“You’re lucky your leg is broken, asshole,” he called over his shoulder.
“I know.” I petted the kitten again. “I’m lucky I have you, too, aren’t I?”
The rest of the day stretched out in front of me, alarmingly empty. I needed to go to Happy Paws and get some cat toys, and I had that appointment with Sven. But other than that, I didn’t have much going on.
Maybe Skylar was free. I texted her to find out.
Me: Hey Sky. What are you up to today?
Skylar: I’m writing. Or trying to.
Damn. If she was working, I should leave her alone. That was no fun.
Me: If you want to do something later, let me know.
Skylar: Okay.
Her non-committal answer tempted me like a playground dare. I had the urge to text her back—relentlessly, if necessary—until she agreed to hang out with me.
But that was a Gavin on the prowl move. Not a Gavin’s just her friend move.
Although would it be so bad if I applied my usual tactics to a friendship? Or would that take me into chasing her territory?
This was so weird. I had friends who were girls, so I knew guy/girl friendships were doable. I’d been friends with Grace my entire life. I was friends with Cara and Fiona. There were other girls I hung out with sometimes who were just friends—girls I hadn’t dated and didn’t intend to. And okay, maybe I flirted with them a lot, but that was just for fun—or in the case of Fiona, to get a rise out of my brother. When it came to those girls, I didn’t have arguments with myself over how much I was going to text them.
The kitten shifted on my shoulder and mewed, a tiny little squeak. I scooped her into my hand and held her against my chest.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be a good cat mom. The squirrel thought so. He led me right to you.”
She mewed again.
“What’s all the squeaking about?” I gently stroked her head. “Maybe that’s just who you are, huh? A little squeaker? Actually, that’s not a bad name—Squeaker. How about Princess Squeaker? That’s more majestic, and you’re definitely my tiny princess.”
Her squeak told me she approved.
I finished my breakfast, then got Squeaker settled in my room. It was nice having an actual bedroom. I’d crashed on the couch at our old house for like a year. And now my brothers couldn’t claim I didn’t live here.
Assholes.
They were my assholes, but still.
My massage wasn’t until later today, so I decided to head into town and get some more kitten supplies. I had the basics, but my Princess Squeaker was no basic bitch. She needed some good shit for an awesome kitty life.
Missy Lovejoy down at Happy Paws helped me find everything I needed for Princess Squeaker, including a pink rhinestone collar, a little cat bed, a scratching post, and some toys. I thanked her for her help and took everything out to my truck.
I glanced across the street at the Steaming Mug. And right in the window was Skylar.
She had her laptop open, but I could tell at a glance she wasn’t looking at it. Her face was tilted toward the window, her eyes unfocused. What was she thinking about? Finding dead bodies in a beaver dam? Or something else this time?
I watched her for a long moment, fascinated. Her lips moved slightly. Not as much as if she were talking to herself, but enough that I could tell there were words running through her mind.
Those lips. Her tongue wetting them as I slide inside her, slow but deep, savoring the first thrust. She moans in my ear and—
My crutch slipped off the curb and I almost pitched forward into the street. I used the other crutch to regain my balance before I could fall flat on my face.
Shit. That would have sucked.
I took a deep breath to shake off the Skylar sex fantasy, looked both ways—I was not getting hit by a fucking car again—and crossed the street to the Steaming Mug.
Her expression didn’t change as I wrangled the door open. Whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t here. Her eyes moved to her screen and she typed something. Then her eyebrows drew in and she shook her head.
I went over to her table, but she didn’t look up.
“Hey, Sky.”
Gasping, she jerked in her seat, her eyes flying up to meet mine.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “I was just…”
“Thinking?”
“Yeah.”
I pulled out the other chair and lowered myself into it. “I know you’re busy, so I won’t stay long. I just saw you through the window and thought I’d come say hi.”
She smiled. “Hi.”
The urge to reach over and touch her was almost irresistible. I wanted to trace my fingertips along her arm, feel her smooth skin.
But after that sex fantasy had just about made me step into oncoming traffic—figuratively speaking, there hadn’t been any actual traffic—I kept my hand to myself.
“Are you working on your book?” I asked.
“Trying to. I decided I need to pick a premise and stick with it, even when my other ideas start to seem like they’re so much better. But I’m still struggling to get the story off the ground. I feel so distracted.”
“By what?”
“Um…” She met my eyes and I had a flash of her face mid-orgasm, while I held her hair and made her look at me while she came.
Jesus, Gav. What the fuck?
“I’m distracted by a lot of things, I guess,” she said.
“Yeah, I kind of know the feeling.” Although I doubted her problem was having uncontrollable sex fantasies about me.
My phone buzzed, then immediately buzzed again, so I took it out of my pocket to check. It was my brothers in our group chat.
Levi: Gram’s furnace is probably going to need replacing soon. It’s old AF.
Logan: Shit.
Asher: I’ll get some quotes so we know how much it’s going to cost.
Levi: Do you think she can afford it?
Asher: I don’t know.
