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.”

“What are you doing that’s got you so absorbed?”

“Oh, just…invoices and payroll stuff.”

“You know, I used to think owning a restaurant was glamorous before I met you.”

Andie laughed. “Ah, but you forget, I don’t own it. My dad does.”

“Yeah, but we both know you’re the one who runs that place.”

She sighed, pulling the last of her attention away from the computer, and he chuckled softly.

“I won’t keep you then. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, leaning over to the coffee table and grabbing her cup of tea.

“Do you remember my friend Chase? You met him a while back. The night of Justin’s engagement party.”

“Um, yeah, I think so,” Andie said, rolling her eyes. Of course she remembered him. Colin had introduced her to Chase when they ran into him at the bar upstairs a little later in the evening that night. He had shaken her hand and said how nice it was to meet her, as if it were actually their first time meeting, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats in the wine cellar only an hour earlier. But there was some consistency with him at least; the overt sarcasm and the offhanded attitude from the wine cellar were still intact.

Andie had never admitted to Colin what she thought of Chase. At the time, their relationship was so new, and she didn’t want to turn him off by bad-mouthing one of his friends. And then, as she and Colin grew closer, Chase became a distant memory. According to Colin, even though Chase kept an apartment in New York, he moved around a lot, having some flighty, fly-by-night job as a freelance photographer. So even though his name came up now and again in conversation, she hadn’t yet had the pleasure of becoming reacquainted with him.

“Well, he’s back in New York again,” Colin said. “He wasn’t gonna be able to make it to Justin’s wedding—some kind of conflict with his job, I guess. But turns out, he can go now.”

“Great,” Andie said casually, her eyes scanning the document in front of her.

“But of course, since it’s this weekend, he would get raked over the coals trying to get a plane ticket to Tampa now. So I was thinking…” He trailed off.

Andie froze. “You were thinking…?” she goaded, although she was pretty sure she already knew exactly what he was going to say.

“That since you’re driving down, he could get a ride with you.”

She didn’t say anything.

After a few seconds of silence, Colin spoke again. “You know I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of you driving—”

“I don’t fly, Colin,” she said, cutting him off.

“Yes, I know that, but I don’t like that you’re driving alone. And if I didn’t have so many groomsman obligations down there this week, you know I’d drive down with you. But now Chase can go with you, so it works out for everyone.”

“I don’t need anyone to drive with me. I don’t want anyone to.”

It was his turn to be silent, and Andie chewed the inside of her lip, realizing she sounded like a petulant child. To Colin, her reaction probably seemed completely irrational and bratty; he had no idea that she didn’t like Chase. In his mind, he was just asking her to do a favor for a friend, a favor he thought would help her out in the process. And while she could explain to him how she felt about Chase, as the words played out in her mind, they seemed so petty and immature now.

What could she say? He was sarcastic with me? He made fun of me for locking myself in the wine cellar? He asked me if I was a real blonde?

There was no good reason for her to say no. She was cornered, and she knew it.

“Sorry,” Andie said sheepishly. “You’re right. It’s probably better for me to have someone with me.” She nearly choked on the lie. “We can drive down together if he wants.”

“Great!” Colin said, the smile back in his voice. “This makes me feel so much better, Andie. You guys will have fun. Plus, he’ll throw in for gas, and now you’ll have some company.”

“Great,” she said with feigned enthusiasm, immediately changing the subject so he wouldn’t hear the displeasure in her voice. “What time is your flight tomorrow morning?”

“Ten.”

“Alright, so we should probably leave here around seven. Are you on your way over?”

“I have to finish up a few things, get everything in order for when I’m gone this week. Give me about an hour.”

“Okay. I’ll have dinner ready.”

“I love when you get all June Cleaver.”

Andie laughed, forgetting for the moment how irritated she was.

“Alright, get back to your invoices. I’ll see you in a bit. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she said.

She felt her irritation give way to guilt as she ended the call, staring at her computer screen, at the “invoices” she was working on. Colin had no idea she was writing a novel. She hadn’t told him. It just seemed like such a fanciful thing to do, to devote hours of her time to something that, as of right now, was nothing more than a glorified hobby. She could be doing so many other worthwhile and productive things with her free time. And while there were moments she felt guilty over being deceitful about it with her boyfriend of a year and a half, she always rationalized by focusing on the fact that she hadn’t told anyone, so it wasn’t like she was specifically excluding Colin.

Andie sat back against the couch and rubbed her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands. “Damn it,” she said as she pushed the computer off her lap, grabbing the mug from the coffee table as she stood.

She went into the kitchen and made herself another cup of tea before returning to her spot on the couch, taking a slow slip as she tried to get back into the frame of mind she was in only moments before. But even as she pulled the laptop back onto her thighs, Andie knew it was pointless. The moment was gone.