But she had. And I, apparently, had been the biggest idiot at a ball full of inbred rich idiots, because I'd been the one who flirted with her and took her home. And then slept with her, I guessed, given how I'd woken up naked in her bed and she came in so unashamedly exposed to greet me.
This was a big problem. I was in deep shit right now.
Yet I didn't feel quite as concerned as I ought to be, and the reason was hastily typed in a text file on my phone.
I didn't even need that saved note. I knew exactly what the story was, still remembered every little flash of inspiration that had come to me last night. How the hell could I not remember half of the time spent talking to the Black Widow, but I remembered every little twist and detail of the plotline that sprang, almost fully formed, into my head? It defied explanation, but I wasn't going to challenge it.
Finally managing to get my shirt buttoned up properly, I reached the front door of the mansion. Stepping outside, I found my old half-broken-down Chevy parked at a rather rakish angle in the driveway. I'd driven Helen back here, it seemed. And if I'd driven, I must had consumed the additional alcohol here at the house that finally stole away some of my memories.
I unlocked the door with a twist of the key that had, thankfully, remained in my pants even when they'd been discarded and thrown on the floor. I climbed behind the wheel and wrapped my hands around it, taking a few seconds to just focus on breathing deeply and keeping the oxygen flowing through my body.
I'd slept with one of the wealthiest women in the city, almost certainly the wealthiest available woman in the city – who might have murdered her previous husband in cold blood! I'd woken up in her bed! I'd seen her body!
(And even though the thought was totally inappropriate, a little part of me did remember the sight of that body, on display so alluringly this morning when she walked back into the bedroom. She'd acted shy, covered up after a brief moment, but I didn't see any reason for her to feel anything but pride. She was gorgeous, thin and willowy but somehow sexy because of it, rather than in spite of it. She looked almost otherworldly, and even my memory of her pale, high little breasts made my dick twitch inside my pants.)
I finally took a deep breath and unwrapped my fingers from their white-knuckled grip around the steering wheel. I twisted the key in the ignition, and after a few heart-stopping seconds of coughing and stuttering, the engine turned over and grumbled into life. I put the truck in gear and made my way out of the O'Callahan estate, heading back to the Stone mansion.
As I pulled into the driveway, now able to leave my car out in the open instead of having to stow it away in the back of the underground garage area, I wondered if Richard had noticed my absence at the end of the night. Probably, I considered with a pang of guilt. I'd helped with the setup, and he probably wondered why I hadn't been around to help with take-down at the end of the ball as well.
I probably ought to go find him and apologize, offer at least some sort of explanation for my absence starting halfway through the evening – but it could surely wait another few minutes, couldn't it? The plot of this book burned inside my head, crying out to be written down on a physical page. I could just duck into my room and jot down the start of it on my computer, just to make sure I wouldn't forget any part of it.
I'd only be writing for a few minutes, I told myself. Just bang out a quick list of the ideas, little more than an outline. Then, I'd go explain what had happened to me last night to Richard.
I dropped down into the chair at the little desk I'd dragged into the bedroom I had previously claimed as my own. The desk was big, heavy, and ornate, looking like something out of the eighteenth century. I'd found it in a back room, covered with a sheet. Richard had shrugged blankly when I showed it to him.
"It's probably a priceless antique," he said doubtfully, when I asked for permission to claim it as my writing location. "Would really be a shame if you ruined all that value by spilling coffee on it and leaving stains."
Linda, however, just laughed as she punched her husband playfully in one arm. "Go ahead," she told me, smiling. "If we didn't even know that the thing was in here, we certainly won't miss it if it gets moved... or smashed up for kindling," she added, looking around the rest of the dusty room. "There's a lot of other junk in here, too."
Even then, Linda had already started on her plans to update and modernize the house, get rid of the piles of moldering old furniture that had been passed down from Richard's various ancestors and instead bring in seats and tables that people could actually use. I quickly acted to haul the desk into my room before it mysteriously ended up knocked apart and in a dumpster somewhere.
At first, I tried facing the desk towards the large bay window in the bedroom, but this just made it all but impossible to see my computer's screen when the sun came glaring in through the window. I finally managed to find an oblique angle that, although it didn't look sensible at first, let me write without staring at a wall, while still able to read the words on my screen.
I turned on the computer, waited impatiently for it to boot up, and then opened up Word. My desktop screen was littered with dozens of drafts, none of them more than five thousand words in total; in most cases, I barely managed to write more than a chapter or two before I grew frustrated with the story.
This time, however, it would be different. Instead of feeling threatened by the blank page that greeted me, I felt up to the challenge, ready to fill it with the words that burned and sparked inside my head. I laced my fingers together and stretched them out, feeling the strain as my knuckles popped – and then started typing.
The words poured out of my brain and down onto the page in front of me, my fingers acting like an unthinking conduit. I barely even saw the words appearing as I typed; inside my head, the story played out almost like I was watching a film broadcast on the inside of my skull. I felt my hands flying over the keyboard, rushing to capture every detail of the film playing inside my head.
