“Ouch, you little rascal. There’s not much room in there anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed, and you’ll do your poor mother a nasty injury if you keep that up.”
A third kick made her laugh. With four weeks still to go before her due date, how much bigger and more active would the baby get? Glancing down at her baby bump, which was already huge, she wondered if she’d just pop one day in response to her infant’s kicks and punches.
That silly thought had her wincing as she imagined instead the reality of the childbirth that lay at the end of her pregnancy journey.
“And we’renotthinking about that,” she murmured. “That’s much too scary.”
The baby must have agreed, because there were no more awkward kicks for a while.
Small mercies.
16
Maura Shaw was a wily one,Travis thought as he hammered at the keyboard and wrote his way towards the end of a long chapter that had his protagonist outwitting one villain while also laying a fiendish trap to outwit another one, too.
The section he was writing hadn’t been in the original plan he’d sketched out when he’d mapped his way through the final third of the book, and the detour was adding a significant number of pages to the manuscript, and probably an extra ten thousand words he hadn’t anticipated writing.
His editor would have something to say about that when she received the finished manuscript, he thought with a sigh as he tapped out the final words of the chapter and pushed back from the desk. Stretching out his fingers and hands and rolling his shoulders to fend off the aches that were building there, Travis considered the likely eventual length of the manuscript, which he reckoned would end up around twenty thousand words longer than the book he was contracted to deliver.
The publishers might not like that. Extra words meant extra pages, which in turn meant a more expensive book to print. He wondered if his editor might push back and ask him to trim themanuscript during revisions. Would all this extra writing end up being a waste of time?
Travis shoved that idea out of his mind altogether. It wasn’t his job to worry about his publisher’s bottom line, and he definitely shouldn’t be letting those sorts of concerns seep into his writing process. If anything he was currently writing was flabby or extraneous, he’d delete it himself before he sent the completed manuscript through to his editor.
But nothing he was writing felt unnecessary at all. The story was flowing naturally, the scenes almost writing themselves as he struggled to keep up with the pace of the typing required to get it all down on the page. What’s more, the extra scene he’d just finished wasn’t simply an exciting and fast-paced piece of plot development; it also sketched out some key features of Maura Shaw’s character, a character which was still unfolding even after so many books, and Travis was sure his readers would love reading the insights he’d uncovered about his clever and personable sleuth.
What he was writing was good. It was, perhaps, the best Maura Shaw book he’d penned so far. Yes, the ending might still be a week or more away, judging by his current progress, pace, and the ground still to be covered. But once he got to the end, he felt sure he’d have a pretty decent book on his hands.
Well, that’s what he hoped, anyway. After seven years spent writing full time, Travis knew only too well that an author was often too close to his work to make any objective judgement about its quality. And he also knew that trying to make those judgements was often fruitless anyway, because the truth was that some readers would love the book and some would hate it, and nothing he did would change that.
Which meant that all he could do was all he’d ever done in his writing career so far—write the very best book he was capable of and then let it go out into the world, knowing he’d told the storyhe wanted to tell and that he’d spent every ounce of energy he possessed to make that story as captivating and entertaining as possible.
So, if that meant an extra twenty thousand words in the final manuscript, then so be it.
With this internal pep talk concluded, Travis got up from the desk, wincing as his stiff legs creaked into motion. Glancing at the time, he saw it was almost five o’clock in the afternoon. Other than a brief pause to wolf down a sandwich around noon, he’d been writing since eight this morning, and he felt the time spent in the desk chair in every bone and muscle in his body.
After saving and backing up his work, he shut down his laptop and decided he needed to get out of the house for a while to clear his head after the marathon writing session. Since arriving on Foxglove Street, he’d come to look forward to his daily walks around Hamblehurst and the brief snatches of exercise between hours at the keyboard. Walking around Hamblehurst was completely different from walking around London, obviously, and he enjoyed the comparatively calm and bucolic peace of the place, from the winding high street to the cobbled lanes to the picturesque parks.
Thoughts of Peartree Park conjured thoughts of Courtney Flynn. Twice now he’d met her there and struck up a conversation. Perhaps he’d meet her there again today?
That was unlikely, he realised, considering how late it was in the afternoon. As their previous meetings had happened in the morning, he guessed she preferred getting out early for her exercise, perhaps preferring to be back home and relaxing by this point in the day, when she was probably feeling the physical effects of being so heavily pregnant.
And why was he thinking about Courtney and her baby bump, anyway?
Because he couldn’t help himself,that’s why. Images of her often popped into his head, unbidden, when he wasn’t writing. He’d find himself thinking of the dark sweep of her long hair over her shoulder, the flash of humour in her eyes, the bright arc of her smile that had the power to make his heart triphammer inside his chest.
And he’d find himself thinking about the gentle way she rubbed her hands over the swell of her stomach and how, when she spoke about her unborn child, the light that filled her expression was enough to blind him.
She’d bewitched him. The fact that she was so clearly oblivious of the effect she had on him only enchanted him all the more.
“Stop it,” he murmured to himself as he walked to the hallway. “Just stop it.”
He couldn’t have her. He was paying her to work for him, which meant he was out of line even thinking about these things. And she was a single, pregnant woman with enough on her plate without having to put up with inappropriate behaviour from the likes of him.
In a few short weeks, he’d return to his flat in London, Ruth would return to her assistant role, and Courtney would vanish from his life altogether once her child was born.
That was the reality. His time here on Foxglove Street was temporary, just an escape from his regular life while he finished writing his book. He’d crossed paths with Courtney by accident and it was mutually beneficial that they were able to help one another during the few short weeks he was spending here.
But it would soon come to an end. Their lives would diverge. And that would be that.
