Daddy, He Wrote

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There was at least an hour of work left. She didn’t want to stop now.

“I’ll make you more coffee,” she said cautiously, hoping he’d go back upstairs so she could finish. Maybe he only wrote at night. She’d read that some writers did that.

“I can make my own coffee,” he said gruffly and reached to take the pot back, his hands covering hers.

Trish stood still for a moment as the warmth of his palms caressed the backs of her hands. She pulled away, trying to ignore the pleasurable sensation the slide of his smooth, warm palms caused over her chapped, reddened skin.

Taking a deep breath to calm her fluttering pulse, she turned and put the jug down on the counter. “I’ll do it,” she said, still facing away from him.

She turned and looked over her shoulder at him. “I just have to put this stuff back in the refrigerator before I go to bed. I’ll bring the coffee up to you.”

“I will not tolerate any interruption of my work,” he said, repeating his earlier admonition. He stared at her for a moment, then turned abruptly and left the room.

From the way she saw things, he had interrupted her. Annoyed, she filled the coffeemaker with fresh ground coffee and water, then raced to tidy up the counter as the fragrant brew dripped into the pot.

The last thing she needed to do was make him angry, although she couldn’t figure out why her cooking in the middle of the night would be a problem for him. He wasn’t paying her by the hour.

She poured the coffee into the insulated pot, wrapped a handful of store-bought cookies in a napkin and took everything up to him.

He sat hunched over the laptop computer, his broad shoulders blocking the screen. He didn’t look up when she set the coffee and cookies on a corner of the huge worktable he was using as a desk.

Trish tiptoed downstairs and finished up what she was doing and got ready for bed. She nursed Emma and settled her back in her basket, then she lay on the couch for a long time, trying to get to sleep without visions of Ian Miller crowding into her thoughts.

Ian stood at the window of his office, moodily looking over the roof of the barn to the old stone farmhouse. He’d spent the morning moving some of the room’s furniture out, including an old iron crib he’d disassembled. For now everything was stored in the small bedroom at the end of the hall.

He glanced around. The room suited him very well as an office. He hoped he’d be able to keep getting work done, but he wasn’t optimistic. All the pages he’d churned out last night were probably just a lucky break.

He was stuck with the housekeeper sharing the house until the blizzard stopped. Her presence was always in the back of his mind, and he kept wondering what she was doing, even when he couldn’t hear her or see her.

She was such a jumpy little thing, acting as if he was some kind of ogre, and it annoyed him.

The creative streak he’d had last night had been a fluke. It must have been. He’d never been able to write when someone else was around. He turned his attention back to the scene outside.

His car was completely covered. According to the morning news, the blizzard had dumped three feet of snow, but in some places the drifts were up to the eaves.

If he didn’t remember where he’d parked, he would never know his car was there. In fact, the scene looked the way it must have two hundred years ago when the stone farmhouse had been built. There was nothing he could see that could be identified as twenty-first century. The pristine quality of the countryside had a magical look to it.

The meteorologist on the local weather channel had announced there was another storm coming in behind this one. They could expect more snow tonight.

He wished the inside of his house was as quiet and peaceful as the landscape. He’d bought the farm as a retreat, to be alone so he could write. He had anticipated having the house all to himself. Now he was sharing it with a woman, a baby, a cat and a dog.

What had surprised him more than anything was he had been able to write last night. In spite of the chaos inside the house he’d written two chapters that pleased him. He was never pleased with a first draft.

The book he was working on was important to him, more important than any of his best-sellers. It was the book he had always wanted to write. The book his agent and publisher had steered him away from. They kept telling him it wasn’t what his fans wanted, what they expected. Ian thought his fans would understand. And if they didn’t, he thought sourly, they could skip buying it.

He suspected that was the reason everyone was having a problem with this project. His agent and editor were afraid it wouldn’t sell well and make the big money his other books had.

He didn’t care what they thought. The time was right for him to write this story, and he was going to finish the book. He would like to blame his writer’s block on them, but he couldn’t. He wanted so much to do a good job on this book he was pretty sure he was the one standing in his own way.

He forced his thoughts away from the book and back to the practical. He needed to make sure they had enough gasoline for the generator so they could stay warm. From the looks of the refrigerator, they didn’t need to worry about food for a month. His housekeeper cooked like a madwoman.

And what was he going to do about her? She couldn’t continue to do all the work around this place. It was too much for one person, especially a slender little thing like her. He wondered how old she was. She looked about seventeen.

How long had she been married? How had her husband died? There were so many questions he wanted to ask. The need for answers surprised him. He never wanted to get involved in other people’s private lives.

He’d have Joyce tell the property manager to find someone to help around the farm with the grounds. Trish could still do the housekeeping and live in the stone farmhouse. The caretaker would have to be a day job.

He bent down to jot a note to himself to ask Joyce to look into it the next time he talked to her. Then he wrote a note to himself. “Ignore the housekeeper. She’s none of your business.”

He straightened up and scowled at his own handwriting.

He crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it in the trash. Since when did he need to remind himself of something like that?

Chapter Five

A scraping noise drew Ian out of his manuscript. Annoyed at the interruption, he glanced at the computer and was amazed to find he was well into the middle third of the draft.

He hadn’t had a creative streak like this for months. He’d been sure he wouldn’t be able to write until his housekeeper moved back to her house, but he’d been wrong.

He stood and stretched, then looked at the time display in the upper corner of the screen to discover it was well past lunchtime.

No wonder his stomach was growling for food. He’d been working since early this morning on nothing but coffee.

He opened his office door and found out where the scraping noise was coming from. Trish was on the landing on her hands and knees, totally absorbed in hand sanding the floor. Her blond curls bounced as she ran the block wrapped with sandpaper over the boards.

He could see how red and chapped her hands were from where he stood. “What the hell are you doing?”

She jumped at the sound of his voice. Her head jerked up, and a look of panic crossed her face, then was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

She scrambled to her feet. “Is it bothering you? I don’t have to do this now,” she said in a rush of words.

She was wearing another of those ratty flannel shirts. He wondered how many she had, then chided himself. His housekeeper’s wardrobe was none of his business.

“I’m hungry.” He rubbed his hand over his growling stomach.

She looked relieved at his statement. “I made soup. And sandwiches. Is that okay?”

“Fine.” Now that she mentioned it, he could smell the soup. He started down the steps, then stopped. “Is it okay to walk on these?”

She nodded and her curls bounced. “Oh, yes. I’m going to do a half at a time, so you can still use the stairs.” She spoke quickly and gestured nervously to the steps.

He looked down at the steps. “What exactly are you doing?”

With a shrug she said, “They were getting scratched, so I’m refinishing them.”

Refinishing? They looked fine to him, but she seemed so nervous he wasn’t going to mention it.

He followed her down the steps. She stopped at the bottom to pick up a wastebasket covered by a thin towel.

He watched her balance the basket carefully in her two hands. “Is the baby in there?”

Her expression softened. “Yes. She’s sleeping. I put the towel over her to keep the dust off while I sanded.”

“Do you ever let her out?” He was amused by the way she carted the baby around like a load of laundry.