While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2

by Virginia Nelson

  She’d backed off, nervous and feeling like some green girl not sure how to handle men, and left him alone with her representation of Mina.

  Would he look at her like he had in the early morning hours? Would the tension snap between them like some live wire arcing out to make her crave the cover of night and the sound of him losing control from her touch?

  Racing through a shower, she took a few extra minutes on her hair, her clothing, hoping to feel that spark and breathless energy pouring over her.

  When she got downstairs, she faced his locked door.

  No problem, she’d make some coffee, wait for him to wake up.

  When the sun set and he hadn’t made an appearance, she made a tray of food and knocked at his door. He didn’t answer and she slunk off to her room, feeling like an interloper and an unwelcome one.

  The next morning, the tray sat outside his door, empty, but he didn’t make an appearance. She made another tray, left it by his door, and waited for him to collect it.

  She gave up around noon and went for a walk. She called her brother. She gazed at the property that burst with brilliant colors as fall erupted with fury around his broken-down farmhouse.

  When she couldn’t stand another moment alone in her own company, she headed back to find the tray empty and the door closed, locked so she couldn’t even enter if she wanted to.

  She peeked in the keyhole to find him bent over his computer, fingers flying across the keys and silence echoing out of the room. He seemed oblivious to the world around him and focused on his work.

  She told herself she could respect that—hadn’t she herself been buried so deeply in her work she’d tuned out the world when she’d created Mina?

  Heading back upstairs, she tried to convince herself she didn’t feel shut out—ignored and helpless to do a thing to bring him out from behind the locked door.

  Sadly, the one person she tried to convince of those facts didn’t believe a bit of it.

  Leaning back, he rubbed his eyes. Eyestrain was his enemy, making the words blur and the glow of the screen burn his eyes like acid. The story rode him hard, pouring out of his fingertips as fast as he could get it down. He’d meant to go find her, to tell her about it, but he’d simply sat down and written more words when he’d found the food, long cold outside his door. When he’d remembered, between chapters, he’d eaten it—cold and tasteless—and replaced the tray. He’d only meant to reread the last chapter he’d written before seeking her out and ended up tossing down another five thousand words instead.

  It was either the best thing he’d ever written or complete dog shit. He couldn’t be sure, too lost in the world and the problems of the two stubborn characters to separate quality from frantic creation. Glancing at the clock, he realized he’d lost the better part of two days, but he’d made good progress.

  Better progress than he’d made in a long time. Congratulating himself on the cleverness of allowing her to stay as a mental laxative for his literary constipation, he decided to take a shower. He’d dozed in between bursts of words, but he could smell himself. Never a good sign.

  The shower revived him and took up some time, making it almost a decent hour of morning. Going to the kitchen, he brewed a cup of coffee—double-brewed it, running the hot water soaked with coffee back through fresh grounds to make it stronger—and then stood at the base of the stairwell, mentally beckoning her to come down so he could tell her about the book—about the story. He wanted to tell someone.

  She apparently wasn’t psychic because she didn’t appear.

  He paced back to her impromptu art studio to find the piece she’d created of Mina and gazed at it for a while, awed that she’d captured the character so well using just paints when it’d taken him the better part of a hundred thousand words to say as much.

  Then back to the stairs, looking up as if she’d appear simply because he willed it.

  An inner debate started, one that shouldn’t have surprised him. He did, after all, spend the better portion of most days talking to himself—usually in multiple voices. It was his job to create dialogue.

  This debate, however, involved whether or not he should wake her up.

  On one hand, it suggested an intimacy he still wasn’t sure if he wanted to encourage. If he woke her, all sleepy and rumpled and sexy as hell, wasn’t it akin to saying there were no barriers between them? An overstep of the roommate agreement, so to speak, although they had no such contractual clauses to their unusual circumstance.

  On the other hand, it was his house. She’d chosen to invade it. If he wanted her company, shouldn’t he be allowed to demand it? Hell, she’d practically invited such intimacies with her invasion of his personal space. If she wanted to know more about him, how better to do so than to let him use her for a sounding board when he practically burst, like some overfed tick, with words?

  Then again, sleepy and rumpled offered up temptation. In his present state of mind, he wasn’t sure if he was far enough removed to ignore the sweet delicacy of her lips if she licked them, as she was prone to do, and looked up at him with those intelligent eyes as if he were the center of her galaxy and nothing could distract her from her calling to save him from himself.

  But wasn’t he above such carnal and physical demands? He was an artist, so was she, so she’d no doubt understand on some level this kind of frustrated need to share while the story was rich and palpable in his head.

  Besides, she’d interrupted his sleep. And again, his house…

  Decided, he took the steps two at a time only to pause outside her door, hand poised to knock, but unable to make contact.

  She saved him from having to make the decision, opening the door to peer up at him—as warm and sleepy-looking as he’d expected—and stretching her face into a jaw-popping yawn. “Is the house on fire?”

  He blinked at the question, shifting from foot to foot. “No.”

  “You pounded up the stairs like there was an emergency. Are you okay?”

