Teddy poised her fingers over the keyboard and stared at the screen.

No words came.

Then she closed her eyes, imagining the scene, and settled her fingers on the keys.

No words came.

She opened her eyes and sighed, took a drink of coffee, then set the mug down and closed her eyes again.

It’ll come.

She opened her eyes and stared at the blank white screen.

Oscar was absolutely not going to think about what happened on the top of the lighthouse last night.

He took a shower—steaming hot—and carefully kept his mind blank during the whole thing by picturing the table of elements and reciting each one, in order, with its chemical symbol.

As he toweled off and dressed, he hoped he wouldn’t run into Teddy in the kitchen. She hadn’t said anything last night once they left the top of the lighthouse, but knowing her, that meant she’d saved up every thought, comment, exclamation, and question overnight and would soon be bludgeoning him with them.

All he wanted to do was bury himself in his work, and now he had two things from which he needed to distract himself: Marcie’s wedding and that—whatever it had been—on the top of the lighthouse.

The word “ghost” teased the back of his mind, but he thrust it away with the same alacrity he’d have done to the lethal Zaire ebolavirus.

Though when he came out to the living room he smelled fresh coffee, Teddy wasn’t there. Evidence indicated she’d made the brew (enough for both of them, it appeared) but retreated to her wing of the cottage.

Good. That meant he could work in peace.

And he did. After plugging in his earbuds and today queueing up Coldplay and Kings of Leon, he set to work preparing a few slides of samples from the hot spring.

Once he had a plate ready, he placed it on the microscope dash. He turned on the lamps, made a few adjustments—magnification, light—and took a look.

Normal water molecular structure. Tardigrades, ostracods, phages, and a variety of other, harmless microbial specimens. Wait.

“Hm.” Oscar frowned, squinting a little more. What the hell was that? He dialed back on the magnification to see the full image. A little jump of interest spiked inside him. Never seen anything like that before. He adjusted the magnification and looked closer.

Instead of the soft, organic shapes he was used to seeing, Oscar was examining something that appeared crystalline and spiky. Shiny and silvery, even under the microscope. That little jump of interest turned into something more like a leap, and he moved the slide around to see if there were other examples of this unfamiliar microbe. There were…randomly, but more than one example. He quickly pulled out samples from a different Cubitainer—maybe that first one had somehow been contaminated.

But no. There they were, the unrecognizable crystals, noticeable only at one hundred magnification. His spike of interest had blown into full-fledged curiosity.

Was it possible? Was there something unique enough about the hot spring to make this trip actually worth something? Oscar had never seen anything like that spiky crystal organism before. It didn’t look like anything else.

Impossible. But…

“I should go get another sample,” he said. Just to make sure what he was looking at was uncontaminated.

He’d get it himself this time. He’d climb into the pool, gather three samples himself, making sure it was done correctly…and then he’d take another look.

“Another sample of what?”

He turned, jolted out of his music and thoughts.

Teddy was there. She must have walked into the kitchen without him even noticing. She looked determined, for her hair was pulled back into a messy knot at the back of her head and she carried a slim silver laptop that looked as if it weighed hardly more than a magazine. In the other hand was a steaming mug of coffee.

Oscar pulled out his earbud, leaving Chris Martin to mutedly sing into the room. “How’s your writing going?” he asked.

She made a face. “I don’t want to talk about it. What are you getting another sample of?”

“The hot springs. There’s a unique crystal sort of microbe—”

“Great. I’ll come with you.” She put down the laptop as if it were a hot potato. “Wait till I change.”

Teddy knew she should stay at the cottage, sit her butt in a chair, and focus on the laptop.

What better time to work than when her housemate was away from the place, and no longer sucking up all her air?

But here she was, traipsing through the woods with Oscar—who was making no effort to hide his grumpiness. Not that he had any real right to be grumpy. He was the one who’d taken over her place and was distracting her.

People didn’t understand how writers (or any artist, she supposed) could be distracted simply by another person’s presence. Even if they weren’t interacting with them. The truth was that they sucked up all the air just being there.

Teddy sighed. If only there was a quick fix for her writer’s block. If only she could take something, or make a wish or something—

“Here we are,” Oscar said unnecessarily. He set down his heavy pack and began to take off his hiking boots.

She sat on a large boulder and began to pull off her walking shoes. They weren’t as heavy-duty as his boots, but they protected her feet. “Too bad that’s not a fountain of youth or wishing well,” she said, looking at the coiling steam rising from the softly bubbling pool. “Something that granted your heart’s desire when you threw in a coin, or jumped in or drank it or something.”

Oscar looked at her as if she’d sprouted a third ear. “What?”

“I’m just saying…don’t you think that maybe the Native Americans—I think they were Chippewas around here—might have considered a place like this special, or even sacred and holy, with it being the only hot spring in the whole region? Probably the only one they’d ever seen. I mean, think about it—in the dead of winter, they’re trudging through here, crossing the huge Lake Michigan on all that ice—they’d have had no idea how big the lake was to begin with—and suddenly they see steam rising from the middle of a snowbank. And there’s this pool of hot water—in the middle of winter! Don’t you think that’d give them something to wonder about? Like, there was some sort of mysterious or supernatural element to it?”

