July 2011

I've run out of BABIES IN THE BOARDROOM Books to talk about in this ezine. Typically, we wouldn't have any more ezines until my next book was out in November. But we're doing so well with the POWER OF QUESTIONS workshop (only 4 more lessons) that I thought we should keep going with ezines. Surely, we can wing it with things to talk about for four issues? This way you will get the rest of the workshop in the next four months.

Okay, so what do we talk about? Well, I started a new duet for Harlequin Romance that will be out next year. I also signed a contract for a Continuity Series that will be out next year. Not sure who all the authors are who signed on for this, but I do know Melissa McClone and Myrna MacKenzie are among them.

Next month, as you will see in Coming Attractions, I'm giving JOURNEY STEPS for NEORWA (http://www.neorwa.com/index.php/Workshops/Workshops). Info is below. If you're one of my writer fans, that's one of my best workshops on plotting.

But I think my most fun venture this year has been to write short stories that accompany the Andreas Brothers Series. I called these Happily Ever Afters because they happen happily after the series ends. Thirty years to be precise.

Why did I go and do something like that? Well, I wanted to show you that the Andreas Brothers' marriages lasted. And 30 years certainly proves that. LOL. But also, I wanted to have the chance to write about the romances of the BABIES from the Babies in the Boardroom.

You know, this is a wonderful time in history to be a writer. With the Internet, and my own website, I can pretty much write what I want to write and post it somewhere. (Laughing again.) But that also means I can let my creativity sort of roam and ramble. I won't get paid for these, unless I decide to put them up on Amazon and B&N and Smashwords. So while they're free on my website they are a gift to my fans.

Also, some fans wanted me to actually write about Darius, Nick and Cade ten years into the future, which might have been fun, but I simply itched to write the stories of the Babies in the Boardroom.

Especially Gino's story. Now, imagine this: You're filthy rich because your dad left you one-sixth of a shipping conglomerate. The rest is owned by your half-brothers. The only problem is your half brothers are thirty years older than you are. And one of them raised you as his son.

From the time he was in diapers, Gino has been groomed to take over the family's shipping empire. Oh, he's had his fun. The kid was raised in the lap of luxury. His "main home" is in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world. He has a half-brother who owns oil companies and a ranch. He has another half brother who lives on the beach in North Carolina. He's been all over the world. Had every kind of fun you can imagine from yachts to gambling. He's got looks and money and will soon have power.

So what would this kid be like at thirty? And who would he marry?

Those questions tickled my fancy enough to write something I wouldn't get paid for! That's curosity!

So to keep with our format, I've posted an excerpt from GINO MEETS HIS MATCH below. You can simply click the link to get to the actual story on my website. Lesson 5 from the POWER OF QUESTIONS is next up in the ezine. The COMING ATTRACTIONS section lists more info about JOURNEY STEPS and PREPPING FOR NANO. There's a Cat Tail. And I decided to go back in time and give you an excerpt from one of my older titles. Still a Harlequin Romance. I don't think my old Silhouette Romance back list has been digitized yet. So we'll stick with the HR's.

So happy July! I hope you have a vacation planned or at least a fun Fourth of July party. Me? I'm slaving away, working on the first book in what I'm calling my MONTGOMERY MOGULS duet. (But my family's having a 3rd of July party, I'm going to an amusement park on the 4th and there may be a beach adventure at the end of the month...good stuff for me!)

Enjoy lesson 5 and GINO MEETS HIS MATCH.

See you in August.

susan

FOR THE WRITERS AMONG US

THE POWER OF QUESTIONS Lesson 5

Lesson 5: The ‘other’ side of questions…Using questions to get you out of trouble.

We’ve gone over core story question and reader question and scene questions that keep your action/reaction/decision train going. So now we’re going to talk about the other side of questions. Using them to make your work better. Your plots sharper, tighter. Your characters’ goals, motivations and conflicts fresh and unique.

But before I say a word, we're going to do an experiment. Right now, everybody get out a piece of paper and a pen and write down twenty reasons a father would NOT go looking for his beloved daughter when she runs away.

You have one minute. Write as many reasons as you can. Stop at twenty or when the time runs out. Go. (I’ll hum the Jeopardy music twice while you write.)

Okay…if you’re reading this that means you are done with the exercise. If you didn’t do it, stop now, give yourself a minute and do it! Seriously, you’ll be glad you did! Take one minute and try to write out twenty answers to that question.

