Prologue
There is a strange man on my sofa.
A cowboy.
Ashirtlesscowboy, no less – thick, sun-burnished muscles on full display, marked with bruises and what look to be smudges of charcoal.
I don’t scream. I always thought I’d scream in a scenario such as this (i.e. home intrusion, sudden appearance of cowboy in living room, possible upcoming murder of self). Instead, I grab hold of the nearest thing I can to cover my own nakedness. Of course, it’s the red spider beret I just purchased from Mrs Casablancas. One of the spindly pipe cleaner spider legs stabs my inner thigh. Ow.
‘Get out, please,’ I say to the stranger, my trembling voice a good two octaves higher than usual. ‘I … I don’t know what you’re doing in my house, what you came here for, but you’re in the wrong place and you need to leave right now.’
How did he even get in here?I glance at the front door, closed and locked from the inside, as always. The window is open, but my flat is on the fourth floor of the building. Did … did he scale the wall?
The man’s eyes meet mine, unreadable beneath the shadow of his Stetson. He blinks like he just woke up,quickly averting his gaze from my naked form, which strikes me as an unusually respectful move for a home intruder with murder in mind. Maybe he’s not a murderer … perhaps he’s a burglar?
‘If-if you’re a burglar then you’d have much better pickings about a mile down the road,’ I blurt, my words tripping over each other. ‘I’m just a writer. Everything of value that I own is purely sentimental.’ I point at my TV. ‘You can have my television if you like? It’s pretty old, though. No OLED capabilities. They probably have much higher-spec electrical equipment at the houses over in Marylebone. Lots of jewellery too, I bet. Silver tableware, genuine Birkins, if that’s what you’re after. There’s this one very fancy looking house on—’
I clamp my mouth shut as it occurs to me that this is not the time or the situation to try to be the most helpful person in the room.
The cowboy stares down at his dusty boots, eyebrows drawn together in a frown. He rubs a hand across his stubbled jaw and I can’t help but notice that it’s an excellent jaw, as jaws go.
Get it together, Gertie.
‘If you leave right now, I promise I won’t call the police,’ I try, my voice attempting and failing to hold some degree of gravitas.
I’m totally lying. I definitely will be calling the police. At the very least the residents of Marylebone now need to be warned to double-lock their doors.
The man stands up from the sofa, conker-brown Stetson almost grazing the ceiling.
He takes a step forward.
‘Please don’t murder me!’ I yelp. ‘I might not have much to live forright now, but I don’t want to die.’
I get a brief vision of my funeral. Would Henry cry if I died? He’d definitely cry.Right?
The cowboy keeps his gaze trained on the floor as he reaches up and slowly tips his hat in my direction.
‘Ma’am,’ he says, his voice an unfeasibly deep American rumble. ‘I have no plans to murder you.’ He peers across towards my open window, eyes narrowing in confusion. ‘But I’m gonna need you to tell me right now – where the sweet hell am I?’
CHAPTER ONE
24 Hours Earlier
The key to being a great romance writer, I’ve always believed, is to possess a true and unshakeable belief in the concepts you’re writing about; from game-changing first kisses to hard-won happily ever afters, slow burns so agonisingly tense they make you squeal, to the notion that every human heart has a corresponding match. A good romance novelist has to genuinely believe that despite – let’s face it – a shit-ton of evidence to the contrary, loveactually isall you need. Even on the dark days. Even when life gets a little crusty around the edges. Even then, you’ve got to be certain that spending the days of your life magicking up fictional people to fall in love with other fictional people is absolutely worth that time. You have to stand firm in the conviction that your stories have meaning, bring joy, make readers feel better, more hopeful than they did before they experienced what you wrote for them. Romance writing has no time for cynics. To be good at this job you have to be all the way, no doubt about it, totally in love with love. A true believer.
And I, Gertie Bickerstaff, was a true believer. The truest. Totally in love with love.
I was good at it too. Three and a half years into a relationship with charming, handsome, certified grown-up Henry Irving. Four published romance novels under my belt. His and hers sinks in a minuscule but dreamy Bloomsbury attic flat. Would some say I was killing it at love? Yes. Was I maybe a teensy bit smug about killing it at love? Also yes. Was I surprised when Henry suddenly declared the need for a break because he’d been feeling ‘emotionally apathetic’ about our relationship? Oh yes. When he said the words aloud, I dropped the slice of chocolate cake I’d been gobbling and yelled ‘Whaaaaaat? Noooo!’ like someone in a sitcom.
Emotionally apathetic. Brutal.
Serves me right for being so smug.
Now, four weeks later, my status as a true believer in love has been seriously shaken. I sit at my kitchen table, staring at my laptop, trying and failing to write anything at all. My hands hover in mid-air, anxious to thump down onto the bank of keys; to press letters into words into sentences into chapters into the final book of my Bedlam Creek romance series, due to land on my publisher’s desk in exactly seventeen days.
‘Come on, guys,’ I mutter, willing my characters to say or do or feel or think anything at all, wishing for even the tiniest bit of inspiration to strike. ‘I’m on a deadline here!’
But my protagonist, Cassidy Oakley, and her romantic hero, Ethan Calhoun, refuse to do anything – they just stand like statues in the final scene of the last Bedlam Creek book I wrote.
