It wasn’t the money he minded. It was the pretense. Emerson’s sweatshirt bore the name of a high school he didn’t recognize and looked like she’d done the hard work of wearing it in over time, yet somehow she looked better in it than his last girlfriend had in her high end “athleisure.”
Emerson gave the barista her order and turned, giving him another split second to notice again that she didn’t need much makeup to accentuate her natural attributes. She had a wide, full mouth and a thick fringe of dark lashes that matched her brunette hair, both of which set off her eyes, a clear, strong blue.
Eyes that spotted him and narrowed.
He brought his coffee up for a sip to hide his smile. His irritation that she of all people would show up in Mugsy faded now that he could see he’d gotten under her skin with no effort. This should be entertaining.
She hesitated, looking as if she were debating saying something to him, but ultimately, she decided not to acknowledge him and claimed the table furthest away from him instead.
Well, well, well. He couldn’t let her sit without a hello. That wouldn’t be neighborly.
He rose and wandered over to her table, drawing out the other chair. “Is this seat taken?”
“Yes,” she answered as he sat in it anyway. She eyed him with a look he’d usually only inspired in opposing counsel during trials.
“I don’t think it is taken, Emerson. I think you just don’t want me to sit here.”
“You’re right. Goodbye.”
“Am I really bothering you?” He didn’t mind giving her a hard time, but he absolutely didn’t want her to feel threatened or harassed in any way.
“Must be an Aidan Maxwell library panel hangover, because yes. You are.”
“Emma?” The barista called.
“Emma?” Aidan repeated. Somehow it fit her better than “Emerson” did.
“Ms. Lindsor to you,” she said, scraping her chair back to get her order. She frowned again when she came back. “You’re still here?”
He thought he heard her mumble “cretin” under her breath. “Yes. But only to apologize.”
That surprised her enough to let something besides irritation show on her face. “You are?”
“Yes. Beverly said I had to.”
“Your deeply sincere apology is accepted. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write.”
“You have to apologize too.” He only said it because it bugged him that she hadn’t offered one up freely.
“For what?”
He shrugged. “Beverly didn’t tell me. I asked if she was going to give you the same manners lecture, and she said yes. Guess you haven’t talked to her yet?”
“No. And I don’t want to talk to you either. Go away, please. I need to work.”
He rose. He sensed that she viewed him as an annoyance, not a threat, but he wanted to be careful not to cross a line with her.
“Have a good morning.” He crossed to his own table and woke up the laptop screen. Not that there was anything to see.
Maybe he just needed to rethink his villain?
This was the part of his job he hated. When he’d worked in the DA’s office, his whole goal had been to lay out a clear trail of evidence that proved a defendant’s unmitigated evil. As a writer, he had to think more like a detective, trying to figure out and anticipate a villain’s next move. He knew everything about the crime he’d given his detective duo, Winder and Cruz, to solve. His stories were always fictionalized versions of cases he’d tried, but with truly satisfying endings. Despite knowing how it all ended, the pieces weren’t coming together the way he needed them to.
Maybe he needed to try one of these freewriting exercises he’d heard a friend mention, a character journal where he wrote everything he knew about the character.
He opened a new document and titled it “Mara Lanzini.” That was the character name he’d given to the victim he was modeling the story around. This part was easy. He’d come to know the real victim well, even though he only ever “met” her when he’d begun building the case against her killer. With the wealth of information provided by her family and co-workers at the time, he didn’t even need to embellish much to color in the details.
His fingers flew over the keys as he put down everything he knew, not bothering to check his notes. He never forgot the details of the cases he worked on. Never. These were the kinds of things that were burned into his brain.
He easily filled two pages when a sound penetrated his concentration, and he stopped for a second to process it.
A sigh.
He looked up to find Emerson staring at him from her table. Emma? Ms. Lindsor. His lip twitched as he remembered her correction. The almost smile seemed to irritate her further and she drummed her fingers on the table.
He lifted his eyebrows in the universal sign for, “Is there a problem?”
She responded with an eyeroll and turned her attention to her laptop.
He went back to his character sketch, adding more details from his mental case file on Mara Lanzini’s real life, feeling a flicker of excitement as he flew through them. It was a flicker he knew well but hadn’t experienced in too long: a sign that his creative juices were ready to flow.
He paused for a second. “Creative juices” was a slightly gross expression, even for a . . . What had Emerson called him? A cretin? It was gross even for a cretin like him. But whatever it was, he welcomed it, determined to chase the feeling until the pump was truly primed and ready to pour forth all the words through his fingers.
He’d just wrapped up the last of the true biographical details and was about to add his own unique flavor to it when another, louder sigh distracted him.
This time he found Emerson regarding him with something far more like a glare than a stare.
When he lifted his eyebrows at her, she imitated typing on her table top, her fingernails striking the wood surface with a jarring staccato. She gave him a wide-eyed look as if to say, “Well?”
