Only one way to tame Crankenstein’s monster. Heart-to-heart combat.
Watkin’s Pond, Book 2
Bestselling author and infamous town hermit Radcliffe McQueen knows what he likes, what he doesn’t, and refuses to pretend social niceties. Particularly with a red-hot mess of a woman who’s taken it upon herself to smooth his rough edges.
She thinks she can change him? Bring it. He’s more than willing to teach her the wisdom of doing things his way. Besides, it’ll distract him from the horror of facing a blank page.
Stodgy. Stubborn. Sanctimonious. Sheri Riddle can think of a long list of adjectives to describe her newest project. An artist by trade, a personality renovator by calling, she’s sure she can transform the blockheaded author into a reasonably personable human being.
Yet as they lock horns, each scrapes away layers of the other until something happens that’s quite outside of Sheri’s plans. Something that’ll take more than one taste of passion to satisfy…
Warning: Contains a temperamental author, a moody artist, a sexy assistant and a hoarder house. Did we mention rabid squirrels? Yeah, one of those too.
While You Were Writing
Virginia Nelson
Dedication
For Aunt Lee…I think you would have liked this one.
I want to start this one off by thanking my amazing editor, Christa. She gets my voice, which is really the greatest compliment I can pay any editor. Her questions are thought provoking, her points all spot on…altogether she rocks. I also want to thank Samhain for taking a shot on a rainbow-haired single mom from Middle-of-Nowhere, Ohio.
Thanks to Sheri, who entered a character naming contest, hence the name of my heroine. It was so great getting to meet you at the Menger! Thanks, as always, to my bratpack. You fill my days with laughter and give me a reason to wake up every morning. Thanks to Shell, Jfab, Ma & Dad for tea, love, support and friendship. Thanks to all my genetic fam and all my nieces and nephews for love and sometimes cheesy eggs. Thanks to the Schommer family for giving us a wonderful home, enough space to fill with dreams and a quiet place to write.
This book includes a very interesting key—from a couple-hundred-year-old farmhouse—and Jen at www.etsy.com/shop/Suite22 helped me find some real antique keys for my beta readers and some giveaways. Thanks so much for making my imagination come to life. Thanks to Niki F. for taking the antique keys and turning them into wearable art. You both are so awesome and I’m so excited to share your gifts with my readers.
Thanks to Heather for inspiring Radcliffe in all the very best ways. It takes a village to raise a child and few are more childish than me, so if I forgot to thank you…thanks, man. xoxo
~VirgChapter One
Hunched over the plastic-covered bar of the grocery cart, the man was a walking warning reminding anyone who saw him to avoid osteoporosis. Although Sheri’s substantial background snooping claimed he stood around six feet in height, the crumpled posture in the too-big corduroy jacket hid his stature pretty well at first glance. A hat pulled low around his ears further impressed advanced age, concealing all but a peek of dark hair at his nape. As she watched him progress down the aisle of the store, he reached out, grabbed a box of toothpaste and shoved it in his pocket.
Shaking her head, she leaned on the glass protecting the meat display and crossed one ankle over the other. “You’re sure he’s the one you told me about? He’s the fascinating recluse author? You’re kidding, right? I’m supposed to believe that hideous old man is Radcliffe McQueen?” Oblivious to them studying him, the crunched old figure elbowed past a woman reaching for a box of cereal before sneering down at the child she pushed in her buggy. From her vantage point, Sheri could hear a mumble that sounded distinctly like, “Snot-nosed brat.”
Said brat started bellowing and the man shuffled away a bit faster, disappearing around the corner of the aisle. Sheri didn’t follow, instead shooting her brother a skeptical glance.
“Yeah, seriously, that’s him. Looks nothing like his author picture, right?” A polar opposite to the gnarly figure they’d been studying, Lance’s golden boy tan and hair gleamed in the florescent lights.
