Taming the Author

21: Be Patient

I spent the following days hounding Loramina.

Matthew and Helena were more than happy to let me stay in their house for two weeks. Since I wasn't there for a vacation, though I had to admit I would have wanted my stay there to be one, I made the arrangement to keep an eye on Loramina.

Losing her once was enough... And that just sounded wrong, didn't it?

Anyway, my author didn't mind my stay and to her credit, she left me chapters to work on every two days. I was a happy editor.

But she frequently asked permission from Matthew and Helena to go on trips around the property alone. And since I was there to prevent her from getting stuck in a tree like a kitten, I did my best to tag along with her.

—Even to the point of pissing her off, which did not bother me at all. What could a midget with a scrunched up nose and pouting lips do to me? She could yell, sure but that was it. She couldn't hurt me or at least, she hadn't tried.

I figured it was because she owed me her life. She wouldn't be loitering around again if it wasn't for me after all.

But that fact, as you may have already predicted, was not enough to keep her quiet and obliging to my stalking whims. And that was why we were there at the edge of the woods in another staring contest - something we happened to resort to when we were close to engaging a heated argument.

"You're squinting," I said, calmly looking at her narrowed brown eyes.

"I'm not," she replied.

"You just blinked."

"I did not!"

"There it was again."

"There was what again?! I did not blink!"

I quickly snapped my fingers in front of her and proudly watched her eyes close in reflex.

"Cheater!"

"You blinked," I said, blinking too. We had been at it for several minutes so my eyes needed to regain its moisture.

She rolled her eyes and turned around, marching away from me. I, of course, followed her.

We were several paces across the woods when she turned around.

"Don't you have a chapter to edit?" she snapped.

"So that's why you've been giving me chapters regularly," I said.

But I already had a hint that she had been giving me something to do so I wouldn't be able to bother her. It came to a point where I became suspicious about her claim of continuously writing her novel. It was more like she had actually finished the entire book and she was just delaying the inevitable by staggering her submission.

Either she was still adding details here in there in the chapters she had written, or she was trying to keep me away from her trips.

Fat chance!

She sighed and turned around. "I was trying to catch up with the deadline," she said, marching away from me. "That's why you're here, right?"

"I'm also here to make sure you don't disappear," I answered, following her. "Like last time."

"That was a one-time thing!" she argued. "Don't you trust me?"

"Nope," I answered, making sure I sounded happy.

She groaned. "Fine," she said. "But catch up! I'm not going to wait for you."

"Catch up?" She was just walking in front of—