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

response, she moved to accept the mug he practically shoved at her. “Thank you, Radcliffe.”
    “How do you propose to help me if you’re not willing to have a flexible schedule? One would think, since this is something you profess to do well, you’d be a bit more understanding rather than snipping at me for merely knocking.”
    She sipped the coffee, reminding herself to take the higher road. “You didn’t knock. You thundered up the stairs as if a herd of hellhounds nipped at your heels.”
    He opened his mouth then snapped it closed, turning away from her.
    “So I’m assuming you wanted to talk. How goes the newest book?” Sitting down, she folded her hands together and considered the way cotton stretched across his shoulders. Somehow, in the intervening days, she’d forgotten how simply large the man was. He dwarfed her, making her feel tiny and feminine—two things she didn’t often spend time thinking about. She was a curvy girl, never being fashionably slender, but he shrunk the kitchen with his broad shoulders and looming height. Something about that flat out did it for her and she breathed in on a count of three and back out, forcing herself to disregard him as a man and instead focus on the project.
    When he finally turned, he’d schooled his own features into a semblance of calm his still twitching fingertips belied. “It’s either amazing or horrible. I haven’t had a story bleed out of me like this in a long time. So the hero…”
    He blasted into the retelling of the story he worked on, his voice compelling. He was so lost in his own words she wasn’t sure if he noticed he’d knelt in front of her to get eye-to-eye contact. His hands fluttered, adding emphasis to some of the story, and she got lost, just a little, in the passionate nature he unwittingly displayed. For a man who barely strung two words together without barking, the enthusiasm he showed when talking about his work in progress was startling at the least.
    “So what do you think?” He leaned toward her and she sucked in a harsh breath through her nose.
    “I think it sounds like it will have the provocative characterization you showed in New Town , but with shades of the identifiable plotline and emotional draw you so easily created in Gods of Love .”
    She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling as his jaw dropped open and his hands went lax at his sides. “You’ve been reading.”
    The awe in his tone freed the giggle she tried to hold back. “Yeah, I fulfilled the first decree—oh sorry, I meant condition—for me to stay with you. I’ve read two of your books.”
    His palms smacked down on her knees, breaking his second condition—no touching. Then again, he’d never said he couldn’t touch her. Only that she couldn’t touch him, which needed more picking at based on the conversation in the upstairs hallway.
    “You’ve met Gregory and Allisa! Oh, and Baxter and Demona. What did you think of them? I so rarely get to speak to readers who aren’t either rabid fans or academics, so you really must tell me what you thought of them.” She recognized the frenetic light of the artist in his eyes and, although most of his actions were so damned controlled even when they were abrasive, she didn’t think he realized he’d invaded her space and clenched her knees with his enormous hands.
    “I think you’ve earned your place as a well-known and award-winning author and I hardly think anything I have to say would have value since, as I said, I don’t read this genre as a rule.” Honesty, something he seemed to prize above all else, so that she didn’t have to tell him he’d reached inside her and stroked her very soul with the words he’d thrown out into the world like stones into a pond.
    He shook his head, standing to loom over her. “Don’t be silly. Of course it doesn’t matter in a critical sense what you have to say. I’m curious, though, what your response would be to the stories since