by L. L. Muir
Weekend flings were out, too, even though that’s all anyone was interested in anymore.
She watched a dark truck pull into the road behind her, so she automatically turned at the next intersection. Then she turned two more times to make sure she wasn’t followed. Any single woman, living alone, couldn’t take chances. And even though Lance had made certain LaMont was still behind bars, the guy in the blue truck was still a fresh memory.
Okay. So she was paranoid. But in her opinion, paranoid meant smart. Paranoid kept her life peaceful, just the way she liked it.
Uncle Dewey’s cabin was tucked back in the pines like every other house in Ketchum. Her neighbors were probably glad the old place wasn’t readily visible so it wouldn’t bring down their own house values. For Ash, it meant that she had a good view of anyone coming up to the front door.
And for those coming up to the side of the house, or the back, she had Wolfgang.
Wolfgang was a mix of wolf and German Shepherd. Lots of people liked to say their mutt was part wolf, but Wolfgang really was. Uncle Dewey had found him in the mountains, wounded and destined to be another wolf’s supper.
As soon as he’d put the pup in his truck, however, a pack of wolves plus one Shepherd, followed him halfway down the mountain before giving up. He’d have stopped and given them back their obviously mixed pup, but he was afraid they’d attack him if he so much as rolled down his window.
But he was also sure that the pup wouldn’t survive his wound if he didn’t get immediate help. Half his ribcage had been exposed, probably from one of the wolves chasing after the truck. So there was no way he’d give it back, when it would probably die one way or another.
Uncle Dewey’s place came up on her right for a change, thanks to her little detours.
No. Her place. She really should stop thinking of it as Uncle Dewey’s. He’d been gone six years.
The white sheers that covered the picture window were still moving when she pulled into the drive. Wolfgang had heard the Jeep and was smart enough to get off the couch he wasn’t supposed to be on in the first place. But after running away from the gas station, Ash had to admit it was nice to have someone waiting for her who possessed a certain willingness to rip the flesh off any unwanted guest.
She watched the garage door rise, and with it, the sign that warned the public that her property was not for sale. Not the house, not the land, not the inhabitants—which included a particularly vicious dog. And by the way, there was probably a gun trained on anyone close enough to read the sign.
Continuing her ritual, she snagged the handles of her grocery bags, hooked her pinkie through the one with her ice, and held them high while she made her way into the house, pausing long enough to elbow the button that would lower the garage door. Out of habit, she glanced out at the road, but the street was quiet.
Wolfgang barked a brief welcome home. It also could have meant “you again?” He shouldered into her hip as he passed her in the kitchen, then shouldered into her other hip as he passed her going the other direction.
“Hello, Tough Guy.” His ceremonial display of affection wasn’t lost on her. But he was far too wild a thing to jump and cry like those city pets who think their owner will never return. Besides, she wasn’t his owner. They just co-existed in Dewey’s cabin, waiting to see if the gentle giant might come back again.
They never really talked about it.
Since the groceries were far less important to her than the ice, Ash completed her routine before putting the perishables in the fridge. First, she dropped the packaged cinnamon roll into the trash—one of those suckers every day would invite an early death, she was sure.
One cup at a time, she poured off any meltage, then tipped the plastic cups upside down and put them in the freezer. Anything at the bottom would freeze solid, but at least she’d have the pristine, crunchy nuggets that stayed high and dry. When she set them right side up again, she could take off the layer of solid ice and pour out the rest.
Would it have worked without tipping the glasses upside down? Of course. But then it would seem like less of a ritual, and she needed rituals like other people needed…people.
Munching on ice kept her grounded. It kept her sane. But most importantly, it kept her awake. And nugget ice kept her teeth from getting worn down by all that crunching.
Ash was a novelist, and like many others of her kind, she didn’t keep human hours. She woke up at 1:00 in the afternoon and had breakfast. Then she spent the rest of the afternoon thinking, coaxing ideas out of the ether, standing in the shower waiting for them to land in her head, or floating in her big tub, in the dark, listening to the voices of her characters.
If none of those brought her the visions that would start her brain-cell-dominoes falling, she had to pound inspiration out through her feet while she walked Wolfgang in one of the nearby canyons.
After all that labor, heavy or otherwise, she would have lunch around five, get fresh ice in the freezer, then nap for 94 minutes. Four minutes to relax. Ninety to sleep.
When she woke up, her mind/mechanism would be reset and she’d be ready to work. She would start typing around eight, break for a light dinner around ten, then jump back onto the keyboard for the next five or six hours.
Bedtime was four or five a.m. She’d grab her solid eight hours of sleep, then start again.
Inhuman hours, yes. But she had to work in silence, while the world slept. It was the only time her characters felt safe enough to dance for her. Bleed for her. Die for her. And sometimes, rise again.
It was a pretty cool job, and even though she worried about another dangerous, over-zealous reader tracking her down, she wouldn’t trade it for a more human occupation.
