“Shoot your shot. What’s your book idea?”
Gabriel’s letter is still in my grasp. Should I do it?
“Contemporary romance,” I hear myself say. “It starts out with him rescuing her from a fire. When she goes to the fire station to thank him, he asks her on a date. Then…”
I continue on for a solid two minutes before Jill interrupts me. “My next meeting starts in one minute. I like it, though. Text your email address to this number. My assistant will be in touch. Chat soon.” The line goes dead.
I stare at myself in the mirror as I slowly lower my phone to my waist.
I huff a disbelieving laugh. I shake my head. “What just happened?” I whisper. Ruby noses my thigh. I bend down so I’m eye level with her, scratching behind her ears.
“Ruby.” I nuzzle her. “We have a book to write.”
CHAPTER 31
“Try this,”Cam says, pushing a matte black, oversized cup my way.
I peek into it. I’ve never seen a cup like this. Inside the cup is a little well, open on one side, and full of a light-colored creamy sauce. “What is that?”
“White chocolate sauce. The heat of the coffee is constantly warming the sauce, which in turn mixes into the coffee.”
“Why don’t you just put the sauce in the coffee and mix it all up at once?”
Cam blows out an irritated breath. “Because that would be one hundred times less aesthetically pleasing.” She nods toward a glass canister on the counter with a little sign that says ‘Treat your dog, too.’ “Grab one for Ruby.”
I do as she says, tucking the small treat into an inside pocket of my purse.
Cam grabs the cup and leads me to a table against the far wall. She pulls out a chair and sits down, and I take the booth side opposite her. “Ready to put that pretty handwriting to good use?”
“I don’t think it’s as good as you think it is,” I warn her, taking a drink. The sweetness hits my tongue, and explodes. Coupled with the caffeine, it’s a formidable duo.
She waves away my protest. “Here you go.” She tosses me a bag of chalk pens, then points to a huge chalkboard leaning against a wall.
“These are the entries?” I ask, nodding at the glass bowl filled with folded pieces of paper sitting on the table beside us. She reaches for it and sets it in front of me. “Choose one.”
I choose one at random, and look up at her. “He who sits in jelly has his ass in a jam?”
Cam shrugs. “Dani said almost anything goes. Use common sense limitations.”
I select a hot pink chalk pen from the bag and go over to the chalkboard, copying the words and adding some flair to the letters.
Together, Cam and I hang it on the wall. She pulls her phone from her pocket and backs up a couple feet. “Smile big. I’m going to spread the word on social.”
I do as I’m told. Cam snaps the photo, spends a moment adjusting the filter and cropping it, then types out a caption. “Posted,” she says proudly, smiling at me. “I tagged you.”
“I haven’t posted anything in a long time,” I remind her. “Tagging me is mostly useless.”
She shrugs. “Certainly can’t hurt.”
Cam’s newest employee, Laramie, waves at her from the register. “Duty calls,” Cam says, dropping a kiss on my cheek and gathering the pens and glass jar. “Stay here as long as you like. I saw you brought your laptop with you.” She throws a glance at the navy blue leather case on the seat beside me.
Cam disappears, and I pull out my computer.
Jill’s assistant emailed a couple days after we spoke, telling me Jill was interested in taking me on as a client. WhenI finished jumping up and down, I signed my name on the electronic document her assistant sent. Now the real hard work begins.
Gabriel said to use our story. Even after my on-the-spot pitch to Jill, I second-guessed using it. Is it possible to write our story objectively? No. Even so, it’s a story I want to tell. So I sat down, closed my eyes, and pulled myself from inside the scene. I stood outside, viewing it as a bystander, doing my best to watch us fall in love and make mistake after mistake. That’s when I decided to move forward with it.
Writing at Gem is a nice change of scenery, though I do miss Ruby’s warm body lying across my feet beneath my desk. Eyes on my computer, I pick up where I left off yesterday, immediately immersed in a world I once considered pure magic.
