Joe meets Janet challenge, with apologies to "Janet and the Night Visitors".
"We have to talk, Janet."
She hadn't heard that voice in a few years, and frankly, she would have been just as happy not to hear it now. Deep and raspy, with just a hint of New Jersey in the vowels, that voice, among others, had given her a particularly nasty nightmare a few years back. She still didn't examine the memory too closely, because it still made her feel squishy around the edges. She'd finally convinced herself that the night visitors had been nothing more than a vivid dream, and during the daylight hours she could almost believe it. With the comfort of dawn's light still an hour or more away on this winter morning, the house still sleeping and silent around her, she wasn't quite so sanguine.
"Janet?" She fortified herself with a deep breath and a bracing sip of hot coffee, then casually made herself comfortable in her desk chair. If she ignored this figment of her imagination, he might just go away and leave her in peace. She had a book tour coming up, contract negotiations, plus an overwhelming number of books to be written. She didn't like to admit it, but she was getting older and the pace she set for herself sometimes wore thin, especially early in the morning when let's face it—it took her a little bit longer to get started than it used to. She resolutely flicked her computer out of hibernate mode, then reached behind her to turn on the overhead lights in her office.
"Don't!" The voice stopped her, mid-switch, and she involuntarily turned in the direction of the voice. She vaguely considered that voices in your head shouldn't have their own direction. "The light will wake the baby."
Baby? What baby? Okay, he definitely had her attention now. Her fingers felt for the small desk lamp instead, as she peered into the dark corner, trying to place the voice. "Is this okay?"
"Fine."
She pushed the switch on her desk lamp, then let out her breath in an involuntary whoosh. Sometimes she'd forgotten just how devastating he could be. She'd concentrated more on Ranger in the later books, she'd admitted, and had tended to take Morelli's charms for granted. Rather significant charms, she admitted to herself, letting her gaze roam over his familiar form. She'd described him dozens, if not hundreds of times over the years, but the sight of those long legs stretched out in front of the club chair and that wide chest still made her breath catch in the back of her throat. That wide chest currently had a sleeping infant sprawled across it, and Janet felt a stab of envy as Morelli's hands made small circles across the baby's back. He tilted his head and whispered low Italian endearments in the tiny pink shell of the baby's ear, then turned his devastating deep brown eyes to Janet.
"We need to talk, Janet," he repeated.
"Uh, okay," she stammered, then recovered. "Whose baby?"
"Mine."
Janet blinked. She hadn't known a single word could be imbued with such ferocity, yet he had barely spoken above a whisper. If there was anything more appealing than an alpha male cradling a tiny infant, she didn't know what it was. Resolutely, she tried to ignore the pull of Morelli's appeal and spoke matter of factly. "Morelli, I never wrote you a baby."
"I know," he said with exasperation.
"So the baby isn't real," Janet explained patiently. "For that matter, you're not real!" She shook her head at her own sense of the ridiculous. She was sitting here in the predawn darkness, talking to a figment of her own imagination, not to mention the figment of his imagination, instead of churning out another book.
"Did you ever read the Velveteen Rabbit, Janet?" Morelli asked.
Taken aback by the apparent nonsequitur, she frowned at him. "What?"
"When your daughter was little," he explained. "Did you ever read the Velveteen Rabbit to her?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Janet answered, still unsure where he was going with this.
Morelli nodded at her. "I read the Velveteen Rabbit to Sofi," he explained. At her quizzical look, he continued. "At night, before bed. I read to her." He paused and sent a small, intimate smile to his sleeping daughter, and his whole face softened.
"We bought her this little red stuffed dog. It's really ugly," he explained to Janet, "but she just loves it. We call it BobTwo. We were trying to get her to quit pulling on Bob's ears and tail all the time, so we got her BobTwo. She chews on it, and drags it all over the place. We have to take it everywhere, because if Sofi doesn't have BobTwo, things go downhill fast."
He made an effort to recollect his thoughts. "Anyway, BobTwo doesn't matter to anybody else, but Sofi loves him. Kinda like the kid in the Velveteen Rabbit. For Sofi, BobTwo is real, because she loves him so much."
"And I know you didn't write Sofi, so she isn't real to you." At this, his voice broke, and Janet could see his eyes were glistening, just a bit as he fought back emotion. "But she's real to me," he choked out.
He made a production of clearing his throat, and when he spoke next it was as if the momentary emotional lapse had never occurred. "And I didn't come here to ask you to write Sofi. I know that doesn't fit in with your overall plan of keeping up this infernal chase between Stephanie and me." He looked around at the well-appointed office in appreciation. "You've got a good thing going here, and I don't blame you for enjoying it. I just wanted to ask you a small favor."
"What's that?" Janet asked, still unsure where he was going with this.
"I just wanted to ask you to please not make it so that Sofi can never be."
Janet frowned at him.
"The things you write are real, we understand that, all of us. Whatever anybody else writes isn't real, isn't canon, you understand?" She nodded in agreement. "I just worry that you might write something that will make it so that Stephanie and I can never get together, after. After you're done with the books, and done with the chase, and all of that. You have to know people will keep writing, just like they do now." Again, Janet nodded. Fan fiction was rampant for her Stephanie Plum series.
"I just came to ask you to please not write something that will take Sofi away from us. That's all," he pleaded earnestly. "She may not be real to you, but she's real to us."
Janet nodded her head sagely. "Morelli, I hear what you're saying. I can't promise you that I'll write you and Stephanie a happily ever after with your row house in the Burg and a couple of kids. That's not what I had in mind for this series. But I'll try to make it so that it isn't impossible either. Will that work for you?"
Morelli gave her the benefit of his full, no-holds-barred, no-bullshit Morelli smile, the one that lit his whole face and made his eyes soften to molten chocolate, and Janet was grateful she was sitting down or her knees would have failed her for sure. "Thanks, Janet," he whispered. Cradling his tiny daughter close to his chest, he slowly faded away.