She saw enough sunshine to get by. She took vacations and experienced more of the world than most thirty-somethings, and she had plenty of friends—other writers with whom she interacted online, who kept similar hours, who let her vent about writer-world problems and completely understood.
The real world? The world of Ketchum, Idaho?
Nothing there really interested her except her memories of Dewey, the care and feeding of the monster-dog…and maybe Jenny. The rest of the familiar faces in town were mostly window-dressing. Part of the set—just another one of the sets she lived in, only slightly more tangible than those in her mind.
Sometimes she looked in the mirror to see if her head seemed a little bigger than the last time she checked—not from the swell of her ego but from the fictional worlds expanding and multiplying in the space between her conscious and subconscious minds.
So far, so good. No universal goo leaked from her ears. Yet.
“Nap time,” she told Wolfgang, though he started galloping toward the back of the house as soon as she closed the fridge. In the bedroom, he turned in a circle a couple of times, then settled on the floor at the foot of the bed and rested his head on one massive paw.
Ash went to the window and scanned the pines between her and the neighbor half an acre away. Satisfied, she pulled the mini barn doors together that acted as blackout curtains and stumbled into bed.
Four minutes to relax…
It never took four minutes.
CHAPTER THREE
The alarm went off and her arm shot out to turn it off before she was lucid enough for cognitive action. A deep cough/bark combination was Wolfgang’s way of waking up. It very clearly sounded like the word barf.
“Time to rise and shine.”
Half an hour later, she was seated at her desk with her blue insulated tumbler beside her that kept her precious ice from melting. Various snackage was tucked inside metal canisters within reach for those times when she hit the “zone” and needed an infusion of sugar to keep the engine firing.
Half the time, when starting a new book or a new series, she’d sit down and have no idea how a book was going to start or where it would end up. She just put her fingers on the keys and waited to see what they would come up with.
This was one such
night.
She took a deep breath and gave her body over to whatever character wanted to use it. Since it was a new book, it was the perfect time to go crazy. She could always dial it back later.
Her fingers started moving right away. All she could do was watch and try to keep up. It was kind of like pedaling a bike as fast as she could in order to keep pace with someone on a motorcycle, praying they wouldn’t hit the gas and leave her in the dust.
Her fingers danced on the keyboard.
She was climbing a wide staircase. Every eight or so steps, there was a landing with candle-filled lamps near the thick marble railing to either side of her. Any second, her characters would come into sight. She had to keep climbing.
A wigged, uniformed gentleman bowed at the top of the steps. She was inside her character then, looking out of his or her eyes.
Beyond, she followed a softly illuminated path that led around to the rear of the white stone mansion. A vast garden was illuminated by Chinese lanterns suspended between trees and gazebos. In the center of the space was a low maze of shrubbery and all through the pathways, couples danced, swaying and turning in unison as if they were mechanical puppets with no will of their own.
Ash waited at the balustrade for her characters to appear. Were they among the submissive dancers?
“I suspect,” came a deep voice from beside her, “that you are not on the guest list.”
She looked up into the eyes of a character far more handsome than she liked to write. And she knew for a fact that he hadn’t come from the pack of characters that followed her around like the train of a wedding gown, waiting for their stories to be told.
Men like him—those too handsome types—weren’t believable enough to work with. Maybe that was why she didn’t trust handsome people in general, because she doubted they would turn out to be interesting.
Since she supposedly embodied the heroine, she tried to see what she was wearing, her fingers poised to describe it. Hopefully, something appropriate for the candlelit party. When she glanced down, however, all she saw were gray sweat pants, the thermal tee and unbuttoned flannel shirt she’d been wearing when she’d plopped into her office chair.
She paused the scene and waited for her fingers and imagination to catch up with each other, but her hands just sat there.
Come on. Come on.
“I say. Are those trousers of some sort? Something Arabic, perhaps?”
Ash looked up into the man’s face again and willed her fingers to erase his dialogue. She couldn’t very well have a flawless hero in her story, let alone a woman in sweats, especially if the story took place in another century. It was obviously a tale set in Regency England, perhaps Victorian, so she couldn’t very well have a heroine wearing sweats.
But a harem costume?
Maybe.
Hoping that spark would fire up her imagination, she glanced down again. Her gray sweats had transformed into…gray sweats.
Oh, good grief. I am not in the mood to research 19th century harems!
“Forgive me for being indelicate, but… Are you perchance lost? Can I help you find your…family?” His tone had changed, like he was addressing a child. A very young child.
Well, she sure as hell wasn’t going to write children into the story. She refused to have children in stories with villains, and she always wrote villains, therefore, she never wrote children.
She looked down again, trying to determine her heroine’s age, but all she could see was her own body, her hands, her thin silver ring with the thin silver knot.
“I worry you are not well, my dear,” said the man, then he started looking around for someone to unload her onto.
Desperate to delete every word, she reached for the overused button on her keyboard and mentally backed out of the scene, but for the life of her, she couldn’t see her monitor or keyboard, and the balustrade and gardens wouldn’t go away. It was like she was actually there.
