The Storyteller's Muse Read online

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ Gabrielle owned up. ‘While Peter was doing his rounds, I sneaked a peek at the story you’re writing.’

  ‘And what did you think?’ Penelope was eager to hear her opinion.

  ‘I loved it so much that I asked Peter if I could be your reader on this one, and he said it would be okay with him, provided you agree?’ Gabrielle finished up hopefully.

  Penelope shot a glance across to Peter, who shrugged, as if to say ‘What was I to do?’

  Penelope could tell Peter liked Nurse Valdez — she hadn’t spent all these years writing books without learning a thing or two about human character. She knew bringing Gabrielle on board would be a good move, for the project and for Peter, but he still seemed a little discomforted. ‘Could you give me a moment to discuss this with my colleague?’ Penelope asked Nurse Valdez, who appeared a little stunned to be denied an immediate answer.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She served them both an uncertain smile and left the room.

  ‘I am so sorry about this —’ Peter began, but Penelope held up a hand to prevent his outpouring.

  ‘Nurse Valdez knows how to get what she wants.’ Penelope liked that about the girl.

  ‘Well, she sure wants in on this book,’ Peter empathised.

  ‘So you think it is the story that motivates her?’ Penelope knew different, but did Peter have a clue?

  ‘Well yes, the story, what else?’ He seemed bemused by the question.

  No, Peter did not have a clue. Penelope chuckled and waved off a response.

  ‘What then?’ he quizzed with amused curiosity.

  ‘Would having Gabrielle as our proofreader be a pleasing scenario for you?’ Penelope got back to the heart of the matter.

  ‘Um,’ he hummed as he considered, scratching his head. ‘Well, if I don’t say yes, she’s going to know I was the one who objected.’ Peter made up an excuse to agree, to cover the fact that he wanted to agree.

  It seemed there was a wee romance developing right under her nose — how exciting! ‘On the other hand, if we tell her yes,’ Penelope ventured, ‘then Gabrielle will know that you endorsed her participation, and that should put you in very good stead with her, don’t you think?’

  Peter’s eyes narrowed, but he could not suppress his grin as he began to catch the old woman’s drift. ‘Are you trying to set me up, Ms Whitman?’

  Peter was shaking his head to the negative, but his grin was constant. ‘If I wanted to —’

  There was a knock on the door and Gabrielle stuck her head in the room. ‘Is this going to take much longer? I’m a really impatient person and I’m dying out here.’

  ‘Sorry, dearie.’ Penelope beckoned her to enter. ‘We got sidetracked on a subplot.’ She winked sideways at Peter, who grinned and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Well, did you decide?’ Gabrielle wondered, bursting to know if she had approval. And that was really what this entire scenario was about, Peter’s approval — Penelope knew this.

  ‘Yes, we did,’ Penelope advised. ‘And we would love for you to be our proofreader.’

  ‘Really?’ Gabrielle clapped her hands together, did a little happy dance and looked to Peter first. ‘Thank you so much.’

  The smile Peter gave her in return confirmed Penelope’s theory of a brewing romance.

  Gabrielle then looked back to Penelope. ‘And thank you, Ms Whitman, for trusting me.’

  ‘I trust you with my life, every day …’ She took up the girl’s hand and patted it ‘. . . and I trust you with my story just as well.’

  ‘I’ve been looking for something to really sink my teeth into.’ Gabrielle squeezed Penelope’s hand, excited.

  ‘We all are, dear,’ Penelope sympathised, and looked to Peter, who was grinning at her; no doubt seeing, for the first time, what a crafty old woman she was — but he didn’t know the half of it. ‘I might get you to help out with some of my Dictaphone work too, as I do most of that during the day when Peter is sleeping,’ Penelope looked back to Gabrielle, ‘I can pay you —’

  ‘You pay me already.’ Gabrielle was quick to wave off the money. ‘But I’ll be happy to help out in any way I can.’

  Gabrielle had not shown the slightest interest in her last book — so why was this project different? There was only one answer. Peter. What Penelope found even more amusing was that she knew that a very sensual tale lay in store and so this editing team promised to be the most intriguing collaboration Penelope had ever had!

