Sweetly Isolated (The Swallow Barn Cottage Series, Book 1)

That's How We Roll

Author's Note:

I doodled John the Furry Menace Holyoake :P He looks like a mix of Richard Armitage and Henry Cavill in my head, but feel free to imagine him whichever way tickles your pickle XD

K. xx

P. S. I post my doodles on my Instagram (kkolmakov), if you're curious.

***

When she thought that taking a bath post-bearman-invasion would be the hardest, she had been cruelly mistaken! It was crawling into her bed and discovering that she should've washed the sheets and it was too late now and she was conking out but simply couldn't settle - that was the worst!

While he'd been purring and murmuring and laughing warmly in the hall, she'd hurriedly gobbled up his pilaf - damn his cooking skills! - then she'd gotten him sheets and a duvet out of her linen closet, dropped them on the sofa, and gone back to her study. Normally, she'd read or do research before bed, but she was on chapter ten, so she'd written for a couple more hours until she started nodding off right at her desk. So, she brushed her teeth, changed into her pyjamas - and now she lay, stiff and tense, her nose full of the aroma of his cologne. And plus, she could hear him move somewhere in the house! He was quiet, didn't bang any doors or anything - but she knew he was there! She'd locked the bedroom door by the way, and even considered pushing a chair under the door handle... but there was an issue with moving objects in her room to an unusual place. Tina sleepwalked. Hers was a pretty safe somnambulism: she mostly sleep-snacked - she had the so-called SRED - and sometimes would turn on her computer and press random buttons on the keyboard, but never tried to wander off. Except, she was definitely under an unusual amount of stress at the mo. Goddess knows, what she'd be up to in the middle of the night!

The stupid cirtusy and spicy fragrance was on her pillows and her sheets, and she turned and tossed... and started thinking about August. Ugh. Tina hated thinking about August. Her thoughts started moving along the familiar route. Oh, what a bloke he was, that August Anderson. So hot, so clever. So hot when he was clever. Oh how much he helped poor Tina to start her writing career. Oh, how cleverly he suggested she used a pen name. And the next step, of course, was that painful 'Oh, how awkward it was to date a bloke properly out of her league' feeling. Here her thoughts did the usual detour into the 'it didn't take much to be out of Tina Popplewell's league' rant. And then of course she started recalling the cold and precise - like a surgical incision - way he'd broken up with her. And the excruciatingly long list of reasons he'd given her. And now it was time to breathe mindfully and go through all the mantras and affirmations that her therapist had given her. And then she, of course, reminded herself that she now had an excellent literary agent instead of August, and how Liv Stardome took such a great care of her, and how many bestsellers Tina had written since then. And that she was a brill writer - even if she was complete rubbish as a girlfriend. Even August had always said that she was better than Jack Richards and John Barnett. It was never a competition for Tina, by the way. No matter the impression her pen name could give, she wasn't a man. She just wanted to be good. And she enjoyed Richards' and Barnett's writing, even though the latter wasn't gorey enough for her.

Tina rolled on her back and sighed. Her current situation was like an absurd parody on the last night August had spent in her rented flat all those years ago. He'd finished his 'break-up statement' over pudding of their Christmas Eve dinner, and announced that a cab would come and pick him up in the morning to take him to the airport, and then he'd said he'd sleep on the sofa. And she'd been lying in her bed, just like she was right now, staring at the ceiling, trying not to listen to a man moving in her lounge - and failing. It had been a different sofa then - but, as Tina suddenly thought, it had been a tad larger than the new one. The last thing he'd said to her the next morning was that he's spent an awful night. And she'd of course - like the thick cow that she was - daftly hoped for a moment he'd meant he'd changed his mind and he'd take her back. And he'd said her sofa was too small, and his back hurt - and then he'd picked up his luggage and left.