Normally, my writing was slower, more halting. I tended to think of additions that I needed to make, and the story would have to pause for a few seconds as I scrolled back up to add additional details, make little changes so that the story flowed more smoothly. This time, however, I couldn't be bothered to pause long enough to change anything. Once or twice, I realized that I did need to make a change to an earlier version – but I just scrawled a note to myself on a pad of paper beside the computer and then hurried to return my fingers back to the keys. I almost felt like, if I stopped writing for more than a few seconds, I'd lose this burst of mental energy and wouldn't be able to recapture it.
Finally, the first act of the story came to an end. I took a deep breath and lifted my suddenly aching fingers up from the keys. There, I'd captured enough of the story to not feel totally lost when I resumed to writing. I could go find Richard, and this little detour had only taken me...
I glanced at the clock in the upper right-hand corner of the screen – and nearly fell out of my chair in surprise. Six hours?? I'd been sitting here, glued to the computer screen and fingers flying over the keys, for the last six hours, without even taking so much as a bathroom break?
It felt almost impossible to believe – but a look at the little clock sitting on my bedside table confirmed the incredible fact. Even now, thinking back, I still didn't quite believe that any more than fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes had passed.
Glancing back at my screen, I looked down at the bottom of the document, where it displayed statistics like the word count – and once again, my eyes almost bugged out of my head.
I'd written more than twenty thousand words, just in a single sitting! In six hours, I'd completed almost a quarter of a full novel – more progress than I'd made in months, in total! And yet, even though I told myself that I ought to feel exhausted from all that creative output, my mind still buzzed with the next part of the story.
Quickly, I saved what I'd written so far, not wanting to lose these incredible results of my crazy burst of productivity.
I scrolled back up to the top of the document – so far, so many pages of text! – and started reading through what I'd written.
It was amazing. Even though I knew every word of the story, had put them all down on the page myself just minutes earlier, I still felt myself being drawn in by the captivating plot and multi-dimensional characters. If I'd picked up this book at a bookstore, or it had been handed to me by an agent or editor, I would have continued reading it all through in a single sitting.
This was, almost certainly, the best thing that I'd ever written.
And all this inspiration came from Helen. I'd tangled with the Black Widow – and instead of getting myself killed, or worse, I walked away with an incredible story.
"That certainly puts a new spin on things," I muttered to myself.
I stood up, intending to finally go talk to Richard – and nearly tumbled down to the floor. My legs had fallen asleep from sitting in one position for so long! I groaned, landed heavily back in the chair, and wiggled my toes until I felt sensation returning with the familiar pricking of invisible pins and needles.
Once I was reasonably confident that I could stand up and walk without tumbling forward and breaking my head open, I headed off to go find Richard. I'd explain to him how, in the last twenty-four hours, my entire life had turned upside down.
But I'd barely stood up and left my room before the house's phone, one receiver on an end table in the sitting room right beside my bedroom, started ringing...
Chapter Twelve
HELEN
*
"Oh, you picked up!" Champagne's honking voice sounded surprised, even through a poor phone connection. "I was totally expecting to get your voice mail!"
"I'm awake," I replied, holding the phone slightly away from my ear and wincing as it crackled and hissed. "What's going on there? Why's it so loud?"
"Oh, I'm driving with the convertible's top down. Listen, what are you..."
"No," I snapped, before she could finish the sentence. "Champagne, what have I said about calling me while you're driving? That's dangerous! I'm not talking to you until you've parked the car somewhere." And before she could respond, undoubtedly assuring me that she was fine, a great driver, I hung up on her.
I wasn't actually all that upset about it. I'd told my best friend dozens, probably hundreds of times by this point, that I wasn't going to talk to her while she was driving. Even so, she still insisted on calling me while behind the wheel of her little girly convertible – her fifth in as many hears, by the way, because she kept on crashing them – and I still insisted on hanging up on her each time.
As I leaned back on the lounge chair where I'd sat down, however, lifting my feet on the ottoman as I curled my fingers around my coffee cup, I couldn't fight the smile that bloomed across my face. As soon as I closed my eyes, visions of last night came swimming up to cavort around me.
Had I really insisted on waiting so long to have a man in my bed, because I feared that doing so would tarnish the memories of my time with Marcone? Clearly, that fear had been unfounded. I could still remember every moment with Marcone, to be sure – but I also had a whole new set of memories, now, with Tanner. They were different, but that difference was in no way unwelcome.
The first time that Tanner took me, we'd both been almost frantic with need, our mouths panting wetly against each other was we came together. He'd done his best to be gentle, and I acknowledged and appreciated it, but he'd clearly had the same fire burning in his veins as I'd felt in mine. Despite starting slow, he quickly built up power as he pushed deep inside me, filled me and made me cry out for the release that he finally brought. But then, even after we'd taken that hot and desperate edge off our hunger, we kept on being drawn together. After finishing off the champagne, we'd curled up together in bed – but even then, the hard press of his body against mine beneath the sheets excited me. I couldn't sleep, instead turning to reach back and explore with blind fingers beneath the covers. I found his manhood, and it only took a couple of caresses from my fingers before it stiffened and grew in my hands, ready for another round. He moved in closer, his breath splashing hotly against the back of my neck as he pressed me down deeper into the softness of the mattress, turning me so that my butt came up to meet his crotch. I felt him part my thighs above me, take me again, and reveled in how he dominated me and claimed me. I willingly pushed up against him, trapped between his body and the mattress, but not feeling trapped at all. I worked him in and out of me in my limited space, until the combined friction of his body above me, and the soft sheets beneath me, brought me over the limit and crashing into another orgasm.
