Chapter One
“Underwear or panties?”
My roommate, Meredith, paused with her hand hovering over her gym bag. “You mean to wear?”
“No.” I shook my head and pointed at the mostly blank page on my laptop. “The words. ‘Underwear’ sounds clinical, but ‘panties’ is sort of infantilizing. I struggle with what to use every time. It’s not like I can write, ‘Austin fisted herundergarmentand ripped it clean off.’ That doesn’t sound sexy.”
“Um,” Meredith considered it. “Knickers, maybe?”
“Too old-timey.”
“Foundationwear?”
“My heroine is a cook on a ranch in Montana; I doubt she wears Spanx.” I sighed and fell back against the lumpy futon in our living room.
“What’s this one called again?” she asked as she resumed packing. “The Rancher’s Sassy Fake Bride and the Doorstep Baby?”
“Close.” I sighed. “It’sThe Montana Cowboy and His Fake Fiancée’s Baby Surprise.”
Meredith zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “And how many words have you written?”
I squinted at the screen. “Let’s see . . . As of this moment, one hundred seventy-five words.”
She let out a low whistle. “Okay, and when’s it due?”
“Two months. I have sixty days to write sixty-five thousand words.”
Admitting it out loud sent my stomach into a seasick dip. I had never,everlet a deadline get away from me like this. But then again, I’d also never tried to write a steamy happily ever after while nursing a thoroughly fractured heart.
Meredith walked over to my makeshift office and perched on the edge of the chair opposite me, so as not to disturb the notebooks piled there. Our brick-walled apartment was long on charm but short on space, which meant that the shared areas did triple duty. Meredith could’ve easily tapped the Bank of Mom and Dad and moved out on her own ages ago, but she was determined to scrimp and save her way to opening a Pilates studio all on her own. Which meant living like we were still in college even though we were six years past graduation. It worked for me since there was no way I could afford solo rent with my by-the-job lifestyle.
“Okay, that’s easy,” Meredith said. “A thousand or so words a day. You’ve got this.”
Her can-do, problem-solving approach to life was one of the many things I loved about her, but not in this moment.
I shoved my laptop to the side with a groan. “Sure, itsoundstotally doable, but I just...” I flailed my hands around to try to convey my current helpless state.
The corners of her mouth turned down. “I know, and I’m sorry. What can I do to make it better?”
I frowned back at her. “Find my muse?”
Not being able to write was painful for me on a bunch of different levels, the primary one being the credit card bills shovedin the notebooks behind Meredith. But it was more than just the terrifying financial implications of writer’s block. I felt like I’d beenbornwith a pencil in my hand. I had diaries that dated back to when I was ten years old, detailing hot gossip like the weather and how I did on my spelling tests. Writing was a way of making sense of my life and the world around me. I felt lucky to consider it my career, even when my bills forced me to do the less glamorous stuff like write a press release for a new energy drink called Heart Attack in a Can or edit an ebook about corporate HR policies.
My primary writing gig was ghostwriting cowboy romances for Liaison Publishing as Dakota Sinclair, which I’d hoped would eventually transition into me finding the confidence to write under my own name. The drenched-in-family-drama book club read I’d written,Truth and Beauty, had been good enough to score my agent, Celeste, but it had failed to sell, which basically crushed my spirit. In the meantime, I needed to keep churning out books about lovestruck cowboys and their feisty fillies, both equine and human, without her support, since I worked directly with Liaison. The books barely charted on Amazon, but Dakota was huge in Germany.
Meredith tipped her head. “Hold on a sec... You’re talking about ripping panties off, and you’re not even two hundred words in. Does this one start with a sex scene?”
She looked a little scandalized at the thought. Meredith was Grace Kelly with biceps and undoubtedly the most prim and proper bartender-slash-Pilates instructor in all Manhattan. The woman wore aslipif she thought a skirt was too sheer, and she’d perfected her “I’m so disappointed in you” look to deal with the pushy drunks who hit on her at closing time.
“While I wouldloveto open one of my books with hayloft cunnilingus,” I said for maximum shock value, “it doesn’t work in the genre.”
Meredith pretended to be scandalized even though she’d been subjected to plenty of spicy content as my beta reader.
“I was trying to jump-start myself by writing a sex scene,” I continued. “I thought it might help to at least get the first one on the page since that part of the story is mechanics, you know? I can fill in the emotional beats later. His mouth goes here, her hand goes there, sighs, flutters, penetration, orgasm, andscene.” I paused to consider my readership. “Or even sighs, flutters, fingers, mouth, orgasm, THEN penetration. But I can’t write a thing. Have I evenhadsex? Because so far what I’ve got sounds like an Amish wedding night instruction manual.”
“Brooke,” she began gently. “It might help if you stopped being borderline agoraphobic and left the apartment, you know? Maybe you can come to class with me a couple of times a week? It might get the blood flowing back to your brain.”
“I’m sorry but that’snevergoing to happen,” I replied quickly. “I know you’d make a huge deal out of me being there, and all your regulars would watch me the whole time. Like, ‘Oh, I bet she’s super advanced because her roommate is an instructor. They probably do the hundred every day before breakfast.’”
