Page 6

6

Gracie clutched her knees together beneath her robe and stared at the buttery rays of morning sunlight melting onto the living room floor as she mentally calculated the number of steps to the bathroom. Fifteen. Twenty, tops. “Pick up, Mona. Pick up.”

The walking wasn’t actually too bad. She could almost nearly completely handle that part somewhat entirely independently on her own. Sort of.

But the whole transitioning from a sitting position to a standing position and vice versa? Gracie couldn’t even attempt to come up with enough adverbs to fool herself about accomplishing that feat on her own. She needed help. Lots of help.

Which is why she really needed her sister to pick up the phone.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Gracie said, starting to rock back and forth by the time Mona answered. “My bladder is two minutes away from bursting, so please tell me you’re less than two minutes away from the house. Otherwise there’s going to be a serious crisis situation involving my favorite undies.”

“Final boarding all passengers. Final boarding all passengers.”

“What was that?” Gracie pressed the phone hard against her ear. Her sister, not one to ever be at a loss for words, breathed into the phone like a woman at a loss for words.

“Mona, say something.”

“I’m not sure what to say. Other than I’ll be back sometime by the end of next week, and I really hope you get that undie crisis resolved by then.”

“What? You didn’t cancel your flight? You’re still going to that conference? I’m your sister. How can you leave me like this? I’m completely helpless.” Something she would never admit to anyone but Mona.

“You’re not completely helpless. Matt promised to stop by. Noah’s right next door. That FedEx lady that dropped off a package last week will probably be around again at some point too.”

“And none of them need to be pulling down my underwear and helping me sit on the toilet.”

“Gracie, listen. I know you don’t want to hear it, but this is exactly why I tried telling you to go into that rehab facility. The workers there love helping people pull down their underwear to sit on toilets.”

“I don’t need a rehab facility. I need my sister.”

“And I need this conversation to end. People are giving me strange looks. Grab some scissors and cut them off. I’ll be back in a few days. Love you.”

“Love you too. But for the record, I’m only saying that in case your plane crashes. I’m actually really mad at you.”

“Duly noted.” Mona gasped. “Oh, I know. Call the boys at the firehouse. I’m sure they’d—”

Gracie ended the call. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, the pressure in her bladder filling. Gah. Was she seriously thinking about asking Noah to help her?

No. Absolutely not. Not when she’d decided her only means of survival around that man was to play the role of an ice queen.

And everybody knew the golden rule of playing an ice queen. Thou shall not let thy ex-husband anywhere near thine underwear even if a small part of thee still finds thou stupidly attractive. Or something like that.

The phone rang. Without looking, she tapped the screen. “Please tell me you changed your mind.”

“Not completely, but I might soon.”

Gracie gripped the edge of the couch. Not her sister. Simone. Her agent. “Did you get a chance to read my manuscript? I know it’s a little rough and the ending needs some work.”

“Oh, I read it all right.”

Gracie held her breath, her nails digging into the soft fabric of the couch. Please say it’s better than you expected. Please say it’s brilliant. Please say you love it. Please say anything but—

“It’s a disaster.”

—that.

She glanced at the window and caught a glimpse of Noah stepping out of the cottage. Perfect. Get the timing just right and her agent could drop her the same moment she peed all over the floor in front of her ex-husband.

She started to take a steadying breath, then stopped when it hurt her ribs too much. She clutched her knees together, then realized that hurt too. Why did everything hurt? Including this conversation?

“Where do you see room for improvement?” Gracie asked as diplomatically as she could.

“Where do I see—?” Gracie heard her agent suck in a deep breath as a rapid click-click-click sounded in the background. Not a good sign. Gracie knew from first-hand experience that her agent squeezed the stapler on her desk like a stress relief ball whenever she was working hard to rein in her snark.

“Room for improvement. Okay, well, for starters, the first fifty pages are all about a woman shooting a horse and then justifying why she doesn’t feel guilty for shooting the horse. We don’t even meet the hero of the story until page ninety-eight, and by the end the only thing that would have made him a hero was if he shot your heroine. She isn’t likable at all. Which I guess is why they don’t end up together?”

“She’s an independent woman. She’s better off without him or the horse.”

“Right. Well, I’m all for independence. But I’m also for humor and zing. Remember the conversation we had in the spring? Humor? Zing? Rom-com readers don’t want cads and cadavers.”

“Maybe it’s time I branched out and tried something else.”

The clicking stopped. “Gracie, once this project is over, you can branch out to whatever you want. Independently publish a collection of inspirational stories for geriatrics who love wearing matching pajama outfits with their cats if you want. I don’t care. But in order to fulfill your current contract—the one I went to bat for you on, the one you’ve already received half of your advance payment for—you need to write what you promised your publishing house you would write. Which is romance. Humor. Zing. Something like the baseball series you wrote. The series that sold really well. Remember those stories?”

“Of course.” Those were her only books people wanted to talk about. The books she’d love nothing more than to forget. “I’m trying, Simone.”

“Try harder. Your editor wants to see the entire story in less than two weeks. We have to show her something better than dead horses and nonsensical soliloquies. Are you having writer’s block or something? I thought you went to a dude ranch earlier this year for inspiration.”

“I did. Back in the spring. The owner was rude, the accommodations were lousy, and the only horse I met kept trying to bite me. It was a complete waste of time. I suppose I might’ve been a little bitter when I came home and wrote the story.”

“Gracie. I say this with all the love in my heart, really I do, but you’ve been bitter for years. And now your stories all stink. You really need to get over it, whatever the it is.”

“I’m trying.” Didn’t Simone know she was trying? Why else would she have climbed up on that old, broken-down, coin-operated machine horse that had always sat outside the Alda grocery store for as long as Gracie could remember? Because she was trying , that’s why.

Trying to be fun. Trying to be silly. Trying to get a photo so she could post it on social media and show that crotchety old rancher how she’d finally made it on top of a horse— ha ha, look at how fun and silly I am, readers —before the horse got carted away in the back of a pickup truck to a dumpster pile.

Sort of lost the amusement factor when her foot got caught in the tiny stirrup and she toppled over the side of the truck, bounced off a parked riding lawn mower, then slammed against the hard pavement.

A bunch of bruised ribs and a hairline fracture in her pelvis. That’s what she got for trying .

Simone sighed into the phone. “I’ll talk to your editor. See if I can push back the deadline another week. Think that will give you enough time to make the revisions?”

No. “Absolutely.”

“Good. Now get back on that horse immediately. Not the biter in Texas. The one in your story. The one you absolutely can’t kill. Got it? Oh, and hey, if you still need inspiration, there’s a hilarious video going around right now of some lady falling off one of those mechanical toy horses from the back of a truck. I’ll see if I can find it, so I can send it to you.”

“No, no. That’s quite all right. I’m plenty familiar with it.”

“Isn’t it a hoot?”

“Oh, it certainly made me hoot.” And holler. And howl. Along with a whole manner of other sounds. So much for nobody capturing it on video. “Poor lady,” Gracie murmured.

“I’m sure she’s fine. Okay, enough of this. You need to get back to your story. Can’t wait to see those revisions.”

After the phone call ended, Gracie pressed a finger between her eyebrows where a sharp headache pierced her skull. That poor lady was a far cry from fine. What she’d give to hide under a blanket the rest of the day. The rest of the week.

With a short sigh, she dropped her hand from her headache to her sore ribs. She was just going to have to grit her teeth and write through the pain. No more wallowing. No more distractions. Only writing.

Which was why when Noah walked through the door she said, “Get me some scissors and don’t ask any questions.”