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“Sorry,” she said, looking sheepish. “I’ll just get back to work.”

* * *

For some reason, I kept finding myself looking up from my desk at Cadence. And not just when she was making noise, which was almost constant. I had adjusted a little bit to her noises, but that wasn’t what drew my attention.

The wisps around her face and neck should have looked messy. They did, but in an intentional way. Her forehead creased as she concentrated and then she huffed out a breath, puffing her cheeks out. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen someone with that many freckles. They were scattered all over her face and arms and fingers and probably elsewhere. Little sprinkles of cinnamon that made her interesting to look at.

An email came through and I saw that it was from Sylvia, so I forced myself to stop staring at my assistant and go back to my actual work.

* * *

I’d managed to wrangle the difficult chapter from last week, but now I had a different problem. My characters needed to go on a date, and I was out of ideas. I’d gone through my lists and done searches and was coming up empty. It had to be unique to them, not just going to the movies or dinner. I was stumped and it was making me increasingly angrier. When the words didn’t flow, it was a level of frustration that I couldn’t explain to someone who wasn’t a writer.

I let out a sound of irritation and rubbed my forehead. Shit. It was hot, which meant that I might have a migraine coming on. I pulled one of my pills out of the drawer in my desk where I kept them. I popped it and chased it with a sip from my water bottle.

“Everything okay?” Cadence asked, pulling down her headphones and letting them rest around her neck.

“Yes,” I said. “Just a little stuck.”

“Want to take a break and pace about it?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes.

“No, I do not.”

I considered going back to my computer and ending this little interaction, but I didn’t.

“Okay. Fine.” I crossed my arms. “Give me a unique date scenario.”

Cadence’s eyebrows went up. “Are you actually asking me for input right now?”

“Yes. Reluctantly,” I said, and she grinned.

“Okay, a date scenario. Between your book characters, I’m guessing. A guy and a girl?”

I gave her the rundown of my characters and their personalities directly from the profiles I’d built out before I wrote the book. I’d barely changed my process since I’d written my first book. First came the beginning outline. My characters got names, jobs, hobbies, personality quirks. It was basic and not very specific. Once I’d thought more about the story and done some refining, I did a much longer outline that was the bones of the book. Whenever I would get stuck or get off track, I’d go back to that outline and it would keep me steady to the end. I wrote from the first page to the last page, all in order. Once that was done, there were rounds of edits and back and forth with the publisher and copy editors, but that process had worked for me so far.

I wasn’t into collaboration. A few author friends I knew had written books with other people, and two were even a writing duo who had published dozens of books together. Not for me.

But I was a dry well and she was here, and maybe, just maybe, she might have an idea that would spark something.

“Are there any themes in the book? Something that’s unique to the two of them? Or even unique to her, that he could make happen? Oh, and is there a budget?”

Her questions set off a flurry of thoughts in my head.

“Her mother, who died, loved monarch butterflies. She has a tattoo on her shoulder of one.”

Cadence turned to her computer and typed something in, and I waited.

“Okay, so depending on what time of year it’s taking place, and where they live, he could take her to see the monarch butterfly migration. He could surprise her with it. Maybe keep it a secret until they get there. And then blindfold her and when she takes it off, she’s absolutely surrounded by hundreds of them. Something like that.”

Well. There was an idea. It was a good one, too.

I nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

She smiled again. “Does this mean I get a writing credit?”

“I’ll thank you in the acknowledgments,” I said.

Cadence let out a little breath that was almost a laugh. “I guess. Still, that scene could make or break the book and I think I should get some kind of credit.”