While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 (6 page)

Chapter Nine

Sheri stared at the squirrel painting in disgust. Other than making a random-looking creature that was complete cartoony crap and that she’d never be able to sell anywhere, she’d accomplished nothing since he’d left her shaking in reaction to his drunken temper tantrum.

She should have been afraid of him. She’d stood and told herself that after he’d thrown the bottle, she should have been afraid of his violence, but nothing in her believed he’d hurt her, even in a whiskey-soaked rage. Instead, she’d wanted to go smack him. She’d literally shaken in her refusal to meet his fury with her own.

Then he’d touched her and she’d ignited. She’d pushed back as hard as he pushed her and ended up telling him something she’d never told anyone.

Maybe because he was behaving so badly, so inappropriately, he allowed her to confess what a truly horrible person she really was. How very awful she really was and how simply unfixable she was—driving her to help others who, comparatively, could actually enact change and fix the bits that were damaged in their hearts so they could learn to love and live again.

Wishing the room he’d assigned for her studio had a door—and wondering for the umpteenth time why his childhood bedroom didn’t have a door to start with—she moved to the corner and lifted the sheet covering her recent work. While he’d been holed up in his office writing like a madman, she’d been on an equally creative bender in between avoiding the dark corners of her own mind and going cabin-fever crazy.

His face, from a bunch of different angles. Driven to try to capture on paper the whiplash flashes of emotion that crossed his dark and brooding face, she’d done half a dozen pieces and hadn’t been pleased with any. Which was what drove her to the rabid squirrel piece, since the furry creature had been her only real companion while Radcliffe played hermit author locked in his room.

Picking one out of the stack, she pitched the squirrel painting to lie in the heap of broken glass from his fit. If he could be a temperamental brute, she could be a moody artist. It seemed fair.

Dipping her brush into the black paint, she deepened the lines around his mouth, the dark curling hair around his face, and then selected a cerulean blue for his eyes under the weight of his sooty lashes. With a smirk, she added red horns sticking out of the soft-looking hair she longed to touch.
Stupid man. Stupid stubborn man.

Looking at the demon version of Radcliffe, she added some neon yellow to his eyes and fangs to his damned kissable lips under that overgrowth of stubble.

Making him into an evil painting didn’t satisfy the urges he’d left rolling through her body like waves of unrest nor did it answer the questions he’d created with his mentions of his mother.

So the house full of dusty things piled up in true hoarder fashion were his mother’s, and he hadn’t dealt with them since he felt like they still weren’t his, though a five-year-old obituary told her his parent had been gone for quite some time. His comment about his divorce said the relationship with his mother
caused
the divorce…but how? And when he’d said he picked the woman who needed him, why had his mother needed him more than his bride?

The answers weren’t in the house. Or rather, if they were, she’d have a hell of a time finding them in all the piles of stuff buried in dust like some living grave. The town was small, though, and her brother knew a lot of people. Perhaps it was time to be proactive about this project and find some answers. Tugging off her paint-spattered T-shirt, she stomped through the house and stopped by his door just to wiggle her bra-covered breasts at it.
Stupid man.

Not that he could see her act of rebellion while he holed up in there, probably sleeping off his drink, but somehow it made her feel satisfied to have had the last word in their exchange, so to speak.

Speeding upstairs, since her boob shaking would be ruined if he opened the door and caught her, she jumped in the shower then changed into public-worthy clothes. Putting on full makeup for the first time in days, she texted her brother while she dried out her mop of hair. She should get it cut, but the heavy length of it nearly brushed her ass and pleased her in some way—like a touch of femininity she allowed even though she knew she wasn’t relationship material.

Mask fully in place, she only paused outside his door to touch the wood that separated them. More answers would remove barriers and he wasn’t giving them to her. He’d scraped more off the surface of her than she’d managed to dig into him, and it was time to level the playing field. The key was his mother.

Lance pulled into the long drive as she stepped off the front porch and she rushed to jump in the passenger side. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“I’m shocked you lasted this long. He finally drive you out of your gourd with his weird grumbling and nutty tendencies?” Her brother smiled, making light of it, but seeing him after her days of confinement with the novelist brought comfort so she let it go.

“No, I need to do research and you’re going to help me. To town, Jeeves.” She pointed down the driveway with a grin of her own, slipping into her usual carefree persona with only a little shiver of unease.

Funny, she’d lived her whole life behind her mask, hiding the darkest parts of herself, but confessing to Radcliffe the gritty bits made her feel fake for the first time. Maybe he was right. Maybe she hid as much as he did. The thought didn’t offer solace.

