There is little on the planet more frustrating and mystifying than the opposite sex. This is certainly true in real life (why, for example, did my ordinarily messy husband randomly do the dishes last night without being asked?), but is also true of our heroes in books. I am in a standoff with my hero Collin in Houses of Cards. He hasn’t let me into his head for two days. I can only presume he’s mad at all women for the fight he just had with his mother or something. Geez. It has just become apparent that the major threat in the book is to him rather than to her, which has her reverting completely to professional profiler mode and he’s being strangely…resistant to acknowledging the fact that the threat is to him. He’s all focused on the threat to the heroine, which is all noble and good–except that he’s the target. She’s flat out told him that. And he’s still in his Protect The Little Woman mode. She found this cute until today. Now she’s ready to throttle him. I think the problem with the scene is that he’s not helping with the action. He’s trying to get her to chill out and relax rather than obsessively do her “job”. He sees her as more fragile than she is, I think. Maybe. Idiot man. Either way, he’s ex-military. He’s not just going to sit around doing nothing. I”m just not sure what exactly he’s going to do. Just tell me what you’re thinking! All I know to do at this point is scrap the scene back to the point where it derailed and start over. I hate that…
