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MEGAN: Are you writing all this down for a book?
ME: YOU ARE NOT HELPING
MEGAN: What do you want me to say??? You’re lusting after a guy you insist is a raging asshole to the point you’re making him your muse and fantasising about shagging him. If you ask me, you’re the problem here.
ME: I didn’t ask you.
MEGAN: I know, but it’s a bit weird.
ME: Didn’t you once write fanfiction about Taylor Lautner and email it to him?
MEGAN: Nah. Different Megan.
ME: Mhmm. What do I do???
MEGAN: You’ve got two choices. You either deny it all and come back home, or you tell him the truth and potentially have a great summer of sex.
ME: You read too many romance novels.
MEGAN: 1, there’s no such thing, and 2, it’s not going to kill you.
I hated it when she was right.
MEGAN: Is he still there?
ME: No. I’m behind because I had to go hunting for the dumb cat so I made him leave.
MEGAN: You’re just going to have to be honest while explaining that you aren’t comfortable with him reading your manuscript. I joke with you, but I know how you get inspired and that it’s innocent, even if you are attracted to him. Your first drafts are a hot mess.
ME: Thanks.
MEGAN: No problem. Honestly, it’s weird that you’re writing about it, but he had no business reading it, even if your laptop was open. Not even I would read it.
I swallowed. I suppose I was uncomfortable with it all—my first drafts were only ever seen by a few people. They were full of inconsistences and mistakes because I threw out whatever was in my head, but they were also the barest parts of my stories.
The fact he’d read such a personal part of my writing process was almost worse than what he’d figured out.
It was my fault for leaving it open—and the door, of course—but I hadn’t been thinking this morning.
All I could do was sit and hope that he didn’t come back today.
And that I’d come up with a way to explain it all.
•••
I had no way to explain it all. I’d thought about it as I’d driven into Windermere to go grocery shopping. I’d thought about it while weighing up whether I wanted apples or oranges with my lunch this week, and I’d thought about it while I’d ummed and ahhed over which cat food to buy Winston this week because the fancy food was on sale.
Spoiler: I’d bought the fancy food. Not that the little sod deserved it, but still. Such was the life of a cat mum.
It all came back down to the fact that I couldn’t explain why I was writing a book that was basically set at Greygarth Estate with a hero who looked exactly like the duke who owned it.
That was it.
I was going to have to be honest with Max and admit that I was attracted to him and he was what my brain pictured this hero to look like. And yes, that was a little creepy, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
The muse wanted what the muse wanted.
The muse wanted him.
