A Fresh Start

Chapter 7

Two months later, Grace was exhausted. Oh, she was happy, too, but boy, she was exhausted.

They were in Prague as part of a few talks Alan was doing, and Grace could hardly believe how lovely it was. She had decided within a day that she loved traveling.

Prague was beautiful. It was romantic beyond words. Grace was beginning to feel that it must be the most romantic city in the world, far more so than Paris. It was the perfect place to get lost in, to ramble around, and see even more than you could possibly have imagined.

Now, she was determined to get Alan out of his luxurious suite and go with her. He had been out only for a day, and that had been because he’d had an event.

Grace had the hang of it now. She introduced her husband, set the stage for him, and he would come in and do his prepared talk or his reading. Then she would take over again, apologizing for him for having to rush away.

She had discovered, to her wonder, that people didn’t mind that. They seemed curious about her, and wanted to know more about her, too.

She had had to spend time with Alan, and she had enjoyed every minute of it.

It was surprising, really, how much they had in common. They enjoyed similar books, and had the same silly sense of humor that she would never have expected in Alan from what she knew of his books. The serious author was an entertaining and endearing man.

She had watched Alan spend time with a boy and his dog in a park, and had found her heart swelling with unexpected affection.

Alan had asked her how her mother was doing. He had gone out of his way to speak to Violet on the phone, and she knew that he hated conversations on the phone even more than speaking to people face to face.

In a hundred ways, Alan had shown himself to be a thoughtful man, and a good friend. He had asked her about her work, and respected her choice when she told him that she wasn’t ready to talk to him about it yet.

He had done something that had made her heart turn into mush when he realized her insecurity in that matter. He had given her his very first draft of his very first book – the one with all the edits. The amount of red ink on it had made her giggle.

“You say you admire my work. Well, we need to swallow our pride to do well. That’s a writer’s lot. Look at that. I wanted to kill my editor after I saw that. But she was right. She helped me turn it into a good book. Read it, you’ll see how horrible it was. It was just a huge bunch of words with a good idea and two good characters in it. I had to redo everything. So whenever you’re ready to show it to me, you should know that you have to be willing to deal with something like that. But it will make you better. It made me better.”

That had frightened her, to be honest – an author’s first effort was guaranteed to be that bad? She supposed she had known it. But he was right, she did need to trust enough to let go and take feedback. She could never perfect it. She needed help for that.

But he hadn’t pushed it, and he had helped her by giving her his first draft. She knew how difficult it must’ve been. It was like baring the deepest shame of your soul.

“Why do you still keep it?”

Alan shrugged and smiled.

“It tethers me. I need it. Now, you tether me, too.”

Alan looked a bit aghast at having said that, but Grace had felt her heart soar.

It was the sweetest thing any man had ever said to her, and she held on to that. He cared about her. He was growing to care about her, just a bit.

She made him his favorite meals, and baked him what he liked. He enjoyed her cooking, and told her that she didn’t have to, but he was glad she enjoyed it.

She was beginning to feel like a wife – in all ways but one. It felt like she was pretending, in a bubble.

But now she wanted more. In the most romantic city in the world – she would stick by that claim, come what may – she wanted to go for a walk with her husband. She wanted romance, and she wanted him to want her.

Determined, she knocked on his room, despite the watch on his door.

Alan left a wristwatch on his door knob, to indicate that he was busy.

Grace was beginning to suspect that half the time, it was just an excuse to avoid human interaction, and so it proved. The man was sprawled on the giant king-sized bed and fast asleep.

“Alan!” called Grace, giving him a hard poke in the shoulder.

He mumbled and rolled over.

Grace had discovered that it was nearly impossible to wake him up when he was sleeping.

“I’m reading your draft,” she whispered in his ear.

He sprang awake.

“What!”

Grace stood there, an impish grin on her face.

Alan felt his body go into overdrive. For the last two weeks, he’d been having trouble concentrating. When he did finally sit down to write, he couldn’t think of anything except the luscious beauty who had made her interest in him known frankly and freely – and who was his wife.

From the moment he had seen her, he’d been determined to keep his distance from her on a personal level. They would be friends, companions and colleagues, but there would be no element of attraction between them.

But he’d had to face one very annoying truth: one of the reasons he had chosen Grace for the ‘job’ was his instant reaction to her. He hadn’t meant to factor that into the equation, and he had managed to convince himself that it was irrelevant. Grace had just been the best person for the ‘job’, and she was proving it adequately. She was playing her part admirably.