“I will use you for my reward,” she said, grinning.
They had not yet said those three magic words, but Kaylee felt them. She wasn’t holding out, she was just getting comfortable. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say after that. Let me stay here forever? No, that wasn’t what she wanted. Come to Newport Beach with me? She didn’t feel ready for that, plus he admitted he didn’t like Southern California. How about I see you every couple of months? Oh, what was the point? That’s what he’d had with Laura. That didn’t sound like real love, it sounded like an inconvenient convenience.
“Did I mention I have a house in Newport Beach?” she asked him.
“Twenty or so times,” he said.
“It’s very nice,” she said. “My mother had admired it for years, like twenty or so years. When her business started doing well the one thing she wanted was a house that would hold her tight, make her feel safe and comfortable till her last day. She didn’t expect to be only sixty when that day came, but that’s what it was. It has a large patio and backyard and pool. It has a view of the ocean, too bright at sunset so she put up custom outdoor shades. It’s on a hill in a very nice neighborhood. It’s not a huge house, but the rooms are generous. It was all hers, that was the important thing. It’s beautiful and comfortable. Have you ever been to Newport Beach?”
“Can’t say that I have,” he said. Then with a curl of his lip he added, “I have some pretty negative impressions of my few visits to LA.”
She remembered his telling of his feelings for LA, the place Laura wanted to be and didn’t want him to join her there.
“I don’t think I’m a Southern California kind of guy,” he said.
She was glad she hadn’t said, “But I love you! We should be together somewhere!”
“Let me take you to bed, Kaylee Sloan, and see if we can work up some book ideas when I rock you to sleep.”
Which was as good an idea as any.
* * *
For a few days, Kaylee stuck to a very rigid schedule. She did take her walk with Otis, spent some time with Lady and the puppies, and took her laptop to Jack’s, but when she saw that she’d only written a page the whole hour and a half she was at Jack’s, she hustled back home. She worked as hard as possible but still was doing more rewriting than writing. She had wanted to have thirty pages after three days but she had nine. She redoubled her efforts.
Her book about Caroline and Landon, however, was growing. They had fallen in love and fallen in bed and it was delicious. That book made her heart sing; poor Caroline had been a lonely widow in need of a fresh start when she found Landon and her world was suddenly twirling. It was certainly reflective of Kaylee’s experience, but she had learned it was also very like Mel’s and Vanessa Haggerty’s. She learned from Mel that Vanessa had been pregnant with her first child when her marine husband was killed in action, and Vanessa ended up marrying his best friend. Whew. And now they had five children.
Her autobiographical fiction was getting more fulfilling by the day and she wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to show it to anyone. She wasn’t very confident of her ability in this women’s fiction genre. But even though she was struggling, she knew what she was doing in suspense. She was surprised to find herself finally closing in on the end and called her editor.
“Simone, it’s Kaylee,” she said. “Are you in the middle of something?”
“Everything can wait for you! How are you? I think about you all the time!”
She used to talk to her editor at least every other week. They had a great rapport and had become friends. Kaylee had worked with her for eight years now and Simone was not her first editor.
“I’m in good shape, actually. I’m going to be sending you this manuscript before Christmas.”
“So your getaway is paying off?”
“I love it here,” she said. “In a perfect world I’d have a house in Newport and one up here, in the mountains.” And she told Simone about the weather, the leaves, the giant trees, the Halloween party, the people she’d met and had developed friendships with like Mel, Jilly, Jack and Preacher. And eventually she told her about Landry. Before she knew it, they’d talked for an hour. “And there’s this other thing,” she said. “While I was having trouble getting into the book, I dabbled around a little bit on a different story. I was just doing it as an exercise, something to get me moving. And now that I’ve written quite a bit of it just for fun, I kind of like it.”