She almost choked but managed to force a chunk of bread down her throat. “In Fallen Springs?”

“That’s where we are,” he said.

We. As in the two of them? It was lunchtime. He must be referring to Christmas-birthday girl.

“There’s a movie theater,” Lauren struggled to come up with an answer because there wasn’t a ton of nightlife here. “O’Brien’s usually has a band on the weekends. It’s a local bar, mostly where the younger crowd hangs out.”

“What about you? What do you do in your free time?”

Take care of my parents, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She’d tell him the partial truth. “I’m an author by profession. I read a lot.”

He looked at her as if for the first time.

“Seriously?”

Lauren couldn’t help but grin. “Seriously.”

“Anything I would know?”

“Depends on what you like to read,” she said. Suddenly, she didn’t feel so backward, out of place in his presence. After all, she’d written four New York Times best sellers, and she was far from a novice in her profession.

“I read everything from thrillers, legal procedurals, biographies, and sometimes, I’ll give Steven King a read.”

Not bad, she thought.

“Good variety,” she said, then took another bite because she really was hungry. Her soup was cold, but she’d take it back to the store and heat it in the microwave. The last thing she wanted to do was slurp soup in front of this man.

“So you’re hoping to publish a book? That’s quite the undertaking, but admirable,” he stated.

Lauren stopped chewing, slowly turning her stool so that she faced him. Knowing she was being rude, she didn’t care. She continued to stare at him, and as expected, he turned his barstool to face her.

He looked at her, the beginning of a smile tipping up the corners of his mouth. “What?”

“You said ‘hoping to publish a book.’ What makes you think I haven’t already?”

“You would’ve told me,” he replied. “Most authors, at least the ones I’ve met, can’t wait to tell you about their work.”

Okay, I’ll give him that. But he was wrong to assume that just because she didn’t toot her own horn, it didn’t mean she hadn’t published a book or any kind of written word. She could be a poet, for all he knew. Or a horror author. “I keep my professional life to myself.”

“I totally understand,” he said.

Sure he does, she thought. Probably has a car full of drugs just waiting to find a club where he can sell the stuff, getting the kids Brent talked about hooked on some deadly concoction.