thinking of the bad times.
Lena appeared at her side with a chocolate brownie on a plate. “You looked like you could use it,” she said with a little smile.
Lena was a local, the daughter of innkeepers and the same age as Ellie. Gemma remembered her from all the summers she spent here, but she was surprised all the same when she’d walked in to the coffeehouse to see that Lena was still on the island.
“Thanks,” she said, eagerly reaching down to break off a piece.
Lena tilted her head. “I heard about your fiancé.”
Gemma stopped chewing. Of course. The brownie wasn’t a reward for the hard work she’d been doing for the past two hours at this corner table. It was a sympathy brownie. And she must have been frowning.
“Ellie told you?”
Lena shook her head. “I heard it from Darcy Ritter. She runs the quilting club here in town? She was good friends with your grandmother. She takes a painting class at your sister’s studio, and she heard all about it.”
Along with everyone else in the class, Gemma assumed. She felt her eyes hood. She knew Darcy, and she knew that Darcy liked to keep her pulse on the community.
Lena tsked. “Terrible thing that man did. Jilting you like that!”
“Oh, I don’t know if I’d use the word jilted.” Gemma skirted her eyes, catching he curious glances from the patrons at the nearest table. “It wasn’t like he left me standing at the altar.”
“Still, you had to call back all those vendors!”
Gemma nodded, and then remembered that she still hadn’t heard back on the full refund from the caterers yet. They could only give a full refund if they booked another gig for the same night. She made a mental note to email them as soon as Lena went back to the counter.
Right now she could use every penny she could find. Especially if she kept getting too distracted to finish this book.
“Well,” she said, forcing a smile she no longer felt. “Thank you for the brownie.”
“Chocolate does wonders,” Lena said, giving her a wink.
If only. Gamma pushed the plate to the side and put her attention back on the computer screen.
She stared at the page count on the bottom of her screen, stricken when she realized she had only accomplished ten pages today. And another day had come and gone. She could work all night, she decided, or at least once the girls went to bed, though who knew about what. She was still blocked. Still unable to tackle the central romance in her story that her readers craved. If she didn’t believe in her own work, how could she expect anyone else to?
And now all she could think about was her catering deposit, and how large the sum was, and then she was thinking of how Sean didn’t have to worry about any of this, because Gemma had been foolish enough to offer to use her inheritance to pay for it. It was that, or ask her parents, and she could never forget how her mother had controlled every detail of Hope’s wedding, until Hope had laughed good-naturedly and said, “Maybe you should wear the wedding dress, Mom!”
Gemma fired off an email to the caterers, her anxiety mounting when she saw a new email from her editor at the top of her inbox. Her stomach tightened into a hard knot and she closed the laptop before she could linger too long, or be tempted to click on it, and feel the pressure escalate. Where was the manuscript? Would it be ready on time? She knew what the email would say without having to read it.
With a shaking hand, she ate the rest of the brownie. And Lena was right, because she did feel a little better afterward. She gathered up her belongings and decided to take a walk through town. Sometimes that was all it took for her mind to open up and ideas to strike. A walk. A shower. Something that didn’t feel so forced.
It was quiet in town, and warm. Shop owners had embraced the season and most had pots of tulips flanking their doors, their large bay windows displaying brightly colored items, inviting passersby to stop in, browse, hopefully to buy something.
Gemma would have loved to poke around, maybe treat herself to some stationary supplies from the paper store on the corner, but then she thought about her budget, and her book, and her future.
Ten pages. She’d been so optimistic when she’d set out into town!
She