“He shoplifted. He’s a thousand years old. Oh, and he seems to be an ass.” Sheri ticked the facts off on her fingers before straightening to move to the next aisle and continue her study. “Are the pictures of him dated or something? Everything in my research suggested he’s only a few years older than me.”
From this angle, McQueen now headed toward her rather than away, not that she could see more of his face under the derby and with his chin tucked close to his chest. Again, he reached out, plucking items from the shelves and stuffing them in his pockets. A loaf of bread remained the sole item in his cart as he worked his way down the aisle, coming closer by the moment. He didn’t look like a writer, he looked like a homeless man. She’d avoided reading his work—not wanting to taint her initial impression of him with his voice on the page versus his actual voice—but she couldn’t see how a creature so solitary and angry-looking could write romance. She couldn’t see how he could get close enough to another human being to have a romance, much less write believable stories about it.
“Nope. He’s only, like, late thirties? He’s not as old as he appears. He’s just weird.” Lance’s hand caught her shoulder, pulling her back a step when she wanted to get a closer look. “Stay back. I told you, it’s not a good idea to talk to him.”
“And I told you, I like a challenge.” At the end of the row, McQueen again turned, still oblivious to Sheri, and shuffled down the next aisle, vanishing with a squeak of an under-oiled grocery cart wheel.
“But then I told you, this guy is impossible. He’s crotchety, meaner than piss, and he doesn’t like people. I’m glad you came to visit me, but if I’d known you planned to try another one of your ‘projects’…” He paused for dramatic air quotes and Sheri rolled her eyes. No one in her family respected her calling. “I might have told you not to come.” Since Sheri’d moved away from him, Lance was forced to race to keep up as she craned her neck for another glance at her prey.
Radcliffe’s hat was off, revealing unwashed, dark curling hair, but the man stuffed handfuls of candy into the derby and quickly re-covered his head. “Everyone likes people,” she mumbled, aiming her phone at him to snap a picture. “I think I can help him.”
“So we’re betting? On him? I almost feel like I’m flat-out robbing you, Sher.” Lance elbowed her, blurring her shot, and she tossed him a glare.
“We’re betting. Loser has to make a batch of Mom’s homemade cream puffs, no complaints, for the winner.”
As she spoke, the old man reached the dairy aisle. Upon peering at a carton of sour cream, he growled, “Bah! Expired.” Without hesitation, he tossed the offending container on the ground and a splat brought a store employee scurrying to find out what happened. Two more cartons followed the first and McQueen rounded on the stock boy, waving a fourth. “D’ya see this? Expired! You’re trying to kill people.” As Radcliffe pitched the red-and-white plastic, another splat echoed through the store.
“You’re on,” her brother affirmed and she shook on it without sparing him a glance, instead focused on the tableau of the New York Times bestselling author, a man that most considered a literary genius, going apeshit over expiration dates. “How are you going to introduce yourself?”
Her lips curled in a grin as McQueen shook off the stock boy’s restraining hand so he could fling more cartons to the floor with resounding splats. “Watch me.”
With that, she headed ove
r to rescue the teenage stock boy from the ranting old man.
Some men preferred to live their lives pretending to like things they hated. Some faked kindness or other soft emotions they didn’t mean in the least. Social order, they called it, social graces.
Radcliffe had played the games when he was a younger, more malleable man. He understood why people pretended, but he decided not to give a rat’s ass about the whole mess. Since he wrote books, people put flowery descriptions on his behavior. They called him eccentric. Some said he suffered from madness or some mental disorder.
The reality was he didn’t care what people thought. He much preferred the company of characters he could write dialogue for, ones who mattered, rather than playing a part for people who would be gone in a flicker, no more tangible or lasting than candle flames in a windy room.
Pitching another carton of sour cream, he reveled in the shock and horror displayed by the pimple-faced boy. “Sir!” the boy sputtered.
Radcliffe half-hoped they’d call the police. He hadn’t seen Lou Sparks, his high school friend and officer, for a while.
