Page 44 of Threat of Danger
Should have stashed the damn thing before she came downstairs.
He’d been too busy resenting Eliot, who made that resentment difficult by turning out to be a nice guy. Polite to Zelda, appreciative of Derek’s books, and not a weakling as a man either. Yet Derek wanted to choke the shit out of him. Because every time Eliot looked at Jess, the man’s eyes lit up.
Eliot had come to Vermont after Jess.
That said something.
And the man had spent the night in Jess’s bed. A troubling thought, even if Jess hadn’t been there. She hadn’t sneaked over. Derek would have heard her. He hadn’t slept worth a lick.
Good thing he had no plans for writing today. The mood he was in, he might kill off a couple of characters who hadn’t been plotted to die.
From the moment Jess had come home, getting her out of town again was Derek’s main goal. But now ... When she left, she’d leave with Eliot. That thought bothered Derek way more than it should have.
In fact, he found the thought completely unacceptable.
So where did that leave him?
Damn if he knew.
Damn if he knew anything since Jess had come back.
He watched as she finished reading the article—the way her shoulders tightened and her fingers gripped and crushed the edges—and he wanted to pull her over onto his lap.
“What is it?” Eliot asked about half a second after he turned back to the table, because he was the kind of guy who paid attention to her.
Dammit.
Jess put the paper down, flexing her fingers as if she had to make herself release the news. “A local girl is missing.”
“Hannah Wilson,” Zelda said from the stove. “Sweet girl. Used to come around selling magazines and Christmas wrapping paper for school fund-raisers. Very polite.”
Eliot glanced at Jess. “I thought you said she drowned.”
Her expression darkened. “Wrong body. The DNA came back.”
She took a long gulp of coffee, looking at nothing but her cup. She was shaken but tried not to show it.
“So what are you doing today?” Derek asked Eliot.
The frown on the man’s face cleared. “I’m going to climb some cliffs. You?”
“Plotting.”
Eliot brightened. “What will this one be about?”
“I never talk about the plot until the book is finished.”
Writers had an innate need for storytelling, an urge to tell tales. If Derek talked the plot out, the story was out. The tale was told. The excitement leaked from the process, making writing difficult if not impossible, at least for him. Different authors had different techniques, but Derek didn’t brainstorm with others and didn’t talk about his book-in-progress with anyone. His agent and editor got brief outlines. They knew to leave him to his method.
“I completely understand.” Eliot didn’t push, didn’t look offended, seemed happy just to be talking to Derek. “No matter what you write, I’m looking forward to reading the story.”
The freaking guy was impossible to hate. No wonder Jess liked him. Even Derek was beginning to like him, dammit.
After Jess and Eliot left, Derek set up his laptop on the coffee table in the living room and sat on the carpet, his back braced against the couch, his legs stretched in front of him. He was plotting the ending of his next book. The FBI agent saved the day—and his ex-wife who’d been taken hostage by bank robbers. He was still in love with her. He still didn’t fully understand why she’d left him in the first place. And now ...
Derek’s original plan had been to have her fall back in love with him once she sees him in the hero role, sees firsthand what he does. In the past, all she’d known was that he was never home for dinner, that he often had to go back to work in the middle of vacation, that she always felt like she came second to the job. Now, with the bad guys bleeding on the ground, a dozen victims saved, she falls into his arms.
Except ...What if she didn’t?
