Gypsy Love: A Gypsy Beach Novel (6 page)

Why did heartbreak and hope have to live so closely together in her beautiful hunter green eyes? It wounded him. He longed to stand and guide her into his arms, to vow to keep her safe. She’d been through so much. He bit his tongue to keep from asking her about her ex. Reminding himself that he wasn’t supposed to know about Chase Masters, his jaw clenched in an effort to keep his knowledge to himself. Why did she have to be so easy to talk to?

“Okay, so you’re all right with me filing to move the hearing to Birmingham, Monday? Your family will be notified. If they’re going to show up to continue their argument, they’ll have to know where to be and when.”

John studied her closely. He didn’t want to do anything to cause her more pain. Determined resolve set her delicate features. She dug deep in that moment. He watched her chest rise and fall in a deep breath as she dipped into a stubbornness he knew had given her the grit to do all that she’d already accomplished. “I’m okay with that. They’ll get over it.” She wanted him to believe that, but John knew better. What he didn’t know was any other way to get her the inheritance she rightfully deserved.

“Think about it over the weekend. If you change your mind, I can try to come up with something else.”

“No, I’m not going to change my mind, and my mother and the bitch trifecta aren’t going to run my life anymore.”

John cracked up. Damn, but she was a spitfire. His cock twitched out its adamant approval. His mind offered him stunning imagery of coaxing out her wild side in his bed. Oh, hell yeah, he was going to do this. “The bitch trifecta?”

Arley giggled again. A melodic sound that heated his blood. “My mom has two sisters. They’re ever of the opinion that they all know how everyone else should run their lives. When I was about sixteen, I nicknamed them the bitch trifecta, but you’re the first person I’ve ever said that out loud to.”

The blood that wound seductively up from the low cut dress and settled in her cheeks had John fighting not to groan from the need to strip her out of that sexy little dress and locate the source of her internal fire.

“Oh, I like it. They sound very aptly named.” He winked at her and watched her delicate neck contract in a harsh swallow.

Her eyes lit a moment later. “A few months ago, my Aunt Ruth said to my face that because I was an author I was incapable of being able to tell the difference in reality and fiction. She basically called me a liar and then deemed herself a saint because her reasoning for my inability to tell the truth was my sinful career. Playing judge, jury, and executioner is their M.O.”

“Damn.” John shook his head. He was stunned. How did she go on with no support? How had she gone on and accomplished what she’d accomplished without her father to jetty the hurricane tides thrown her way? She was the kind of woman that would walk over glass and right through the fire and still smile because she knew she was real. She was somehow a hardcore survivalist wrapped in a beautiful, delicate package. Her heart was certainly wary and her soul weary, but she refused to give in. He’d never seen survival painted so beautifully.

The longing startled him momentarily. He’d never before felt the need to protect someone as adamantly as he felt it with her. He’d always longed to take care of everyone he reached, but this was more. This was different.

“I’m really, sorry, Arley. That’s rough. I think I would have given up.”

“Believe me, I’ve thought about it dozens of times, but then I sit down at my laptop and the characters start talking, and it’s kind of like I transcend all of the crap thrown my way. I used to never feel more alive than when I wrote.”

John’s brow furrowed. “Used to?”

Her blush deepened. “Yeah,” she glanced away uncomfortably, “I think I might have writer’s block. I can’t seem to get anything out lately. It kind of terrifies me.”

Her confession spoke volumes that never took on word. With all of the heartbreak she’d experienced lately, nothing frightened her more than not being able to write. Tapping into her passion allowed her to live, and she was currently being smothered by legalities and familial discord. He wouldn’t allow that. He’d find some way to bring her passion back to her.

“So, do the stories attack you, or do you attack the stories?”

“What?” The slight grin she gave him said she suspected he understood more about writers than she’d originally given him credit for.

“In my experience, successful writers fall into one of two categories. Either the characters attack them, wake them from their sleep, demand that their stories be told. The others go after inspiration, characters, and plots with a club. Both are successful, but you’re usually one or the other.”

