Page 92 of Slow Burn Summer

He shrugged. “I don’t know. A month? Three months? Who are you, my mother?”

“If Iwasyour mother I’d move in, so you better be glad I’m not,” she said.

“My mother doesn’t give a damn as long as I keep paying the rent on her condo. She certainly doesn’t come round here being unnecessarily pissy over a few dirty glasses.”

Fiona pinched the bridge of her nose. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need anything.”

She looked at him, really looked at him, and she didn’t say how exhausted he looked, or how truly broken her heart was for him that Eleanor died, or how she was painfully aware that eighteen months is both a long time and a blink of an eye to get over losing the love of your life. His disordered home was a reflection of what was going on behind his eyes, of his solitary descent into quiet chaos. She resisted the urge to load the dishwasher or empty the overflowing bins and reached instead for two highball glasses,placing them down beside an age-shrunken lime from the fruit bowl on the windowsill.

“Mix the drinks while I go upstairs and unpack. And roll that lime a few times before you cut it, or it’ll be drier than a camel’s hump.”

—

Several hours and a hastilycobbled-together carbonara later, Fi sat in the armchair cradling a mug of black coffee, thinking. Hugh had passed out on the sofa, having whiskey-bared his soul and the fact that he’d not written a single word of the chronically overdue manuscript she’d come to talk to him about. Didn’t even have a vague outline. His publisher had been understanding, of course—Hugh Hudson’s smash-hit DI Rivers series had more than earned him their loyalty and patience—but everything has a limit and the public was baying for the eighth book in the series. As was his editor.

She looked at him, his scowl finally smoothed away by sleep, and wished she could wipe the last eighteen months from his memory and see him smile again. He’d always been a self-assured sort of person; readers loved his easygoing style at public events, Eleanor always by his side adding star power. They’d been the gilded couple, the handsome writer and the luminous theater actress. And then she was gone, wiped off the earth by an abrupt and tragic riding accident, and it was as if someone had turned Hugh’s sun off.

Fi rose to settle a blanket over him and was about to turn in herself when an email alert illuminated the screen of the computer on his desk in the bay window. Instinctively, she wandered across to dim it so it didn’t disturb Hugh. Not that it was likely to—he was sleeping the sleep of the dead, one arm flung above his head, the other trailing toward the oak floorboards. She’dtaken his half-empty glass from his hand awhile back, remembering how much Eleanor had prized the huge Turkish rug beneath the coffee table.

Clicking a random key on Hugh’s keyboard, Fi squinted at the suddenly glaring brightness, raising her glasses with a quiet jangle of chain. She wasn’t planning to look, especially, or to not look, especially, but she couldn’t hold back her agent instinct when she noticed the flashing cursor on an open manuscript.

“What have you been writing, Hugh?” she whispered, leaning closer to the screen. Within a couple of minutes she’d abandoned her plan to allow her client his privacy and settled down in his leather desk chair, unable to tear her eyes away from the screen.

—

“Morning,” Hugh said, bleary-eyed andsheepish. “Did I pass out?”

Fi handed him a coffee, careful not to pounce too soon.

“Mexican eggs,” she said, laying him a place at the table she’d scrubbed.

“You really didn’t need to cook for me,” he said, scraping his chair back on the flagstones. “But thank you anyway, smells good.”

In the same way a mother might roast a chicken for incoming teenagers on a particularly cold Sunday, Fiona Fox had mastered a small but reliable menu of dishes for occasions exactly such as this, comfort food designed to engender trust and lower raised guards.

She sipped her coffee and sat opposite him as he ate, safe in the knowledge that the food was restaurant standard.

“I read your manuscript,” she said.

His body stilled, then he lowered his cutlery and raised his gaze.

“I haven’t written one.”

She looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Yes, you have.”

“You had no right.”

“It was just there, Hugh, and I’m your agent.”

“It’s not for sale.”

She nodded, knowing everything has its price.

“Your publisher has been incredibly fair with you,” she said, pitching her voice low and neutral. “They haven’t applied pressure, but we all know you need to deliver a book, and believe me when I say I get it, Hugh, your mind isn’t in the right place to write another DI Rivers yet.”

“Bear with me, that’s all I’m asking,” he said. “A couple more months.”

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