Goodbye Arizona Read Online Free PDF

circulated among the tables, handing plates and taking orders all at once. The crowd chattered over the Latin music, or yelled at the barista to pump up the volume so they could follow the recap of the Diamondbacks’ ball game. No one paid attention to them, and no one could hear anything in that noise anyway.
    Marcus nodded, chewing a bite of meat and pastry.
    “All right, then. Why romance?”
    He swallowed his food, blinking when the chili pepper sauce scorched the back of his throat. “I prefer to call it ‘romantic suspense’. I’ll give you the whole story. I’ll answer all your questions. But there are probably some things you won’t want to publish.”
    “Really. And why is that?”
    The emotions that engulfed her earlier appeared to have settled down again, so the woman he faced was the sassy, tough-as-nails Deb he loved word sparring with. She fascinated him. “Because it all started in San Francisco.”
    While she digested the news, he forked more enchilada. “I suffer from writer’s block.” Deb opened her mouth to protest, most likely since he had six novels under his belt, alter ego or not. He pointed the fork at her to shut her up. “If I didn’t put out a new sci-fi novel since Ayin , that’s because I can’t. I’m stuck. Every piece I try to knit is awful.”
    She couldn’t stop herself. “But you published two novels in fourteen months! Considering the writing/editing process, that’s nearly a miracle.”
    “I got lucky. Eden hooked a publisher with the first ten chapters of Midnight Gold . I was writing like a maniac. By the time she finalized the contract, my first draft was finished.” He paused to sip some water. “Anyhow, neither book is in my original genre. When you joined me in Frisco, I was desperate. Eden had suggested the change. New place, new people, new interests. She thought it would help.”
    “Did it?”
    “No.”
    “You never said anything.”
    He hadn’t. Out of shame, or because he couldn’t bear to have her question, argue, pull or push. She was very good at pushing.
    He remembered those weeks—months— all too well. The frustration, the anger, the failure… He’d tried to write. He’d tried his hand at new plots, worked out different angles. He’d researched futuristic weapons, perused issues of scientific magazines. He’d followed Philae and Rosetta’s twitter accounts. And nothing.
    Every new attempt dug him deeper into his hole. He couldn’t put two sentences together without agonizing over them for hours. He kept going back to the beginning to adjust a detail, or to change a verb. He woke up in the middle of the night to rewrite one paragraph, and deleted pages in the morning. He was miserable, and growing more frustrated by the day.
    So when she’d stopped on her way to some new adventure, Deb seemed to be the exact distraction he needed. The distraction he thought he needed. Until… “The pages you read were the only bits I had managed in weeks.”
    The betrayal still stung, nearly as much as the disappointment he had caught on her face while she read his lame attempt at a new scene.
    “Is that why you were so angry?”
    Marcus managed a smile. Trust Deb to hit the right spot on her first try . “I guess. Also, I had asked you not to read my work-in-progress, but you did anyway.”
    She changed the subject. “But you’re writing now…”
    “Yes. But I haven’t returned to sci-fi.”
    He wondered if she grasped how hard it was, to crave for the futuristic, action-packed thrillers he loved and to dare not try.
    “But why did you choose romance—sorry, romantic suspense?”
    “Ah!” He leaned over the table to plant a kiss on her mouth, and enjoyed every bit of her blush when a party of six nearby catcalled. “Actually, that’s your doing, honey.”
    “Me?”
    “You left a book behind, something by Chloe Fielding.”
    “You read it? After all you said about my taste in books?”
    “Some stuff you read is terrible. But that one