Arley’s beautiful smile lit his soul. “Yeah, you’re right. In the beginning the stories attacked me, I guess. I used to make up stories for my sisters when we were growing up. I rewrote lots of books that I read to make them the way I wanted them to be. After I was published, I could hardly keep up with the characters and stories. They came on so fast. In the last year or so, I’ve had to chase more of them down. I guess I was sort of getting burned out. I don’t know.”

“It sounds like the past few months have been rough. And as much as I’m sure you appreciate advice from a lawyer who last wrote a decent sized work his Senior year of college, but have you tried to write something lately that you didn’t want to get published? I just wonder if the stories got harder to hunt when you started writing for a public instead of for yourself.”

“I never really thought of that, but the idea of writing something just for me sounds heavenly. I’m just afraid I can’t write anymore at all.”

“Hey,” John reached and cradled her face in his right hand. He gently lifted her chin until her eyes met his. “You’ve been walking through hell lately, sweetheart. Let me help you get to the other side. You’ll write again. Talent doesn’t just get up and leave. If you have it, it’s there. You just need to relax a little and let it surface again. Trust me.”

“I do.” Arley had no idea why she trusted him, or even how, but in that moment she knew that she was going to trust John for as long as he was willing to stick around. She highly suspected that it was going to end up with her having a permanently broken heart, but she simply couldn’t walk away.
Arley, my beautiful baby girl, if you don’t live fully, never have a broken heart, never experience true pain and true joy, you’ll have nothing to write about.
Her memory offered her a precious gift. Her father’s advice in his own voice. She closed her eyes in an extended blink, just to try to bring his face, aged with wisdom, to the forefront of her mind.

When the waitress returned with their wine and bread, they ordered. Suddenly very anxious to learn everything she could about John Rowan, she leapt back into the conversation with more interest now that they weren’t discussing her family or legal issues.

“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

He shook his head. “Nah, it was just me and my mom growing up. I have a few stepbrothers and a half-sister, but I don’t really know them.”

He tried to cover a note of pain when he explained his family dynamic. Arley sensed that she shouldn’t push, but she wondered what his childhood had been like. She smiled. “This is probably terrible. I swear I’m not an evil person or anything, but sometimes I used to wish that my mom would take my two sisters and go live with one of my aunts, so it would just be me and my dad.”

She’d never admitted that to anyone, and couldn’t believe the ease at which she’d just confessed it to him. “I’ve never said that out loud. I don’t know why I keep telling you my deep, dark secrets.” Her cheeks took on the color of her strawberry blonde hair.

His sexy chuckle eased her trepidation. “I like deep and dark, but if I get the chance to meet any of your relatives, I swear I will never tell anyone about that.”

“Thank you!” She hadn’t laughed at all in the last six weeks, and he’d successfully made her smile and laugh without end. “I’m sure you’ll get to meet some of them at the will hearing thing.” That realization robbed her of her earlier laughter.

“I have a lawyer friend that lives in Tuscaloosa that will have to file the transfer for me, but the will hearing I can handle with no problem. I do want to talk to a few literary lawyers up in New York before I take on your publishers, though. That’s not my field, per se. I don’t think it will be difficult, but I want to make sure you win. I want to cover all of my bases so to speak.”

“So, you handle a lot of wills and crazy family stuff then?”

John smirked. “You hoping your relatives won’t be the craziest I’ve ever encountered?”

“Yes!” She laughed again. It was a sound he was quickly becoming addicted to hearing.

“Well, trust me, you have nothing to worry about. I’ve seen it all. I handle mostly divorces, but I’ve seen my fair share of will and inheritance insanity. Once, I negotiated a bi-weekly custody situation for a ferret and a parakeet that couldn’t stand each other. That’s why the couple was divorcing—so that the pets could live in separate abodes. I’m doubting your family holds a candle to that.”

