Chapter 10
Everything was fine, until he brought out that effing book. It sat on the kitchen table for a full day, and I eyed it every time I walked past. Then on the second day, the angle changed.
It had been moved.
Ian didn’t say a word about it, content to torture me with the knowledge of his awareness. Because it was a Sunday morning, the start of the day was a slow one. I luxuriated through my coffee on the couch. Sage was lounging next to me, her eyes glued to whatever game was playing that morning.
That was when I noticed a tiny little dog-ear in the book.
My eyes narrowed, and I took a loud sip of my coffee. Ian was outside working on something in the barn, and when he came inside, he whistled a slow tune that I didn’t recognize.
Sage’s phone beeped, and she glanced at the message waiting on the screen. “Mom, can I go over to Aunt Rachel’s to play?”
My sister’s kids were eleven and thirteen, and even though Rachel and I had a bit of oil and water aspect to our relationship, I liked my niece and nephew. They were funny and sweet, and they’d embraced Sage wholeheartedly, just as excited to have family around as Sage was.
“You don’t want to hang out with me today? I wasn’t planning on working at all. We could go see a movie or go shopping or something.”
“They said they got the new Mario Kart races,” she said hopefully. The answer to which plans she preferred was clearly stamped on her face. I kept the disappointment off mine.
“Ahh. Well, I can see why you’d want to go.” I lightly swatted her backside. “Get a move on, then. You can’t go over there in your pajamas.”
“Pajamas are technically clothes,” she pointed out.
“Kid, believe me, you don’t have to convince a writer of that.” I sighed. “But good social graces dictate we put on actual clothes before going out in public.”
“Boo.”
“I know.”
She skipped up the steps, taking them two at a time, and I set my empty mug in the dishwasher. Ian usually had a couple of cups in the morning, so I left the machine on and then went upstairs to tug on some socially acceptable pants.
As we left the house and walked out to the car, there were sounds of banging and tools and all manner of manly things happening in the barn, so I decided not to interrupt.
My sister, Rachel, and her husband lived close to downtown in a neatly kept neighborhood with small homes and small yards. She worked part-time at her kids’ school, and her husband, Todd, was a mechanic at the shop his family had owned for fifty years.
The kids—Micah and Caitlin—waited on the front stoop when Sage and I pulled up. Sage bounced in place, ripping at the seat belt the moment the car was in the driveway. The kids whooped and hollered like they hadn’t just seen her at school the entire week, and it helped break up the slight cloud of Mom-sads that I wouldn’t be able to spend the day with her.
But this was the reason she wanted to leave New York, and that made my heart happy in a different way. As the kids chased each other in the stretch of green grass in front of the red brick house, my sister appeared in the front doorway. She wore an apron covered in a dusting of something white—flour or powdered sugar or something.
I got out of the car and waved. Rachel didn’t leave the house but returned my wave through the front door screen.
“Thanks for having her over,” I said. “We didn’t have anything planned today, so she was excited to get the invite.”
Rachel smiled. It was closed mouth and a little tight at the edges, but I could see the effort behind it. She looked so much like Mom that it made my chest pinch. “Of course. My kids get along better when she’s here, so it’s a help, if I’m being honest.”
I smiled back. “What time do you want me to pick her up?”
“Whenever works for you.”
“Oh, I have the whole day open, really. I wasn’t planning on working, but since she’s here, I might as well.”
“Right. Well, just let me know when you’re on your way.”
I nodded. “Will do. Thanks, Rachel.”
On my way back to the car, I blew out a slow breath, then accepted a quick hug from Sage as they raced off to the backyard. As I backed out of the driveway, Rachel watched from the door, then disappeared without a wave or a smile or anything.
We’d never had ease in our interactions, not since the day I was born. She was six years older, but if pressed, I bet she remembered those first six years as a happy, joyous, resplendent time in her life without me in it just fine.
Rachel was quiet and kept to herself, much like our dad. And she’d followed in our mom’s footsteps to the T, wanting nothing more than to get married as soon as they could. The only place she and Todd deviated from our parents was to wait a while to have kids. They built up a slight nest egg and made sure they wouldn’t be living paycheck to paycheck the way we had.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little, thinking about Rachel’s and my stilted interaction after our dinner at the Wilders—so loud and full of laughter. Walking into that house felt like a big, warm hug, even with the slight cloud of grief that still clung to the walls. I more than once caught Ian’s jaw clenching when he looked over at the empty brown leather recliner.
The whole night, I found myself watching him, maybe more than was necessary, and the times our eyes met and held, I couldn’t ignore the warm, bittersweet ache behind my ribs.
