“They’re not really journals,” she admitted. “They’re...stories. Like...novels. Sort of. And I carry ’em around with me because I can’t help myself. I had five nosy big brothers. If I didn’t want them making fun of me, I learned not to leave them lying around. It’s a habit I can’t break.” And then she braced herself.
But he didn’t mock. Didn’t laugh. “What are sort-of novels?”
She made a face. “Ones that I start but never finish?”
He lifted the bag as if judging its weight. “How many?”
“Six.”
“That was a loose-leaf binder. You write in longhand?”
“Yes.”
“Why not a computer? A laptop or a tablet? Would weigh a lot less than all those binders.”
“Yeah, but there’s something satisfying about a pen on paper.”
He grinned. “What do you do when you want to change what you’ve written? Wouldn’t pencil be better?”
“Probably, but I think better with a pen.” She shrugged self-consciously. “It’s just my thing.”
He squeezed her shoulders. “Your process is your process. What do you write about? What kind of novels?”
“Just...stuff.” She could feel the look he gave her and stopped to examine a table filled with screen-printed T-shirts as if they were positively fascinating.
“Stuff, she says cagily,” he said. “Now you’ve really got me curious.” He leaned down until he was looking over her shoulder, his chin touching her shoulder. “What secrets are you keeping, Arabella Fortune?” His deep voice caressed her ear.
Her knees went to mush. “A couple mysteries,” she admitted faintly. “Fantasies. A bunch of children’s stories. And—” She slid a look toward him, feeling engulfed by the warmth in his green gaze so close to her own.
“And?”
“And a romance,” she finished in a rush.
But again, he didn’t laugh. Instead he just straightened with a smile. “That’s quite a variety. Are those the genres you also like to read?”
“I like to read everything,” she admitted.
“Looks like they do, too.” He picked up one of the shirts so the printed front was visible. Two skeletons wearing sunglasses and holding books in their hands reclined on chaise lounges in the shade of a cactus. It’s a dry heat was printed below them.
“We’re having a special on tees today.” A bubbly girl quickly moved from her chair deep in the shade of a market umbrella. “Buy one, get two free.” She tugged proudly at the white T-shirt she was wearing that had the words I’d give it all up for Jett Carr splashed across her breasts. “Have a whole new batch of these in. We sold out of them last weekend.” She turned around briefly to show them the back, which had a black-and-white image of the bearded singer’s profile, and smiled brightly over her shoulder at Arabella. “What do you think?”
Arabella smiled ruefully and shook her head. “Pass.”
Jay made a sound that sounded vaguely choked. “Not even cactus and bony readers?”
She gave them both an apologetic shrug. “Not in the market for T-shirts today, I’m afraid.” She folded the skeleton shirt and placed it neatly atop the small stack of them. “Good luck with your sale, though.”
Even before they moved away from the booth, they’d been replaced by two other shoppers—both women—who screeched a little excitedly over the Jett Carr shirt the seller was wearing.
Arabella shook her head. “I don’t know what they find so exciting about that singer.”
Jay laughed and kissed her on the head. “Me, either.” He dropped his arm over her shoulder again and they fell into step once more. “How often do you write?”
He was still talking about her books. As if they were actually something to be taken seriously. “Most every night. Sometimes it’s only a paragraph or two.”
“Isn’t that how books get written? A paragraph or two at a time?” He squeezed her shoulder. “Why d’you suppose you haven’t finished any of them?”
“I guess because I get another idea that I think’ll be better, and so I abandon what I’m doing and start all over again.” The latest were the children’s stories that she’d started working on when Brady had become guardian to Toby and Tyler.
“Do you have a favorite?”
“I’ve never thought about it.” She did then, briefly, and shrugged. “I don’t have one.”
“Is that why you keep toting around even the ones that you abandoned in favor of the next greatest idea?”
“No, I keep toting them around because one day, maybe I’ll finish one of them.”
“Then they’re not really abandoned, are they? They’re just hanging out, waiting for some sunshine to start growing again.”
He stopped and she realized they’d reached Mariana’s food truck. The picnic tables that had been vacant earlier were all now occupied and the line at the window was even longer than it had been earlier. The tinny music that had been playing before was still going strong, though the volume had been turned up.
“Waiting for some sunshine.” She looked up at him. “That sounds a lot better than that I can’t bring myself to throw them away because it feels like admitting failure.”
“Nothing creative is a failure.”
A short laugh escaped. “Says the insurance actuary.”
He grinned. “Former insurance actuary. I didn’t last long.”
“I thought you went into that straight out of college.”
“I did.” They’d reached the end of the line at Mariana’s truck.
“What’d you do after that?”
He didn’t answer and she looked up and followed his gaze toward the quaint carts filled with fruits and vegetables where Mariana was holding court, talking to a young woman with a mic while a brawny guy nearby wielded a television camera. “Looks to me like she’s too busy to be making fry bread tacos.”
“Looks that way to me, too.” Jay turned to face her and settled his hat more firmly as he studied the line they’d joined. “No wonder it’s not moving. What say we take a rain check on the fry bread until next weekend and raid my grandmother’s kitchen instead? Sound good?”
So he expected to see her next weekend.
She beamed. “Sounds perfect.”
Chapter Ten
Louella was not home when they arrived
