Work In Progress (Red Lipstick Coalition #3) - Staci Hart Page 0,66

ass as she leaned into the pantry, emerging with her arms full of flower, spices, and several cans of something I couldn’t make out from where I sat.

Her face was alight, her hair up and cheeks rosy as the pile on the island grew.

“Do you mind if I turn on music?” she asked over the rattling of baking sheets.

“Not at all. I actually prefer it.”

“Oh!” She carried the stack of muffin pans and cookie sheets to the island along with a bag of chocolate chips she’d scrounged up from who knew where. “Well, why don’t you put yours on then? That way it won’t distract you.”

“All right.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, smiling as I connected to my living room speaker.

Wu-Tang Clan came on first in my shuffle, and I was just about to change it, certain the angelic little fairy in my kitchen would be somehow offended. But then she started rapping along with Raekwon to “C.R.E.A.M.”

If we hadn’t already been married, I would have proposed on the spot.

“I don’t know if I’m more surprised that you’re into Wu-Tang or that you know all the words to ‘C.R.E.A.M.’”

Amelia laughed. “Rin loves them. We lean on Wu-Tang when we have bad days. Nothing pumps you up quite like Method Man, you know?”

“I do know,” I said on a chuckle.

She bopped around the kitchen, collecting more supplies—bowls, bread pans, spoons. To be honest, I didn’t even know where half of it had come from and made a mental note to send my interior decorator a fruit basket for hooking me up so thoroughly.

I looked back to the judgmental cursor and felt my mind shift, clicking into the track that led straight into my imagination.

My thoughts wandered through a repository of mythical creatures, finding footing in the classic fantasy bracket. Besides being my current interest, elves seemed to be the most romantic option, beautiful and elite with aristocratic rules that could provide conflict, especially if he were royalty.

I should name him.

I pulled open a list of Gaelic names and skimmed through. Conlan, Deren, Elwynn…Wynn.

I smiled to myself and jotted down some notes. Wynn Morain, heir to the throne. High priestess prophecy that his father will die, and the throne will be lost. Relic needed. Stone? Book? Spirit?

My attention shifted to Amelia, still rapping in the kitchen, though she seemed to have foraged for everything she needed and had begun measuring and mixing. Her big eyes were turned down, her hair piled on her head. Her nose was nothing but a button on her small face, an apostrophe between wide eyes and a small, luscious mouth. She looked like a sprite. Give her some wings, and she’d be the spit of Tinker Bell but with a far better disposition.

Nothing but a sweet fairy, making sweets in my kitchen.

And that was when the idea hit me like a Louisville slugger to the face.

My notes soon became too long to be considered notes, morphing without intention to a fully formed idea, like Athena popping out of Zeus’s head, sword in hand and ready to take over.

Words—glorious, luscious, effortless words—poured out of me. Words that I’d thought had abandoned me, leaving me empty and without purpose.

But they hadn’t. They’d only been sleeping, lying dormant, waiting for something worthy to call upon them.

The story sprawled out, my mind stretching and yawning, my fingers flying. The words came too fast, too quick for my mind to relay to clumsy, out-of-shape fingers. But I didn’t care about the typos or the missing punctuation I was certain had unknowingly made their way in.

I felt like a conduit, a vehicle. And before I realized how long had passed, I’d written three chapters.

I blinked at the screen, taking a look at the word count. I’d written nearly seven thousand words, which was roughly seven percent of a first draft.

And in…

I checked the clock.

Three hours.

That can’t be right. I rubbed my eyes, highlighting the text to recount the words. It had to be a glitch, an error. I’d never written that much in three hours, especially not at the beginning of a novel when I didn’t know the world or characters or story. But there it was again, without error.

I glanced to the kitchen, feeling like I’d lost time, my knees aching from the long stretch on the coffee table, my neck stiff as I scanned for Amelia without finding her. But just as I began to list the places she might be, she popped up from behind the island