  Another yawn erupted on the last sentence, garbling the words, but he understood them well enough. “I’m fine.” He wanted to dance out of his skin. He needed to tell her about the story she’d inspired.

  She seemed to be coming more awake by the second, eyes squinting as she considered him. “You’ve showered?”

  “Yes.” And if she kept asking such banal, stupid questions, he might scream at her. Where was her curiosity, her probing questions which seemed to sink right to the marrow of a matter?

  “I take it you’ve been writing the past couple days?”

  He resisted rolling his eyes, but barely. “Yes.”

  “Well, good for you. I’m tired so…”

  She started to close the door in his face and he almost screamed in frustration. Instead, he snapped a hand out and stopped the door from shutting. “You wake me up when I’m sleeping.”

  She blinked at him, as if not comprehending the meaning of his words.

  He waited.

  “So because I’ve woken you up when you’re sleeping, you can come wake me up? What, are you bored? Require company? Mister Hermit has decided it’s social time so I’m supposed to jump because you’ve remembered I’m here?”

  He didn’t answer. When she put it like that, it seemed far less reasonable than it had in his inner debate. She waited, glancing once at his hand still holding the door open.

  “Well, you’re the one who wants to talk to me.” It grated that he was the one to point it out.

  Her lips, the full and tempting curl of them, turned out in a pout. “You’ve ignored me for days. How am I supposed to help you when you lock me out of your office and then just appear—at an ungodly hour, I might add—and expect me to do tricks like some circus puppy?”

  “I’m ready to talk now.” He didn’t feel further explanation necessary.

  “Well, bully for you, buddy.”
She reached out to move his hand physically and he turned his wrist, capturing her hand. “How come I’m not supposed to touch you, but you’re allowed to manhandle me and push me into corners with your size?” She grumbled the last and scowled up at him, which was really quite a buzz kill for his writing high.

  “I wish I could write your dialogue. You say all the wrong things, do you know that?” He snapped out the words, riding a wave of frustration, and released her wrist with a sigh. “You can’t touch me because I won’t be responsible for what I do if you push me.”

  That light, the brittle gleam of intelligence which both fascinated and repelled him, glittered suddenly bright in her eyes. He backed off a step, but she followed him. “So, it’s not that you don’t want me to touch you, it’s that you’re afraid of what you’ll do if I touch you?”

  Not at all the conversation he’d planned with her, so he backed another step away from her terrier-like advance. “I didn’t say that.”

  Her smile filled with womanly mystery and power, and he froze, powerless, to see what she’d do with her newfound knowledge. “You also didn’t disagree. Look, give me a few minutes to wake up, pour me a cup of that coffee I smell, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen to hear whatever you’re bursting to say.”

  He opened and closed his mouth, searching for the scathing words to gain back the ground he feared he’d lost, and found nothing. Her door closed and he still hadn’t found them. Stomping back down the stairs, he decided he would meet her in the kitchen, much less intimate ground than the door to her bedroom, but he’d be damned if he made her coffee.

  Chapter Seven

  She’d been cranky, but she’d never been left entirely alone for such a long period of time. Usually, she supplemented her work on her “projects” with the company of others, with people who filled her with laughter and words and…

  Radcliffe’s home was in the middle of nowhere. Unless she made a phone call or engaged in social networking, the only person to talk to was the reclusive writer. When she’d found herself sitting under a tree, tearing apart a pinecone, so she could bitch back at what was obviously a rabid squirrel, based on its desire to chew her out in squirrelese, she’d gotten pissed.

  How could she help a locked door? She’d renovated some very strange, very alone people in her time, but none that so completely shut her out for so long.

  Not to mention he’d done so after bringing thoughts of Preston bubbling to the surface like lava through water.

  She’d managed to read two more of his books—one more than she’d agreed to read—and it only made her more annoyed. How could a man who seemed to understand people so damned well be so oblivious in person?

  Then his standing there, like a puppy wiggling in excitement, obviously ready to socialize when she’d barely managed to scrape an hour of sleep past her seemingly frantic need to paint and her frustration with him, expecting her to leap because he’d graced her with his presence…?

  It’d driven her to snap in a way she might not have if she’d focused more on the man as a project than just the man.

  She took her time getting ready to go downstairs. Time to calm her frayed temper and curb her complete inability to censor what she said to him. Apparently, his lack of social discretion was contagious and she’d contracted the disorder.

  When she finally entered the kitchen, she found him tapping his fingers impatiently on the countertop. “I made your damned coffee. I hope it’s cold.”

  Raising her brows in response, she moved to accept the mug he practically shoved at her. “Thank you, Radcliffe.”

  “How do you propose to help me if you’re not willing to have a flexible schedule? One would think, since this is something you profess to do well, you’d be a bit more understanding rather than snipping at me for merely knocking.”

  She sipped the coffee, reminding herself to take the higher road. “You didn’t knock. You thundered up the stairs as if a herd of hellhounds nipped at your heels.”

  He opened his mouth then snapped it closed, turning away from her.