Evan: We’ll figure it out if she can’t.
Asher: Do any of you know how stable she is financially?
I sure didn’t. Gram had never discussed money with me—not hers, at least. I’d just always assumed she and Grandad had saved enough for her to live comfortably. Plus, she owned her house and all the surrounding acreage. That had to be worth a lot.
Levi: I don’t have any details. We should probably talk to her about that.
Me: You know she’ll just tell us it’s none of our business.
Asher: There’s nothing wrong with making sure.
Me: I’m not arguing, I just know what she’ll say.
Logan: I bet she’s fine. Grandad probably stashed money all over the place.
That made me smile. He probably had stashed money all over the place. That seemed like a Grandad thing to do.
Me: Check behind his Cherry Coke fridge out in the shop.
Skylar was quietly typing, her eyes intent on her screen. I didn’t want to interrupt her, so I just hung out for a while. You’d have thought I would have been bored—if I’d been anywhere else I would have been. But I wasn’t. There was something about just sitting at a table in a coffee shop with Skylar that was weirdly soothing. The click of her fingers on the keys lulled me into relaxation. I almost felt drowsy.
It was nice.
Eventually, she blinked, gasping like she’d forgotten to take her last breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what? You’re fine. Although I should probably get going. I’m getting a massage.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah, apparently this guy is really good. I’m all jacked up from walking weird.” I got up and tucked my crutches under my arms. “Bye, Sky. I’ll text you later.”
She nodded and gave me that cute shy smile of hers, and suddenly I really didn’t want to leave. But she was trying to work, and I’d probably been distracting her. And I did want that massage. My back felt all knotted up.<
br />
So I left. And it was the weirdest thing, but not ten seconds after I walked out the door, I already missed her.
14
Skylar
My feet ate up the small amount of space in my bedroom. Back and forth, over and over. I was too anxious to sit, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
I was probably overreacting. That was one of my superpowers. But my mind was fevered, my fingers itching to know if it had been a coincidence.
I’d written an entire chapter in the coffee shop, all with Gavin sitting at my table.
My fingers had flown across the keyboard, the words coming easily. The scene had taken shape in my mind, the main character’s motivations, thoughts, feelings, and actions all crystal clear. I’d been able to see the dark forest, feel the debris crunching beneath my feet. It had all been there, ready for my brain to turn into words, sentences, paragraphs.
Even more amazing, the result wasn’t awful.
Sure, it would need work, especially as the story progressed. Revisions were part of the process. But this didn’t need to be relegated to my alarmingly large collection of cut text files. I didn’t have the heart to delete things outright, but my folder of discarded half-written chapters had turned into a graveyard of abandoned ideas.
Rest in peace, stories that could have been.
But this? This wasn’t garbage. I could feel it.
The problem was that once Gavin had left, the words had dried up.
It was utterly inexplicable. He’d come into the coffee shop, made a little conversation, and then sat quietly at my table while my mind had gone crazy. While the words had poured out of me as easily as if someone had turned on a faucet, ideas flowing like water. When I’d come to, it had been like waking from a too-long nap. My mind had been so focused, so captivated, I’d barely remembered where I was.
Then he’d gone, and it had stopped.
I’d tried to get it back—tried everything. But the words wouldn’t come.
It was entirely possible that I was just done for the day. I’d used up my creative well and tomorrow I’d be right back at it. After all, Gavin Bailey’s presence couldn’t possibly contain that kind of magic—that kind of power. This had to be my overactive imagination making connections that didn’t really exist.
But I had to know for sure. So I’d texted him and asked him to come over.
A knock at the door roused me from my tangled musings and I raced downstairs.
Gavin’s dimpled grin when I answered the door almost rendered me speechless. “Hey, Sky.”
“Hi,” I managed to get out. Pull yourself together, Skylar, he’s not that good-looking.
Okay, yes he was.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I need your help with an experiment.”
His eyes swept up and down, and he caught his lower lip between his teeth. Suddenly I was thinking about a very different kind of experiment. Heat rushed to my core and my inner thigh muscles twitched.
Focus, Skylar.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
Other than give me a much-needed orgasm? “Come in. Upstairs. Wait, can you do stairs?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.”
I let him in and closed the door behind him, then led him up to my room.
He hesitated just inside the doorway, leaning on his crutches as he glanced around.
Gavin Bailey was in my bedroom.
It made me wonder how different things would have been if I’d grown up here. If my parents hadn’t divorced and I’d spent my childhood around the Bailey brothers, instead of hearing about them second hand. Would Gavin and I have been friends? Would a teenage me have invited a teenage him up to my bedroom?
Probably not. He would have looked right past me at that age.
“You can sit on the bed if you want,” I said. “This is probably going to sound weird.”
“Not gonna lie, I’m curious as hell right now.” He laid his crutches on the floor and hoisted himself onto the bed.
“When we were at the coffee shop earlier today, I wrote an entire chapter.”
“That’s awesome, Sky. Good for you.”
