While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 by Virginia Nelson Page A

turned out in a pout. “You’ve ignored me for days. How am I supposed to help you when you lock me out of your office and then just appear—at an ungodly hour, I might add—and expect me to do tricks like some circus puppy?”
    “I’m ready to talk now.” He didn’t feel further explanation necessary.
    “Well, bully for you, buddy.” She reached out to move his hand physically and he turned his wrist, capturing her hand. “How come I’m not supposed to touch you, but you’re allowed to manhandle me and push me into corners with your size?” She grumbled the last and scowled up at him, which was really quite a buzz kill for his writing high.
    “I wish I could write your dialogue. You say all the wrong things, do you know that?” He snapped out the words, riding a wave of frustration, and released her wrist with a sigh. “You can’t touch me because I won’t be responsible for what I do if you push me.”
    That light, the brittle gleam of intelligence which both fascinated and repelled him, glittered suddenly bright in her eyes. He backed off a step, but she followed him. “So, it’s not that you don’t want me to touch you, it’s that you’re afraid of what you’ll do if I touch you?”
    Not at all the conversation he’d planned with her, so he backed another step away from her terrier-like advance. “I didn’t say that.”
    Her smile filled with womanly mystery and power, and he froze, powerless, to see what she’d do with her newfound knowledge. “You also didn’t disagree. Look, give me a few minutes to wake up, pour me a cup of that coffee I smell, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen to hear whatever you’re bursting to say.”
    He opened and closed his mouth, searching for the scathing words to gain back the ground he feared he’d lost, and found nothing. Her door closed and he still hadn’t found them. Stomping back down the stairs, he decided he would meet her in the kitchen, much less intimate ground than the door to her bedroom, but he’d be damned if he made her coffee.

Chapter Seven
    She’d been cranky, but she’d never been left entirely alone for such a long period of time. Usually, she supplemented her work on her “projects” with the company of others, with people who filled her with laughter and words and…
    Radcliffe’s home was in the middle of nowhere. Unless she made a phone call or engaged in social networking, the only person to talk to was the reclusive writer. When she’d found herself sitting under a tree, tearing apart a pinecone, so she could bitch back at what was obviously a rabid squirrel, based on its desire to chew her out in squirrelese, she’d gotten pissed.
    How could she help a locked door? She’d renovated some very strange, very alone people in her time, but none that so completely shut her out for so long.
    Not to mention he’d done so after bringing thoughts of Preston bubbling to the surface like lava through water.
    She’d managed to read two more of his books—one more than she’d agreed to read—and it only made her more annoyed. How could a man who seemed to understand people so damned well be so oblivious in person?
    Then his standing there, like a puppy wiggling in excitement, obviously ready to socialize when she’d barely managed to scrape an hour of sleep past her seemingly frantic need to paint and her frustration with him, expecting her to leap because he’d graced her with his presence…?
    It’d driven her to snap in a way she might not have if she’d focused more on the man as a project than just the man.
    She took her time getting ready to go downstairs. Time to calm her frayed temper and curb her complete inability to censor what she said to him. Apparently, his lack of social discretion was contagious and she’d contracted the disorder.
    When she finally entered the kitchen, she found him tapping his fingers impatiently on the countertop. “I made your damned coffee. I hope it’s cold.”
    Raising her brows in