Page 37 of Merry Mended Hearts

No. That would defeat the whole purpose. I’d just have to find a way to give this to Grace before I left for the cottage. And with the sun setting as early as it did, that had to be sooner rather than later.

GRACE

I was in the zone.Sitting on the armchair in the inn’s living room, with the fire crackling and the inn’s designated “Social Hour” going, I essentially had the room to myself.

My feet were propped on the footstool. Lights beamed on the elaborate Christmas tree beside me. And inspiration flowed like loose shingles off a roof in a windstorm.

Demon Boone had dark hair, a pointed nose, and a sinister laugh, which he directed at anyone foolish enough to not understand his impressive wit and sly, evil schemes. After he rescued the damsel from the fae clan who’d abducted her, in an epic plot twist, he revealed himself to be the wicked one.

Cue wicked laughter.

He’d bargained with the enemy fae clan, convincing them he’d have their backs once they abducted the princess. But—and this part made me want to twist my mustache and tap my fingers together at the sheer genius of it—he only used them as scapegoats to make himselflookheroic in order to win the princess’s favor.

And now that he had her in his clutches, his inner darkness was revealing itself. He stormed his snowy castle, spewing expletives and evil curses at servants and condemning the heroic fae hero with pointed ears and an affinity for trouble but who would turn out to be the princess’s true hero.

It was fantastic. The surge of inspiration made me feel like I was glowing on the inside with ideas. This was going to be good. So good. So much better than my first manuscript, which I often referred to as The One That Got Away.

I didn’t have a name for this villain. In the earlier pages, I called him Shiv. But now, I’d resorted to calling him Demon Boone.

No rejections would come on this one, no sirree. I could feel it with every word that clacked out from my fingertips and filled the white space on my screen. My word count climbed higher and higher, ticking up like a victory banner on its way to fifty thousand words.

“Hey, there, Grace,” Junie said, peeking in.

I concentrated, not wanting to let go of the last threads of delicious banter my characters were engaging in. Finally at a stopping point, I peered up.

Junie smirked from the entryway. Instead of the sweater and jeans she’d worn earlier, she was in gray pajamas with pink snowflakes on them, and her curly brown hair hung past her shoulders instead of in their braids. The combination made her look much older than she usually did.

It made me wonder how old she really was. Twenty-five?

“Hi, Junie. How did the rest of your day go?”

She padded farther into the room on stocking feet and nestled into the chair across from me.

“Oh, great. So great. Just trying to keep things together the best that I can, you know? What about you? I assume things went okay taking the box out.”

“Not exactly,” I said, placing my hands on either side of my laptop. “I mean, I got it out to him all right, but?—”

“Let me guess. He was less than friendly.”

“Something like that.” I smiled to lessen my irritation.

Writing Demon Boone was also more therapeutic than I realized. I had a wretched ending for him in mind once the heroine got to the climax.

No spoiler alerts or anything, but she was going to take himdown.

“Don’t take it personally,” Junie said, her knees bouncing as if she had excess energy. “We’re working on his PR. It’s just that Boone’s had things a little rough. Not saying there’s an excuse for his behavior, and if he were anyone else, I would have fired him by now. But he’s family.”

“I get that,” I said, not wanting to let my desire to know more about him take over.

I’d suspected as much. In fact, I was aching—okay, dying—to ask what kind of rough things Boone Harper was dealing with to make him so snappish. It wasn’t like I was always a ray of sunshine, especially not when things were going wrong. Maybe I’d just caught him at a bad time.

Three times in a row?

Hm. I started to rethink that.

I wasn’t going to go easy on him. He was a villain—and he was going to stay that way.

“I can’t tell you how awesome it was for you to offer to help me.”

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