When I pulled the car back up to Ian’s house, I got out and stretched my arms over my head with a groan. There was no more clanging and banging coming from the barn, but Ian’s truck was there, so I knew he hadn’t left. I don’t know what I expected him to be doing, but his long-ass legs stretched out on the long part of the couch, my book in his hand, and an engrossed expression on his face was not it.
As the door slammed shut behind me, I exhaled heavily.
He never looked up. “Do you mind? I’m reading.”
While I kicked my shoes off and tossed my purse onto the bench next to the door, he made exaggerated movements to turn the page and narrow his eyes.
“Maybe you need glasses,” I suggested sweetly. “You are getting old.”
“I can see just fine.”
I set my jaw and ignored the slow ticking of my curiosity level. It was a sick urge for every writer—tell me what you think, but OMG, don’t tell me if you hate it, but what do you think?
The words crawled up my throat like little ants, the pressure to escape building and building and building. I rolled my lips shut and breezed through the family room. “I’m going to get my laptop and work at the table.”
“Sounds great. I’ll be right here.”
My chin edged up an inch, and I didn’t ask anything while I walked upstairs.
See? Didn’t bother me in the slightest.
The Sin Watcherwas my fourth book and definitely my most successful. It won a few awards, had my best critical reviews, including a write-up in the NY Post, and earned me my first spot on a bestseller list. By that point, my writing wasn’t quite as clunky as my debut but not as strong as it was by the time my last few books came out.
That was the thing about writing, though—also known as the weirdest job in the world. Your best works didn’t always hit the most successfully. It was a job where success was never predictable, always precarious, and always some elusive amalgamation of timing and luck and the right hook. And no matter how hard you tried, attempting to replicate any of those things was a bit like playing the lottery.
While he read quietly on the couch, I set up my computer and popped my earbuds in because honestly, I couldn’t handle the sound of him turning pages or making noises because I’d end up clutching his shirt and begging him for validation.
Mentally, I slapped the shit out of myself. I didn’t need his validation, thank you very much.
What I needed was a reminder that I could do this, and even if I couldn’t jump right back in any saddles or on any metaphorical horses, I’d be able to do it again someday.
I flipped through emails and answered a few of the quick ones, then hopped onto my social media and cleared out notifications. A few reader messages, reiterating their excitement about my next release, whatever that might be, helped bolster my motivation to keep trying, even if trying looked a little different.
After about twenty minutes, my eyes wandered over the edge of my laptop like he was a living, breathing man-magnet. His focus on the book was completely fixed, the hard line of his profile impossibly handsome as he flipped another page, unaware of my scrutiny. For a moment, I wondered what part he was at.
My teeth dug into my bottom lip to keep myself from asking. Instead, my gaze tracked lightly over the way he held the book. It occurred to me, as I stared like a fricken creeper, that I’d never actually seen Ian read a book for fun before. We read in school, of course, but he’d never wanted to sit still long enough to read, not like I had.
He was always doing something, working on something, the constant, restless movement something I associated with him so strongly that I couldn’t help but marvel at the stillness I saw in him now.
His hand was so big where he held the book, like it would be affixed in a dictionary somewhere along with a definition of hot-man-hand. Veins roped over the back of his hand, stretching along his forearm where the muscles flexed as he turned another page. His shirt—a somewhat shocking shade of pale blue cotton—was short-sleeved, so I could study the impressive curve of his biceps too, where they stretched against the edge of the sleeve.
“Can I help you?” he asked, eyes never moving off the page.
I blinked, shifting in my chair and clearing my throat. “Nope.”
“Am I bothering you by reading in here?”
I scoffed. “Of course not. Read wherever you want.”
“So if I wanted to sit next to you at the table, that wouldn’t mess with your head?”
My eye twitched. “Nope.”
Finally, Ian’s gaze cut to mine, and when I saw the bright gleam of amusement buried in the depths of his face, I glared.
Ian snapped the book shut and tossed it onto the couch. His attention was unrelenting, and I sighed, turning away from my laptop to face him more fully. “What?”
“Why Hollis King?” he asked. “Why not put your name on the cover?”
The directness of the question knocked the breath from my lungs, and I exhaled in a short gust. No one had ever asked that question before. Not my agent, not my editor, and definitely not my parents.
Discomfort bloomed in my chest, and I fought the urge to move away from it, do something to distract myself from the overwhelming sensation.
No. I wouldn’t hide from this. Not with him.
