Grizzly - Bundle Parts 1-3 by Emerald Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

(all the while)
    I don't need nobody
I don't need the weight of words
To find the way
To crash on through
    I don't need nobody
I just need to learn the depth
Or doubt of faith to fall into
    You are all I need
When the water runs deep
You're all I need
Now I cry my soul to sleep
You're all I need
    You are all I need
You are all I need
You are all I need
     

Chapter Seven
    (( 7 ))
    CASSIDY
     
    I was going crazy. It had been two days since the night that Abe stayed over and baby-sat me through my get-out-of-jail-and-get-drunk fest. There had only been a few brief emails between us, him focusing on and confirming small details that mattered to his edit on my shifter book.
    Other than that, he’d said nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No mention of our amorous ending to the evening.
    Which made me worry.
    Was he no longer interested?
    All my usual insecurities were rising up and haunting me. That I’d possibly misinterpreted his interest. That he’d had some time to think about it and had thought better of it. Or maybe he’d decided that he didn’t like women who punch men at the gym while swimming, who then call a near-practical stranger to come bail them out of jail for five thousand dollars?
    Whatever the case might be, I was a bit of a nervous wreck. The more I thought about him, the more I liked him. And it wasn’t just his bedazzling looks. Nope, he had an amazing personality, a genuine warmth about him. He cared about people. He was a good guy. More than just a guy. There was a graciousness about him that was hard to put my finger to.
    A gentleman.
    That’s what he was. A gentleman.
    And that was refreshing. I’d never wanted for attention from men, despite what common knowledge and the media would have you believe. Nope, I could have gotten laid ten times every night if that was what I wanted or was about. But it wasn’t and like any woman my age, I was seeking something more emotionally satisfying.
    A long-term relationship. A deeper connection.
    So, exasperated that forty-eight hours could crawl by and feel like weeks, I decided I needed to refocus my energy and my thoughts. I didn’t want to come across as desperate, although sometimes I felt like I was. It’s hard to say these days what a woman feels from one day to the next, when it comes to men, sex and intimacy, right? We’ve all been there.       
    I dragged an old manila accordion file out of my office storage cabinet. I slipped off the thick, wide rubber-band that was holding everything in place and carefully pulled out the contents.
    It was my novel. My attempt at the great American novel . The one I’d started a long while ago and had been afraid to start working on again.
    Pulling it out, feeling the aged paper, looking at the title page, my real name as the author name instead of a pseudonym, and feeling the weight of the three hundred plus pages I’d written.
    It pulled me back in time. When I’d been both more naïve and more optimistic. So there I sat, breathing in that sort of ‘off’ but pleasant at the same time, old paper, thinking about what I’d been like at the age I wrote it.
    Funny how a handful of years can make such a difference. I felt so much more seasoned, like it was an entirely different person who wrote this novel. Since I’d distanced myself from it, I was eagerly looking forward to reading it. A re-read.
    Then doing revisions and rewrites.
    It was my hope that my fast-paced writing in the shifter fiction genre had trained me to be a better writer. That my review and editing eye would be able to attack the novel and make it a more appealing and marketable book.
    I loved being both the businesswoman and author. An authorpreneur , if you will. The two sides of me complimented the other. The business savvy it took to be an author was mind-boggling nowadays. In the end, I was lucky if I simply got to write forty to fifty percent of the time since so much of my other time was tied up in business matters having to do with