If you did the exercise, I now want you to take the bottom or back of that sheet and write down twenty reasons why a FATHER would NOT GO AFTER his PREGNANT DAUGHTER when she runs away from home.

One minute.
Jeopardy music.
Jeopardy music.

Time.

Okay, sorry, but one more time, somewhere on that sheet write 20 reasons why a KING would NOT go after his PRINCESS DAUGHTER who is PREGANT WITH THE NEXT HEIR TO HIS COUNTRY’S THRONE when she runs away.

One minute. Jeopardy music. Jeopardy music. Time.

Right about now, you should notice you have 3 similar lists, but each list became more specific as the question became more specific.

What we just did is the list of twenty. Decades ago Andrew Carnegie commissioned an "efficiency expert" to spend some time with him. He told the man (Ira something…sorry…most important guy in the story and I can't remember his name…) Anyway, Carnegie told Ira, if at the end of the time they spent together he could give Carnegie 1 idea that revolutionized his life he would pay him a million dollars. (A tidy sum at the time.) Ira said, you're on.

They spent the time together (either a week or a month) and at the end of it, Carnegie said, Well, what's your suggestion to revolutionize my life and Ira said, "Every time you have a problem, rather than coming up with a solution, trying it, possibly failing, spending time to come up with another potential solution and trying again, and potentially failing again, and taking time to think of a third potential solution, trying it and again potentially failing, and again spending time to come up with another solution…Write your problem on the top of a piece of paper and write out twenty potential solutions to the problem. Don't stop. Don't say hey this one is the right one. Don't monitor. Write everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. Keep going until you have twenty. Then….choose the BEST ANSWER and try that one."

Ira didn't merely make this recommendation because he wanted Carnegie to sift through all the possibilities in order to come up with the "right" idea, so he and his team would make fewer mistakes. Ira wanted Carnegie and his people to push themselves beyond one potential solution and even ten potential solutions so that they would release their creative energy and come up with some revolutionary ideas. Things they might not have thought of with the trial and error method. (Because by then frustration would have set in!)

I heard this story on a tape by motivational speaker Brian Tracy (tapes available through Nightengale Conant). Tracy explained that using this system to find solutions to your problems will revolutionize your job not just because you come up with the right idea or even something you might not have thought of; but also because it shows you wonderful things…like how doing the opposite of what you're doing now might be the answer.

But, if you’ve been paying attention, you also have probably noticed that for this system to be really successful, you must come up with a great question.

Remember those three lists we made? Each time we refined the question our answers got a bit more specific.

And that's the real power of the list of 20.

Not only did the very specific question "control" the answers that we got so that we weren’t all over the board; but also the very specific questions got us very specific answers.

The broad and general list-of-20 question is okay when you're working on your synopsis, but you need a more specific question when you have a specific problem you must solve for your story to work.

Let's take another look at the 3 lists you wrote when this lesson started.

In the first list…why wouldn't a dad go after his daughter when she runs away? You probably had reasons like…He didn't know she'd run away. You may have said, she lied and told him she was with a friend for the weekend to give herself a head start.

On the second list…The one that answers the question why doesn’t a dad go after his PREGNANT daughter when she runs away…You may have had answers like: She's an adult. She had a right to "run away" if she wanted. Because the word pregnant changed your perception of who the "runaway" was. You may have said: He didn't go after her because he assumed she was running to the baby's father. (Intimating that the dad believed that was where she belonged.) Which, again, potentially changed something big for the story.

But in the last question when I said, why wouldn't a king go after his daughter who is pregnant with the next heir to the throne… then we not only had a more defined story, we also had a more difficult time coming up with answers.

We had boundaries. Our answers had to fit.

That doesn't seem like fun. Having the sky as the limit is a lot easier. But typically the sky isn't the limit. The more specific the question, the more specific the answer and the more often that answer will work!

I actually did this a few years ago when my editor called and told me my book was going to print, but she’d found a hole in the plot and I had 24 hours to solve it. Oh, and the answer couldn’t be more than one sentence.

Yikes!

After working with two vague questions, I made the question very specific and in 8 tries, I answered my question. Not merely satisfactorily, but with something that was smooth and efficient. Something most readers would read and believe without the blink of an eye!