Even the tiled balcony felt firm against her stockinged feet.
But really, she couldn’t be standing there, trying to type on the wide marble railing, standing next to a formally attired gentleman that couldn’t be interesting if he wanted to—
“I beg your pardon?” He appeared to be insulted. In fact, he seemed both amused and insulted.
Something was definitely wrong in her head. She just needed a minute of silence to think. She gave him a pained smile. “Just give me a second, sweetheart.”
She’d lost herself in fictional worlds before—a few times at least—but it had only been for a minute or two. Never long enough for a conversation, let alone an argument, with one of her characters. It didn’t necessarily mean she was crazy, only that the mind was so much more powerful than anyone gave it credit for…
Wolfgang barfed a couple of times, sounding curious. Then he lost it, barking like someone dangerous was lurking around the cabin. And although the sound was coming from inside her head—her ears had nothing to do with it—the dog sounded farther away with each bark.
It’s alright, she told herself. Wolfgang will scare any company away until I can get a grip.
“Did you just call me Sweet Heart?” The man chuckled beside her. “I suppose I should simply be grateful you are speaking in full sentences. You did worry me.”
Ashlynn rubbed her face and looked around. Obviously, she was having a mental break of some kind. She just needed to get back out of her head, send a note to her editor that she wasn’t going to hit her synopsis deadline, and book a flight out of Idaho.
She tilted her head back, rolled it from side to side to stretch her neck, then faced her new imaginary friend. “Look. I’m sorry. I can’t play with you today, all right? I need a vacation. And when I count to three, I’m going to need you to not be here.” She waved her hand around, indicating the gardens en masse. “And take all this with you, okay?”
He shook his head, confused. “O. K?”
“One.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
Realizing that keeping her own eyes open might be part of the problem, she closed them. “Two.”
“Brace yourself for disappointment,” he murmured.
His sing-song warning made her snort. She waited for a few seconds, trying to sober up. Then finally, “three.”
She opened her eyes and was unsurprised when he was still standing there. His brows bounced a couple of times and he waved his fingers at her.
Ash laughed. “I see what the problem was. You showed a sense of humor. It caught me off guard is all. Let’s try it again.” She closed her eyes. “One.”
He joined in. “Two…”
She tried not to smile, but failed. “Three.” She opened her eyes and found him still there, but standing much closer. His hand rested on the railing only an inch from hers. And though she knew it wasn’t real, she was strangely tempted to touch it.
“I have a rather daring solution,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and waited.
“If I kiss you thrice, I assure you,” he waved at the gardens, “all this will disappear.”
She bit her lip, though there was no sense trying to hide her smile from a guy who didn’t exist. But that also meant she didn’t need to be self-conscious about letting him kiss her, either. And he was pretty hot.
“Fine. If you promise.”
He nodded with complete sincerity. “Oh, I do promise. All of this, gone.”
Ash sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Maybe, before she started writing emails and planning trips, she should take another nap. Clear the mechanism. Maybe enjoy a nice long dream about a guy in a garden. He could even be handsome and uninteresting.
Trying to be casual about it, she took in the details of his face to use in that dream, and when she thought she had it memorized, she nodded. “Okay. Three kisses.” She closed her eyes and lifted her chin. He’d have to bend down…
She jumped a little when his fingers touched the sides of her face, but she kept her eyes closed tight. She could
feel his warmth invading her body space, breathed in air flavored with the scent of another human being—new, but tantalizing. She could even taste his breath as he bent closer to press his lips against hers.
What an imagination! Warm lips. Warm body. She felt it all!
His fingers dragged slowly along her jaw, pulling her closer even though it was impossible. Then suddenly, he pulled away and whispered, “One.”
She had no time to respond. His lips were back again, pressing again, moving again. She was on that bicycle once more, trying to keep up, praying he wouldn’t leave her in the dust.
Not that he was as substantial as dust…
Hell, if she was acting any of this out, as it sometimes happened when she was writing facial expressions, it was no wonder Wolfgang was barking—er, had been barking. All she could hear now was her heart beating in her ears, along her scalp. And of course, she heard and felt every breath this expendable character took.
“Two.”
Chills raced up her spine and into places she never wrote about. And while she dreaded the third kiss that would mean an end to her little fantasy, the truth dawned.
She was still in the middle of her nap! There was no other explanation that made sense!
CHAPTER FOUR
Dreaming? What a relief! She wasn’t going crazy at all.
Ashlynn figured that the inspiration for the new book had just arrived late that day and didn’t bother knocking. Maybe her sub-conscious had plucked that guy from the gas station and dragged him onto the stage of her mind, then demanded he start performing.
Well, who was she to complain?
Kiss number three was coming. Any second. All she had to do was keep her eyes closed. But would her subconscious stick with the bargain and make it all go away?
If her alarm hadn’t gone off yet, there was still time to enjoy the dream.
She opened her eyes and pulled back. When he released her face, she put a step between them. “Hang on. No hurry. Let me catch my breath. Number three can wait for a minute or two, right?”