  “So I’m assuming you wanted to talk. How goes the newest book?” Sitting down, she folded her hands together and considered the way cotton stretched across his shoulders. Somehow, in the intervening days, she’d forgotten how simply large the man was. He dwarfed her, making her feel tiny and feminine—two things she didn’t often spend time thinking about. She was a curvy girl, never being fashionably slender, but he shrunk the kitchen with his broad shoulders and looming height. Something about that flat out did it for her and she breathed in on a count of three and back out, forcing herself to disregard him as a man and instead focus on the project.

  When he finally turned, he’d schooled his own features into a semblance of calm his still twitching fingertips belied. “It’s either amazing or horrible. I haven’t had a story bleed out of me like this in a long time. So the hero…”

  He blasted into the retelling of the story he worked on, his voice compelling. He was so lost in his own words she wasn’t sure if he noticed he’d knelt in front of her to get eye-to-eye contact. His hands fluttered, adding emphasis to some of the story, and she got lost, just a little, in the passionate nature he unwittingly displayed. For a man who barely strung two words together without barking, the enthusiasm he showed when talking about his work in progress was startling at the least.

  “So what do you think?” He leaned toward her and she sucked in a harsh breath through her nose.

  “I think it sounds like it will have the provocative characterization you showed in New Town, but with shades of the identifiable plotline and emotional draw you so easily created in Gods of Love.”

  She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling as his jaw dropped open and his hands went lax at his sides. “You’ve been reading.”

  The awe in his tone freed the giggle she tried to hold back. “Yeah, I fulfilled the first decree—oh sorry, I meant condition—for me to stay with you. I’ve read two of your books.”

  His palms smacked down on her knees, breaking his second condition—no touching. Then again, he’d never said he couldn’t touch her. Only that she couldn’t touch him, which needed more picking at based on the conversation in the upstairs hallway.

  “You’ve met Gregory and Allisa! Oh, and Baxter and Demona. What did you think of them? I so rarely get to speak to readers who aren’t either rabid fans or academics, so you really must tell me what you thought of them.” She recognized the frenetic light of the artist in his eyes and, although most of his actions were so damned controlled even when they were abrasive, she didn’t think he realized he’d invaded her space and clenched her knees with his enormous hands.

  “I think you’ve earned your place as a well-known and award-winning author and I hardly think anything I have to say would have value since, as I said, I don’t read this genre as a rule.” Honesty, something he seemed to prize above all else, so that she didn’t have to tell him he’d reached inside her and stroked her very soul with the words he’d thrown out into the world like stones into a pond.

  He shook his head, standing to loom over her. “Don’t be silly. Of course it doesn’t matter in a critical sense what you have to say. I’m curious, though, what your response would be to the stories since you’re neither academically connected nor saturated in the genre.”

  She snorted as he pulled her to her feet, still invading her space and seemingly unaware he did it. “Well, flattery will get you everywhere, McQueen.”

  “You know what I meant.” He waved off her complaint as inconsequential and squeezed her fingertips. “Did they engage you? What was your favorite scene? Least favorite? Who did you like better—Mina, Allisa or Demona?”

  “Baxter,” she answered without hesitation and decided to remind him he touched her in a very overt way. Flipping her wrists in his grip, she stroked his hands as she pulled her hands away, keeping eye co
ntact as she placed one palm on his chest. He stiffened, sucking in a breath. Good, apparently he now was aware of her as a woman and not just someone to bounce questions off. “He had real heart.” She tapped his chest once, right over his heart. “He managed to stay loyal, strong, even when everything was against him doing so.” She watched Radcliffe swallow and he backed up, moving fast. She sped to keep up. “I answered a few of your questions, you owe me an answer, McQueen.”

  He froze, seeming to realize he’d been giving up ground. “We made no such agreement today.”

  “Ah, so you’re welching? I thought it was a question for an answer? Status quo. And this time, you woke me up. So my turn?” She left it dangling like a question and didn’t force him to edge away again, even if the power of doing so was going to her head.

  He smelled like man, like soap, and she licked her lips, imagining backing him up farther and going on tiptoes to touch her lips to his. Would he scramble away from her like a roach hit with a light or would he answer her silent question?

  “Fine.” He bit the word out, still frozen, hands loose at his sides. “I’ll only give you one, however, since you didn’t negotiate prior to the initiation of the conversation.”

  “What happened to your wife?”

  His eyebrow—he still hadn’t manscaped it into two, shower or not—dropped low over his cobalt gaze and the lines around his mouth deepened in tension. “Someone has done more than read in the past couple of days.”

  She smiled. He hadn’t answered her question and he wasn’t the only one who could wait.

  With a gusty sigh, he shoved his hand through his dark curling hair. “Divorce. Trite, but divorce.”

  “Why?”

  She fired the question off even if he hadn’t promised her a second answer. Depending on how sensitive a nerve she’d plucked, she braced for any reaction.

  His slow curling smile, like a Cheshire grin, wasn’t one she’d expected. “What are you willing to trade for your answer, Sheri?”