Sugar on the Edge (2 page)

Casey pins me with a huge smile and says, “I’ll do that. Her name is Savannah Shepherd. I’ll have her call tonight.”

I nod at Casey and turn away from her, walking back into my house and straight down to the entertainment suite, where I pull out the bottle of Scotch and pour myself a “welcome home” drink.

Just a mere hour later, and I am fully unpacked in my new home. All I had was two suitcases of clothes, and a box of office supplies that I had shipped over from my flat in London. I pour another two fingers of Scotch in my empty tumbler, which is actually a plastic glass with a big, pink flamingo on it that I found in the cupboard, and take a sip as I sit down behind my desk. The office chair creaks and moans, causing me to make a mental note to get a new chair. This one will drive me nuts if it makes this much noise.

Reaching over into the almost-empty box of office supplies, I pull out the last item in there. The only piece of decor that I had shipped over.

The small frame feels light in my hands. As I turn it over to see the picture inside of it, I’m wholly unprepared for the sharp stab of pain in the center of my chest. I haven’t seen this picture in over two weeks, and it opens up a fresh wave of longing and bitter feelings. I take another sip of the Scotch, willing the peaty burn to start numbing my mind and my heart as it slides down my throat. I gently set the picture on my desk in front of me.

Reaching out, I rub an index finger lightly over the glass and swallow hard so as to prevent the buildup of tears that will often hit me when I stare at Charlie’s picture. It’s my favorite one of him… taken just a few weeks after he turned two. He’s sitting on the front porch of our house in Turnbridge Wells, a midsize town about sixty kilometers from London. Charlie had his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clutching on to his favorite stuffed animal… a ridiculous-looking, bright blue octopus. He’s smiling big, his little baby teeth winking at me, while his blue eyes sparkled in the morning sun. I remember he was smiling so big because I was dancing around and making a fool of myself while Amanda snapped pictures. It took almost no effort on my part to get Charlie to smile and giggle, but I always hammed it up hard around him. It was just my thing as a dad.

I can almost feel his soft, brown hair on my fingertips if I think hard enough. My favorite times were when he’d lay across my lap to watch TV, and I’d stroke his head. He’d never make it very far, often falling asleep within minutes, and then I was free to just watch his tiny chest rise and fall with every breath he took.

I miss him so bad that I ache in my bones, and it’s the main reason I turn to my good friend, Macallan, to help numb the pain.

Speaking of which, I lift the plastic glass to my lips and swallow the rest of the smoky liquor down in one huge swallow. My eyes burn in response, but then I become gloriously warm all over. Reaching for the bottle, I pour another two fingers and set the glass down, reaching instead for my laptop. I need to check my email before I get too drunk. My agent, Lindie Booth, will want a status update from me to make sure the house closing went off without a hitch. She’s been afraid that I’ll change my mind and head back to London to the life of dark debauchery that I’ve been living for the past several months.

It was actually her idea that I move here. She said my writing wouldn’t survive my lifestyle, and that I needed to get away to craft in peace. She suggested the Outer Banks, having vacationed here herself many times.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s full of shit. Who knows, but here I am.

Lindie is a power hitter in the world of traditional publishing and snapped me up quickly when my last book,
Killing the Tides
, hit number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list. I had self-published it, having spent four years being turned down by every agency and publisher in the United Kingdom and the United States. My brand of dark, paranormal thrillers with a heavy dose of erotica was not something anyone was willing to take a chance on. But apparently, the readers knew something that the big publishers didn’t, and my book stayed on all the major best-seller lists for weeks and weeks.

Just four months after its release, I was represented by Lindie. Three months after that, and I had one of the big five offering me a huge, eight-figure deal for another two books. Even though I was drunk and high as hell when Lindie pitched the deal to me, I recognized it as the money train I had always been waiting for in recognition of my work as a writer. I’m pretty sure I was stoned out of my mind when I signed the contract. In fact, I was pretty tanked when Lindie flew to London to confront me, telling me that I needed to get my shit together, get away from the sordid lifestyle I was living, and move away from the UK so I could concentrate on saving my fledgling career. I agreed to all of those life changes without really having any good lucidity whatsoever.

And, so here I am, in a new country, a new home, with a manuscript that is just about forty-thousand words shy of completion and only two weeks left to finish it.

Staring at the bottle of Scotch before me, I know I’m going to have to set it aside starting tomorrow.

I hope I can set it aside.

I don’t want to, but I need to.

“About time you got home,” Casey says as I step inside the door to the small beach house that we share. It’s almost nine o’clock in the evening, and I’m pooped. No… beyond pooped. I’m utterly exhausted, as I’ve been working since seven this morning.