The gist of the story in PRINCE BABY is that a pregnant princess ran away from her father, the king of a small island county. She ran away to see the man who had gotten her pregnant because she didn't feel it was fair that he didn’t know he was about to be a father. When she gets to the hero’s house, she goes into labor and the hero delivers the baby. But she can’t travel across the Atlantic for a few weeks, so he persuades her to live with him (with the baby) until she’s able to travel. And, of course, they fall in love. (I do write romance! LOL)

When I turned in the completed manuscript, my editor was thrilled with the book, but a few weeks later she made that phone call telling me that she kept stumbling over why the princess’s dad doesn't follow her. I mean, after all, she's pregnant with the country's next heir. He might not be able to stop her from running, but why wouldn't he run after her? Would a king really let his daughter stay in America with the peasant who got her pregnant?

It was a problem! And all I had room for was about 2 sentences of explanation. One sentence would work better … So after two tries with vague questions that didn’t net me any results I did a third list.

With a better question…

Why would a king let his daughter who is pregnant with the heir to his country's throne leave the country AND not go after her for the six weeks she needs to fall in love with the hero?

It’s a cumbersome, weird question I know, but note that it took in lots of background information, in order to get and keep my brain going in the right direction! The question had to take in a lot of information because the answer had to "fit" certain circumstances. Which means that the more "tightly" your answer has to fit, the more specific your question has to be.

So how did my list turn out?

My answers were something like this:

She sneaks out of the country and the king can't find her.
He doesn't know she's gone.
He's afraid if he chases her to the United States the press will discover the future king was conceived out of wedlock and his PR people won't have time to "spin" it. (NOTE: This one is good, but not quite complete. It frustrated me…so I walked away, glanced at the newspaper and saw Bono doing something and voila…number four was born.)
The king can't chase his daughter because he's touring with U-2.
He's at Michael Jackson's trial. (Still reading the paper…)
He's a juror.
He's somewhere that he can't leave.
He's the head of his country…so when parliament is in session, he must be there! And if he leaves mid-session, the press will know something is horribly wrong and they will discover the future king was born out of wedlock and his PR people won't be able to spin it!

Notice how walking away and reading the newspaper really shifted my thoughts, but also notice how shifting my thoughts in another direction ultimately ended up uncovering the key I was missing for my story!

I combined #3 and #8 and came up with something that I could say in one sentence. I didn't even need the two sentences I was allowed…LOL.

But -- just as an aside here. Notice how the power of the ridiculous came to my aid. Walking away and reading the paper jumpstarted my brain, but the ridiculous answer I created was what really got me going in the right direction. Touring with U-2 wouldn't work in a million years. I also couldn't use "The king was at the Michael Jackson trial," but both of those led me to number 7…He's somewhere that he can't leave. And that led me to number 8.

(As another aside…I don't generally stop at 8. If I hadn't been on deadline I would have gone on and I might have come up with a better answer.)

So that's a quick and dirty explanation of the List of 20. Really a remarkable tool. Next month, Lesson 6 goes into a detailed explanation of how to use this tool to help in all aspects of your writing process from synopsis to problem solving. So come back next month!

For your homework? Using your current work in progress, create a question for a problem that’s bedeviling you.

susan

COMING ATTRACTIONS

August

Journey Steps. NEORWA
http://www.neorwa.com/index.php/Workshops/Workshops

Journey Steps, Taking the Train to Somewhere Ever wonder what you’re supposed to “put” in between those four or five turning points of your story? Susan Meier’s Journey Steps, Taking the Train to Somewhere provides quick, easy solutions for any author who has ever wondered “now what?” Topics include the “magic formula” for plotting, the list of five, explanation of plot threads versus subplot and tricks for writing an “edge-of-the-seat” read. Learn to tell your story in one straight-forward paragraph that can be used for pitches! Beginners, intermediate and experienced authors will benefit from this workshop.


Coming in October PREPARING FOR NANO at Pennwriters.com

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Everybody believes NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which runs every November at www.nanowrimo.org) is a race against the clock, a fight with procrastination and inertia. In some ways it is. But once you’re in the thick of things, you’ll discover NaNo is really all about ideas. Writers don’t stall because they’re lazy. Writers stall because they don’t know what to write next.

The month BEFORE NaNo, get proven tips from Susan Meier—the author of almost 50 books for Harlequin and Silhouette—and let her take you through several different ways to examine the story you want to write, to capture the natural scene possibilities within your idea, to generate new ideas, and to push yourself through the most grueling, but fun, month you will spend this year! Lessons include:


* The List of 20 (How to generate ideas quickly so you have little downtime when your natural ideas run out)

* Turning a “Want” into “Need” (How does knowing why you’re writing this book provide you with both energy to write and ideas for your story?)

