It could be either, but I’m suddenly getting weird flashes of some kind of cowgirl-themed sex tape and this is my cousin we’re talking about, so I think we’d better stop.
And my best friend. Agreed.
We will never speak of this again!
He sends me a zipped mouth emoji. I’m smiling so hard my face hurts.
But after a minute of dumbly grinning at my phone, I realize we’ve covered everything we need to.
Owen
Well, I’ll let you get back to your day.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like it takes a little longer for the next response to come through.
George
Yeah, you too. Have a good one!
I close the app and set the phone down. And then I’m sitting alone in George Knight’s apartment, in George Knight’s bed, feeling the strangest sense of missing a man I don’t really know.
As I climb out of bed and shuffle my way to the kitchen, something else strange happens. I realize I no longer feel like I’m intruding being here. Instead, George Knight’s fancy Upper West Side apartment feels like somewhere I belong.
CHAPTER 29
GEORGE
An hour,some coffee, and an amazing thawed cranberry scone I’m pretty sure Owen made from scratch later and I’m sitting on the sunporch, computer open in my lap, staring at my notes for the next chapter and trying not to think about texting Owen.
I want to. I’m itching to. But I don’t have a reason.
Is it weird that I want to text my friend’s cousin/temporary housing swap mate that I barely know? Yeah, no, answered my own question there, didn’t I?
Your manuscript, George? Hello? Remember that?
Goddamn cursor.
You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you? I gave you a chance, tried to let this Vermont retreat thing work its “magic,” but clearly what you need is a swift kick in the?—
Nope. Not doing this. I am here to work. I am a professional. I can write a damn book.
I type a note to remind myself Sebastian needs to have slipped a weapon into the embassy with him and that it needs to be something they wouldn’t find on a frisk. Maybe a knife strapped to his ankle. Ceramic to avoid the metal detectors? Maybe a gun, too. He can slip that behind the guard’s back during said frisk while he speaks low and husky to the poor guy,enjoying the proximity a little too much. Maybe toys with him with a spin on “is that a gun in your pocket or…” if I can swing it.
The thing is, I don’t have any particularreasonto text Owen. And he’s probably off doing something. He’s on vacation, after all. I shouldn’t bother him. I should be working, anyway.
I write Sebastian past the flustered guard and intercept him with a beefy security man three times his size, who he outmaneuvers using a variety of martial arts. It feels flat.
I write him a scene where he flirts with the ambassador. It feels wildly inappropriate.
I have a mad urge to text Owen to tell him about my misadventures in scene writing. I squelch it.
I look back at the words on the page. I just have to find a way to make this work. Sebastian needs to confront this woman, not seduce her. I highlight the text and am just about to delete the whole thing when I read over it again. The dialogue isn’t half bad.
It doesn’t work for Sebastian and Ambassador Sokolova, but this teasing flirtation in an inappropriate setting, this dynamic of the out-of-place, less powerful character, daring to tease his superior. There’s something there. Something that in the right context becomes fiery, intoxicating.
An hour later and I’ve written Mr. Fletcher and Sir Henry Ashford into a very steamy scene behind a country inn, tensions only mounting afterwards as they go in to secure their rooms for the night. A curt nod from Ashford being his only acknowledgement of his companion as they part ways on the stair landing. Proper, for a man of such higher stature. Except his pinky slides against James’s as he turns. Three square millimeters of skin on James’s hand burn. He meets Henry’s eyes. And the intensity there makes it hard to swallow, hard to stand, hard tobreathefor a moment. And he knows they are both in deep, deep trouble.
I breathe out and collapse against the back of my chair.