  After three days alone to write, Nathaniel had got more work done on his novel than he had managed to accomplish in the last five years. He actually felt like a writer and his work was inspired as a result. Nathaniel had found his muse — it was extraordinary! There was a voice in his head dictating the flow of words, asking him the right questions at the right time and, with a little research, his plot had begun thickening nicely.

  He’d just had a very late dinner and felt ready to take a seat and get cracking on his next chapter when he heard the apartment lift moving. Nathaniel knew that only the tenants of this apartment had keys to access this floor of the building so he figured one of his flatmates was dropping by.

  ‘This is very bloody inconvenient,’ he mumbled, even though after three days alone the idea of a little conversation with another human being was not entirely undesirable. He hoped it was Tyme dropping off some of her artworks, but he also knew she had more manners than to just arrive without calling first.

  Nathaniel opened the front door and awaited the lift. ‘If this is Julian, in a drunken stupor, I’m just going to —’

  The elevator door parted to reveal Monique, who had sunk to sit in the corner and couldn’t get up. ‘My saviour.’ She held her hands out towards him.

  ‘Monique?’ He was surprised to see her in such a sad state as she was usually so vigilant about her fitness and health regime.

  ‘Opening night was awesome, they loved us!’ She cheered herself as Nathaniel hoisted her off the floor and struggled to keep the lift door open at once.

  ‘That would explain your state,’ he mumbled.

  ‘There was so much expensive champagne,’ Monique emphasised, ‘and the waiter just kept topping up my glass.’

  ‘Well, you do have to perform tomorrow too, you realise?’

  They staggered into the foyer and through into the apartment.

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’ Monique looked to him. ‘I just know I’m going to wake up late, and when I do, I’d rather be five minutes away. I won’t disturb you, I promise, just let me crash on the lounge . . . I’ll be out of your face early and —’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Nathaniel assured her. ‘You can take the bed upstairs; I’ve been crashing on the lounge anyway.’

  Monique looked up at the spiralling iron staircase and was clearly worried. ‘I might need a little help with that.’

  It was a struggle to get his friend up the stairs. She was being amorous, as Monique always was when inebriated, which wasn’t helping matters.

  When he finally got her to the bed he let her drop, but Monique grabbed Nathaniel’s shirt and pulled him down on top of her.

  ‘Don’t do this, Mon,’ he whined, as the idea of a little sex with an ex was mighty appealing right now. He always seemed to become more aroused when his writing was going well, which today it was.

  ‘Come on, Nat.’ She kissed his neck. ‘You know how good I am at keeping secrets.’ She sucked his earlobe.

  Nathaniel grabbed both her wandering hands and brought them together at her chest to hold her at bay. ‘But I am a terrible liar,’ he stated, ‘and I couldn’t do that to Jenna, not now . . . not ever.’

  Monique relented. ‘Why did you have to go get married?’ she sulked. ‘You ruined a perfectly good love affair.’

  ‘Is that what it was?’ Nathaniel queried. ‘I thought we were having a relationship . . . and unfortunately all those other love affairs you were having put a bit of a downer on that.’ He crawled off her and got back to standing
as Monique twisted into a fiercely seductive pose.

  ‘I hate to see you so unhappy.’ She laid her head upon the pillows and looked to him.

  ‘I’m not unhappy,’ he insisted. ‘Relationships go through their ups and downs; if you’d ever stuck with one long enough, you’d know that.’

  ‘Ouch.’ Monique pouted, pretending to be hurt. ‘In that case, I hate to see such a good man going to waste.’

  ‘Five minutes with my daughter is more meaningful to me than our entire romance,’ he stated, and he could see he’d really hurt her that time. ‘However, our friendship is rather dear to me, which is why I am now going to bid you goodnight.’ He headed for the door and switched the light off on the way out — she wouldn’t remember a thing in the morning.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ Monique called before he closed the door. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Back at you.’ His good mood returned. ‘Now be a good girl and pass out.’ He closed the door behind him and headed back to work.