* The One-Paragraph Story Summary (Say it succinctly…3 kinds of one-paragraph story summaries: back cover blurb, core story question, and growth paragraph)

* Could, Might, Must and Should List (How to capture ideas that spring up naturally)

* Storyboard Versus Synopsis (Breaking your idea down into manageable bites)

* The Psychology of Pushing through the Hard Times (What to do when you get stuck)

* The Psychology of a Draft (Push, push, push!)

* What Are You Doing in December? (Editing tips)


TESTIMONIALS:

“I was bowled over by how helpful it was. Susan was ever patient and ready to offer feedback and encouragement. The course material was broken down so that it was easy to understand but it pushed me to dig deeper and really understand my story. I would not hesitate to recommend this course in the future or any course with Susan Meier.”

- SGM

Fantasy writer

“Susan Meier generously shares her knowledge and shapes it to fit your needs. She is enthusiastic and encouraging. This course helped me to fill in the gaps, taking my plot from mundane to magnificent! Thanks, Susan!”

- JBS


Cat Tails

So what are Sophia and Fluffy up to this summer?

Interestly, my daughter Sarah moved into her own apartment this year! Yay! (I think she was getting sick of us.) Because her roomie already has two cats, she left Fluffy behind. This was fine with us, but we worried about Fat Fluff because he adores Sarah. But surprisingly he hasn't been half bad. In fact, without Sarah around he's amazingly social. Every night we now have what my DH and I like to refer to as the Every Night Fight. Fluffy comes downstairs, swats Sophie across the head and the fight is on.

I read somewhere that cats see fighting with their companions as exercise. Well, Fat Fluff may not be Fat Fluff much longer if this keeps up! LOL

GINO MEETS HIS MATCH

When Gino Andreas entered the executive offices for Andreas Holdings, a hush fell over the gleaming corridors.

In her office at the end of the hall, Bethany Johnson watched the men he passed all but scrape and bow. Gino was thirty now, about to take his seat on the board of directors with his three half brothers, Darius, Nick and Cade. Everyone anticipated that within five years, the older Andreas brothers would retire early and enjoy their golden years on the French Rivera with their adoring wives.

And Gino would rule.

The women of Andreas Holdings weren’t quite so pragmatic. Even those climbing the corporate ladder, hoping to serve as presidents or vice presidents, had privately admitted to Bethany that their breath stuttered a bit when Gino walked by. Tall and slender like his oldest half-brother Darius, with Nick’s sense of fun and Cade’s shrewd dark eyes, Gino wasn’t just sex appeal in a suit. He was smart and funny. There wasn’t one unattached female in Andreas Holdings who wouldn’t give her next Christmas bonus for the opportunity to find out what he’d be like in bed.

Except Bethany.

Not because she didn’t think Gino was hot. For Pete’s sake, the guy exuded sex appeal. Add a little money and power to that, and some days she honestly thought she would drool. The thing of it was Bethany was broke. No one had told her living in New York City would be so expensive or that roommates could bolt the first time they fell in love and decided it was time to live with their fiancés. She had bigger, more important things on her mind than somebody’s hotness.

“Good morning, Ms. Johnson.”

Deep and sexy, Gino’s voice drifted to her and Bethany’s lungs shivered. If he could patent that voice, he’d be even richer than he already was.

“Good morning, Mr. Andreas.”

“Anything I need to know?”

“Just that your brothers are waiting for you in the conference room.”

Halfway to his office, he stopped, turned. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. They called an emergency meeting of the board an hour ago.”

Hands on his hips, he glanced skyward as if seeking help from above. “There is no emergency. They just want me to be late for my first board meeting so they can harass me.”

She laughed. “Probably Nick’s idea.”

“Undoubtedly.”

Their easy camaraderie warmed her heart. She was only a floater – someone who filled in wherever administrative assistance was needed. Gino’s real personal secretary made oodles of cash. But when they’d offered her the job of standing in for Roberta while she took maternity leave, Bethany had seen it as a good sign that one of “the” Andreas brothers liked her. Her goal was to do such a good job for Gino that he would give her a good recommendation, so she’d be moved into one of the permanent assistant positions and actually be able to make her rent.

She just had to keep her lease for the next six months.

***

Gino left Bethany’s office and headed toward the big boardroom just off Darius’s executive suite. Though he knew he should probably be wondering what the hell his brothers would spring on him, he found himself shaking his head over Bethany’s hair.

A ponytail. In an office. It made him laugh.