“I’m not sure what you hope to find out. He’s a recluse—I’m pretty sure no one knows much about him.” Lance sped out of the driveway, gravel flying in his wake, and only spared her one glance.

“I’m not researching
him
, not exactly. I want to know what people know about his mother.”

His mouth tasted like he’d been chewing sawdust and tar, almost like he’d licked a skunk’s ass. His eyes, dear Lord, his eyes. Cracking them open, light burned like razor wire into his brain, and he rolled onto his side to cover the aching things with both hands. A marching band stomped through his brain, slipping a little on the blood from the slices of the razor wire, but not deterred in the slightest. The hard floor beneath him left his back aching—hell, everything ached—and his stomach roiled like he’d chugged acid.

He hadn’t been as drunk as he’d gotten the day before…possibly ever.

And, of course, his brain wasn’t kind enough to have blacked out his actions. They screamed in a repeating monotony what an ass he’d been and how he’d treated her—

Dear God, he’d thrown a bottle at her.

Well, not at her, but still, close enough to—

What in the fuck had he been thinking?

He hadn’t been thinking and therein lay the big problem. She’d wound him tighter than a wind-up toy and he’d simply spun into action until the twists wore out.

His cock, seemingly unaware that the rest of him writhed in agony, perked to life at the mere thought of her. She’d touched him. He’d had her in his arms, and he’d flubbed it.

He shouldn’t care, not with the razor wire acid combination, about his attraction to her, but—

Yes, he’d admit it to himself. He wanted her. He’d wanted her since that first glimpse of her in the grocery store. He hadn’t invited her here out of altruistic hopes of shaking free of writer’s block, he’d agreed because he wanted to get to know her, to look at her.

To taste her, once the idea had occurred to him.

First woman in however long to have really tripped his trigger and he’d thrown an empty whiskey bottle at her.

He wasn’t sure how he could face her, not with the epiphany that he liked her blending with his own poor excuse for behavior. Perhaps he could simply act like nothing happened?

After apologizing. He’d have to tell her he was sorry. He’d overstepped—hell, he’d over-stomped—and he’d make it right. He wasn’t sure how but…

Shower.

The water beat down on him like a hundred angry fists, but he took the torture as his due and scrubbed until his flesh literally squeaked under the soap. Once he faced his own bloodshot reflection, he grimaced.
Shaving, yeah, most men shaved.
He’d never wanted to be most men, to fit an ideal, however she deserved much more than he’d given her.

Finding his face under the overgrowth, he even waxed the space between his eyebrows—something he hadn’t done since the divorce.

His hair was still too long—nothing he could do about that himself unless he wanted to shave his head—but the man gazing back at him in the mirror looked years younger than he’d appeared for such a long time. Radcliffe took a moment to consider him.

Had it been so long since he’d really looked at himself?

Since the man in the mirror was practically a stranger—if a red-eyed one—he realized it must have been a long time. Too long since he’d cared what he looked like to others, to a woman.

It was amazing she’d let the beast paw at her, considering the horror of that old reflection compared to his new one.

He made coffee and stood listening for some sound of her. Since silence echoed through the house, she probably slept. Curled up, all warm and soft and sweet-smelling, left with the memory of the monster that had attacked her drunkenly in her studio. She’d wanted to help him—could he have changed that desire with his reckless attack?

Peering into the studio in question, he frowned at the glass still shattered in the corner of the room and the squirrel painting—not one of her better attempts, if he dared be critical after his ruthlessness—lay atop it like a sacrifice to the gods of fury.

But what sat, like glaring accusation in the brightly lit room, on her easel made him stumble. His hung-over brain recorded the image and he dropped to his knees before it like a parishioner at an altar.

She’d painted the monster inside and given him literal horns and fangs to go with the ugliness glowing out of those unearthly eyes. That she’d both captured and caricaturized all of his flaws in one painting carved out a piece of him that might have been hope.

No apology, it seemed, would fix his actions from the night before. She’d left this for him to see, since she had to know he’d peek in, to show him what she really thought of him.

Even so, he couldn’t resist the need to try to tell her he’d messed up. Pounding up the stairs like a madman on a mission, he thumped on her door with his open palm. “Sheri! I need to talk to you.” He swallowed, bile rising in his throat at his dumbfuckery, choking his words. “I know, I was out of line, even for me. I need to say—” The door opened on his third hit, swinging as if it hadn’t been closed all the way or latched. She hadn’t locked him out, perhaps not as afraid of the monster as he’d feared?

The room stood empty, her things packed into her trunk which sat near the door.
As if she planned to leave.

But she wasn’t there and he hadn’t heard a sound.

