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“When I fucking feel like it, Mikey.”
He grins and then looks over my shoulder. Long arms slide around my waist from behind, and James rests his chin on the crown of my head. Sweetly claiming.
“This is James,” I tell Mike.
He reaches to shake one of James’s outstretched hands. “Hey, James. Mike.” He gives me an approving little smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I scowl at him. “You have not.”
“There are volumes in silence, Carey. I could tell how much you liked him based on how quickly you’d change the subject every time you accidentally dropped his name.”
“Well, whatever,” I say. “You can be right for once. Turns out, he was higher up on the list than furniture was. So you’re all going to have to deal with sitting on the floor while I cross things off one at a time, at my own pace.”
James is the only one who gets it, but I can tell he likes that answer, because his kiss to my temple feels like a safe haven and his body pressed all along my back promises dirty, dirty fun.
“Speaking of lists,” he says quietly, “I made one of my own, and skinny-dipping is right at the top.”
I turn back to face him, grinning. “As it damn well should be.”
“I might have noticed you have a creek out back.” He jerks his chin toward the window. “All you need is some stairs down that steep hill.”
Happiness feels like a sweet, frolicking beast inside my chest. “If only I knew someone who could build such a thing,” I quietly tease.
He kisses the tip of my nose and raises a hand. “James McCann: assistant, engineer, and infatuated boyfriend, at your service.”
Before I can verbalize the incoherent giddiness these words trigger, the infatuated boyfriend bends, brushing his lips against mine. He’s careful not to deepen the kiss too much, but in his restraint, I sense how he wants to pull me right up against him and hold me tight.
“I’ll build anything you need,” he whispers, kissing my jaw. “I’d do anything for you.”
What a sweet relief, because I would do anything for him, too. So this is what it feels like to be with someone who wants to give simply for the pleasure of it.
I pull James in close, holding him as tight as I think he needs, and he nearly squeezes the air out of me, letting out the happiest little groan. It is like falling onto a soft bed, the relief of being in his arms. The house seems brighter, the air inside fresher. I look over his shoulder and out the window at the view. My view. My home. My life, finally coming together by my own hands, one piece at a time.
We outlined this book together in Salt Lake City on a giant whiteboard and with about seven thousand Post-it notes. It was amazing! It was exciting! It was the best weekend ever!
Sometimes the idea is shinier than the first draft, and this was definitely the case with The Honey-Don’t List. The idea was so clear in our heads; when we outlined, we were cracking each other up. And then we sat down to write and it was like making a huge mess in the kitchen and then pulling a very deflated cake out of the oven. It just didn’t come out the way we’d imagined it.
But that’s our process lately, we realized—draft fast, edit later—and after twenty-plus books together, we’d finally hit a point where we didn’t panic if it wasn’t perfect from the start. We dove back into edits a few times, and each time the book got a little closer to the one you’re holding right now. By the time we handed in the copy edits to our editor, we had made the book everything we wanted it to be when we sat in Christina’s kitchen, surrounded by a rainbow of Post-its.
The bottom line is that we are lucky to do this together, and have created a friendship and partnership that is truly meaningful, both creatively and personally. We love working together, we love that we get to do this career as a team, and we love you all for picking up and reading our books.
We also love our agent, Holly Root. Quite frankly, anyone who’s ever met Holly knows she is the most together person in publishing. So wise, so calm, so supportive, and such a badass.
We love, too, our editor, Kate Dresser, who sees the deflated cake come into her inbox and says, “I see what ingredient you left out!” … and then finds five hundred more ingredients we left out in the first draft. Sometimes the book she gets probably feels more like a bowl of batter than a fully baked cake, but with her big, amazing brain, we’re able to draw out every flavor we’d planned. And then our brilliant and adorable PR rep Kristin Dwyer comes in and makes everyone taste the cake and shout publicly that it is tHe bEsT cAKe EvER!!