“I know,” I say, my voice laced with fatigue. “The photo shoot went much longer than I anticipated.”

“And just exactly how much of that time was spent trying to avoid the douche bag’s cheesy come-ons and lame innuendos?”

“A good thirty minutes, at least,” I answer her with a wry grin, but then I give a tiny shudder. I do some contract work with a local portrait photographer and he’s an absolute slime ball, constantly hitting on me in the most inappropriate ways. Unfortunately, I need the job desperately, having just been laid off at the newspaper where I was the staff photographer. The paper couldn’t afford me full time, thus the layoff. At least they promised to contract certain projects to me, but it’s microscopic peanuts compared the regular ones they were paying me.

Heading into the kitchen, I drop my purse on the kitchen table with a thud. Opening the refrigerator, I peruse the contents, but I’m too tired to make anything substantial to eat. So I pull out a bag of carrots and an apple. When I turn back around, Casey is leaning up against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest.

She’s so beautiful that I feel dowdy next to her, but Casey is never one to flaunt herself… at least not around other women. Sure, she’s the biggest flirt when it comes to men, and her motto has always been “love ’em and leave ’em,” but she’s one of the nicest, most down-to-earth women I’ve ever known. I’m so glad we became roommates, because without her added help with the rent, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to stay here.

“What did he do this time?” Casey asks, her eyes narrowing at me.

“The same… casual brush ups against me, dirty comments,” I tell her wearily. “You’d think he’d come up with something original, right?”

“Well, your luck is about to change, girlie,” she tells me with a grin, dropping her hands to rest on the counter at her hips. “I found another house for you to clean… it’s huge and the guy that owns it is super rich. With that, you can leave the douche bag forever.”

I take a bite of a carrot and, with my mouth full, demand, “Tell me more.”

“His name is Gavin Cooke, and he’s kind of weird… well, he’s kind of an asshole. He’s some big-time, British author that moved here to finish writing a book. He needs someone to clean his house a few times a week, and he told me to have you call him.”

Munching and then swallowing the carrot, I consider this. Between the contract work at the newspaper, the part-time work with the douche bag photographer, and the two other houses I clean, it will mean even longer hours for me. I’m barely functioning as it is, and this will mean less sleep and sorer muscles.

Unfortunately, I really don’t have a choice. Between my student loans, living expenses, and the brand new transmission I had to put in my car last month, I barely make enough money to feed myself much more than carrots and apples. On top of that, cleaning houses and hauling camera equipment provides me with too much of a workout for the very few calories I’m able to consume each day, and I’ve lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose.

Still, the alternative isn’t appealing either. If I can’t make it here on my own, my only other choice is to move back home to Clearview, Indiana, and become that weird twenty-five-year-old woman that still lives with her parents. And while my parents are the nicest, sweetest, Midwest couple you can find, my life will absolutely stagnate back home. I worked hard to get out of our little town, so I could travel the world and take photographs of all the wonders I would behold. Granted, I haven’t made it any further than the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but that is practically a world away from my humble upbringing.

Yes, I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to slot another job in. Once I get the transmission work paid for—which, thankfully, Smitty down at the local garage is letting me make payments on—I can ditch the douche bag and have more of a manageable life.

“I’ll call him after I eat my dinner. Do you think it’s too late?”

“Nope. My guess is that as a writer, he stays up late. At least, that’s my impression from when I went to pick him up at his hotel room to have him sign the closing documents and then show him the house. It was around noon, and I’m pretty sure he just rolled out of bed.”

Setting the carrots aside, I pick up the apple and take a bite. It tastes like chalk going down, my interest in food waning over the past several weeks. I’ve been so mired in hard work, coupled with a rising sense of panic that I’m not going to be able to survive on my own, that my appetite has been off.

“I have some leftover pasta in the fridge I made tonight,” Casey says as she eyes me eating the apple. I don’t know what expression is on my face, but I’m guessing she can tell the apple isn’t doing much for me.

“No thanks,” I tell her with a small smile. I’m too proud to take help from her, and even leftover pasta is still charity to me.

“You’re wasting away to nothing, Savannah,” she gripes at me. “You can’t go on much longer like this.”

“I’m fine,” I drawl out with false confidence in my voice. “Like you said… this house cleaning job will be enough to put me in the black on my expenses.”

“You’re not fine,” she practically barks at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re working yourself to the bone. What are you up to now… like three jobs, plus you volunteer every week at The Haven with Alyssa and Brody. You’re hardly eating. Seriously, you’re putting your health in jeopardy.”