Love Isn't Blind 1 Read Free Page A

I do what I can to try to make him happy."
    "Does he go out very often?" asked Ashley, unsure of whether or not she was crossing into overly familiar territory. There was something about the way Helene had said it, but she seemed to be hinting that Anthony Lang wasn't as content as a best-selling author should be.
    The old housekeeper's shoulders sagged a little. She frowned and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms in front of her. "Unfortunately, he rarely goes out anymore. He used to at first, but it's difficult for him out there. You notice how he moves about the place like he can see just fine? It's not like that outside, and I think he sees it as a type of weakness. Damn shame if you ask me."
    "What about guests? Surely he must have friends over all the time. Other writers maybe?"
    "Nope, hardly ever." Helene straightened up and resumed wiping down the counters. "That's why I'm glad to have you here. Mr. Lang was having all his transcribing done by some company over in who knows where, and it's been just the two of us in the house since I came. Having another person in the place sure will do a lot to brighten things up."
    Ashley sipped her coffee and tried to reconcile the energetic and confident man she'd met the previous day with the man his housekeeper was describing. It was beginning to look like there was a lot more to her boss than she could have imagined. His storytelling style was so bold and confident that she'd assumed he'd be a positive and outgoing person, but now it was becoming evident that he was something of a recluse. She was here to do a specific job, and she didn't want to risk it by acting inappropriately, but Anthony Lang deserved better than to be hiding away in this house with nothing but writing to keep him happy. She was going to help him get over whatever had turned him into a man who felt he needed to hide from the world.
    She didn't know how she was going to do it, but she couldn't sit idly by while he lived out his days in relative isolation, not after everything he'd done for his country and definitely not after everything his books and stories had done to influence her own decision to become a writer.
Chapter Four
    SEVERAL DAYS PASSED, AND Ashley fell into a simple rhythm of transcribing the audio recordings before taking a break and working on her own project. Lang composed and dictated into his recorder for a fair number of hours each day, but his total output was typically reduced to a morning's careful transcription. Much of writing involved knowing where a story was going, and she was beginning to recognize just how much Anthony Lang made things up as he went along. She herself was more of an outliner. She wanted to know the full arc of her story before starting the writing, but each day she could tell that his recordings contained the words of a man discovering the story as he told it. It was amazing how clean the work was in these first drafts; it was almost as though he thought each sentence over in his head several times before speaking it out loud.
    Some days Ashley ate dinner alone in her room; other times she shared a meal with Helene in the kitchen. After nearly a week of slipping comfortably into a working routine, she was confused when she came down one day to see if she could help the housekeeper with dinner and saw that two places had been set in the dining room.
    "Mr. Lang asked that you dine with him tonight," said Helene, entering with a bottle of wine and two glasses. "Didn't I tell you this at lunch?"
    "No, you didn't tell me," said Ashley. She could have easily been irritated by Helene's forgetfulness, but the woman was so kind and likable that it was difficult for her to hold this sort of thing against her.
    "Must have slipped my mind," said the woman on her way back to the kitchen.
    "Is that a bourguignon I smell, my dear Helene?" asked Anthony as he entered the dining room.
    "You know it," came the reply from the other room. "Sit yourselves down and