As if she left already and only needed to send someone back to get the trunk.

A cocktail of emotions swelled inside him. Betrayal—the most unexpected of feelings considering he probably deserved her desertion—but valid because hadn’t she claimed she could help him, demanded to do so, and she’d given up and ditched him?

Panic—he couldn’t fix gone.

Hurt—she’d left him. He’d known she would. Repulsive, wasn’t that what Lila called him when she’d left so very long ago? But that
she’d
gone…

He’d hoped, in some tiny part of himself he hadn’t really admitted to, that she would be the one person that wouldn’t leave. That she’d stick it out. That he’d get to hold her in the night against the darkness that dogged his every footstep.

He hadn’t even realized he’d let that hope germinate, that he’d allowed such weakness—

Foolish.
He knew better. She’d only confirmed what he already knew.

He stomped back down the stairs, wanting to break something—to hurl things and hurt someone. Instead, he closed the door to his office with calm he didn’t feel and locked the barrier behind him. Moving to his desk, he stared blindly until the sun set and darkness filled the room around him.

Finally, he scrolled the mouse to wake the computer and then clicked open his e-mail. Finding the one he’d searched for, he grabbed his phone and made the call.

Even if he was a monster, he didn’t have to be alone. If Sheri taught him one thing, it was that he didn’t want to be alone. And if she’d left him…

He’d damn well replace her. Any woman should do, shouldn’t she?

Chapter Ten

She hadn’t planned on being gone so long from the ramshackle farmhouse Radcliffe called home. She felt a little like Beauty as she pulled the rental car into his driveway, racing home to her beast before the rose dropped its last petal.

She’d read too many of his books if she waxed poetic about leaving for a day. Crashing out on Lance’s couch hadn’t been comfortable, nor had she slept worth a damn, but she’d found out more in one day and morning than she’d learned in days holed up in the middle of nowhere with Radcliffe.

His neighbors and the few people in town they’d interacted with remembered Radcliffe’s mother, Estella, well—from the people who brought meals by the house in her last days to the ones who knew her from when she was a girl. While munching on Mrs. Watkin’s famous pineapple upside down cake at the local diner, she’d heard stories, laughter, remembrances…it seemed the town was more than willing to fill the blanks her mysterious writer hadn’t filled. Knowing more about his mother, about his past, might be the key to unlocking the wall that stood between them. Maybe by helping Radcliffe, she’d help herself. Some little light went on inside her once she’d started helping him, some brittle glow that might be herself coming back to life, learning to forgive herself for not being what she wanted to be.

As if to reaffirm her thoughts on life, she’d wandered through the small town while her brother was at work, enjoying the quaint, bucolic beauty of it all, and found herself standing in a cemetery. Sure, it wasn’t
the
cemetery, since Preston had been buried back home in Spring City, Tennessee, but it looked enough like it that it shoved her stumbling down memory lane. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so much the look of the graves, surrounded by grass and some so old the names had been washed away by weather and time, as the fact she’d been thinking of him that knocked her into the past.

Passing through the waist-high, black iron gates, she wandered among the graves. Maybe she hadn’t been the best fiancée of all time, but she wasn’t horrible. And, although his sickness shaped who she was, they’d had some really good times before he died. A few, even, while he’d been sick.

A girl, probably about her age, sat cross-legged on one of the newer plots. Twirling a leaf in her fingertips, she seemed in deep conversation…with a headstone.

“Oh hi!” she called out, waving Sheri closer. “You must be Lance’s older sister.”

“Uh, yeah, I am.” It almost creeped Sheri out how everyone in this town seemed to know who she was and why she was here before she’d even been introduced to them.

“I’m Abigail. Lance dated my sister for a while…well, hell, everyone dated my sister at some point or another, but still. Nice to meet you.”

“You’re talking to a grave.” It seemed that spending time with Radcliffe might be making his bad habits rub off on her instead of her good ones on him, but…

“Yes, this is my grandmother. She was such a wise woman and I miss her so much. I know, probably seems weird to come here to talk to her, but, well, you don’t bury love, do you?” Abigail shoved a lock of dark hair behind her ear and shrugged almost self-consciously. “Or maybe that’s just me. We carry fragments of them in our hearts, some sharp and painful and some like the glue that helps keep us together when we feel like we’re falling apart.” Abigail tapered off, biting her lip.

Realizing she was making her feel nervous, Sheri dropped to sit next to her on the grass. “No, I get it. I’ve lost people I miss dearly too. Guess it never occurred to me to just, I don’t know…talk to them.”

Abigail reached out a hand and touched Sheri’s arm. “Probably it’s crazy, like I said. But it gives me peace, so I’ll take the crazy.”

