Page 12 of Bitter Heat

It was what she was writing before her father had died. “No.”

“Do your sisters know about your pen name?”

“No.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Less than five people on the planet,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Now six.”

“I hate you.”

“In the books, you love me.”

Her back went ramrod straight. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I’m partial to the first book. It has the best sex scenes if I do say so myself.”

She erupted from the couch and stood, hands fisted at her sides. “Shut up, or I swear to God, I’m going to shoot you!”

The fact that Roth read the books, which documented most of their affair and then some… Her feelings for him were in black and white. So were their sexual preferences and fetishes. She hadn’t held back when she wrote it. Why would she? She had the protection of a pen name, and she wasn’t going to tell anyone about it. Ever. And now… she couldn’t handle this.

“If you shoot me, you’d be killing off one of the main characters.”

She let out a strangled yell as she stalked away from him. The bathroom was the only sanctuary in the cabin aside from Kaia’s bedroom. Impulsively, she ducked into the bedroom and slammed the door. She turned the old-fashioned lock and was on her way to the bed when the door opened.

She whirled, and bellowed, “Get out!”

He leaned against the doorjamb. “Just so you know, none of the locks work.”

“But the doors do, so get out.”

“If anyone should be upset, it’s me. You never asked for my permission.”

She gaped at him. “Excuse me?”

“The guy has my build, my face, my words, and my background. I’m surprised no one else figured it out. Those books are everywhere. Soon, it’ll be made into a movie, and then everyone will know.”

“I based the characters and situations on real things, but everything else is made up. No one suspects anything.”

He surveyed her through hooded eyes. “How much of it’s true?”

“What do you mean?”

When he came toward her, she looked around for a weapon, but the only thing in the spartan room worth hurling at him was an old lamp or a Bible. Fuck.

He stopped two feet away. He didn’t look amused any longer. He was deadly serious.

“I didn’t cheat on you.”

Her blood ran cold. “What?”

“In the book, you leave your husband because you found out he was cheating. I didn’t cheat on you.”

Oh, God. This couldn’t be happening. “The books are fiction,” she said through numb lips.

“But you divorced me, just like the woman in the book.”

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