  Perfectly timed, Penelope considered as she switched off her Dictaphone and watched Nurse Valdez approach.

  ‘Finally, I got a lunch break!’ Gabrielle rolled her eyes. ‘You said you wanted me to help out with something?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Penelope was eager to get started. ‘Pull up a chair.’

  Gabrielle obliged and looked to the old woman, ready to be of service.

  ‘This is the thing . . .’ Penelope took a deep breath in preparation to hatch her little scheme.

  The old woman explained to Gabrielle that the book was about to take a rather erotic turn and she feared that Peter might feel a little uncomfortable hearing the more intimate scenes being described in her old voice. ‘Would you mind lending your young, sexy voice to my more sensual material?’

  Gabrielle was grinning broadly; shocked, delighted and honoured. ‘I would love to,’ she stated. ‘Do you have such a scene ready to go?’ Gabrielle was keen, as she’d enjoyed drama at school and had never been afraid to really get into character.

  ‘I do, as it happens.’ Penelope passed the Dictaphone to the nurse. ‘Do you know how this works?’

  ‘I showed you, remember?’ Gabrielle took possession of the recording device. ‘So which character is getting seduced?’

  ‘Monique,’ Penelope replied and Gabrielle was excited.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’

  Peter was often surprised by the modern terms the old woman used in her tale and how raunchy her romance scenes were — more so in her other books than this one, so far, thank God! He gathered she kept abreast of the times watching television; despite her bad eyesight, Penelope’s hearing was still fine, when it suited her. That last scene with Monique and Nathaniel in the upstairs bedroom had started to get a little raunchy and Peter found himself praying that Ms Whitman didn’t launch into describing a full-on sex scene.

  He hadn’t considered how the sensual aspects of the story might make him feel during transcribing. But as seduction was an inevitable part of any of Ms Whitman’s stories, Peter felt he was just going to have to get over it.

  ‘I know!’ He had a thought while making coffee, and when he returned to his computer Peter did a search for photographs of Penelope Whitman in her younger days — maybe if he could see her as a young woman the situation would not feel so odd? He found several photographs taken at the start of her career in the fifties, and she was a stunner! There was one photo in particular of her that caught his eye — Penelope was dressed for the races in a tight-fitting pencil skirt and a fitted waist jacket, complete with heels and hat. ‘Wow!’ The picture put a completely different slant on things — seeing an image of his mentor at his age made her situation all the more relatable to him. He too would grow old one day and he hoped that his passion for life, love and a good story would not wane as a result.

  But before he returned to the manuscript he was curious to see if Ms Whitman had any sort of online presence. His search produced many fan pages and old articles. Still, as she didn’t appear to have any social media pages, he took the liberty of creating a page for her, using the stunning picture he’d found on the internet and a banner displaying her most popular books; Peter couldn’t possibly have displayed them all as she had penned over sixty novels in her career. As he wanted to get back to work, he only really created a bare bones page, no information as he felt he should discuss the idea of promoting their venture with the writer before he added anything more, and if she didn’t like the idea, then he’d take the page down. His reasoning was that bedridden, and with no knowledge of computers, Ms Whitman probably had no idea how popular she still was, and if she loved having her ego stroked — which she did — he felt she might take a liking to social media.

  After an hour mucking about with social networking, Peter returned to the Dictaphone and was surprised to hear a younger woman’s voice gracing his ears. He thought his mind was playing tricks on him, until he recognised the voice as Gabrielle’s. He would have begun cursing Ms Whitman and her over-zealous means to get him dating, but Gabrielle’s voice was so sensual and captivating that he sat down to listen.

  Monique had managed to remove most of her clothes before climbing under the bedcovers and having thought through all the excitement of the day, was just teetering on the verge of sleep when she began feeling rather sensual.

  Open to me. A voice whispered the instruction in her mind as her legs were eased gently apart and her clitoris was blanketed in the attention of a warm, wet tongue.

