With a nod, he binned their empty water bottles and they resumed their walk, heading in the direction of the park gates. As they strolled out of Peartree Park and meandered back to Foxglove Street, they made easy small talk, the conversation flowing naturally.
When Travis waved goodbye after seeing her back to Rosie’s house, Courtney was glad she’d bumped into him at the park. She’d enjoyed getting to know him better.
And she felt like she’d made a friend.
14
Travis was chasingdown the ending to the chapter he was writing and coming to the realisation that he’d actually need to write yetanotherchapter in order to conclude the exciting sequence of scenes that Maura Shaw and the jewel thief, Phillip Rorkman, had found themselves in.
The two characters were just having too much fun to wrap things up quickly. The romantic inklings Travis had made Maura feel for her villainous and charismatic accomplice had caused fireworks on the page that showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
He didn’t want them to end anytime soon, either. Travis was having fun, too, watching their antics unfold as they worked together to unlock the crypt at Castle Ferleagh. The high jinks and wry humour of the interactions between the unlikely pair was the perfect foil for the darker emotions and pain that motivated Maura Shaw to uncover the truth about the murder of her good friend and the identity of the cold-blooded killer who’d taken his life.
When he’d begun writing this chapter yesterday afternoon, Travis thought it would be quick and short, just a matter ofgetting Maura and Rorkman into the castle as a prelude to the crypt break-in and the search for clues that would follow.
Instead, their arrival coincided with a grand ball that was being thrown at the castle by the owner, Grant Reagan, the man Maura knew to be her friend’s killer. Maura and Rorkman inadvertently found themselves caught up in the festivities of the ball, something Travis hadn’t anticipated when he’d started writing.
In fact, he hadn’t even known therewasa grand ball taking place at the castle, and only discovered it was happening when he snuck Maura and Rorkman into the ancient stone building through an old servant’s entrance at the rear of the kitchens. When they found themselves whisked away from the kitchens and into the ballroom by a member of the serving staff who assumed they were guests who’d taken a wrong turn along one of the castle’s many winding corridors, Maura and Rorkman had ended up face-to-face with Grant Reagan himself, who was just as surprised as they were to discover them both in attendance, considering he hadn’t invited them to the ball in the first place.
The situation, filled as it was with misunderstandings and subterfuge, was funny and energetic and served not only to throw yet another obstacle in Maura’s way as she sought to uncover the truth about her friend’s death, but also forced Maura and Rorkman to work together in an unexpected manner that helped them appreciate one another all the more.
That Travis hadn’t known anything about the grand ball at the castle that Maura and Rorkman would accidentally gate-crash in their quest to break into the crypt was thrilling for him as the story’s author. It was one of the things he loved most about writing—that the characters and the story could so often surprise him with twists and turns he never saw coming.
As the book’s first reader, he loved being caught out like this, loved it when his expectations were upended, and loved it whenunexpected developments that appeared as if by magic while he was writing helped to make the story richer and more satisfying.
It was like living inside a dream—a wonderful, crazy, fun-filled dream, and one from which he didn’t want to wake up.
Or, more precisely, one he didn’t want to stop writing about.
Never in a million years would Travis ever have imagined that writing about a wry, steely, sixty-something cozy mystery heroine could bring him such fun and joy.
He was about to launch into a new paragraph in which Rorkman would whisk Maura around the castle ballroom floor in order to escape the attentions of their suspicious host before making good their escape down to the crypt, when he heard the doorbell ring.
Travis blinked as he was pulled out of the page on the computer screen and back into the real world. Rising from the desk chair, he glanced at the clock on the wall and was amazed to discover it was two-thirty already. He hadn’t even paused for lunch, thanks to the antics unfolding in the new Maura Shaw mystery, which had kept his fingers on the keyboard since early morning.
When he opened the front door, he was surprised to find his temporary assistant, Courtney Flynn, standing on the doorstep. His heart bumped hard against his chest at the sight of her smile lighting up her pretty face, the reaction automatic, even as he tried to tamp it down.
It had been three days since he saw her at Peartree Park. He’d be lying if he told himself he hadn’t thought of her every day since.
If it wasn’t for the book he was writing, he wouldn’t have been able to get her out of his mind at all. She’d taken up residence inside his head and Travis had no desire to evict her, even although he knew it was lunacy to feel that way.
“Hello, Travis,” Courtney said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I tried to phone, but it kept going to your voice mail, and although I guessed that meant you were probably writing, I didn’t think this could wait.”
He saw now the alarmed look on her face, which he’d missed while being dazzled by her smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned. “Is everything okay with the baby?”
Courtney looked confused for a moment before shaking her head. “Oh, I’m fine and so is the baby. No, this is about your author page on Facebook.”
“Oh, okay. Well, come on in.”
He was relieved all was well with Courtney and the baby, even if he was wondering what the problem was that had brought her to his door and interrupted his writing.
Not that he minded. Interruptions usually drove him mad, especially when his writing was in full flow. But being interrupted by Courtney didn’t concern him at all.
He welcomed it.
Which meant he wasout of his mind, obviously.
