the work was important. Sort of. But, hey, can you sing, dance, or conjugate verbs in Ancient Greek? Give us something we can promote.

  So Maggie gave them Alicia Tate Evans.

  The idea that her parents and brother would be grateful, even proud, might possibly have entered into this decision just a tad, but it wasn't as if Maggie was sucking up to the family that never really understood her.

  Much.

  Anyway, the name was just perfect for Maggie's historical romance novels that would soon top the New York Times bestseller list on a regular basis.

  Six published novels later, the NYT wasn't even in sight, and her mother and brother, less than flattered to have their names on "those trashy books" had not become Maggie's biggest fans.

  Her dad was okay with it, but Evan Kelly was okay with most everything ... nobody yelled at him if he just nodded, agreed with every word his wife said, and otherwise kept his mouth shut. Evan Kelly had earned his master's degree in Wimp, probably by the first anniversary of his marriage to Alicia Tate.

  Maggie worried, a lot, that she was the female Evan Kelly, especially when her mother continually asked her why she didn't write a real book and she couldn't figure out a snappy answer. Hence Doctor Bob's presence in her life.

  But back to Maggie and her great critical reviews, lame titles picked by committee (and maybe by the UPS guy who'd wandered through the office in his spiffy brown shorts and was asked for input), on the cheap cover art, lousy print runs, nonexistent publisher support, mediocre sell-throughs and—my, what a shock!—serious lack of name recognition after those half-dozen novels.

  It came to pass after those half-dozen historical romances, with her career not exactly taking off like the proverbial rocket, that Maggie found herself cut loose from her publishing house, Toland Books.

  Alicia Tate Evans was dead in the water. Good-bye, good luck, don't let the door hit you in the fanny on the way out.

  This left Maggie depressed. And broke. With no prospects.

  All things being equal, and Maggie prepared to garbage can surf rather than crawl back to New Jersey and the "I told you so, Margaret" marathon bound to follow, she had herself a major pity party that included two half gallons of chocolate ice cream and three, yes, three, jars of real chocolate fudge topping.

  She then sat down (first opening the button on her suddenly too-tight jeans), to reinvent herself.

  She gave a moment's thought to renaming herself Erin Maureen, for her two sisters, but Erin, at the least, would probably sue.

  And then, inspiration struck. Near the end of the third day of fierce concentration, Maggie Kelly became Cleo Dooley. She became Cleo Dooley instead of, say, Maggie Kelly, because she'd done some market research online while riding her chocolate high, and she'd concluded that a remarkable number of NYT authors had Os in their names.

  Os also looked good on a book cover.

  And think of chocolate, for pity's sake. Popular? Definitely. So notice the Os: Ch-O-c-O-late. Two of them, in that one wonderful word and three in the phrase "O-ne w-O-nderful w-O-rd," but that was probably pushing it.

  In any case, enough said. Os, obviously, were the way to go.

  All that was left to do now was to write the perfect book, and she'd be back in the game she'd been, even though published, mostly watching from the sidelines in the low-rent district, the dreaded mid-list.

  She needed a foolproof hook, something that would grab the readers right out of the box.

  Historicals. Historicals worked. But sex also worked—her online market research told her that sex worked even better than historicals.

  Not to mention that you didn't have to figure out new ways to say, "He reached for the foil packet," every time you put an English Regency Era hero and heroine in bed. There were many perks in writing historical romance, but to Maggie, this one pretty well topped the list: the lack of the "oh, yuck, again?" factor.

  And series books. Man, create a popular series, and you're home free.

  A mystery series? Yes! But an historical mystery series, because Maggie knew more about Regency Era England than most sane people would think useful.

  A sexy historical mystery series?

  Whacka-whacka! Eureka! Don't you love it when a plan comes together! Pass the ch-O-c-O-late, Cle-O!

  This was good. This was workable. Even d-O-able ... um, doable. She was soon going to have to stop counting Os, or she might need professional help—more professional help than she was already getting with Doctor Bob (more Os!), or would, until she depleted her savings.

  Ah, but the perfect series needs the perfect hero.

  God. Doesn't everyone?

  There was, luckily, another jar of chocolate fudge topping inspiration in the fridge.

  With a teaspoon loaded with cold chocolate fudge firmly upside down in her mouth, Maggie sat down and went about creating Alexandre Blake, the Viscount Saint Just.

  The perfect hero.

  Everything she'd ever longed-for, lusted after in her daydreams, sighed over since hitting puberty, all wrapped up in one gorgeous hunk of man.

  So where had all the heroes gone?

  To the movies?

