Chapter 30
Lily’s eyes have narrowed until I’m not sure she can see through them. “Em, this fucking event is next week. Do you know how much we still have to do?”
“I do. I’m asking for this as a friend,” I say in a heavy whisper as the store is full of patrons who just happen to be taking in the town on a Wednesday afternoon.
Lily huffs out a breath and leans against the counter, her arms crossed now. “An hour now, two days while you’re off having a sex-cation,” she says so matter-of-factly it doesn’t register with me for a moment. “You know I have a life too, right?”
“I’m more aware of that than anyone. I watched your kids for more than one sex-cation,” I remind her.
She puckers her lips as if she hadn’t considered that too.
“Don’t get hurt, Em.”
Now I narrow my gaze on her. “Why would I get hurt?”
“He’s leaving.”
Wasn’t she on the other side of this before? Wasn’t she the one telling me to live a little, or am I making that up because normally, that would be exactly what she’d have said.
“I’m fine. I’m not going to let this make or break me. We’re having a nice time while he’s here. He’s going to help me with my book. Who knows; maybe someday I’ll have my own signing here,” I say and wait for her expression to change, but it doesn’t.
“You deserve something like that. You deserve to have anything you touch turn to gold.”
“Deserve it or not, I can only have it because you’re here with me.” I reach for her and she takes my hand.
“Ride or die, bitch. You can’t get rid of me.”
When I step back into the office, I’m not even sure Noah notices until I shut the door behind me. And then, only briefly, does he look up.
“How fast does a wild fire move?” he asks as he’s writing notes in a notebook I’ve seen him take out of his bag from time to time.
“It depends on a lot of factors. We once had over a thousand houses destroyed in a matter of a few hours when a fire started and we had eighty mile an hour winds.”
That has him looking up at me. “In the mountains?”
“Just at the base of the foothills, not far from Boulder. It nearly wiped out an entire city.”
“Recently?”
I nod. “Just a few years ago.”
He blinks up at me and then looks down at his notes. “So, specifically in your book. I’m just trying to track the timing of the fire.”
I sit down in the folding chair he’d put there when we ate lunch. “There is a lightning strike that starts it. I guess the way I see it, it smolders in that area and then with the dry ground cover, it starts to move.”
He nods thoughtfully. “All while Autumn and Logan are …”
He leaves it hanging.
“Yes.”
Noah puckers his lips. “So the fire wipes out her wildlife research and his lumber mill?”
“Yes. Then they have a fight on their hands, right? First the fire, then the rebuild. She wants what’s best for the wildlife she’s studying and he’s a business man using the forest for profit.
I mean that’s the gist of the enemies to lovers anyway.
Wildlife supporter versus the lumber mill in this case. ”
Noah nods thoughtfully. “I think you need some angst while they’re in the throes of passion.”
To that I raise a brow. “Angst? They’ve been battling each other for half the book. Now they’re in, what I consider, a very detailed moment, and you want me to give it more angst?”
“Hear me out. They’re not paying any attention, right?
It’s storming outside, but there is no rain.
Anyone working in a forest all the time would pay attention to that.
Wouldn’t even the air feel different? It would crackle around them more than just because of the sexual energy.
” He places his hand on my knee. “Maybe deep inside one of them thinks they should look outside when the room lights with lightning and they should react to the crack of thunder. They’re not that far from ignition, so wouldn’t there be a tremendous noise? ”
I roll my lips between my teeth. He’s right. I have them doing it up until they’re tired and someone comes to the door to tell them to evacuate.
“Shit,” is all I can say.
We lock eyes, but it’s as if we’re scanning one another for the answer, and it has to come from me.
Simultaneously we both stand and switch places as if this were a rehearsed dance we’d taken part in hundreds of times before.
I sit down behind the desk and look at the screen. The cursor blinks right in the middle of the most heated sex scene I’ve ever written. I can feel my cheeks warm.
The words on the page were written years before I met Noah Carter. But as I read them, I can feel them. Perhaps this book was in some way a wish that came true.
I scan my eyes over the words, looking for that moment where I can change the direction.
“Here,” I say, pointing to the screen. “This would be the perfect place for one of them to come up for air, consider looking out, but then get taken back down by …” I leave it linger there.
His eyes flash, and I wonder if this is the exact spot he was thinking of too—or is he thinking of the take back down that has my heart flutter as well?
“Write it in,” he says.
I lock my glance in his direction. I’ve never written anything while someone watched and I can feel every hair on the back of my neck stand in protest.
Not only am I going to create something in front of someone who does this for a living, it’s the sex scene.
Noah obviously doesn’t have the same reaction, because he’s watching the screen, waiting for the words to appear.
I move my fingers in and out, as if I have to warm them up before they execute the maneuver, and then I rest them on the keyboard.
Looking at the screen, I move the mouse to the right place and begin to change the feel of the scene. Throes of passion, words of angst and pleasure, lightning. She lifts her head toward the window and he takes her under with another kiss, another pulse, another whisper, another?—.
The air in the room is thicker now. My palms are damp and I retract my hands from the keyboard and wipe them on my pants as Noah cranes his neck to read what I’ve written.
“I can’t type and look up at the screen,” he says, his eyes still scanning the text.
“Typing 101,” I say.
“Yeah, I failed typing 101. Hunt and peck works out perfect for me,” he admits, then touches the screen where I’ve added the text. “Go deeper on this.”
I read the line he’s pointing to, and again, my cheeks heat.
“Go deeper? Isn’t that what he’s doing?”
A small chuckle escapes Noah. “This is a pivotal moment between them and the entire story. Everything comes together and falls apart in these pages.”
He’s right. When I wrote it I thought it was just that love scene that came at the right time. But when he works through it, it’s so much more.
I chew on my bottom lip as I remember the first time with Noah. I channel all of the anxious energy knowing I was going to sleep with a man who I’d only just met, who I hadn’t had very many nice things to say about, and who would then leave.
My fingers touch the keys, retract, and then hover.
Noah moves in closer to me, his hand now on my thigh. “It’s right there,” he whispers, but when I look at him, he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the screen. He’s in bed with those characters, and I’m not even sure he knows it.
I may be the one writing, but it’s showing me the genius that is this man. So why is he so blocked?
I look back at the screen and begin to type. Maybe it’s his hand on my knee or his breath in the room, but the words flow through my fingers.
Soon, the love scene that was there to heighten the tension and to bring these two people—opposing forces—together, now has that angst that Noah was talking about.
It reads even hotter now that there is some uncertainty and they are each choosing the other in that moment.
It becomes life or death and they can’t even pay attention to the details because they are so wrapped up in one another.
I turn to look at him now and he’s smiling at me as if he’s the one that wrote what is on the screen. “That’s it. That’s what I was looking for.”
Everything in me heats now and I move to kiss him.
His hands come to my cheeks and when he eases back that smile is still there.
“Now, in the next chapter,” he begins and I realize he’s all work now.
I ease back in my chair and listen as he goes over his notes. The affair I’m having with this man is never going to compare to the professional I’m working with now. There is a great chance I might not like him again when this is over.