My mind made up, I strode out of Grandma’s and walked over to Emily’s pink-roofed buttercream house, one hand on the towel around my waist.
Chapter Seven
Emily
Killian wasn’t just an asshole, I decided as I glared at the Word document. Its cursor blinked mutely. He was a Class A asshole. If he were a romance hero, he would’ve been beyond redemption—the type of hero who would earn your book half a million one-star reviews.
I hadn’t been able to finish writing the dirty sex scene for Molly and Ryan. Not when Killian started banging on the damned drums and cymbals again like the fate of the galaxy depended on it. Then he also spent some time on an electric guitar and a piano that badly needed tuning. I hadn’t realized until then that music could actually induce a person to want to commit murder. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have. But I knew the cops were too damned good at catching half-assed amateur murderers, based on numerous late-night chats with romantic suspense writers at bars in conference hotels. Goddamn advances in forensic science…
I hadn’t been able to escape to a café to write, either. There was only one café in town, and the owner had refused to let me monopolize one of its four tables. Said it wouldn’t be fair. I even offered to buy a latte every hour, but that hadn’t persuaded her.
“Other people have the right to sit and enjoy our café, too.”
She hadn’t cared that other people didn’t have to endure excruciating noise pollution from Killian Axelrod. Just like the dispatcher lady, everyone I encountered seemed to think I was lucky—lucky!—to listen to an obnoxious ruckus that not even a noise-canceling headset could block out for the entire day.
I picked up my phone and texted my writer friends, Lucy and Skye. I needed some genuine sympathy and understanding.
–Me: Are you sure there’s no way to get away with murdering an obnoxious neighbor?
–Skye: Nope. Trust me on this. There is no perfect crime.
I glared at the text. What did Skye know? Her genre of choice was heartwarming contemporary romance.
–Lucy: Exactly. Especially in a town that small. People are gonna know if somebody’s missing.
Damn it. Lucy wrote gritty romantic thrillers and suspense. If anybody was creative enough to come up with a plan to pull off an unsolvable murder, it’d be her.
–Me: I just can’t write the sex scene with all this noise!
–Lucy: Just put SEX in there as a placeholder and write the other scenes.
I wanted to bang my head against the table. Better yet, I wanted to bang Killian’s head against it.
–Me: I’m a linear writer. I can’t skip around like you do.
–Skye: But it’s just one sex scene, right? You can skip it for now and come back later. I promise. I do that when my kids are home and won’t leave me alone. Trying to write sex with kids around? IMPOSSIBLE!
Point. Her kids were rambunctious. Still, I wanted to whine, because if I couldn’t whine to my friends, who could I whine to?
–Me: I can’t write anything romantic with all that damn drumming. And it’s hard to intuit how the relationship should morph and evolve when I haven’t written out the first sex scene! It has a big impact on the rest of the story, you know.
I added a sobbing emoji.
&
nbsp; –Lucy: Why don’t you check into a hotel?
–Me: There aren’t any in this town.
–Skye: Drive to a bigger town, maybe? You only need a few days of quiet to finish the book. Hotels are nice. You can order room service.
True. And I could take my Hop Hop Hoorays with me. Leaving the ice cream behind was sad, but it’d be waiting for me when I came home with the completed manuscript.
–Me: That sounds like a fantastic idea. Thanks, girls. I knew I could count on you.
–Skye: Anytime.
–Lucy: Yup. Sorry we don’t live closer. If we did, I’d let you stay at my place.