He couldn’t imagine how much worse it might have been trying to pack up their lives if they hadn’t already lost most of what they owned in the wildfire.
He hated writing under the gun. He usually tried to be done with his books well ahead of his deadlines so that he had time to caress the prose to his satisfaction. He did not have that luxury this time, though how he was supposed to feel creative in the middle of a construction zone, Andrew had no idea.
He sighed and rose from his desk to put in a few steps walking around his half-finished office.
Today was supposed to be a great writing day. His momwas collecting the kids from their day camp and taking them to a movie they had all wanted to see and then she was picking up takeout from their new favorite Chinese place.
He had been looking forward to finally having a long stretch of time to hopefully reach his creative flow state without the distraction of the kids in the next room.
He had made progress on the book, writing at night after the kids were in bed and in the morning before they awoke, though he was not a huge fan of working at the cramped kitchen table of the apartment.
Besides the ergonomic pain from sitting in a bad position, his creativity needed more room than that to thrive. That probably would sound stupid to anybody who wasn’t a creator, but Andrew knew his imagination craved space to unfurl, to stretch its wings and soar. The confines of the tiny apartment, with its constant reminders of daily life and responsibilities, felt like invisible bars caging his thoughts. He longed for a dedicated space where his ideas could run wild, unencumbered by the mundane realities that surrounded him at the kitchen table.
Today, he had decided to set up the room that would eventually be his office, in the highest turret of the house.
When it was finished, the space would be magnificent, with views in all directions from the windows that circled the room. As he walked around the room, Andrew could see the mountains on one side, the ocean on the other, the town below.
Gulls flew past his windows and from here he could see a man and child on the beach below flying a kite shaped like a dolphin. It dipped and soared in the wind like a sea creature riding the waves.
He saw yet another vehicle approaching the house, this onewith the logo of Lucas Construction on the side, an oval with a stylized silhouette of a couple of pine trees surrounding the name of the company as well as their brand identity:Built on Family, Rooted in Oregon.
As he watched, the driver’s side door opened and a woman emerged, carrying what looked like a bundle of blueprints.
Sunlight glinted off auburn strands and he immediately recognized Rosie Lucas.
If he were smart, he would stay right here in what he was already starting to call his writing tower. His neighbor affected him in ways he did not want to think about.
He had dreamed about her twice since the day he and the kids had encountered her and little Olive on the beach. Spicy dreams filled with tangled mouths and twisted sheets.
He hadn’t had an erotic dream in a while. To have two of them about the same woman, a virtual stranger, annoyed and embarrassed him.
He was busy trying to tell himself to stay planted with his butt in the writing chair when an alarm on his phone rang.
He glanced at it and winced. Apparently, he was supposed to be meeting with the project manager today, something he had completely forgotten.
When he was on a deadline, he had trouble keeping track of anything but absolute necessities. In California, he’d had a personal assistant to keep him on track and handle all the details of his life. Saima Rashid still worked as his extremely efficient assistant but she handled things virtually for him now, mostly focused on handling his marketing and social media instead of his daily schedule.
Since moving to Oregon, Andrew had fallen back on setting copious reminders on his phone to keep track of his to-do list.
This particular phone reminder was his fifteen-minutewarning, which meant that if Rosie was here for the meeting, she was fifteen minutes early.
And why was she here instead of Bryce Kendall?
He really hoped her presence didn’t indicate another problem with the project, which had already been beset by delay after delay.
With resignation, he saved his manuscript and closed out of the word processing app he used, picked up his laptop and headed for the winding stairs that led down to the entry hall.
He was nearly down to the first level when she opened the door and walked in. At first, he felt peevish that she walked into his house without knocking, until he reminded himself that she worked for the construction company and none of the other workers ever knocked.
Maybe if he and the kids were living inside the main structure, things might be different but this was a construction zone.
As he moved closer, he saw her looking around with an expression on her face he could only describe as wistful. She was taking in all the original woodwork that had been restored already in the project.
“Looking for me?” he asked.
She jumped, dropping some of her papers, and whirled around, eyes wide.
“Sorry. I thought you heard me coming down the stairs.” He hurried the rest of the way and helped her pick up the papers.
