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Chapter One
Santino wasn’t having any of it. His rugged hands pinned Claire by the shoulders and held her up against the wall, and then. . . and then. . .
Wait, can hands be rugged or is calloused a much better fit?
Argh!
Abigail Collins tore her hands away from the keyboard and groaned in disbelief. Fuck, fuckety fuck. The flow wasn’t right. She’d rewritten the same scene at least five different times, and each time it came out just . . . wrong. The book was never going to be finished if she kept up like this, and she had deadlines to meet and fans to please.
What was the matter with her? She never had writer’s block like this before. Plot bunnies and colorful characters in her mind always burst their way out easily onto paper like a broken dam. It was annoying that now she had brain constipation.
With a desperate sigh, Abby leaned back in her chair and stared at the old wooden ceiling overhead. Water damage had discolored the planks years ago, and she remembered staring at the same dark splotches during her childhood. She had the desk and chair in the same spot. The only difference back then was that she doodled and wrote for fun. She had a fertile imagination even as a child, especially curious about sex and what went on behind closed doors at night. She wrote her own story and illustrated it as an outlet and never showed it to anybody. Not even to her grandpa. That would be too embarrassing. She was often consumed in her own world to escape reality, daydreaming about princes who swept princesses off their feet, rogue pirates with tender hearts, brave knights who fought dragons to save their damsels in distress. She lived in a fantasy realm where unicorns shot rainbow lasers from their asses and everybody lived happily ever after.
But now she couldn’t run away from her problems anymore. She wasn’t the little kid she used to be, carefree and unaffected by the world and its expectations. Coming out to the old family cabin in Cub's Cove had been a good idea, but a change of scenery wasn’t going to cure her of her woes.
And it certainly wasn’t going to cure her of her heartache.
How was she supposed to write a romance novel when her own love life was in shambles?
Claire’s back hit the wall, but Santino cradled her head with his palm before she made contact. Their noses were close. The touch of Santino’s hand was . . .
Wait, why noses? Would faces be a better fit in this situation?
Useless, useless. Abby scrunched up her nose and shook her head. It wasn’t working, and it wasn’t going to work until she fixed the three-month ache in her chest.
Santino . . . Uhm . . .
Santino kissed Claire’s soft lips. Nah, too predictable.
Santino caressed Claire’s neck and down to the valley of her breasts. Ugh. Santino’s kind of a pervert.
Santino chocked on gum he was chewing and couldn’t breathe.
Santino accidentally stepped on a banana peel, lost his balance and crashed onto the floor spectacularly.
San—
The knock at the front door startled her, and Abby jumped up from her chair with a gasp. Since her grandfather had died, the cabin in Cub's Cove was empty most of the time. No one should have known she was there. She’d only come to try to break herself out of her funk, after all.
Abby crept over to her window and peered down. Her bedroom windows faced the front of the house, giving her a clear view of the front door below.
Even from above, Abby recognized the two women waiting for her to answer.
“Oh my God.” Abby’s fingers tightened at the sill, and then she pushed back from the windows and grinned. “No way!”
In seconds, she was out of her old, dusty bedroom and on her way down the stairs. Abby opened the front door right in time to catch Tiffany with her fist raised and ready to knock again.
“Tiffany!” Abby squealed. She grinned from ear to ear. “Carmen!”
Tiffany hitched one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows and shot Abby a look. “Seriously? You’re still in your pajamas at this time of day?”
Abby opened her mouth to reply, but found no words. Instead, she looked down at herself. There was no way she could argue that the pink pajamas with white polka dots and the cute, baggy, graphic T-shirt she wore were street clothes.