Was that supposed to be him? Did she think he was making a lot of noise? He didn’t even have fingernails long enough to click the way hers had on the tabletop. She was being ridiculous. It wasn’t possible to type more quietly. He typed another sentence or two, paying attention to the noise of his key strikes.
Ha. Just as he’d thought. It was quiet, far quieter than the low conversation happening at the only other occupied table, or the hiss of the espresso machine. She just didn’t want him in her space.
Well, it didn’t say “Emerson’s” on the sign outside, and he’d gotten here first. She could leave. In fact, he’d give her an incentive to.
He picked up his things and moved so he was now only two tables away from her, directly in her line of sight. It meant sitting with his back to the door, something he hated, but it was worth it to see the look of consternation that wrinkled her forehead.
He went right back to work, but this time several minutes lapsed without any loud, reproachful sighs. Actually, Emerson wasn’t making much noise at all. He spared her a glance. She was staring at her laptop screen, unmoving, wearing an expression of frustration. He had a feeling he’d worn that expression a lot too, especially over the last month as he’d fought with his new story.
Well, he didn’t have the luxury of not figuring this out. He’d had his agent, Tobin, negotiate for a record-setting deal on world and film rights so that he could use it to fund his dream of an addition to the youth center, and he’d cashed those checks. This book must get done. There could be no delays because there would be no forgiveness from the executives who’d signed the book contract.
He went back to the character sketch he was writing, filling in the details that would make his readers fall in love with the victim so that they would scream for justice on her behalf by page thirty.
He only got another half-page written before the unnerving silence from Emerson’s table rattled him. Shouldn’t she be typing too? Was she glaring at him again? He glanced up. Indeed she was. This was getting r
idiculous.
“You blocked?” He gave his tone a fake blend of sympathy and condescension, as if he understood that this was something that happened to mere mortal writers, not author gods like him. It was mean, but he didn’t care. He was tired of being glared at just for working, especially when he’d come in and attempted to be nice. This wasn’t on him anymore.
“Because I’m not vomiting out a hundred words a minute? No. Literature doesn’t work the same way.”
Man, this woman was trying his temper, and he didn’t even have much of a temper. But something about her got under his skin in the worst way. “Vomiting out words,” he repeated. He gave a small snort. It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t going to paint her a picture of how hard he worked at his craft, because even if he did it as paint-by-numbers, she still wasn’t going to see how seriously he took his work. The highbrow types never did. He wondered if they ever looked past the moral victory of the starred reviews they collected from fancy critics to consider why no one bought their books. Couldn’t they see that it was because they failed to connect to real people, the ones who needed redemption and clear victories and escape?
“Yes. Word vomit,” she said. “It’s when you spew a bunch of stuff that forms sentence-like shapes and then publish it.”
“And then go cash big old checks afterward?” He nodded. “I’m familiar. I’ll just get back to my word puke. I don’t want to distract you. It must be so hard to write when you write about nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” she said in a borderline sputter. “I write about nuanced people with complex thoughts and feelings.”
As if he didn’t. As if the victim he was avenging through his Mara Lanzini character hadn’t lived a rich and complicated life. But whatever. He kept meaning to ignore Emerson Lindsor, and this time he’d stick with it.
“You go ahead and think your deep thoughts. I’m going to just keep word vomiting over here.” He went back to his keyboard, kicking into high gear as interesting layers for his Mara character came to him. Never mind that none of it would help him move the story forward. It was just satisfying to bask in the anger rolling off of Emerson the faster he typed.
It was only a couple of minutes before he heard the soft tap of her keys, moving at a pace close to his. After a couple of minutes, he couldn’t resist looking up. She was focused on her screen, the tapping sound getting faster, like she could feel the weight of his stare.
Well, good for her.
He sped up even more, blasting through the rest of his character sketch for Mara at what had to be his all-time best pace.
When he finished, he decided he needed a restroom break and more caffeine before he moved on to the next character.
“Hey,” he called softly to Emerson. Her keystrokes over the last few minutes had grown louder and somehow angrier-sounding, though her expression hadn’t changed much from the half-frown he’d seen on her face since she’d spotted him. If she really was concentrating, he didn’t want to interrupt, but she answered with a half-muttered, “What?” right away.
“Can you watch my laptop for a minute?”
She stopped typing long enough to stare at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’ll do the same for you.”
“Fine. Whatever.” She went back to typing.
“Sounds like you’ve had a breakthrough.” He offered the observation as an olive branch.
She smacked it right out of his hand. “Yeah. I’ve been trying to write this total jerk without any luck, but I’ve magically found my inspiration since coming into this coffee shop.”
Okay, she was funny. He had to give her that. And he might have even deserved that. “You mean since spotting me in this coffee shop.”
“You said it, not me.” She kept her eyes on her screen.
“Then you’re welcome. And thanks for watching my stuff.”
He stopped by the counter to place another order before heading to the restroom. When he came out, he waited for the barista to finish making his drink. Emerson didn’t look his way, but her fingers flew even faster the second he was back in her orbit again. Man, she was on fire.
Although it hadn’t been his intention, his angle gave him a clear view of Emerson’s screen.