Arley dissolved in another round of laughter over his story, but the prickly edges of the term
divorce attorney
seemed to pinhole her stomach. Certainly she knew that people got divorced. Heck, she’d written her fair share of second chance romances involving divorcees, but she just didn’t care for the concept that love somehow ended. She preferred to believe that true love had a happy ending always.
Don’t be stupid, Arley. This is real life, not one of your novels.

She distracted herself from his career by watching him cut into his steak. The way his substantial hands tensed when he made methodic work of the meat eased her tension and made her wonder what it would feel like to experience the warmth of his hands on her body.

She wound the long ribbons of pasta covered in a delectable cream sauce up on her fork and speared a scallop on the end before bringing the heavenly mixture to her mouth. A slight moan escaped without her permission. The food and the company somehow fed not just her stomach, but her soul. It had been so long since she’d had anything so delicious.

When she opened her eyes, John was watching her with a decidedly hungry gaze that made her entire body quiver in need. It had been entirely too long since she’d been in bed with anything other than her favorite vibrator. As Chase had never successfully gotten her to orgasm, that made it nearly two years since she’d been satisfied by an actual human being. And never, in her entire life, had someone looked at her like he’d gladly walk away from his rare steak and devour her instead.

“Uh …” her voice shook. His admiring gaze never faltered. “So … uh … law. Lawyer. I mean, how did you decide you wanted to be a lawyer?”
Wow, Arley, that was brilliant. Have you ever had a conversation before?
She tried to shake off her inward mocking. “I mean, how did you decide you wanted to go into family law?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to call him a divorce attorney.

She watched his Adams apple contract as he wiped his mouth. Debate set in his eyes and his lean muscles contracted in a quick tense. With a quick inhalation, he seemed to decide to go on with his story.

She’s basically laid everything out on the line for you. You might as well tell her
. John didn’t really care to dissect the reasons he did anything that he did, but for some reason he wanted to tell her. “Honestly, it was what I said about my mom and me. My dad walked out when I was maybe four or five. He moved to Mobile with his mistress and very conveniently hid any money he ever made. He left her, and she had nothing. She used to work three jobs trying to keep our rent paid and keep me fed. I guess I wanted to stop shit like that from happening. I definitely grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. That’s all we could afford. He ran a motel in Mobile in his girlfriend’s name and funneled all of the money to her. He didn’t marry her until I turned eighteen, so the income never showed up as his.

“Mom didn’t have the money or the knowledge of how to force him to prove any of that. He was, quote unquote, unemployed, and therefore she got nothing.” The hatred shuddered through his body. “When I graduated and got hired on at the firm where I work, I saved everything I made, bought my mom a house and paid for her to go Georgia State. She wants to be a teacher. She’s student teaching this year and should have a job by December. She’s gonna graduate top of her class.”

The pride in his tone and the broad grin that had masked the disdain previously etched his face made Arley’s heart swell. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry, but that’s such a fantastic thing that you did for her.”

He scoffed. “She did everything for me, so that was the least I could do.”

“You’re really completely amazing. Do you know that?” She couldn’t help but gush. He was truly an amazing human being.

“Definitely not amazing, but I do love my mama.”

Arley beamed at him, soothing the bitter ache that discussing his sperm donor always brought on.

“So, tell me, what does Arley Copeland, soon-to-be famous author, like to read?”

She rolled her eyes at what she considered hyperbole, but John knew she was going to be a success. He wouldn’t stop until she was. “Well, I obviously read a lot of romance. Every book you read makes you a better writer. That’s what Daddy always told me, anyway. And I love the happy endings. I want the characters to end up with a happy life at the end. I’m pretty sure that’s what I love most about my genre. But I read classics, too. Nin and Miller are my favorites, just like you said. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice about a thousand times. I love Collette’s descriptions, even if her works occasionally don’t go anywhere.” She wrinkled her tiny adorable nose, and John chuckled. The sudden feeling that he never wanted this conversation to end should have frightened him more than it did.