The words stuck with Sheri. Later that night, she’d found old canvases she’d painted and gesso’d over about a hundred times in the attic at Lance’s. When she couldn’t sleep—she tried to blame the couch and not her own restless thoughts—she’d begun to paint and whisper.

“Preston? Okay, I’m talking to myself, but I guess I want to say the words out loud. I loved you, I loved you so much it hurt. Losing you just about broke me. But you taught me to love, what it was like to be loved. I guess in those last days I looked for that feeling again and I’ve been damning myself for years because of that one mistake…

“But is it a mistake? Is it ever a mistake to look for someone who loves you? Who understands you? I’m sure if you were still here, I’d be with you and we’d be happy, but you’re gone. How long should I punish myself for not dying too?

“How long until I realize I should be happy to have known you, to have been loved like that, and live the rest of the days I have in whatever happiness the world has to offer?”

While she whispered into the darkness, she’d let her mind wander, considering the words, rather than thinking consciously about what she painted. The heart on the canvas looked like it throbbed with life, with light, rather than only paint.

Maybe it wasn’t about having Preston forgive her. Maybe it was about forgiving herself.

And perhaps she wouldn’t have ever realized it if she hadn’t met a crabby-ass author who made her see herself as a woman again—a real live breathing woman who had needs and a lot of love left to give.

Who knew? Maybe she wouldn’t be able to help Radcliffe and maybe she’d never entirely forgive herself for what happened with Preston…but maybe the past didn’t matter so much. Maybe it was as much a story as the ones she’d heard about Radcliffe’s mother—something locked in the past and unchangeable.

She tried not to overthink how Radcliffe made her feel, but it seemed her mind refused to cooperate, focusing on the image of his face, the grumble of his words. A crush seemed sort of shallow for the jagged mix of feelings she had for him. It was more than that. She wondered, briefly, if he’d even noticed her absence.

The strange car in the driveway had her pressing the brake a bit harder than needed. Apologizing to the rental car, which didn’t answer, she stared at the unfamiliar bumper and tried to reconcile the knowledge that the hermit had an actual visitor.

She rushed to the front door, curiosity speeding her steps. Who on earth had he invited to his house? From what she’d gathered, he never had anyone there—well, except for her.

Her hand was on the knob when it opened and a laughing woman spilled out, nearly knocking her down the stairs. “Oh, sorry!” The girlish chirp of the dark-haired goddess froze Sheri in place. She gaped at the other woman, struck speechless.

“Sheri, you’ve come for your trunk?” The solicitous sound of Radcliffe’s voice, so different from his usual growl, caused her heart to race in panic.

“No. I’m back. I had some things to do and I—” She floundered, out of words, and shrugged. “You want me to go?”

The question slipped out in a trembling voice and her face flamed with heat. She couldn’t look at him, instead focusing on the tall, dark-haired beauty smiling at her.

“No, I thought—” He stopped speaking and her gaze slammed into him, shocked he hadn’t found words. Radcliffe was a lot of things, but unable to express himself wasn’t something Sheri expected. He cleared his throat and the second shock slammed through Sheri, bringing her hand to her mouth to cover her suddenly trembling lips.

He’d shaved, turned his unibrow into two distinct eyebrows, and he was startling in his handsomeness. Like the wedding picture she’d found in the old newspaper, this man was a stranger. All the attraction she’d felt for the grumbly, unkempt hermit boiled, heated by the full weight of his cobalt gaze and strong jawline.

“I. You. Um.” She couldn’t find words for everything, her thoughts tumbling upon one another like an avalanche she couldn’t possibly control.

“Well, I thought you might…” Again he cleared his throat, shifting and stuffing his hands into his pockets to slouch—a familiar movement in a foreign appearance.

“Hi, sorry.” The dark-haired goddess shoved a hand out and Sheri blinked at it, not sure how to proceed. “Radcliffe should introduce us, but I’m Candice, his assistant. You’re…?”

“Sheri.” Sheri answered at the same time as Radcliffe and her gaze locked on his, asking questions she still couldn’t find voice for.

“Pleasure to meet you. So you stay here?” Candice raised a brow, slowly taking back the proffered hand Sheri never shook.

Sheri hated her, both for her beauty and her ability to speak while she couldn’t seem to string together an entire sentence.
He’s hired an assistant?
She’d only been gone a day…what changed?

“Yes.” Again, she and Radcliffe answered at the same moment and heavy silence between them followed the single syllable. Candice seemed to wait for further explanation neither offered.

