Chapter 39
Katie
On Monday morning, when I arrived in the kitchen, Tyler was already standing on the other side of the island, reaching for
the coffee carafe. Across the room, on the breakfast table, his laptop was open, and last night’s dangling pages were now
scattered in frantic stacks.
“Hey,” I said, pulling a mug off the shelf, then walking his way.
“Hey,” he said. His hair was mussed. His voice, hoarse. His shirt, wrinkled and the same as last night. He poured his coffee,
then slid the pot my way. “Welcome back.”
I filled my cup. We were maybe a foot apart, and both barefoot. I curled my toes into the floorboard. “How, uh, how was your
weekend?”
He stroked his jaw, then sort of half-looked at me. His five-o’clock shadow, scruffy and exhausted and too long and exactly
right. “Weird. How about yours?”
“Same,” I said. “Really, really weird.”
He nodded, then took a long sip. I wanted, all of a sudden, to float those nine, ten, eleven inches toward him.
To push the hair out of his face. To tell him to take the day off, to take a nap, to eat a real meal, to slow down.
I wanted, all of a sudden, for him to tell me what he and Meredith were up to.
Not because I hadn’t figured it out, but because I wanted to hear it from him.
Because I liked the way he told stories, and I liked the way it sounded when the stories he told were only for me.
But just when I was about to break whatever was left of my rules to ask, Meredith glided into the kitchen, a notebook in one
hand and Pinot asleep in the other.
“Hi, you two. Are we ready to get back to the plot yet?”
Tyler and I both muttered slightly startled affirmations. She smirked, then set her pad on the marble. “I’d like for us all
to go to dinner,” she said. “There’s this little Italian place in town. Fantastic courtyard. The veal marsala is excellent.”
Now Tyler and I exchanged the quickest of glances. After all, when was the last time Meredith Bradford left her house?
“I was thinking Saturday,” she continued. “Seven thirty, maybe? I’ll have Maurice make a reservation.” She turned to me then.
“Are you still going to spend the weekend with that doctor, Katie? Danny, was it?”
“Oh, he’s actually an . . . never mind. And I haven’t really decided yet, I guess.”
“I see.” Meredith scooped up her notepad. “Well, if he survives the week, bring him. We can all meet. And Tyler will be here—won’t
you, Tyler?”
Tyler nodded. And then, because what else was there to do, we both smiled, took equally long sips of our coffee, and said
that sounds great, we can’t wait, thank you.
We spent the bulk of the next few days on the terrace, downing Arnold Palmers and dousing ourselves in sunscreen and polishing the first 178 pages of our manuscript over and over again.
Trying to nail every moment, clean up every sentence, put every word on trial for its life.
But by Wednesday afternoon, our seventh read-through had resulted in only two measly tweaks: the removal of an echo in Henry’s dream sequence and the deletion of a single duplicated word in the chapter that followed.
There was, quite simply, nothing left to fix.
We had to keep drafting. We had to keep moving forward.
We had to broach our midpoint—and all the things it stood for when you were writing a romance novel. I glanced up from my laptop.
“I might want more payoff than just Kissing in the Rain,” I said. “They’ve already waited so long. It’s almost not enough, you know?”
Tyler was still typing. “What were you thinking?”
“Maybe they get stranded. Like, they finally kiss, and we’ll let that play out based on character, but then Willa loses the
master key, and the storm is really bad, and they can only get into the honeymoon suite because the door isn’t installed yet
or something. And maybe there was a delay with the sofa delivery, and the rugs aren’t in, and the floor is tile, and there’s
just one bed.”
“That’s preposterous, Katherine.”
“So? Who cares? It’s hot. Romance readers eat it up every time. And besides, the tropes work.”
“Okay,” he said. “Fine. Let’s plot it, then.”
I glanced up from my screen. Humidity clung to Tyler’s jaw, his neck, his knuckles again, but not like last week.
Summer was in full swing now, thick and relentless, and leaving its mark on his pinched, glistening skin.
Sweat dripped down my chest just the same, pooling between the triangles of my bikini top and sliding everywhere below.
I dragged the moisture down my sternum with the palm of my hand, and his eyes, for a second, followed my fingers south.
His mouth did something strange. I wiped my hand dry on the chair cushion and sucked in a breath.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s . . . let’s plot it, then.”
Tyler adjusted his ball cap. Twice. “Who, uh . . . who should make the first move?”
“Henry,” I said. “It has to be Henry.”
His lips parted. “Oh. Okay. And how does . . . how does Willa want it?”
“She doesn’t care.”
“Really? She’s so . . . particular.”
“No. Not when it comes to Henry. Not for him.”
Tyler rubbed his throat, and something pulsed through my bloodstream. A synapse, firing. My hand, floating off my keyboard.
Everything inside of me, low and liquid and spreading fast. That sun, this heat, the sharp lines of his jaw, convincing me
I needed contact—needed fingertips on slick skin and the careful pull of two flimsy strings. That I needed those hands in
my hair, those lips in my ear, that mouth on my—
“Katie?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s Willa still doing with that guy?”
“She, uh . . . She just . . .”
“She keeps running from Henry. He tries to talk to her, and then she’s gone. He’s nervous enough as is. How’s he supposed
to get her back if she won’t even stay the weekend? How’s he supposed to kiss her if she’s never there?”
“I think,” I said, “she’s just really afraid. That Henry hasn’t changed.”
“Is—is that why she went on the boat?”
I rubbed my wrist. “She didn’t go on the boat.”
Tyler, for a moment, closed his eyes. And then, after pressing both his hands to his mouth and letting out a long exhale,
he leaned forward an inch in his chair. I wanted to finish the job for him. I wanted to climb out of my seat and into his
lap, just to feel again the way he wrapped his arms around me. The way he anchored me. The way time stood still when, between
kisses, he muttered my name into my neck.
“Katie,” he said again.
“Yeah?”
“He’s going to try, okay?”
I nodded. My fists were glued to the edge of my chair. “Soon, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “As soon as he can.”