A Study In Seduction (39 page)

Have you ever stared in the mirror and had yourself a mini identity crisis? Felt unsure of who you really were? I have, and that was the inspiration for BLAME IT ON TEXAS. But for my heroine, Zoe Adams, her identity crisis isn’t so mini.

Imagine seeing a childhood picture of yourself splashed across the TV screen on an unsolved mystery show, which claims you were kidnapped from some highfalutin Texas millionaire family. Imagine learning that your corpse was supposedly discovered shortly after you were kidnapped. Imagine it, when all your life you’ve had some strange memories that didn’t make sense.

With Zoe’s parents—or people she thought were her parents—deceased, she’s certain of only one thing: She’s not dead. (Although, after her fiancé ran off with another woman, taking her heart with him, she hasn’t felt too alive.) So Zoe does the only thing she can: She takes a leave of absence from her job as a kindergarten teacher, packs up the only thing that matters in her life—her handicapped cat—and hightails it from Alabama to the Lone Star State.

Her search for answers lands her in a whole lot of trouble, too. When someone starts taking pot shots at her, she winds up under the protective arm of a sexy commitment-phobic PI who is more than willing to play bodyguard. Between Tyler Lopez, his family and friends,
and all the zany characters she meets while working at Cookie’s Diner, Zoe learns that who you are isn’t so much about your birth name or who your parents were. It’s about whom you let into your life and whom you love.

From Texas-sized flying cockroaches and ticked-off clowns, to games of strip Scrabble, writing the story of Zoe and Tyler was the most fun I’ve had doing something that wouldn’t get me arrested. The chemistry between these two characters lit up the page from the moment she dropped three plates of food on him. Hot grits and sunny-side-up eggs never looked so good. I hope you enjoy the story of two people stumbling their way through life’s bumpy roads and landing smack-dab in the lap of love.

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Confession #1: I’m terrified of math. I have been a math-o-phobe since first grade, when we learned basic addition and I had to count on my fingers to make sure I was
getting the answers right. Confession #2: I still count on my fingers. Confession #3: I’m way, way beyond first grade.

Math and I have never found a groove. I’m okay with some numbers (2 and 5 are polite acquaintances of mine, if not exactly friends), but others make me nervous (7 is somewhat flinty, and 9 is plain evil). I never memorized the multiplication tables. I still can’t do long division. My son is now a first grader and completes his math homework faster than I can check it.

So what provoked me to create a heroine who is a brilliant mathematician? Lunacy, of course, and maybe a little bit of “Ha! I will confront you, Math, even though you scare me.” At least in writing about a mathematician, I could channel my fear into creating what I hope is a unique and memorable heroine.

If there is one thing Lydia Kellaway, the heroine of A STUDY IN SEDUCTION, does not fear, it’s numbers. Equations comfort her. She enjoys theorems, series, postulates. She understands them. They understand her. And I loved the idea of a Victorian woman who has a harmonious relationship with math and who is renowned for her extraordinary intelligence.

The seed of Lydia’s character came while I was researching nineteenth-century Russia and discovered information about Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891), a prominent Russian mathematician who made major contributions to the field.

Despite the barriers she encountered in academia, Sofia earned a doctorate
summa cum laude
from the University of Göttingen, becoming the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Personal and professional struggles did not prevent Sofia’s success, as she soon became the first woman in Northern Europe to hold
a full professorship at the University of Stockholm. She published numerous papers, edited a mathematical journal, and received the competitive Prix Bordin from the French Academy of Sciences.

While Sofia Kovalevskaya inspired my idea of a heroine who is a mathematician, I wanted Lydia to be a unique character in her own right. I loved that she could immerse herself in numbers and find comfort in equations, but what did that mean for the other parts of her life? What would happen if Lydia had spent her years in lonely isolation, with only numbers as her faithful companions, and then was suddenly forced to confront the exact opposite of intellect—the pull of lust?

After her destructive early experiences, Lydia lives in safe comfort inside her head… until Alexander comes along to wreak havoc with all his hot Russian sexiness. He is fascinated not only by her body, but also by her brilliant mind. Writing about how Lydia’s affinity with math affects and changes their relationship was both a challenge and a pleasure.

Confession #4: I’ll never overcome my fear of math. Words I love, but numbers I’ll merely tolerate. I’ll always carry my portable calculator, and when my son’s math homework gets beyond me (which it soon will), I’ll either study with him or recruit someone else to be the homework helper. I’ll keep working at multiplication, especially the 7s and 9s, but in the meantime I take a small measure of comfort in Sofia Kovalevskaya’s remark to one of her teachers: “I was unfortunately weak in the multiplication table.”