Shorthand. I hadn’t consciously meant to use it, but after everything I’d been through with Christopher, I’d taken to going totally analog with my ideas.
I grabbed her arm twisting her in front of me. “Don’t.”
Her mouth dropped open. I expected fear. Even braced for it.
I shouldn’t have put hands on her.
But her eyes dilated and her gaze dropped to my mouth before bouncing up to meet mine. “More secrets?”
“They aren’t secrets if you were spilling town details now are they?”
“Then why are you writing in a foreign language?”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s my own.”
“Oh.” She nibbled on her lower lip. “Interesting.”
I stepped back, letting her arm go. “Not really.”
She jammed her fingers into the pockets of her overalls and the buttons gaped showing off all that golden, color splashed skin. Her lips quirked up. “Like what you see?”
“Offering up something, neighbor?”
“I haven’t decided yet. You’re rude and mysterious. It’s kind of hot, but also annoying. Not sure it’s worth a bounce.”
I blinked.
Her lips spread into a wide grin and her eyes sparkled like moldavite.
A dangerous, cosmic stone I’d used in one of my books—if you believed in that kind of thing. When I’d gone on the rabbit hole of research for my second book,Wavelength,my character had opened a fissure in the world because of that stone.
Fitting that this woman would remind me of that time in my life.
High on the success of my debut, I’d believed I was invincible instead of trapped under an ice dam of impostor syndrome and doubt since Christopher had knocked me off my axis.
Phoebe had a strange, offbeat way of her that left me unsettled and intrigued. After a year of flat nothing, it was tempting to chase anything that made me remember what it was like to be alive.
“Nice to know you’re interested.”
“Who says I am?”
“Since you can’t keep your eyes off my tits.” She tapped the tip of my nose. “Unfortunately, I have to get to the café.” She whirled around and crossed to the door, holding it open for me to leave. “I’m behind thanks to the storm. Why don’t you take Mouse with you when you go in town?”
“It’s not my dog.” Exasperated, I followed her.
“Tell him that. Besides, he’s just going to break out of my house to get to you anyway. I’ll be back around ten. I’ll take him off your hands when I get back.”
“Ten?” I frowned.
“Yeah. I don’t have regular hours. I have a feeling you don’t either.”
Annoyed that she had me so off balanced, I crowded into her in the doorway. “I don’t.”
She licked her lips. “I do love a mystery, Dutch of California.”
“How do you know I’m from California?”
“You did say you were from San Fran.”
