Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,52

her mascara. She was naked, and so was I, and she’d stolen all but one square foot of the duvet, which rested over my lap. Her even breathing was the only sound in the room and I’d lost track of how long I’d been contentedly sitting by her side while she slept.

The rain had stopped a couple of hours ago. A gentle wind blew outside and the branches of a tree in my neighbor’s yard tapped gently on the window pane. The curtains were open just a sliver, letting some of the light of the moon stream through into the room.

It was enough light for me to see my way as I got out of bed, put on some sweat pants, and padded over to the chair by the window. Like every nook and cranny in my house, there was a notebook there. I hadn’t written in this one yet. It was a simple black leather-bound notebook with smaller pages made for writing on the go rather than sitting down at a desk. A gold pen was tucked in the spine. I pulled it out, clicked it open, and held the ballpoint over the first blank page.

It was always tricky finding the right place to start. The first word held more weight than one might think. It set the tone, like the paint color on a wall or the first note of a song.

I licked my lips.

What word made me think of Briar?

I glanced up from the page as she rolled over in bed and claimed that last square foot of duvet as her own. A smile tugged at my lips and I got a great view of her bare ass as she drew one leg up. It pulled the blanket up with it, where it got caught up around her knee. She nuzzled her cheek deeper into her pillow and fell still.

My attention shifted back to the page.

Petals.

She is made of petals and lace and glass that does not break. She looks fragile, but she is mighty, and she carries within her the soul of who the rest of us wish we could be.

Grace and kindness are her left and right hands. Patience and gratitude, her eyes. Passion and lust, her lips.

She holds you like you’ve wanted to be held. Where in the hands of others you feel like water, in hers you feel solid and whole. You are not too heavy for her even though she’s weightless like sunlight. How she can hold you so you can never truly understand, but you don’t ask questions. You don’t need answers from her.

She lets you breathe deeply. She kisses away the hurt that’s scorched your heart. She tells you to let go of it without saying a word and you do because you trust her, and because you know when you forgive she will still be there, keeping you together.

My pen stilled.

Did this even make a lick of sense? Or was this just the rambling of a man who had lost all sense of who he was?

I frowned and tapped the end of my pen to my chin.

This wasn’t the kind of thing I usually wrote. There wasn’t really a story here. It lacked a beginning, middle, and end. It had something going for it, to be sure, but what that might be, I couldn’t decipher. Not yet anyway. It had a cadence and a rhythm, and it read more like prose than fiction.

My frown turned to a scowl.

Bleh. Poetry.

Not my thing.

The pen twirled around my fingers like a living thing as I lowered my hand back to the page. Briar hadn’t moved a muscle as I’d scrawled frantically. She still lay with her back to me, her bare ass on display, the curve of her spine daring me to write about elegance and the curves of back roads and winding rivers.

She has a spine like the creek that runs through your backyard and eyes like the reflection of the sun that dances upon the surface of the water. Her body moves like a dancer but she tells you she’s never danced anywhere like she meant it unless you count her bedroom, where she’d dance wildly in bare feet on the pink carpet beside her bed.

She makes it hard for you to breathe and you wonder what it felt like to hold air in your lungs before you met her.

She has a mouth full of clever words and a dangerous tongue. It’s too quick for you, that’s for sure. And