7. Be A Distraction
BE A DISTRACTION
“ I ’m busy, Lucky,” Emma said, shoving away the six-month-old kitten that jumped on her lap and tried to walk on her keyboard.
“Meow,” her kitten said, sticking its gray head under her arm as she typed.
“When I want to cuddle, you’re nowhere to be found or don’t want to be touched. When you want some affection, you think you can interrupt me. Nope, you’ll learn who is boss.”
Her fingers were moving faster on the keys to get the thoughts out of her head.
They flowed faster than she could type at times.
“No,” she screeched at Lucky when he jumped on the keyboard and mashed everything together. There were letters all mixed up and words that weren’t actually words on her screen.
She picked the ball of fur off her laptop, causing more keys to jam together and put him on the floor. “You’ve got food and water. I know you do because it’s automatic. I’ll finish soon. I promise.”
Having never owned a pet in her life, she did not know felines could be this needy.
Or this temperamental depending on his mood.
Lucky crawled up on her lap again, but she picked her laptop up and climbed off of the lounge chair she was sitting on in her sunroom.
She should have sat on the deck in the shade, but it was too hot for her and she never liked to have sweat on her keyboard from her hands.
If keypunches could be logged like steps, she’d have zero percent body fat!
She moved to the bar in the corner, sat on a stool with her laptop on the counter, and tried to finish her train of thought.
Lucky’s tail was tickling the soles of her feet as she rested them on the rungs.
Good enough to let him get his attention while she finished this chapter.
Her fingers were flying now—the killer was hiding behind a wall while her sexy detective was snooping around.
For now, her hero was going to not notice the killer in the shadows, but he’d just found a clue that would help him catch his perp.
“Phew,” she said, wiping her forearm across her brow ten minutes later. “Now that was a session.” Her brain was fatigued and anything else she tried to pull out of it wouldn’t be good enough for her in her eyes.
She stood up and stretched her stiff limbs that she hadn’t felt when she jumped up to move locations and escape her cat.
She bent over and touched her toes, then arched her back. Her joints and bones were popping and cracking a lot more than they should have for her age.
Oh well. At least she didn’t have a flabby ass from sitting on it so much.
She had no clue what time it was and went in search of her phone.
When she finally found it in the bathroom, she noticed there were several text messages.
The last one was from Hunter about an hour ago. That was odd. He never texted.
She opened it up and her phone bobbled in her hands as if it was on fire and she couldn’t afford to burn her second biggest asset.
She needed her fingers to get her work done. Her brain was the most important, but her fingers finished the job.
It wasn’t the message saying that she had a visitor looking for her that caused the phone to bobble. It was the picture that Hunter included that had her pulse racing and her body shivering in places it hadn’t been touched in sooooooo long.
Rather than text her cousin back, she hit the button to call.
“You are getting back to me faster than I thought you would,” Hunter said when he answered.
“I finished what I had in my head about ten minutes ago and then had to search out my phone.”
“Where did you leave it?”
“In the bathroom. My primary bathroom, which means it had to be left there when I woke up since I haven’t been in there since.”
She’d gotten up at four this morning with her characters calling to her.
She peed, then raced downstairs to write what was in her head. She stopped between chapters for coffee and did some research, then dove right back in.
Dang, that was almost twelve hours ago. No wonder why she was hungry. Coffee and water only went so far.
“At least it’s not some of the stranger places you’ve left it,” Hunter said.
It was a joke in her family that she just set her phone down and forgot it.
She was a hermit and the only people who reached out to her were her family or her agent via phone. Everyone else she had communication with in her life was on her laptop.
It’s not like she didn’t socialize. She did with her readers and fans and other authors.
But it was at her convenience, and she never let it be a distraction.
“Who cares about my phone,” she said. “Let’s go back to your text. He actually stopped in looking for me?”
Hunter laughed. “He’s here until tomorrow when he checks out. Looks as if he’s been here a few days.”
“Do you think he’s been looking for me to show up for a shift?” she asked all giddy. She was jumping up and down.
Talk about super sweet hero worthy.
Guess she made an impression on him that he came all this way and wasted his time for days waiting for her.
“You’re finding humor in this, aren’t you?” Hunter asked.
“Totally,” she said. “I’m going to steal this move for a book. I’ve got to.”
“Why am I not surprised? I wondered what you’d think of him doing this and I laughed and said he wouldn’t be prepared for your thoughts.”
She giggled. “I’m never even prepared for my thoughts. They pop up at the oddest times.”