  Monique moaned with pleasure; Nathaniel had always been very liberal with his foreplay, and the way he was devouring her favours he was hungry to satisfy. So intense were his attentions that Monique almost wished he’d slow down, she was going to climax in seconds at this rate and she wasn’t even fully awake! He’d never been this eager to please before; in fact no man she’d ever slept with had ever been so intent on giving her pleasure! She tried to reach down under the covers but her hands were batted away as he intensified his efforts. Monique’s passion swelled to all consuming as she became fully focused on her pending orgasm. She was moaning uncontrollably, knowing no one would hear her besides Nathaniel and that was a turn on for him, even if he wouldn’t let her touch him. Her pelvis was raised high in the air when she climaxed and the pleasure radiated all the way through her body, causing a tingling all through her.

  ‘Nathaniel, that was —’

  The bedroom door opened and Monique screamed and sat upright, not expecting anyone else was in the apartment.

  ‘It’s me!’ Nathaniel switched on the light.

  ‘It’s you! Then who —’ Monique hesitated to say more, as clearly there was no one in the bed with her now. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned, embarrassed.

  ‘I thought you were watching porn up here —’ Nat laughed off what was now an embarrassing moment as Monique hung her head shaking it in disbelief.

  ‘I think I just had a wet dream about you.’ Monique felt like such a schoolgirl. ‘I was asleep, I swear!’ She tried to reason away the event of the amazing orgasm she’d just had, certain she had not pleasured herself into thinking that Nat was seducing her.

  ‘Wow.’ Nathaniel was flattered. ‘All that was about me?’

  Monique was super embarrassed now as her moans of pleasure must have been loud enough to get Nathaniel upstairs to investigate and she did recall pumping up the volume for Nathaniel’s benefit, but this was not what she’d had in mind.

  ‘I had forgotten how vocal you can be.’ He raised both brows. ‘It made me kind of sorry I couldn’t take you up on your lovely offer earlier.’

  Monique melted into a smile. ‘You always know what to say to make everything better.’

  ‘Let’s hope that comes through in my writing.’ Nathaniel crossed his fingers.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ Monique stressed. ‘I assure you that I had no intention of disturbing you . . . that bubbly was really something else! This will never happen again.’

  ‘Rathe
r unfortunate,’ Nathaniel concluded, ‘but probably for the best, I’d never get any work done. Speaking of which . . .’

  ‘Goodnight.’ Monique was eager to end this conversation, as it was as uncomfortable as it was delicious.

  Nathaniel turned off the light and pulling the door closed he said, ‘I won’t say sweet dreams, as you seem to have already been there —’

  Monique threw a pillow at the door to close it and end the embarrassing experience.

  She pondered the ordeal a moment, but was too drunk and tired to care what had triggered the episode. She flopped back onto the bed. Within minutes, Monique was fast asleep.

  The recording ended and broke the spell it had cast over Peter, who was left gobsmacked and rather aroused. Gabrielle’s voice had mingled with the young image of Ms Whitman on his computer screen to create the most spellbinding encounter with a character he’d ever had!

  ‘I doubt my transcription will have quite the same impact.’ He wiped the sweat from his brow and headed for the bathroom.

  Once Peter emerged, clean-showered and hair still wet, he felt no less impassioned than he had before. There was something about the combination of Gabrielle’s voice and Penelope Whitman’s talent that was so very alluring! ‘That crafty old . . .’ He stopped short of cursing the hand that was feeding him. ‘Well, if she thinks she can manipulate people in real life as easily as she does the characters in her story, she’s got another think coming.’

  Peter decided to make like a professional, and sat down at the computer to play back the digital audio recording and do his job. But the sound of Gabrielle’s sultry oration made his temperature rise and his imagination wander.

  ‘Get over it!’ He demanded a little focus from himself. ‘No more distractions.’ Peter’s resolve to ignore Ms Whitman’s romantic set-up hardened. ‘They’re just words, type them.’ The statement sparked an idea and Peter grabbed the box to further investigate the Dictaphone software he was using on his computer.

  The software had the capability to type up the words on the audio straight from the recording, leaving only the edit and layout for Peter to revise. He decided it was high time he investigated how the automatic transcriber worked as it would obviously spare him a lot of frustration.