Page 54 of Bitter Heat

“So be it.”

He shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go inside.”

She didn’t move. “I don’t know if…”

His expression hardened. “You don’t have a choice. If you want a divorce, I can make it happen, but you give me what I want.”

“For me to visit you?” She shook her head, unable to believe that was his condition. She and her father didn’t have a relationship and she was wary of getting close to him. “Why?”

“I’m a sick and miserable old man… and a terrible father. You went easy on me in your book.”

She swallowed hard.

“I still have time,” he said quietly. “I can change our story, and it would be nice to have company.”

“You want me around?”

He scowled. “Didn’t I just say so?”

“Um, I guess…”

“You guess what?” he asked impatiently.

She gave him a tremulous smile. “I-I guess we can start with visits?”

He gave a curt nod and started back to the house. She walked behind him before she noticed his awkward gait. She paced at his side, watching him closely, ready to reach out if he needed help.

“A lot has changed,” she said.

“Karma caught up to me,” he said grumpily. “My doctor said I shouldn’t have survived my second stroke so I was forced to retire. Now I have too much time on my hands, which has forced me to reflect on other aspects of my life I failed in. I hate it.”

She bit her bottom lip. “You… you actually read the book?”

“Yes.”

She waited for him to continue, but when he didn’t, she prompted, “And?”

One side of his lips curved into a smile. “You have more of me in you than I thought.”

Chapter 9

Jasmine stared out of the twenty-five-foot lead-glass windows at Tuxedo Lake. It was a beautiful morning without a cloud in the sky. The glass-like surface of the water reflected the orange leaves on the trees. Even though her surroundings were serene, she was anything but. She sat in the corner of the massive couch, chin on her knee, as she contemplated her dilemma.

The book wasn’t going well. Was it even a book if the damn thing consisted of a few scenes and no storyline? The highly anticipated fifth book in her bestselling series had a tentative release date several months from now. She had written the first chapters when Maximus had his stroke. After the funeral, she tried to pick up where she left off, but the idea she wanted to pursue no longer held any appeal. She tried sketching out new ideas, but nothing worked so she gave up and took Kaia up on her offer to visit.

Jasmine’s lip curled as she reached for her coffee and sipped. Going to Colorado had fucked with her head even more. Despite her best efforts, that fucker had crept into her mind. It didn’t help that his character was actuallyinthe fucking story, and she had to give him some kind of resolution. The only sendoff she wanted to give him was a bloody one. She actually wrote a scene where he was “accidentally” killed off. It made her feel marginally better, but if she tried to nix him, her fan base would freak out. Maybe it would help if she wrote in a scene where he revealed his vasectomy? Then her fans would understand the heroine’s mindset when she shoved him off a cliff. She set the cup down, picked up her pencil, and tipped it back and forth on the empty pages of her notebook. Why hadn’t she written Roth out of the series after she and the character divorced him? Because the damn readers loved his ass, that’s why. They thought he was redeemable. He wasn’t, and she wouldn’t let them talk her into giving him a good ending. If she couldn’t kill him, he had to exit stage left as soon as possible… Maybe a crazed hooker would take him off her hands.

The fact that her real life heavily influenced the series had fucked her up royally. In book four she reconciled with her father and peppered that with some fictional sexcapades. And now what? The heroine reunites with her father who then dies? That was a downer. No one wanted to read that shit.

She had been back at Tuxedo Park for three weeks and hadn’t gotten past chapter one. Logic told her to give the heroine a happy conclusion that was complete and utter fiction, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t write happy shit when her soul was black, tattered, and dripping blood. Everyone expected the series to have a happily ever after. It was expected since it started as a romance but… not everyone got HEAs.Shedidn’t. Yes, she got her childhood home and was now rich enough to buy a country, but was she happy? Fuck no. But she also couldn’t ruin the whole series by writing a realistic ending either. She rubbed her temples. Reading was about escapism. It was why she had fallen in love with books as a child. She couldn’t do that to her readers. No one wanted to see a character they had been rooting for give up at the end. So what the fuck was she going to do? She had already sent out a newsletter explaining there would be a delay in the release due to some personal issues and a family death. There was an outpouring of support but also some snarky and irritated emails from fans who had been waitingforever. Everyone wanted closure. So did she. She just didn’t know what that meant.

She got to her feet. Another day with no journal entry or sketch. Oh, well. She turned to face her sanctuary and paused to savor the way the morning light lit up her favorite room in the house. The library was straight out ofBeauty and the Beastwith two fireplaces, its own stone terrace, and a second-level reading nook with ladders that went up the ceiling. Left to her own devices in a world where she had no one, it was no wonder she had become a book lover. She lost herself in stories to escape the real world, which was frequently unkind. She started writing at eight years old and secretly submitted her work to publications and magazines. Everyone turned her down and rightly so. She was a novice and still learning. She wrote throughout school and self-published her first book at twenty under the pen name, Minnie Hess. Back then, she had been proud of her accomplishment and told her family, who had been less than impressed. Despite lackluster sales, she continued to write and gathered a small fan base as she wrote romance and fantasy. It wasn’t until she blew up her life and married Roth that she really had something to write about… and write it she did. It was ironic that writing their story as Thalia Crane gave her the money she needed to leave him.

She walked out of the library with her coffee cup in hand and entered the massive kitchen that had its own fireplace. She refilled her cup and grabbed a protein bar. Once she was back in the library, she climbed the stairs to the second story, which she had claimed as her office. She told Thea to take some time off in the hopes that being completely alone would prod her muse.

She tapped her pencil on the empty page again. She was following the same routine that had churned out two bestsellers. Coffee, write in her journal to cleanse her mental palate, sketch out some ideas, then write. But nothing happened. Her fingers didn’t type. They hovered over the white keys, immobile. For the first time in her life, there were no words. Words were the only thing she had been able to count on, and now even they had deserted her.

She forced herself to type. She wrote even though she knew the words on the screen would be deleted. It wasn’t right. Nothing was right, and she didn’t understand why. There was nothing to worry about. She had a home, no financial worries, and things were better than they had ever been with her sisters. Last week, Ariana, Rami, and the kids came out for the weekend, and they had a great time. Colette had texted her a couple of times and even called her once to see how she was doing. There was no word from Roth. He couldn’t contact her, but still… Neither Colette nor Ariana brought him up, and that was good. If only she didn’t have to deal with him in her story, everything would be peachy.

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