Then he spotted her. He recognized everyone in the small town by face, if not name—he’d lived in Jefferson for most of his life, after all. His gaze locked on her for longer than he might have planned, mostly because she was entirely unfamiliar…and she looked like a woman he wouldn’t have forgotten.
He didn’t understand, not really, the modern idea that a woman should look like a teenage boy to be considered attractive. If he wanted to fuck a man, he’d find a man, not a boy. Radcliffe liked his women curvy, smelling of sweet things they cooked in the kitchen, and full of respectful awe for what a talented genius—blah blah etcetera—he was.
He also liked women short. Nothing grated on his nerves more than a woman who towered over him. Something about the idea of tossing them over his shoulder, barbarian style, always tripped his trigger. Not that he’d had the chance to toss many unwary females over his shoulder, but a man couldn’t give up hope.
The woman considering him with a half-smile and intelligent eyes was probably five feet tall, if even, and fit all of his criteria. Tiny, rounded and long-haired. The hair stirred that barbarian lurking beneath the surface. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, exactly, with long hair, but it just got his motor running.
The only flaws he could see in her, right off the bat, were the biting intelligence in her too-green eyes and her presence in his town. He didn’t associate with the people in his home area, not if he could avoid it. Safer, really, to keep locals at a distance. He wouldn’t have time to focus on his work if people popped in, being social, so he preferred to keep most of his associations as far from his writing cave as possible. Still, his body immediately reacted to the sight of her, like some rusty engine being turned over for the first time after a long stay under a tarp in an old man’s garage.
Better to distance himself from the tempting morsel than encourage conversation. With that thought in mind, he tossed another sour cream and waited for her expression to turn appalled.
“Hi,” she greeted. Her voice wasn’t tittering. He couldn’t stand women who tittered and giggled, as if their every word should be considered amusing. The sound of the single syllable she uttered was caramel dashed with whiskey, a sensual thing better heard under cover of darkness while skin slicked with sweat met more skin.
“Hmmph,” he grumbled, tossing another carton to ensure she found him batty.
“Sheri Riddle, artist.” Holding out one fine-fingered hand, the woman ignored the stock boy and the cashier who’d joined him with a mop and bucket to attempt to clean the splattered sour cream and smashed plastic containers.
Ignoring the hand, Radcliffe turned back to his buggy and walked away from her.
Not one to take a hint, apparently, the woman jogged to his side, deftly avoiding the cartons and white globs of rotten milk product. “You’re Radcliffe McQueen.”
“Stating the obvious is not interesting.” He kept walking. Most backed off once they realized he wasn’t interested in polite banter.
“I’ll try to be more interesting then. I want to stay with you. I’ve heard your house is a huge thing, situated on one of the most scenic portions of the state. I’m an artist. I want to stay at your house.”
Her words, a bit breathless, since she was short and he’d been trying to lose her by practically jogging away, brought him to a halt. “Stay with me? Why ever for? And why would I let you?”
Pretty cheeks blushed and a lock of that magnificent mane of hair dropped to fall over one eye. “Because I asked. And you said to be interesting—what could be more interesting than a stranger in a grocery store asking to stay with you?”
Frowning, Radcliffe tilted his head at her. “Don’t confuse strange with interesting.”
She grinned, as if they shared some joke. “I’m both. You’d find out if you simply said yes.”
“You came to a grocery store in the middle of nowhere to proposition an author you’ve never met to let you stay with him. You know nothing about me, whether I like to dance naked in my living room wrapped in plastic wrap or if I like to dress in my mother’s skin while milking cows, and yet you think it’s a good idea to stay with me?”
“I know enough.” She shrugged.
“Oh, you’re one of those.” He sped away from her, getting into a line to pay for his bread.
“You sneered the word those, so I’m assuming I just got lumped in a stereotype. Care to share?” Dogging his steps, she continued to follow him like a terrier on the scent of bacon.