  Maggie had a thing for old movies. She also had a pitiful social life, which explained why she had so much Saturday night time for old movies on cable. There definitely was no dearth of heroes in those old movies.

  A little lean, flinty Clint
Eastwood as he looked way-back-when in those spaghetti westerns. A little suave, sophisticated Sean Connery as James Bond, the only James Bond who really counted, except for Pierce Brosnan. So she threw some Pierce into the mix—everybody needs a little Pierce.

  Maggie giggled at that. Who said she couldn't write sexy books?

  She tossed in some veddy-veddy-English upper crust Peter O'Toole as he'd looked in Lawrence of Arabia. A bit of this guy, the meltingly sexy voice of that one, the mouth from this one, the eyebrows from another, the brooding indigo blue eyes of another one. On and on, slowly, as the level of fudge in the jar went down, she mentally constructed The Man in Every Woman's Heart.

  And every woman's libido. That, too. Definitely.

  She tossed in a few more physical attributes that, well, rang her bells, and finally had a mental picture of the perfect hero. Her perfect hero.

  Handsome. Oh-God-Yes!

  And smart. Leave the good-looking boy-toys for someone else—Maggie believed the perfect hero ought to have an IQ larger than his collar size.

  Rich. Rich was good. As someone very wise once said, it's as easy to love a rich man as it is a poor man.

  Witty. Sophisticated. A little bit arrogant, because the best heroes always were arrogant. In a nice way, of course.

  Confident, something she wasn't, but Saint Just would be an absolute whiz at confident.

  Brave, honest, steadfast—wait, that was the Boy Scouts, right? Unless a person had a square knot that needed tying or a pup tent to raise, who needed a Boy Scout? Not a perfect-hero-hungry woman! Let there be a little bit of larceny in the man's soul.

  Maggie was on a roll. Knock her down, would they! Try to send her home to New Jersey, would they!

  Heh-heh-heh. Heh!

  Six weeks later, the Viscount Saint Just had become the hero of his very first book, The Case of the Misplaced Earl.

  He was tall, lean, muscular, to-die-for handsome. He flattered his tailor just by wearing his clothes with the sort of elegant panache of a true gentleman. He carried a cane that concealed a thin rapier inside it. He favored a quizzing glass hung from his neck by a black grosgrain ribbon, and employed it to great effect when he stared down a villain. His coal black hair was done in the windswept style favored by Beau Brummell. He could ride, drive, shoot, fence, box, and recite Shakespeare.

  He was a near god. He was Alexandre Blake, the sophisticated, wealthy, handsome Viscount Saint Just.

  He was the perfect Regency gentleman. He was the perfect hero.

  With the help of her friend and former editor, Bernice Toland-James, Maggie sneaked in the back door of Toland Books once more, this time as Cleo Dooley, bringing Saint Just and his sexy mind and body with her.

  A few The Case of ... Saint Just mysteries later, hello, NYT!

  And that's how it stayed for several years—Maggie and her imaginary perfect hero. Cleo Dooley wrote the books, the to-die-for sexy Viscount Saint Just solved the crimes and bedded all the lucky ladies, and Maggie Kelly giggled all the way to the bank.

  Never mind that she smoked too much, talked to her two cats too much, whined to Doctor Bob every Monday morning at nine, got out socially entirely too little, and had developed this unnerving habit of comparing every man she met to her perfect hero and finding those men lacking. Hey, she wasn't in New Jersey!

  So where was she, exactly? This was a question she tried not to ask herself too often as she edged toward her thirty-first birthday because she didn't much like the answer.

  But then something strange happened.

  The Viscount Saint Just happened. Alexandre Blake happened.

  Really.

  One day Maggie turned around in her solitary Manhattan apartment, and there he was, in all his Regency Era glory.

  She recognized him immediately. Why not? She'd built him.

  And there was his sidekick, the lovable Sterling Balder, the darling, naive, perfectly adorable comic relief, the sweetheart of a guy she'd created because even perfect heroes need someone to talk to or else they'd be talking to themselves, and folks tend to look at such people a little strangely.

  Saint Just explained to Maggie—after she'd recovered from her faint—that she'd made him and Sterling so real, so complete, that they were able to "move onto her plane of existence."

  Mostly he, Saint Just, after living inside Maggie's head for several years, observing her, was here, so he said, because she needed him.

  Of course she did ...

  For the past several months Saint Just, known to Maggie's friends as her very distant English cousin, Alex Blakely, and his friend Sterling Balder, known as Sterling Balder because the fellow couldn't possibly carry off an alias without tripping over it, have lived in Maggie's world. They had been, she told her friends, the inspiration for her now famous characters.

