Chapter 13

* * * *

A little after four o’clock I found my rhythm and the story started to flow in me like a frozen stream beginning to thaw. I pounded out a half dozen pages at a furious pace, time slipping away from me in my inspired haze. I didn’t hear the car pull up into the drive or the steps on the porch, the opening of the door. “Curt?” Lee called out, his voice barely breaking through my fevered mind. “We’re home.”

“Be right down,” I told him as I finished up the sentence I was on. My head ached with the rest of the story, words forming themselves into paragraphs of thought inside my head, aching to spill out into the keyboard. Vaguely, I heard the heavy thud of luggage set on the floor, a low conversation in clipped tones that I couldn’t understand, my lover on the steps.

Saving my work, I clicked off the computer just as Lee entered the study. “I’m coming,” I said.

He took in my flushed cheeks, the excitement in my eyes, and his frown disappeared. “I love to see you like this.”