“Thanks. Specifically, I wrote it all when you were there. Before you came in, I’d barely written anything. And after you left, it was like… I don’t know, it was just gone.”
He picked up the pillow next to him and put it behind his upper back, then settled against it. “So you’re saying you could write when I was there and couldn’t after I left.”
“Yes. Apparently. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but now I really need to know. I haven’t written that much in one sitting in months.”
“You want me to sit here while you write to see if it happens again?”
“Yes.”
He clasped his hands over his middle. “Okay.”
“That’s it? You don’t mind?”
The corner of his mouth turned up in a grin. “Nope.”
How was he so adorable?
But I hadn’t invited him over so I could contemplate his attractiveness.
“Do you want something to do while I work, or will you be fine just like that?”
“I’m pretty comfortable. I got that massage and I feel awesome.” He shifted against the pillows and glanced around the room again. “Are those your books?”
I had a small stack of them on a shelf next to the closet. “Yeah.”
“Can I read one?”
Normally I would have cringed in horror at the idea of someone reading one of my books in the same room as me. But for some reason, Gavin reading my work didn’t send me into a tailspin of anxiety.
“Sure. Any preference as to which one?”
“Surprise me.”
I grabbed one about an FBI profiler working to solve a series of murders that turn out to be the same killer who got away from him a decade earlier. It had a lot of twists and turns, and some rather graphic crime scene descriptions. But all my books were at least a little morbid, so there was no sense in trying to hide that from him.
Cullen had disapproved. Encouraged me to tone it down. Especially in this book.
Shaking off that unpleasant thought, I handed the book to Gavin.
“This is fucking awesome.” He ran his hands across the title, down to my name printed in large letters at the bottom.
“Thanks. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will.” He opened it and flipped to the first chapter. “Okay writer monkey, get to work.”
Leaving him to it, I sat down at my desk. Flipped open my laptop, took a deep breath, and laid my fingers on the keyboard.
At first, nothing happened. I was hyper aware of Gavin on the bed behind me. He turned the page, the sound of the crisp paper making the hair on my arms stand on end, and I wasn’t thinking about the story. I was thinking about him.
This had happened at the coffee shop. When he’d first sat down with me, I’d been completely distracted, daydreams running rampant through my mind. So this time, I let the fantasy play out.
I crawl on top of him. Brace myself against the headboard while he unzips his pants. He’s commando, no underwear to get in the way. I’m in a dress so all he has to do is slide my panties to the side and—
He turned another page. I sucked in a quick breath, feeling my cheeks heat up and the throbbing between my legs intensify.
He moves my panties to the side, aligns the tip of his cock with my opening, and I slide down onto him. His fingers dig into my hips as he moves me up and down.
God, it would feel good.
I blinked, my attention turning back to the words I’d written earlier. I forced myself to stop thinking about sex with Gavin, and re-read the last few paragraphs.
And then, as if by magic, I started to write.
The distracting arousal hadn’t gone anywhere. I squirmed in my seat a few times, trying to get comfortable. But the physical sensations in my body faded. Because right now, my main character was about to miss an important clue.
Something that was going to come back to haunt her later.
I wrote in a frenzied rush, my sense of time and space falling away. My body relaxed as my fingers clicked on the keyboard without stopping. No barriers. No inner voice jumping in to interrupt the flow of thoughts. I just wrote.
Reaching a natural break in the story, I once again became aware of reality. The glow of the laptop and the plastic keys beneath my fingertips. The chair. Gavin on the bed behind me. The lingering pressure of arousal from my earlier fantasy.
But there were words on my screen. It had worked.
For the moment, I didn’t let myself ponder the ramifications of only being able to write when I was with Gavin. I’d figure that out—somehow. I just read the result, bracing myself for it to be a nonsensical jumble of useless prose. Or worse, a retelling of the sexual fantasy I’d indulged in before I’d started.
It was neither of those things. Instead, I’d written a very usable chapter that posed enough interesting questions to hopefully keep the reader turning the pages.
Satisfied and bewildered, I closed my laptop and turned around.
Gavin’s eyes were glued to the pages of my book. By his expression, I guessed the main character had probably just discovered the first murder scene. It was pretty grisly.
“It worked,” I said.
He jerked, like I’d startled him. “What?”
“The experiment worked. I wrote another chapter.”
With his finger holding his spot, he closed the book. “No shit?”
“I’ve written more today than I have in the last few months combined.”
“That’s awesome.” He held up the book. “You’re really good. This book is so intense. My heart’s still pounding.”
I smiled, his compliment filling me with warmth. “Thank you.”
“I’m serious, I’ve never read anything like it. It felt like I was right there. Although you’ve got some messed up shit in that head of yours.” His mouth hooked in a grin. “I like it.”
“Thanks. My…” I paused and avoided saying that Cullen was my ex. “My agent thought I’d sell better if I toned things down.”
“No way. The crime scene was graphic, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as good if you’d skipped all the details.”
Rushing In: A Small Town Family Romance Page 11