Actually, it made him comfortable. Roberta, a tall gorgeous redhead whose husband would kill anybody who took more than a three-second glance at her, had been coolly efficient. He’d never had to worry about missing a meeting – even a trumped up meeting his brothers had decided to have for sport – because with her layers and layers of friends within the corporate maze that was Andreas Holdings, Roberta would have heard about it.

But Roberta didn’t make him laugh. She most certainly didn’t make him comfortable. And the truth was he was smarter and more efficient when he was comfortable.

So in some ways he was glad Roberta was off for the first six months he would serve on the board. He didn’t need somebody to prop him up, to help him, to make him look smarter. He was smart enough. He needed someone who helped him relax.

Whatever he had to do over the next six months to keep Bethany Johnson right where she was, he intended to do it.

“So you finally made it.”

Walking into the boardroom, Gino glanced at his three older brothers. Though the Andreas men had different mothers, they shared dark hair and dark eyes. Darius, the brother he called Dad because he and his wife Whitney had adopted him, was the tallest. Nick with unruly curly hair was the handsomest. Cade the shrewdest. It showed in the way his nearly black eyes narrowed every time he came against something he didn’t like.

Nick guided Gino to the chair at the foot of the table. “Thirty years. You’re the only brother who had to wait to get his seat on the board.”

“Yeah, because you guys changed the rules.”

Darius laughed. “After our father’s will gave you – as an infant – an equal share in the company, which came with a seat on the board, we recognized the flaw in not having guidelines for directors.” He pulled out Gino’s chair. “So we wrote some. That’s the fun of being boss. Find something you don’t like, you change it.”

More or less forced into his seat, Gino sat.

Cade strode over. Dressed in a suit and tie, he looked like the billionaire he was, but he didn’t really look like himself. A rancher first and foremost, he typically dressed in jeans and T-shirts. “And don’t think because you’re on the board, we’re going to listen to hair-brained schemes. You’re the newbee. You watch and learn.”

“I’ve been watching and learning for thirty years.”

All three laughed. Taking his seat at the head of the table, Darius said, “You haven’t seen anything of life yet.”

And that was the problem. He’d been raised in the lap of luxury, as Darius’s son, because their father and Gino’s mom had been killed in an accident. He’d never really encountered a problem, didn’t know what it was like to be hungry or cold. Didn’t know a damned thing about struggle.

Darius hit the gavel and brought the room to order, which basically meant Nick and Cade took their seats.

But a board meeting, even for a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, turned out to be a very dry discussion of business. Not that he didn’t care. He did. One day the responsibility for Andrea Holdings, a huge, multi-national enterprise would be his.

But could he take the reins of a multi-national conglomerate without really understanding the things that most normal people knew? Cade, Nick and Darius hadn’t grown up wealthy. Though Stephone Andreas had acknowledged Darius, he’d basically been raised by a struggling single mom, as Nick and Cade had been. The things they’d learned through their struggles growing up gave them insights into life and people that Gino didn’t have. He didn’t know about the blood, sweat, tears and trouble that had gone into making Andreas Holdings great. He simply knew great. And he also knew that wouldn’t serve him well as a leader.

***

When Bethany arrived home, there was an eviction notice in her mail slot. She leaned against the row of post office boxes and slid down to the floor. She was a few days late! A few days! Surely the building manager couldn’t evict her yet.

But when she took her notice to his office in the basement, he grinned at her around his cigar.

“Yeah, I can evict you.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and blew smoke at her. “We’re not exactly the classiest building in the city and our renters aren’t the cream of the crop, so our lease is a little different than most. You should have read the fine print. If you’re as much as two days late I can start the process.”

“I’ll have the rent money on Friday.”

“Yeah, sure, babe. I get that. But without a roommate you’re going to have trouble every month until pretty soon you’ll be weeks behind and soon after that months.” He guided her to the door. “Only way I take this off the books is if you come to me with a new roommate and prove you can pay your rent.”

Suddenly she was in the hall and his door was slamming behind her.

She straightened her shoulders. Okay. Fine. He wanted her to have a roommate. She’d find a roommate.

Click the link below to read the rest of the story...I think Michael and Lucy pop up first...so scroll down to Gino Meets His Match.

http://susanmeier-happilyeverafter.blogspot.com/




And now...a blast from the past! A little bit from MAID IN MONTANA

Jeb Worthington watched the aging sport utility vehicle chug up the tree-lined road leading to his ranch. He pulled on his horse's reins, stopping Jezebel, and reached for his small binoculars.

