“Getting the new book in the hands of my voracious readers in time for Christmas is smart. However, we’ll have to buckle down, girl. No more taking breaks for half the day the way you did today. We need to work, work, work.” He emphasized each repetition of the word with a slap of his fingers against his palm.
“No more taking breaks? You mean when I had to run my shop and like work at my actual business to earn a living and pay the bills? Those breaks?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“I can help with the shop. And Jules too,” Harper offered.
“Thank you, but you have your own work. And Jules has school.” There just weren’t enough hours in the day. Lionel was right. She should have never let Harper, while pretending to be her, agree to this deadline.
“I’m between books. Honestly, I have the time,” Harper insisted.
Natalie sighed. Harper might have the time, but Natalie didn’t know if she had the energy to work with Lionel for every waking moment for the next month.
“Wait, I might have an idea. Do ghosts have to sleep?” Harper asked.
Natalie opened her mouth and closed it again. “I’m not sure. I think they do but I’m not sure they have to. It might be more out of boredom or habit.” She turned to Lionel. “Do you know?”
“I haven’t slept since I arrived. How do you think I’ve become so familiar with your papers?”
“He hasn’t slept,” she relayed to Harper, who donned a slightly evil smile.
“Then I do have an idea,” Harper announced, eyes wide with excitement.
Lionel rolled his eyes. “I can’t wait for this reveal.”
“Since I can hear Gabe and Millie when they’re together. Graves can tell them the book changes he wants and they can tell me. But not just me. What if we recruit more people? Alice. Agnes. Others. We could, theoretically, schedule out twenty-four hours a day of productivity, if the old man can keep up, that is.”
“Ha! If there is a weak link in this plan, it won’t be me.” Lionel crossed his arms with another humph.
Natalie nodded. “That could work. But there’s one problem. Gabe hates Lionel. There’s no way he’d agree to spend so much time with him.”
“I have a solution for that too,” Harper announced. “I’ll promise Gabe and Millie that large screen television they’ve been begging for in their bedroom, with whatever streaming services they want, and a voice-activated remote so they can change the channel themselves. But only if they agree to help us with this book.”
It was a good plan, but Gabe was as stubborn as they came. And his hatred for Lionel couldn’t be discounted. “I still don’t know if he’ll agree.”
“Of course he’ll agree. That man is smitten. He’ll do whatever Millie wants and I know for a fact, Millie wants to binge Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age.”
“Okay, let’s assume Gabe isn’t an issue, why would Alice or Agnes or you for that matter want to spend your free time on this project?” Natalie asked. She still wasn’t completely sure why she’d agreed herself.
Harper shrugged. “Alice, of course. She would do anything to correct the history regarding her family’s legacy. And since you said he’ll write that article as soon as the book is submitted, the rest of us will do whatever it takes to make that happen. I might complain a lot, too much, about Mudville but you can’t deny we’re a tight community.”
“Well, Miss Chase?” Natalie glanced up to see Lionel’s pinched face as he glared at her. “It seems the romance writer has miraculously solved all your problems. So what are you waiting for?”
What she was waiting for was to wake up from this nightmare. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Natalie sighed and said, “Okay. We’ll try to make this work.”
“Make what work?” Liam walked into the meeting room and glanced around. “Hey, Harper.”
“Hi, Liam. We’ve just been negotiating terms with the professor.”
“Ah. Yeah, that’s kind of why I’m here.” His gaze focused on Natalie, he said, “I, uh, might have some new info.”
“What?” Natalie and the professor said simultaneously.
“As I was removing the top of the skull to access the brain…”
“Ugh. Disgusting.” Harper covered her mouth.
Natalie cringed as Lionel’s eyes flew wide. “Barbaric!”