“Privacy was one reason,” I answered truthfully. “I liked the thought of having an androgynous pen name. Male readers don’t always gravitate toward female writers, even if they like the genre.”
“Assholes.” He settled his hands over his stomach and kept his eyes on me, intense and searching, and it went on long enough that I wanted to squirm away from that too. “Why else?”
I pinched my eyes shut because I couldn’t handle the way he was looking at me.
“Harlow.”
“Stop giving me that look, and I’ll answer.”
I could hear the slight smile in his voice. “What look?”
“Like you know I’m not being honest with myself, and you’re going to laser-eye me until I tell the truth.”
Ian laughed quietly under his breath. “Interesting. Didn’t know I had that superpower.”
I pried my eyelids up again. His gaze had softened, something intimate buried there that plucked at a long-neglected chord under my ribs. “You have a lot of them.”
Mouth hooked to the side in a wry grin, Ian lifted a hand off his stomach and motioned for more. But it wasn’t compliments he was seeking. Not this man. He wanted me to peel back all the layers, one by one by one, and expose all my deep, dark secrets. Apparently, Ian knew when to push too.
I sighed heavily. “It felt safer,” I whispered.
“Safer how?”
Oh sure. It was easy for him to ask, all calm and steady because he wasn’t the one having his soft underbelly ripped open.
“If I failed.” This time, I didn’t whisper it. I kept my eyes on his and refused to look away. My heart raced when pride lit his features. “If I proved them right. I could hide it more easily.”
Ian made a small sound from deep in his throat. Not a hum. Not a sound of agreement. He was thinking about this, not rushing to talk me out of how I felt. “You didn’t fail, though.”
My chin rose an inch. “No, I didn’t.”
“Maybe someday soon, Harlow Keaton will get to claim all those things she did right.”
“I don’t mind flying under the radar,” I admitted. “It’s a little easier to go unnoticed sometimes.”
Ian arched an eyebrow slowly. “You go unnoticed? Doubtful, sparky.”
My mouth went dry, and I looked away before the heat in my cheeks gave me away.
Slowly, he stood from the couch, idly scratching at his stomach, and the briefest glimpse of dark hair disappearing behind his jeans had a wave of very unwelcome heat slipping over my skin.
“Got plans?” I asked. My voice was only a little breathy when I said it too.
“I need to shower. Have a … thing that I have to do at the shop.” He passed behind me and paused, leaning down toward my ear. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “You are an incredible writer, Harlow.”
Then he squeezed my shoulder, a warm press of his big hand, and left the room.
I slumped in the chair. God, it was like a hit of ecstasy to the bloodstream or something, like I’d snorted something delicious that went straight to the dopamine center of my brain, lighting up all the feel-good receptors that I had in my possession.
His words echoed as he closed the door to his room.
The need for validation was a dangerous, unavoidable truth in my job. Yes, I needed to believe in myself, and I did. It’s how I got as far as I had the last twelve years of being a published author. Without that belief in yourself, all the external validation in the world couldn’t serve as effective motivation. We’d talk ourselves out of it, dismiss it, or worse, let it paralyze us because there was no internal foundation in our own minds that found truth in it.
Maybe my internal foundation had been hiding a little, battered by my own inner critic, but it was still there. Ian’s praise could take root there because it felt good to hear him say it. The whole conversation had the same effect as a good, soft rain on dry earth. Slowly, slowly, everything would be lush and green again, but it would take time.
I chewed on my bottom lip and opened up the email from Bea. Up until today, I’d put it out of my mind, not really in the mood to try any of her prompts. Then I clicked on the link she’d sent while I took a sip of water.
My eyes widened. If I had pearls, I would’ve clutched them. Then I read the second one, and promptly choked on my water, almost sending it shooting out my nose. Once it was determined I wasn’t choking to death, I patted my chest and took a couple of deep breaths.
“Okay, she wasn’t kidding about the prompts,” I mumbled.
I read a few more and squirmed in my seat. A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled out of my throat. Ask me to write a murder scene, and I didn’t flinch, but a setup including a stern, handsome boss saying things like I won’t touch you unless you beg had my face heating to about a thousand degrees.
The prompts were specific and … graphic. Some with aliens parading human pets around on collars and Mafia bosses taking you by force into their limo. I passed by both of those easily. Some were just a line of dialogue, and a few of those had me lingering, an undeniable whirring in the back of my head.
Tell me when to stop.
I blew out a slow breath.
If you don’t let me kiss you, I’ll die.
I rolled my neck and heard a satisfying pop, then kept reading until I got to a few more of the situational prompts. My screen slowed when I read one in particular, and I felt it. Rusty gears clicking into motion, a plot bunny sent racing before I could stop it.
