Page 6 of Save the Drama for your Mama
He turned and glared at me, shaking his head in disgust, like I had been the one in the wrong. Me! What was wrong with this guy?
I marched back inside to the front counter and calmly asserted, “Abigail—that man is scribbling in your books.”
She glanced over at him, then back at me. “Yeah—I know. He does that occasionally.”
I jerked my head back. “Why aren’t you doing anything?”
“Well, he—”
I kept my voice low. “Call the authorities. Now.”
Abigail laughed. “That won’t be necessary.”
“What? Why not?”
The perpetrator approached and handed a piece of incriminating evidence to Abigail. “Thanks for letting me borrow the pen.”
Borrow the pen?!
“You’re welcome,” she said, all bright and cheery, like he hadn’t committed the most heinous of all crimes.
He glared at me again, then disappeared out the front door, down the sidewalk, and out of view.
“What is happening here, Abigail?” I asked, still staring out the window, even though he was gone.
She giggled. “I tried to tell you earlier when I said I had inside information. That was Cooper Galloway.”
“Cooper . . .”
“You know . . .” She pointed back over to the stack of books. “The author ofThe Daredevil’s Redemption.Son of Sandra Galloway, the mystery author?” She pointed to the shelf full of Sandra’s books. “Anyway, I asked him to sign the copies we had in stock.”
I blinked, at a complete loss for words. The author himself had been signing copies of the very book I had criticized as garbage. The weight of my embarrassment was suffocating.
“You don’t look so hot,” Abigail said. “Do you want some water?”
“No, but a hole to crawl into would be lovely.” I turned to leave, but then paused and spun back around. “He’s not, by chance, a local, is he?”
Abigail shook her head. “His mom was, but I think he lives in San Francisco.”
That was good to know. This little episode might take a while for me to get over, but there was a silver lining to my embarrassment. At least I would never see Cooper Galloway again.
ChapterTwo
COOPER
I headed down Orange Avenue on foot toward our family estate, my thoughts consumed by that dangerously unbalanced woman back at the bookstore.
What on earth had possessed her to believe that I would want to engage in a dead-end discussion aboutPride and Prejudice? Or any discussion at all, for that matter? I barely had enough time to mediate the lively conversations going on inside my head.
That being said, if I looked past her borderline insanity, I had to admit that her fiery personality had somewhat impressed and intrigued me. Strong, opinionated women had always been my weakness. I had even enjoyed the verbal sparring, but what dazzled me the most was that she held her ground, despite the fact that she was misinformed.
Beautiful, but clearly unhinged.
At the moment, though, I needed to concentrate on something much more important than Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.
My overdue manuscript.
I had a story waiting to be completed and a publisher breathing down my neck. Which was why I was back in Coronado. I was confident that spending some time in the house that had been in the family for three generations would give me the inspiration I needed to finish the book.
