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They ate their omelets in quick and relative silence, and even though part of him wanted nothing more than to wake Sloane just to catch her sleepy-eyed and thoroughly mussed, Gavin made the executive decision to let her sleep. After all, hehadpromised her some undisturbed slumber, and although he’d promised her breakfast too, he had the feeling she’d appreciate the sleep more.
He put her omelet in a plastic container while Bree rinsed the dishes in the sink, and the harmony of the simple movements surrounded him with easy calm. His mood, which had been good to start with, skyrocketed into the realm of sheer excellence, and as he left for La Dolce Vita an hour later, Gavin felt a sense of relief that had been too long in coming.
Finally. Finally, Mom, I’m starting to get it right.
17
Sloane scanned the sixteen pages of hand-scribbled notes, spreading them out over the normally pristine kitchen table like a sunshine-yellow quilt of words. She gathered all the Post-it notes she’d rapidly accumulated over the course of the evening and stuck them with meticulous care around the pages, rearranging them as if they were all pieces in an intricate puzzle.
The refrigerator hummed its nighttime symphony as Sloane’s pencil flew over the unfurled pages, marking more notes in fluid shorthand and peppering in enough Post-its to ring the entire perimeter of the table. Finally, with one last brightly burning detail deposited from her brain to the page, she stepped back to take the whole thing in.
Apparently, her muse had one hell of a soft spot for Gavin Carmichael’s brand of inspiration. Which would’ve been great on several levels, except the outline spread in front of her was the polar opposite of what Belinda had asked her to write.
Sloane had discarded the ideas from the surprised handful of notes she’d written yesterday afternoon about as quickly as she’d churned them out. Yes, they’d been the only worthwhile pages she’d managed since Halloween, but still. Nothing she’d jotted down had anything to do with dashing, adventurous heroes or exotic, whirlwind escapades. She needed to gear up for the Greece book, and she couldn’t afford even a couple pages’ worth of distraction, even if they were good pages. So, she’d done what any writer in her position would do. She’d shoved the notes in her bag and mentally filed them undermaybe someday.
But as soon as she’d woken up this morning, surrounded by the memory of what had happened just hours before, the ideas on those pages had burst right back into her brain, mashing down last night’s desire to leave and rendering it useless. The thoughts on those pages called to her in barely audible whispers as she wandered down the hall to discover a surprisingly good-natured Bree sitting in the breakfast nook, reading the newspaper.
Those loose threads she’d scratched out tiptoed through her brain, weaving themselves together while she’d eaten the omelet Gavin had left for her in the fridge. By the time she and Bree had field-tripped back to the bungalow so Sloane could shower and change, then taken a quick trip to the store to cap off their afternoon, those vague ideas had become loud snatches of insistent suggestion she could no longer ignore.
What had started out as a glimmer had become a thousand-watt light show in a matter of hours, and the six pages had nearly tripled before Sloane knew what hit her. The more she’d tried to purge the ideas for the sake of clearing cerebral real estate for her Greece book, the sharper and more wonderful the new outline had become on the page.
It was the most finely crafted outline she’d ever come up with, bar none.
Sloane snapped a bunch of close-ups of her handiwork with her iPhone, then flipped her laptop open on the counter in the breakfast nook. Images vaulted from brain to fingers to screen, all without so much as a mental tug to move them along, and despite her misgivings on the subject matter, she didn’t fight them. After months of having to drag the words out of her brain kicking and screaming, watching them spill over the page without effort was a huge relief. Even if the whole shebang was set in none other than a cozy mountain resort town, with not an ancient ruin or breathtaking exotic view in sight.
She’d just have to deal with the fact that they were thewrongwords later.
“Wow. It looks like you got over that writer’s block pretty fast.”
The sound of Gavin’s voice filtering in from the entryway to the kitchen yanked Sloane on a one-way trip back to reality, and she pulled the canvas hat from her head with a series of blinks.
“Oh, sorry! I didn’t hear you come in.” Whoa, when had nine-thirty turned into midnight? And when had she passed the heading for Chapter Two?
And more importantly, how did Gavin manage to look so freaking sexy, all buttoned up in that serious navy blue suit? He gave up a mischievous smile that ratcheted his sexy factor even higher, and Sloane’s muse giggled its head off.
The rest of her tightened with awkward indecision, and she dropped her eyes to the floorboards, gripping her hat with a little too much enthusiasm. She’d always been terrible at the whole morning-after thing, to the point that she avoided it whenever she could. But steering around this was impossible, and the heat in her veins suggested that part of her didn’t even want to avoid it.
Of course, that was the part that had gotten her into this in the first place.
Gavin’s easy smile stayed constant, though, and it chipped away at her unease. “At least you didn’t head-butt me this time,” he said. “Looks like we’re both making progress.”
Progress. Right. She closed her laptop with a snap and a soft laugh. “More like running in circles, I’m afraid. At least as far as this is concerned.”
He gestured to the literary cyclone covering the kitchen table with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t look like running in circles to me. But between the paper and the Post-its, you might want to buy stock in 3M.”
Sloane unwound herself from her cross-legged position at the breakfast bar, eager to head off the invasion of awkward that was sure to drop back in any second now. Though she had zero regrets about spending the night being righteously “inspired” by Gavin, things would just be easiest if they skipped a repeat performance.
Probably.
She started talking, the words tumbling out just a touch too fast. “Yeah, sorry about the mess. I just need to number these pages really quick and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“You don’t have to rush.” Gavin’s eyes locked on hers. “You could take your time. Or stick around for a while, if you want.”
Ohhhhhh, Lordy, did she ever want. “Oh. Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you up or anything.” Her cheeks flamed at the insinuation, while her inner voice went right intoliar, liar, pants on firemode. “I mean, you know. If you’re tired. From work.”
Dammit, she knew all that awkward was going to sneak up and bite her. Sloane clamped down on her lust-addled tongue and leaned over the table to mark each page in sequence for quick removal.
“I’m not.” Gavin paused, clearly catching the look of disbelief that had emerged on her face without her consent. “Well, Iam,but…” He turned his attention toward the splayed-out sheets, clearing his throat and changing the subject without fanfare. “So, this is how you write a book, huh?”