Yep. Just as he suspected. His new housekeeper, Sophie Penazzi, had arrived.

Adjusting the glasses, he watched her get out of the car, taking in her straight, shoulder-length brown hair that, if he remembered correctly, was a color almost identical to the dark brown of her eyes.

She stretched, working the kinds of out her back and shoulders from the long drive. The smooth, even tan of her skin brought visions of her in a bikini, rushing into the crashing waves of the Pacific, surfboard under her arm. It didn't surprise him that he'd envision her that way. Not only did her resume list her home as Malibu, but also there was a part of him that would pay very good money to see her perfect bottom in a bikini.

He dropped the glasses to his thigh. Those were exactly the kinds of things he could not -- would not -- think about about his new housekeeper. He'd lost the last one because she'd made a pass at him and he'd fired her. But instead of admitting she'd been let go because she'd tried to use her position as a springboard to becoming mistress of the house, Maria had promptly gone into town and trashed his reputation, claiming she'd quit because he was a grouch, too difficult to work for. The only way he'd recoup his standing with the locals would be to be nice to this new housekeeper, proving Maria had lied.

But being nice came with trouble of its own. Or maybe better said: Being nice to a live-in employee came with rules of its own. A line had to be drawn. He didn't want to be accused of sexual harrassment or even flirting. And he wouldn't. He would find a middle ground.

He nudged Jezebel, urging her to increase her pace.

Sophie bent into the rear compartment of her SUV. After setting several suitcases on the ground behind her vehicle, she lifted out an odd looking thing covered in net, at least four feet long and flat as a pancake. From the brackets on the side, he suspected that whatever it was, it was folded up. God only knew what it became when she unfolded it.

Once again, he nudged Jezebel, this time increasing her walk to a trot.

Adjusting the glasses so he could watch her as he rode, he saw Sophie slam the rear hatch, open the back door and bend inside.

There was more?

She pulled out a small seat and what looked to be a cooler and Jeb took Jezebel to a full gallop. What the hell was this woman doing? Planning to take over a wing in his house? Sure, she had to live with him, but he remembered telling her that her quarters were a bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. She didn't get to spread out all over his home.

He galloped past the outbuildings and barn, slowing Jezebel when they neared the driveway and taking her down to a walk when the reached the pavement.

Obviously hearing the clip-clop of Jez's approach, Sophie turned around. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up at him and called, "Hey! Good morning!"

Her bright brown eyes shone with joy, accenting her pert little nose, wide smile and nicely defined chin. Her should have kept his eyes on her face, but the blue top clinging to her breasts and the jeans outlining her perfect bottom drew his gaze downward until he'd taken in every feminine inch of her.

Irritated with himself, he nearly cursed. Why had he hired someone so cute?

A glance at her mountain of gear only increased his ire. Obviously she was all wrong for this job. He reined Jez a few feet ahead of the car, and growled, "What are you--"

Too late. Sophie ducked into her back seat again and he stopped talking. Not only was she providing him with a jaw-dropping view of her backside, but also there was little sense talking when his conversation partner couldn't hear him.

He waited patiently, ready to ask her just how much junk she thought she could get into a small suite of rooms, but when she pulled out of the back seat, baby in her arms, the words he'd intended to say fell out of his head. He was -- for the first time ever -- speechless.

She smiled at him. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

He stared at her. Then the baby. The kid was small but chubby. Healthy. With pink cheeks and a thatch of thick black hair that poked out in all directions.

The only thing that came out of his mouth was, "What are you doing?"

She frowned. "You said to move in. Today. So I can start working tomorrow. Did I misread your instructions?"

"Apparently! Since I don't remember telling you to bring a baby!"

"Oh!" She laughed. "This is my son, Brady." She kissed the little boy's cheek. "Say hello, Brady."

The baby cooed and gooed and Jeb's heart stuttered in his chest. Willing back the swell of emotions that threatened to overtake him, he simply said, "You can't have a baby here."

Sophie kissed the baby's cheek again. "Why not? The agency said it wasn't a problem."

"The employment agency told you that you could bring him?"

"Yes, when they explained that this job was for a live-in housekeeper, I told them about Brady and they said it was no problem for me to bring him."

"I gave them the exact opposite instructions! I said no kids." Somebody's head was going to roll.

That's the beginning of MAID IN MONTANA...if you likie...go to Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com and get one of the older copies...or maybe digital if you have a Kindle.

That's all for this month! See you in August for Lesson 6 and another Andreas tie in.