“Not particularly, but if it might make you go away, I’ll try. You’ve read my books. I made you cry, laugh, fall in love for the first time. My ability to scrape off the veneer of polite behavior and dig down to the very marrow of the human experience has hardened your nipples and you want nothing more than a chance to be near a man who understands women like I do.” He spit the words out, hoping the taste of them wouldn’t linger. “I’m not the hero in one of my books, I don’t understand women—actually, I find most of you little more than moronic twits looking to have your asses spanked and your egos petted—and I’ve no desire to pretend to be one of my heroes.”
He turned away from her again, assuming he’d said enough to scare her off.
When the line moved, the cashier swallowed hard. He’d scared her.
His little Sheri, however, simply moved with him, staying by his side. “Actually, I’ve never read your books. From what I understand, they’re sob fests, someone always dies, and they’re kinda cheesy with the formulaic romance.”
He snapped his attention to her upturned face. No artifice marred her features. She simply smiled up at him, one hand cocked on her hip, as if daring him to contradict her.
He swallowed. Formulaic? “I would hardly call my stories formulaic.” He didn’t mean to defend himself, but the blow caught him like a junk punch to his ego.
Again that almost French shrug. “Like I said, I’ve never read them. I prefer mysteries or true history books. Your stuff isn’t my kind of reading.”
Sticking his bread on the conveyer, he noticed he’d crushed it a bit with his fingertips. “You can stay with me on one condition.” As soon as he said it, he wanted to retract the words. He shook his head and wondered why he would even entertain the idea of inviting a woman he picked up, like a gallon of milk, at the grocery store to stay with him…
But then he remembered the open Word document and the blinking cursor he’d been staring at for the past week of sleepless nights. This woman might be just the thing to shake his muse out of torpor and get the words flowing.
Or she might be a nutjob.
Either way, it was surely inspirational. “Actually, two conditions,” he continued with increased enthusiasm. Reaching into his pocket, he produced his wallet and rummaged for his debit card. Handing it off to the still wide-eyed cash
ier, he turned back to his friendly neighborhood stalker. “You read two of my books and tell me if you still think I’m formulaic.”
“That’s both conditions?” She arched one well-plucked brow at him.
“No, obviously that was one condition. You’re going to have to be a bit swifter on the uptake for this to work, you know.”
She didn’t rise to his dangled bait and instead seemed to be battling to hide a smile. She was losing the battle. “The second condition?”
“You don’t touch me. I don’t care for touchy people.” Actually, they horrified him.
She nodded. “Works for me. Since you’re obviously not a fan of things like hygiene or general upkeep, more than works for me, Cliff.”
He frowned. “Rule number one, don’t shorten my name.”
With an inelegant snort, she accepted the bag with his bread from the cashier and headed to the door. Only pausing to shoot him one glance, she headed out into the sunlight, obviously not deterred in the least by his lack of manners or the idea of going home with a stranger. “I thought you said there were only two conditions.”
For the first time in a very long time, Radcliffe allowed himself the liberty of a full smile, baring his teeth at her. “I said two conditions, dear girl. I didn’t mention how many rules, not once. Do try to keep up.”
Chapter Two
The single steamer trunk could be called her prized possession. It also weighed a ton. Two feet tall and four feet across, Lance hauled the thing out of his trunk while she slung her backpack on her back. Radcliffe McQueen neither offered to help nor waited, instead sitting in the front seat of his rusty antique truck tapping the steering wheel as if he might drive away from her at any given moment.
An artist by trade, Sheri had started what she considered her side venture years before. Like a calling, helping people gave meaning to her life and inspired her artwork.
She named what she did “personality renovation”. Some people could look at an old battered house and see the potential, the hidden beauty. She found broken people, found their hidden potential, and helped them find peace and happiness. She couldn’t resist her fascination with the hermit author living in the same small town as her older brother, so she’d mixed business and pleasure and hopped a plane to visit Lance and check the author out in person.
While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 Page 1