He puts a blanket over your lap, and you tell him you’re not cold. His eyes lock onto yours, and his hand slips underneath the blanket, big fingers spanning the width of your thigh. “It’s not for the cold. Now you better keep quiet,” he whispers into your ear. “Someone might see.” His hand starts to move.
My document was open before I knew what I was doing. Just like I always did before I started, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and wiggled my fingers over the keyboard. The only sound that penetrated my brain was the running water of the shower down the hallway past the kitchen.
My eyes snapped open, a line of puzzle pieces clicking neatly into place. And then my fingers flew.
The scene unfolded in my mind, sights and scents and sounds vivid and whirring through the dusty parts of my brain, and my mouth moved along with the motion of my hands. It was a drive-in movie, the spacious cab of a truck, lights and sounds coming from in front of the vehicle, commotion everywhere as people wove in and out of the parking lot.
Old-fashioned commercials played on the screen, and the razor-sharp sense of the forbidden had my skin feeling tight. Like Bea instructed, I didn’t stop to think, I didn’t stop to self-edit or worry about what comes next. I thought about rough hands and a big, heavy palm on soft, silky skin. Of panting breaths and the struggle to keep facial expressions hidden.
Anyone could see.
Anyone could walk by.
His fingers moved past the lace barrier underneath and then stopped.
Heart pounding in my chest, the flush of heat on my cheeks felt like I was there. Squirming on the bench seat, trying to get him to move, move, move. His nose dragged along my cheekbone.
So impatient,he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. One hand tucked a stray piece of hair off my cheek, lingering on the edge of my jaw. My eyes fluttered closed from that small touch. Then he brushed his fingertip against the front of my panties so lightly that I almost screamed, and I clutched his wrist, trying to force him to move.
A man walked past the car and peered in. I kept my face even. So did he. We were motionless, not so much as a ripple of movement underneath the blanket.
The scene poured out of me, and I swear I must have blacked out from the sheer relief of words, so many words. The things I was writing hardly even registered as they came out so seamlessly.
The clunking sound of the shower shutting off snapped me back to reality, and I sat back on a gasp.
I blinked a few times, absolutely stunned to see that I’d done eighteen hundreds words in such a short amount of time. My mouth stretched in a grin, and I tipped my head back on a laugh.
Resting my elbow on the table, I set my chin in my hand and scrolled back to the beginning to read what I’d written. I blew out a slow breath because, honestly, I did pretty damn good at the steamy stuff, considering I didn’t have a ton of practice.
Scary scenes? All the damn time.
Stabby scenes? Sure.
Orgasm-y scenes? Not so much.
I exhaled a laugh when I realized the POV of the character changed from third person in the beginning—she pressed her thighs together when his pinky brushed the inside of her thigh—to first person only a few short sentences later—I clutched his thick wrist, tugging it without thinking, and bit back a loud moan when his finger hooked around the elastic on my panties.
“Someone needs to get laid,” I muttered under my breath. And I did. Relationships didn’t just take a back seat in New York; we weren’t even riding in the same damn car. Without my vibrator and a vivid imagination, my poor, neglected brain would’ve forgotten what an orgasm felt like to be able to describe it. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my OB found cobwebs down there during my physical.
But this? This didn’t read like a neglected single mom whose last sexual experience took place in a different decade.
As I kept reading, the description shifted a bit, a clever little carousel that rotated between what he was doing between my legs, some pretty damn good physical descriptions of pleasure, the sights and sounds of the drive-in, and then they shifted. To him.
My smile dropped, and my heart thudded painfully when I got a little further. The veins on his forearms and a light blue cotton shirt. The smell of fir trees and the scrape of a dark beard against my jaw.
My mouth went dry, and I covered my lips with a suddenly trembling hand. Blood pumped hot through my veins, and all I could hear was the whooshing of my screaming pulse in my ears. Because it just kept getting worse.
An unsmiling mouth hovered over mine while I silently gasped through my orgasm, praising me with whispered words, that I was a good girl, that I’d done well.
My heart pounded like a jackhammer against my ribs, so loud and so hard, that my breaths came in choppy bursts.
Deep brown eyes with streaks of gold. And long dark hair pulled back off his handsome face, which came into sharp, horrifying focus in my brain as he slipped his fingers into his mouth and hummed deep in his throat at what he tasted there.
I slammed my laptop shut and shoved away from the table. My heart lodged in my throat, and my skin coated with a million goose bumps.
“Ohhhh shit,” I whispered. “This is not good.”