Normally a screen of fiction had no visual pattern. Paragraph sizes were different. Sentence lengths varied. No one page looked like any other. But even without being close enough to read it, Aidan could see that there was something off about Emerson’s page. The rows of text were too even, and the spaces between words all matched the ones above and below it, almost as if she were writing lines.
He took a quiet step closer so he wouldn’t startle her, close enough that if he squinted, he could make out the words on her screen. It was a cardinal sin to look at another writer’s work uninvited, but his instincts told him this was a special case, and his instincts were rarely wrong.
A grin flashed over his lips as he made out what she was writing. “Aidan Maxwell is an insufferable braggart. Aidan Maxwell is an insufferable braggart. Aidan Maxwell is an insufferable braggart.”
He leaned down and said, “That’s your problem, you know. Your vocabulary.”
She squeaked and slammed her laptop shut then twisted to face him. He immediately straightened to stay out of her space.
She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath before answering him. “I don’t like you.”
“That’s better,” he said. “That’s how people talk, not like they ate a thesaurus. They say things straight, not call people ‘insufferable braggarts.’ No one talks like that.” His tone was a perfect reflection of his mood, laced with amused detachment.
Instead of answering, she narrowed her eyes and turned back to her laptop, opening it to pick it up where she’d left off. “Good tip,” she said, typing again. “Aidan Maxwell is a jacka—”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “But maybe try the green tea. I read that it sparks creativity. Looks like you could use some. Might help you come up with more varied sentences.”
“Only if it goes well with a plate of thesaurus,” she said. “Do you mind?” She gestured as if she were brushing him away like spring pollen just as the barista called his name. Great. Now when he went to get his drink it would look like he was retreating from their sparring.
“Aidan?” the barista called again.
He stifled a sigh as Emerson’s fingers picked up speed on her new mantra.
How did he always come up short on their exchanges? That woman was really starting to get under his skin.
Chapter Three
Aidan was the literal worst. That was the only conclusion that explained how he kept bringing out the worst in her. It had been bad enough when he invaded her favorite coffee shop after mocking her for writing there in front of a room full of his fans. It had been worse when he’d sat down and gotten right to work, as if he could conjure words as easily as breathing.
She had to fight for every single one, and those fights were long and excruciating.
Then again, maybe he could conjure words as easily as breathing because he didn’t fight for very good ones. The man’s novels were thick as bibles but without the enlightenment. He did that derivative ripped-from-the-headlines kind of work, sending his sexy blonde detective and her smart partner all over Seattle solving crimes that he didn’t even have to invent. No wonder he could rattle his words loose as easily as the barista ground beans. She dumped them in the top of the grinder, pressed a button, and just like that, coffee in a neat little mug. Aidan did the same thing. Opened his laptop, dumped in a bunch of words, pressed send to his editor, and just like that, he had a slickly packaged bestseller, even if it was about as well-made as instant coffee.
When he sat down with his refill, she sent him a saccharine smile. “Watch my stuff for a minute?”
He nodded, and she rose for a bathroom break. When she returned, she stopped by the counter to place another order—not for green tea. She was trying to write a moment laced with
bittersweet nostalgia, and she needed the right drink to match her mood. But that was why she always chose this coffee shop.
“Hey, Hailey.”
“I know that look,” the barista said. “What do you need this time?”
“I’m working on a scene where my main character visits her grandmother’s home. She loved it as a child, but now she’s looking at it with adult eyes and seeing all the sadness that hid beneath the surface. What do you have for that?”
“A tea, definitely.” Hailey turned to the menu board and tapped her chin as she scanned it. “Happy Afternoon,” she decided.
Emma read the description. “Ceylon sonata? This grandmother wasn’t much of an exotic type.”
“Trust me, the rose hips and vanilla in this blend will give you that nostalgic feeling but with some sharp notes that keep it from being strictly sentimental.”
“Sounds perfect,” Emma agreed. She half-expected to hear something snide from Aidan Maxwell, but while she heard the deep murmur of his voice, he didn’t seem to be talking to her. He was probably on his cell, like his call was so important that the whole cafe needed to hear him take it. She turned to give him her best quelling stare—the kind her mother used on upstart grad students and impertinent interviewers—but found him standing and talking to a woman in running clothes instead. He wore the same plastic “I’m so charming” smile he’d deployed on the women at the library.
She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but she was sure he was agreeing with the woman’s assessment of his awesomeness and encouraging her to buy more of his books. The woman dug into her purse and pulled out—
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. There was Aidan’s book cover with the blonde cop, a sultry look on her face, her male partner behind her, eyes hidden by mirrored glasses as he stood there looking competent and cool. This time, Emma couldn’t stop the eyeroll which Aidan caught the tail end of when she let her glance fall back to the ridiculous scene playing out in front of her.
His eyebrow rose, but he returned his attention to his fan, signing the title page as he listened and nodded. She took the book back from him and gave him an enthusiastic hug before rushing out.
Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4) Page 3