He paused, fingers frozen above the keyboard, as the next set of images began to form. He continued to type, describing how she stretched, her muscles stiff and unfamiliar after so long, how she wobbled to her feet like a new-born foal. But as she’d raised herself to full height, something had happened. Strength came, filling her with purpose. She turned and looked at a dark and difficult path that led between the trees. She was about to go somewhere. She was about to leave her sleepy woodland glade.

Brody took his hands from the keyboard and pushed himself back from the desk. The sentence he’d been writing was only half completed, but he found he didn’t want to scoot the chair forwards again to finish it. He didn’t want to know where this woman who wasn’t an elf was going to go.

He spun his chair around and stood up. Time to take a tea break. There was no point pushing himself so hard he just locked up again. Besides, it was always good to leave a chapter or a scene half done. That way he wasn’t starting from nothing the next time he sat down to write. It had been a technique he’d used many a time when this had been his career. Nothing wrong with that. Tomorrow, he could just pick up the threads and carry on.

He made it look casual, even to himself, but he took great care not to make eye contact with the little wooden woman on the other side of the room as he turned and left the study.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

‘SORRY, BUT THE person you’ve called isn’t available at the moment…’

Anna tapped at her phone screen to end the call. That was the sixth time she’d gone straight through to Gabi’s voicemail since getting home from work. It was most frustrating. Did Gabi have a job she didn’t know about? It wasn’t unusual for her to get last-minute bookings, but she wasn’t usually incommunicado for forty-eight hours. Anna hadn’t talked to her since just before her ‘big night’ with Lee on Saturday, and now it was Monday evening. She was starting to get worried.

Unlike Gabi, Anna hadn’t been hopeful that Lee was about to propose, but that didn’t mean it was all doom and gloom, either. He might have wanted to ask her to go on a fantastic holiday, or move in with him, but as time crept on, Anna was beginning to think this was less and less probable.

Or maybe she was just being paranoid? Lee and Gabi could be snuggled up somewhere in a newly engaged bubble of love, having forgotten the rest of the world existed.

She put her phone down on the sofa cushion and stood up, thinking it was about time she started the jambalaya she intended to cook for herself that night.

However, she was only two steps away when her phone rang, and she stopped and twisted to check the caller ID. Gabi! She dived for her phone and brought it up to her ear. ‘Hey there!’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘What’s the news?’