CJ created a problem for me.

Once I knew who she was, I had to find a man who could stand beside her without either diminishing her or disappearing himself.

That is harder than it sounds.

She is forty-five, exceptionally successful, wealthy, intelligent and accustomed to authority. She can make decisions that affect enormous amounts of money without needing somebody beside her telling her she’s doing brilliantly.

She doesn’t need encouragement to speak.

She doesn’t need permission to take up space.

So I couldn’t give her a man whose masculinity depended on being more powerful than the woman beside him.

He would last about twelve minutes.

Chase had to be strong in a different way.

He had to be secure.

There is a difference between confidence and the performance of confidence, and I wanted Chase firmly on one side of it.

He has achieved enough himself that CJ’s success doesn’t become a competition.

He doesn’t need to win every conversation.

He doesn’t need to know more about every subject.

He doesn’t require her to be impressed before he can relax.

And when she challenges him, his first instinct isn’t to put her back in her place.

He likes it.

That doesn’t make him submissive.

Quite the opposite.

Chase has authority of his own. He is successful, decisive and perfectly capable of being difficult when the occasion requires it.

CJ doesn’t overwhelm him.

That’s important.

I didn’t want to solve the problem of writing a powerful woman by putting a saint beside her who spends four hundred pages admiring everything she does.

That would be dreadful.

Chase has an ego.

He has opinions.

He gets irritated.

There are things he wants that CJ doesn’t make easy.

There are moments when he pushes back.

He just doesn’t need her to lose for him to win.

I think that is an underrated quality in men.

Perhaps in people generally.

We talk a lot about confidence as though it is visible. The loudest person. The person who takes charge. The one who walks into a room as though they own it.

Sometimes that’s confidence.

Sometimes it’s theatre.

Real security often shows itself in what somebody doesn’t need.

They don’t need the last word.

They don’t need to turn somebody else’s success into a joke.

They don’t need to explain something to a person who clearly knows more about it than they do.

They can admire without feeling reduced by the admiration.

That was the man CJ required.

Because she wasn’t going to become less herself to protect somebody else’s ego.

And I wasn’t going to make her.

I also didn’t want Chase’s attraction to her to be based solely on the fact that she is unusual.

CJ isn’t a curiosity for him.

He notices the obvious things, of course. He’s alive.

But what holds his attention is the combination.

She is intelligent without making intelligence her entire personality. Successful without expecting success to make her interesting. Funny. Irreverent. Independent. Occasionally infuriating.

And very difficult to impress.

Chase likes that more than is probably sensible.

There is also something else I wanted from him.

Restraint.

A powerful man who can get what he wants is common in romance.

I wanted to know what happens when he chooses not to.

When he respects a boundary he doesn’t particularly like.

When curiosity doesn’t automatically become entitlement.

When wanting to know more about somebody doesn’t mean deciding he has the right to find out.

That, for me, says far more about Chase than any amount of money or professional authority could.

Respect is easy when there is no alternative.

It means more when somebody has the power to ignore a boundary and chooses not to.

That doesn’t mean Chase accepts everything indefinitely.

He shouldn’t.

Respecting somebody’s independence doesn’t require abandoning your own needs.

There comes a point in any real relationship where understanding the other person’s reasons isn’t enough. You can understand why somebody behaves as they do and still decide the behaviour hurts you.

Chase needed that line.

Otherwise he stops being a partner and becomes somebody whose entire function is accommodating CJ.

I didn’t want that any more than I wanted CJ to disappear into him.

They both have to remain people.

That’s where equality becomes interesting.

Not two characters who are identical in every measurable way.

Two people whose strength can occupy the same room.

CJ doesn’t need a stronger man to contain her.

She needs one secure enough not to try.

Chase doesn’t need a woman who will admire him from a safe distance.

He needs somebody interesting enough to surprise him.

Put those two things together and you get friction.

You also get attraction.

And, occasionally, a fairly spectacular argument.

I like that.

I don’t want romance without conflict. Two intelligent adults are going to disagree. They are going to misunderstand one another. They are going to discover that the qualities they found irresistible over dinner are considerably less charming when those same qualities are preventing them from getting what they want.

That’s part of knowing somebody.

CJ’s independence is attractive until Chase wants to be included in something she would rather handle alone.

His confidence is attractive until he decides he’s entitled to challenge her.

The qualities remain the same.

The context changes.

That is where characters stop being lists of desirable traits and become people.

Chase had to be capable of meeting CJ there.

Not above her.

Not behind her.

Beside her.

Which sounds terribly simple when I write it like that.

It wasn’t.

But once I could see him clearly, I couldn’t imagine anybody else getting the job.