I was still half-lost in memories when I heard the door open. I sat up hurriedly, reaching up with one hand to brush fruitlessly at my hair – had Tanner come back for something? But instead of those broad shoulders entering the living room, Champagne swept in like her own little tornado, stirring up little clouds of dust and curtains in her wake.
"Okay, there, I'm not driving, okay?" she burst out to me as she entered, undoing the snap holding a very large purse shut. "Now, where did you..."
Champagne's voice snapped off as if someone had just pushed the mute button on a remote, staring at me. I blinked, caught a little off guard by the intensity of her silent inspection. "What?"
"What the hell happened to you?" she asked, her tone almost interrogative. "You're different! What's going on? Oh my gawd, are you committing suicide right now?"
"Suicide?" I echoed in confused disbelief. "What are you talking about?"
Champagne dropped the big purse into a chair, where it landed with a surprisingly heavy clink. She pulled out a bottle of white wine, holding it by the long, thin handle and waving it at me like a club.
"There's something very different about you!" she insisted, leaning forward to lift her oversized Gucci sunglasses and peer at me. "You're doing something very strange, do you know that?"
"What am I doing?"
"Smiling," she said darkly. "And that either means that you've finally decided to go through with a suicide attempt, in which case I need to call a doctor or an ambulance or something, or else..." she trailed off – and then, like the sun coming out from behind heavy clouds, she beamed. "Oh my gawd, that's it!"
"What's it?" I asked, still warily keeping an eye on that full bottle of wine in her hand.
Champagne plunked it back down on the chair atop her bag, clapping her newly freed hands together. "It has to be! Oh, Helen, I'm so happy for you – tell me everything! How big was it? How many times?"
"What?" I asked again, totally lost by this point.
She rolled her eyes. "You can't hide it from me, silly. You got laid! I can see it!"
I weakly tried to protest, even as I felt my stupid pale cheeks flushing and giving me away. "I don't know what you're talking about," I stammered out. Trying to distract her, I pointed at the bottle of white wine. "And why are you bringing that here?"
After peering at me for another moment, Champagne grabbed another ottoman and dragged it up so she could unceremoniously plop herself down on it. She picked up the bottle of wine and, with a single twist, pulled off the screw-off cap. "Hair of the dog, this is, and I need a bloody big dog after last night," she said, taking a swig straight from the bottle. "But you can't avoid telling me – I can sense it! Spill, or I'll just keep on pestering you until I get it all out anyway!"
I shifted my gaze over to the drink in her hands. "If I agree to tell you, will you promise to try drinking from a glass like a civilized person?"
Champagne threw back her head in a laugh – and then shifted to a wince, lifting one hand to press freshly manicured fingers against her temple. "Ow. Bad idea. Come on, Helen, have you seen my net worth? I can drink however I want – and, like, so can you, by the way! And you can also bang whoever you want, too. If a newspaper prints something bad about it, you could just buy them out and fire them all!"
"Not really what I'm worried about." I looked up past Champagne, and caught a g
limpse of Julius's concerned face hovering at the entrance to the kitchen. I waved a hand at him. "Julius, could you bring us a couple of wineglasses, please?" I didn't really want to drink anything, myself, but I knew that Champagne would at least insist on me taking a full glass. I'd have to surreptitiously toss it on a plant while she was distracted.
Julius didn't say anything, but he radiated disapproval at drinking at such an early hour as he returned with two empty wineglasses. Champagne, of course, didn't notice as she accepted the glasses and splashed a generous portion of wine into each. She passed one across to me, and then immediately held out her glass to clink against it.
"Here's to you finally getting some dick!" she cried triumphantly, as I winced. "Now, who was it? Was it Lord Prembill? He's been going on the prowl recently – had to fight off a few hands from him, myself! At least Tarquin didn't see, or he would have smashed the Lord's face in. Or was it that sexy Jake Burne, who's apparently producing movies these days? He's bankrolling them all, but still, can't turn down a chance to date a guy who might let you meet some real-life movie stars!"
"None of them," I said, after taking a moment to recover from Champagne's full-force onslaught. "He was an author, actually."
Champagne's eyebrows climbed. "What, like he writes about interviews with celebrities and stuff?"
"No, not like that at all!" I took a sip of the wine without thinking, immediately regretting it. It was far too early in the day to be drinking wine! How could Champagne just toss the stuff back like water, probably on an empty stomach as well? I pushed the glass aside and tried again. "He's a real writer, Champagne. He's working on a fiction novel, about real life. And he's got a way with words that's..." I didn't know exactly how to describe it, and I doubted that Champagne would really understand what I meant even if I did have the right terms.
For Love of Passion (Stone Brothers Book 4) Page 8