Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,62

out of parking my aged butt here until I find out. But I’m also human. I do not expect you and Alejo to drop your lives because of my obsession. I know you have a ranch full of people depending on you. Feel free to go home, with my gratitude. I’m fine here. I have plenty of dough, so I can stay indefinitely, and then get myself home. I might even take the train. They say it’s a great trip, and I could set up shop with my laptop and write half a book in the time it takes to cross the country. Hmm. I wonder how long it does take, anyway.”

Rigo had been shaking with silent laughter. “Two days. I looked that up, too, as an alternate, in case you needed it.”

“Really, you do not have to run interference for me like that.”

“I like doing it. Nothing makes me happier.”

“Well, thanks. But seriously. . .”

“Hey.” He stretched out his hand toward hers in what she recognized as a silent offer, almost an appeal, and she knew he’d instantly pull it back in an instant if he saw any sign of withdrawal in her. But she didn’t want to withdraw. She liked holding his hand.

She relished sliding her fingers across his callused palm and lacing her fingers through his as he finished in a low, slightly husky voice, “I enjoy spending time with you. These past couple days have been more fun than I’ve had in years.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Me, too.”

They sat there in companionable silence. The thought occurred to her that they could probably talk about anything, and he would be just as easy. That’s who he was, and not the monster she’d built in her mind. Weird, when you considered he had a literal monster inside him, but she had discovered that monster was kind of . . . noble. As well as being seriously cool to look at.

Then he glanced at her laptop sitting at her right hand. “So are you writing the next book?”

“I’ve always got at least one going,” she said. “I’m mulling the next one. Still in the planning stages.” At his interested look, she thought, why not use what had started as an excuse? “It starts with a tea party at a grand house with a bunch of obnoxious super-rich snobs. When one of them gets bumped off, the reader doesn’t really care. The story drive is to see which twit did it, and watch them get what they deserve. Classic Agatha Christie kick-off. But that’s the easy part. Tougher is to figure out who, why, and all the false leads as I hide the real clues. Who knows? I might even get some twists for the mystery out of this trip.”

He smiled at that. “I have a feeling this is the sort of stupid question that authors get asked all the time, but where do you get all those characters? You just make them up?”

Her lips parted, and the truth hit her like a kick from an invisible mule. That is, she knew she took characteristics from real people, and mixed and matched them when building characters. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes unconsciously. Like the way her P.I. had developed over the course of her series.

But . . . the villains in those first few books had all been variations on Rigo.

And he didn’t seem to realize it.

She looked up at him, braced to see irony there, or hurt, or the narrowed look of a verbal trap. Except that she knew by now that he wasn’t the kind of person who played those games.

In fact, he wasn’t the kind of entirely human monster that she’d written so angrily into those books.

Should she admit the truth?

Not now. She had a feeling it would only hurt him. Maybe someday they could laugh over it . . .

Someday? Like, she was going to continue this . . . whatever it was between them?

“Godiva?”

She blinked, recovering the present. And the fact that she was sitting there with her cup suspended in mid-air.

“Did I ask the wrong question?” He was looking concerned.

“Not at all! I just had, um, a thought about the new mystery. I’ll have to write it down before I forget. To answer your question, every writer is different. For me, characters are taken from everywhere. A funny gesture from this person, a quirky habit from that person, the way someone overheard in a grocery store line was talking. It all goes into the mix,