About the story:

Trust Me began with a house in Pacific Heights. I don't know who owns it, but to me it officially belongs to Henry Tremayne and his thirty-five pets. The real house isn't quite as grandly Gothic as the one I describe in Chapter Two, but it does sit "high on the highest hill around", and has a brooding, fortress-like air that makes me think that there must be gargoyles up there, somewhere.

I love houses. Years ago, when I was an unemployed writer living in San Francisco, I used to spend Sunday afternoons wandering around Pacific Heights--the ritzy section of town--staring at the huge houses and looking for story ideas. This particular mansion was on my list of favorite stops, and I would stand on the public sidewalk, much like Max Giordano does in the book, staring up at the house and wondering about it. The wandering and wondering eventually led to the plot for Trust Me, although it took a year in the town of Davis, California, to add the other important part.

Davis is part of the University of California system, and has one of the top veterinary schools in the country. I moved there, and was suddenly surrounded by vets. (And pre-vets, and spouses of vets, and pets of vets.) I had always wanted to write a book with a veterinarian heroine, so this was the perfect research opportunity! Carly Martin, D.V.M, is fictional, but much of her character is based on what I learned during the Year of the Vets. Trust Me wasn't actually written until long after I left Davis, but when I needed a plot for my second novel, both the gloomy mansion and the veterinarians popped up out of my memory to volunteer.

Other Notes:

— The original title for the manuscript was "The Tremayne Trust" which I liked because I am a sucker for alliteration, plus I thought it was a nice play on words that described both Henry Tremayne's legal trust, and Max Giordano's emotional trust issues. Then Beth de Guzman, my editor at Warner, took it one snappy step further and shortened it to Trust Me, arguing that nobody knew what a Tremayne was until after they'd read the book, which was unlikely to happen unless it had a better title. This was the point where I decided to just shut up and write the books, and let the pros handle the marketing part.

— There was a flurry of last-minute research at Warner over the scene where Max feeds Lola the Great Dane a packet of peanuts from the hotel minibar. The question was: is it okay to feed peanuts to a dog? Might peanuts (like chocolate) be terribly, mysteriously toxic to canines? Since we didn't want to be responsible for the untimely deaths of hundreds of romance readers' pets, we carefully checked this, and determined that it is perfectly okay to feed peanuts to your dog, provided that you don't do it too often, because then you will end up with a fat dog.

— The limerick that Professor Zimmerman recites for Professor Martin is something that I wrote for a friend in college who was doing a thesis on wild mustard plants. I really like limericks, and have written enough to publish a book of them, except that I can't get my agent to stop howling with derisive laughter at the thought of trying to sell such a book. I think I may be stuck trying to work them, one by one, into my next 200 romance novels.

— Trust Me is dedicated to the Mercer Veterinary Clinic for the Homeless. Founded in 1991 by students at the University of California at Davis, the clinic provides free veterinary care to the companion animals of Sacramento's homeless community. All royalties from this book benefit the Mercer Clinic.

November 2003
isbn 0-446-61285-5
Warner Forever