So yeah, I think he’d be fine with me grabbing a quick smoke down here. But I’m sure he’d appreciate your concern for his house.”
Andie grit her teeth together, looking away from him. She hated feeling stupid, and it seemed like, for whatever reason, it was his goal to make her feel that way. She couldn’t understand how this guy was a friend of Colin’s. Granted, she hadn’t known Colin long at all, but it just didn’t seem to fit.
“How do you know Colin?” she asked, trying to sound conversational instead of accusatory.
“We went to high school together. Played soccer together. We ran in the same circles.” He shrugged, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “You?”
“Me? Me what?”
“How do you know Colin?”
“Oh. I met him at a friend’s barbecue,” she said.
“And won him over with your easygoing charm?”
Andie glared at him as she stood, pacing in front of the shelf. She needed to get back upstairs. Now.
“God, how long has it been?” she asked, running both hands through her hair.
“Relax,” he said through a laugh. “Here.” He shifted, reaching in his back pocket again.
“I said I didn’t want a cigarette.”
“I’m not giving you a cigarette, sweetheart.”
Andie whirled on him. Sweetheart? Before she could even react, he tossed something at her, and she brought her hands up quickly, fumbling with it for a second before she looked down and realized what it was.
A cell phone.
She should have been happy, but instead, she was furious. “You’ve had this the whole time?” she asked, completely appalled. “Why the hell didn’t you give it to me before?”
He shrugged, flicking the ashes off his cigarette before he lifted his eyes to hers. “You were entertaining me.”
She felt heat curling in her belly as her fist clenched around the phone, and just as she opened her mouth, two muffled bangs sounded outside the door before it flew open, nearly slamming into the wall with the force. A couple stood in the doorway, and the woman immediately looked contrite, holding her hand up.
“Oh my God, we’re so sorry…we didn’t mean to interrupt…”
“Not at all.” Andie cut her off before she turned to throw the phone back to Chase, using a bit more force than was necessary. He caught it easily in one hand, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he looked back up at her.
“Nice to meet you, Andie,” he called as she turned to walk out the door.
“You too,” she forced out as she passed the couple, giving them an amiable smile. As she turned the corner, Andie added under her breath, “Asshole.”
Present Day
CHAPTER ONE
The sound of her phone ringing danced around the edges of her concentration as her fingers moved feverishly over the keyboard, the tiny rapid clicking providing a gentle soundtrack for her thoughts. She was, as they say, in the zone; words were spilling like an avalanche down the page in front of her. Opportunities like this were rare; it seemed that whenever she was moved to write, it would be somewhere inconvenient, like in the back room of the restaurant or in line at the grocery store. And as much as she would try to keep the fire ablaze until she could get to her computer, or at the very least, a pen and paper, most of the time the inspiration would extinguish long before then. And then there were the times that she did have a stretch of time laid out before her, uninterrupted, where she could sit down with her thoughts, plan her words, craft them and build them, but those were usually the days she sat staring at the computer screen, at a blinking cursor that seemed to taunt her with every flash.
But not today.
Today the gods smiled down upon Andie Weber, and she was lucky enough to have her muse and some time alone.
If only the stupid phone would stop ringing.
“Damn it,” she mumbled as the phone rang for the third time, and she reached behind her, slapping around for it, her eyes glued to the screen as she reread the sentence she’d just written.
“Yeah?” she said absently, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she brought her hands back to the keyboard.
“Hey babe, where were you?” Colin asked.
“Sorry, I was in the middle of something,” she said, finishing up a thought.
“You on the computer?” he asked, obviously hearing the manic clicking of the keys.
“Huh?” Her fingers slowed as she started to focus on the conversation. “Oh. Yeah.”