“Well, hello. Okay, Radcliffe, I’ll be back in about an hour. I’m getting groceries.” Candice smiled, the sheer perky perfection of her making Sheri all the more aware of her rumpled, slept-in clothes and her unbrushed hair tugged into a glob at the back of her head. “Is there anything you’d like me to pick up while I’m gone?” The kindness of the offer didn’t decrease Sheri’s automatic and violent hatred of her, and she hoped her face didn’t give away her loathing.

“No.” Pushing past both of them, Sheri headed upstairs as if she had all the right in the world to do so. She heard a few more words exchanged before she made it to the top of the stairs—Radcliffe’s tone far more kind than anything he’d ever graced her with as he spoke to the damned perfect woman. Not that Sheri should be surprised—after all, she’d foisted herself off on him, forced him to deal with her and picked at all of his painful bits with her questioning. The goddess had been hired. Sheri hadn’t exactly encouraged kindness from Radcliffe, but it stung that he demonstrated social graces he’d never bothered to show her with the goddess.

The door closed downstairs as she reached her room and she paused, leaning on the doorframe, not sure why she’d been so shattered that he had another woman in his home. It shouldn’t matter, not really, but—

“Sheri.” His voice rang up the staircase and she straightened her spine, refusing to let him see he’d hurt her.

“Yeah,” she answered. “You want me to leave?”

“No. Please. I—want to apologize. For the other night. I was out of line. You’re welcome to stay—” He went silent and she didn’t dare look at him, this stranger with the clean-shaven face and manners. She’d shatter. She didn’t want to look too deeply into herself, to think through why it mattered, but she recognized she couldn’t let him know.

“Thank you.” She should be happy. She’d helped him, obviously, based on the manners and the woman and the shave. She’d made him want to try, which was her goal, after all. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. My brother’s couch—” She remembered his hatred for banal banter and then wondered if the new him would care about her babbling or not. “Anyway, I’m going to sleep. I’ll see you both later then?”

She didn’t mean to make it a question, but if he’d fixed himself while she was gone, did she need to stay? Wouldn’t she be better served to move on?

The thought of leaving, of not seeing him, sent a shard of pain through her and she didn’t wait for his answer. She simply closed herself in the room and crumpled to the floor to cry.

The impulsive hiring of Candice Winters as his personal assistant could be considered one of the few decisions he’d made that he immediately regretted.

When she changed from Internet stranger to warm-blooded female on his doorstep, he made the split second decision to paste on his conference face—the polite falseness he wore to keep people from really seeing him—and keep it in place as long as he possibly could.

He’d honestly thought Sheri wouldn’t come back. That he’d scared her and she’d ran from him…

Just like Lila.

But worse, somehow, because Lila hadn’t understood what she signed on for, facing the reality of his life unarmed. Sheri? She’d known he wasn’t fit for polite company, that he refused to bow to trite manners which meant nothing in the great grand scheme of things and were kept in place for societal norms and control rather than because anyone wanted to pretend to be less than base animals stuck to a rock for such an insubstantial portion of time.

And she’d left anyway. He’d driven her away. He’d taken her picture of him, the devil-horned picture that showed his true self more than the clean-shaven reflection in the mirror and hung it in his office as a reminder.

No one could love the beast, could tame him, or bear his presence.

Better to hide behind the mask and not be alone than wrestle demons he’d never control.

Candice—perky, peppy, fake as her spray-on tan and obvious boob job—bounced in and steamrolled through his house with a tablet in hand, making lists and organizing. She’d hammered out a schedule, accessed his overflowing e-mail inbox, and planned to answer all the varying requests in it and simply notify him of things he absolutely needed to attend to. Besides that, she planned to hire a crew to help move most of the things towering in piles to storage—so he might never have to deal with it all. Not a fix, not really, but a reallocation of miscellany, not that he told her that.

“With a gift like yours, what we really want to focus on is giving you as much writing time as possible. To create an environment that is stimulating to your muse and allows for your process.” Flipping her inky black hair over one orangish shoulder, she grinned up at him. “Sound good, Mr. McQueen?”

It sounded like typical industry babble, buzz words, rather than actual independent thought. “Radcliffe.” He’d tried to smile back, but the expression felt nearly as plastic as his assistant looked.

He’d spent the better portion of the morning trying to avoid her, eventually locking himself in his office and peering under the door to watch her feet pause outside and then briskly pace away.

When she’d knocked and demanded a grocery list, he’d lifted his hands in surrender and rattled off as much as he could think of simply to guarantee she’d be gone for a while.

The sight of Sheri on the porch, the jaw-dropping shock of her expression when she took in his improved appearance, should have pleased him.