  Her friends believed her.

  Some people will believe anything.

  Maggie had stopped smoking, although she still saw Doctor Bob every Monday morning at nine. She talked about her childhood years, her fears, her hang-ups ... even her inability to say good-bye to Doctor Bob and make it stick.

  But she'd yet to tell him about Saint Just.

  After all—she wasn't crazy. Even if she, after a terrible inner battle wherein she weighed common sense against the allure of the perfect hero—common sense losing in twenty-two seconds of the fifth round—was now romantically involved with a figment of her imagination.

  Definitely a once upon a time sort of fairy tale, even if you couldn't exactly count on a slam dunk happily-ever-after when one was dealing with an imaginary hero come to life who could, you know, poof back out of your life as quickly as he'd poofed in.

  This was, as Sterling would have said, "a worriment."

  And then there's that other problem. Ever since the sexy, crime-solving Saint Just did his poof thing into Maggie's life, people around her seem to keep turning up murdered.

  Chapter One

  Maggie sat with her back to her computer, looking around her living room, which also served as her office, her dining room, her den, her library, her—how had she ever thought this arrangement worked for her?

  Claustrophobics-R-Us.

  Figuratively choking herself with both hands as she stuck out her tongue and gurgled, she decided, once and for all, that she had to relocate. Expand. Grow.

  Leave Alex.

  Whoa.

  Leave Alex?

  This time the gurgle was audible, closely resembling a whimper.

  Not that Alex lived with her anymore, showing up in her kitchen early in the morning, looking put together while she leaned against the sink in her ratty pajamas, just trying to stand up straight until her morning caffeine kicked in.

  He wasn't sleeping just down the hall anymore, leaving the top off her toothpaste, beating every password protection she put on her computer, and generally driving her insane.

  No. He was now gainfully employed as a perfume company's photo model, financially self-sufficient, and happy, living in his own condo directly across the hall. He and Sterling both were happy.

  She was happy, having them live directly across the hall.

  She could watch out for him, keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't do anything too herolike.

  And then there was the fact that, once Sterling was tucked up in bed, Alex could tiptoe across the hall to her for a few hours and they could ... well, how could she possibly leave Alex?

  And the idea of moving had nothing—nothing!—to do with the fact that her onetime friend and now archnemesis, fellow author Felicity Boothe Simmons (once Faith Simmons, back before she went NYT and figuratively left the planet), had just bought herself a two-level condo soon to be featured in Architectural Digest.

  Nothing to do with that. Absolutely nothing.

  Okay, maybe a little bit.

  But there were better reasons.

  Maggie's accountant had told her she needed the interest deduction. Her bathroom was too small; she didn't even have a bathtub,
for crying out loud.

  She had to keep her new treadmill in the living room (the treadmill a gift from Faith no less, given just so that Faith could comment without commenting that Maggie still hadn't lost the weight she'd gained after she quit smoking), and Sterling had this way of walking in without knocking, to see her sweating bullets as she ran her tail off in the hopes of running her tail off.

  There were a lot of reasons for her to move, sell the condo, buy a bigger one. Good reasons.

  And one very big drawback. Leaving Alex.

  But she'd just signed a new contract with Toland Books. An obscene contract. It wasn't as if she didn't have the money, plus most of the money she'd earned in the past six years. When success hit in the publishing arena, it hit. Big. Even her earlier Alicia Tate Evans novels had been re-released, and were in their sixteenth printing, for crying out loud.

  So she had buckets of money, and it wasn't because, as Alex had teased on more than one occasion, she squeezed every penny until it squealed.

  Okay, maybe a little bit.

  For crying out loud.

  "For crying out loud, I'm becoming a little bit redundant," she said, looking over at her Christmas tree, which had been shoved into the corner of the small room. Faith's tree had been a good twenty-feet high in her two-story living room. It was pink, with real crystal ornaments, and probably snowed on itself. Not that it mattered, for crying out loud, even a little bit.

  Maggie swiveled back to face her desk and looked once more at the real estate page she'd brought up on the computer screen.

  The building pictured on the screen was big. Extremely big. And it had character.

  If you could call vaguely resembling a wedding cake having character.

  Constructed of light gray stone, the ground floor had its own straight lines and straight roof, but then the next three floors rose in half-rounded tiers. Like a wedding cake.

  Built in 1897, it had seven huge bedrooms, nine fireplaces, seven full bathrooms, two kitchens, a couple of balconies, a pair of staircases, a rooftop garden, and an enclosed backyard fashioned of marble, or something. At any rate, there were two huge stone greyhounds guarding the entrance to the patio like twin sphinxes.