“I’ve got his number if you want it,” Hunter said.
“Ahhh, yeah. You know what? Better yet, why don’t you give me his room number? I want to surprise him.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Hunter said. “Just like I couldn’t give him your information, even if you were an employee.”
Emma frowned. “Come on, Hunter. Be a sport. It’s not like I’m some stalker. If anything, that could be him.”
“You’re not making your case any better,” Hunter said drily.
Since she had no claim to The Retreat. It’s not like she could ask anyone to give her that information. Or even get access to the software to find it.
Nor would she push Hunter.
“I know. Maybe I’ll go surprise him.” She looked down at what she was wearing. It was what she slept in. “I need to shower. I haven’t yet.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope,” she said. “I rolled out of bed and started to work. I told you things pop into my head at all times.” She ran her tongue around her teeth. “I don’t think I even brushed my teeth this morning. No wonder my coffee didn’t taste the same.”
“Ugh, Emma, that’s nasty.”
“Hey,” she said. “I live alone. Except for Lucky. He doesn’t care.”
“Huh?” Hunter asked. “Who is Lucky?”
“My kitten,” she said.
“I didn’t know you had a cat,” Hunter said. “And you know what? That is going to be a long story, so I don’t need to know. I’ll text you Warren’s number after you answer me this.”
“What?” she asked.
“What were you doing for hours in a private room with him last weekend at the casino?”
“He brought that up?” she asked, her jaw dropping in a massive smile.
“Yes,” Hunter said.
“We were playing ask and answer.”
Hunter groaned. “Never mind. I don’t want to know that either.”
She laughed. “Don’t be so stuffy. Kayla broke you of that habit. You know how I get with questions.”
“You were grilling him on his career and he still wants to spend time with you?” Hunter asked.
“No,” she said, waving her hand. Not that Hunter could see her motion. “We were talking about movies and books and things like that. We both had to answer the same question asked. It was so much fun.”
“If you say so,” Hunter said.
“Can you please just slip his room number in the text?” she asked. “He went to you for my number.”
“Emma,” Hunter said. “There are several reasons I can’t do it and you know that. We use discretion here.”
“I knoooooowwww,” she whined.
“Are you going to give him your last name and tell him what you do for a living?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Probably. It depends on the reason he wanted to reach out to me. I’m not easy, you know. Don’t think that.”
“Considering I don’t know the last time you left this island for something that wasn’t a family event forcing you to go, I wouldn’t think you were. He doesn’t live around here and doesn’t have a lifestyle to move around as much as you might think. At least not once training camp starts.”
“Training what?” she asked.
“Look it up,” Hunter said. “Also, if you tell him who you are, if he digs enough, he’ll see who you are related to.”
It was hard not to find out she was an heir to a billion-dollar fortune.
Many thought that was the only reason she was as successful as she was.
She didn’t buy that.
She had her mother’s genes in her.
But it was a damn good thing no one knew her mother was thriller writer Steve Spencer, or they’d compare them even more.
It was one thing she wanted in her life—to be successful on her own, not because someone else got her there.
“I know he might,” she said. “And since he came here looking for me, he might do that. I’ll figure it out. Bye.”
She hung up on him before he could say another word.
Everyone in the family was used to her doing that.
First order of business was a shower, so she raced to her room, into her bathroom, turned the shower on to warm the water up, and then into her closet to grab shorts and a T-shirt.
She wasn’t going to doll herself up for anyone. He saw her the way she normally presented herself and she was going to continue that way.
After removing the clothes she had worn for almost twenty-four hours, she hopped under the hot shower, dunked her head, and washed her entire body, even shaved since she hadn’t done so in days.
The benefit of being a recluse: no one saw you and you didn’t have to worry if there was stubble on your legs or not.
When she bent down to put sandals on her feet, she noticed she needed a pedicure and ditched them for canvas sneakers without socks.
She needed to do some serious self-care pampering soon.
Once this book was done, she told herself.
Her stomach was growling loudly, so she ran into the kitchen to look for fruit.
The last time she got groceries was almost three weeks ago on her way home from one of her shifts at The Retreat.
Anything fresh was gone.
She marched into the pantry, her eyes searching the shelves filled with boxes of coffee K-cups, protein bars, and bagged and boxes of snacks.
At random, she snagged a blueberry protein bar and was out the door with her purse and ready to go.
Until she was at the bottom of her driveway and realized her music wasn’t playing and she’d left her phone somewhere in the house.
“Urgghhhhhhh.”
She was a hot mess!