He was still looking at her oddly. “Sure.” Then he glanced at the pool. “Maybe.”

She grinned at him. “See, you do have an imagination.”

“I never said I didn’t.” Now he sounded grumpy again.

“Right.” Teddy walked over and slipped her fingers into the water. It was hot. And it would feel so good on her skin. “I wish for whatever energy is in this pool that it helps me attain my heart’s desire,” she said, trailing her fingers through the churning pool.

“Your heart’s desire? What are you talking about?”

She shrugged, feeling a little foolish. After all, he was a fact-based scientist who couldn’t even run with her plot idea about random bad stuff. “I don’t know. What if it is a sacred or special or holy place, and this pool is special somehow? I figure I’m going to increase the chance of getting what I want by—”

“By wishing for your heart’s desire over a hot spring?” He was looking at her as if she’d grown that third ear again. “You’re an interesting woman, Teddy Mack.”

“But,” she said, “what if you only think you know your heart’s desire? Like, mine right now is to figure out how to finish this damn book. That’s all I want. But what if deep down inside, my heart’s desire is really to find another career? Or to write something different? Then I wouldn’t finish the book, my career would be over—or at least it would change—and then I’d move on. And that would be my heart’s desire—even if I didn’t actually articulate it.”

He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure most people know what they really want.”

“So what’s your heart’s desire? What do you really want?” She gave him a cheeky grin, then it faded. “Oh. You want Marcie back.”

He didn’t respond. But he didn’t need to; sadness was written all over his face.

Suddenly sober and feeling bad for bringing it up, Teddy pulled off her sundress, under which was her bright blue one-piece bathing suit, and climbed over the rocks to slide into the pool.

“Ohhh,” she groaned as she settled into the heat of the water. It felt good, but it was hot. She swam over to where the little trickle of a waterfall poured into the pool and let the cool spill over her. “Ohhh…my…God…”

When she opened her eyes, her hair slicked back from her face, she saw that Oscar had zipped off the bottoms of his cargo pants, turning them into shorts, and taken off his shirt. And…yes indeed, her memory from last night was dead on: he looked pretty damned good for a nerdy scientist who was mourning the loss of his fiancée.

Good enough that Teddy took her time checking him out (now that it was daylight) when he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t bulky or hugely muscular, but wiry and toned and well proportioned. Though he had a farmer’s tan, his shoulders and upper arms were covered with freckles that gave him a lightly bronzed appearance along the top. His calves were muscular, and he didn’t have knobby knees, which was a major bonus in her book.

When he came over to the pool, Teddy looked away, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that not only were they alone here and now, but they were sleeping under the same roof. And they’d been trapped up on the lighthouse together, with her slumped against his warm, solid torso last night…

All of a sudden, the pool seemed even hotter, and she smoothed a hand over her wet hair and moved under the cooler waterfall again.

Get a grip, Teddy. You have a book to focus on.

But getting laid might lube things up…so to speak.

As if! I don’t even know the guy.

You could get to know him.

“Pretty warm, huh?” Oscar said as she came out from under the waterfall. He eased into the pool with his own sigh of pleasure, leaving his tools and gear untouched on a nearby rock. “Your face is really flushed.”

I’ll bet it is. “So is yours.”

“Even though it’s pretty warm already, it feels good in the water.” He leaned against the side of the pool, and the water surged and bubbled against the rocky rim. The waterfall splashed down between them, sending little sprays of cool droplets against her skin.

“So you really don’t like my RBS idea?” Teddy asked, pulling her attention from his freckled shoulders and the patch of blond-red hair on his chest. It was either that, or talk about what had happened up on top of the lighthouse last night, and that she wasn’t ready for.

“No.”

She sighed and sank deeper into the water, despite the heat. Rivulets of sweat and water ran down her cheeks and throat. But maybe if it was a sacred, special pool, it would take a while to do its work. So she had to soak in it for a bit. “Well, I’ve got to get my hero out of a difficult situation regardless.”

“That’s right. He’s got to save the world.” Oscar eased lower in the water too. His hair, now damp from the humidity, had begun to curl up into tiny, dark waves around his temples and neck. “You know what always gets me about books and movies like that is how complicated they get. Why does villainy have to be so complicated? Why can’t it be a simpler situation than a plot to infect the entire city of New York with a virus—which is ridiculous anyway—or…or mechanized robots that are going to pilot a bunch of planes and crash them into the ocean with important people on them?”

Teddy sat up, and the water surged away from her. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Mechanized pilots…they could be flying Air Force One, maybe.”

“No, no, no,” he said, waving his hand and sending droplets of water flying. “Too complicated. Couldn’t you just write a computer hacker who sends out a false news report—sort of like War of the Worlds, but done purposely—that causes the stock market to crash or even the Internet to go down because of too much traffic and not enough bandwidth? Then he could take over communication and cause all sorts of chaos.”

She stared at him. “Yes. I like it. Hmm. That might work. Let me think on that…” She settled back and stared at the waterfall, working through the details.

“So you said your hero’s caught? Well, what about a trapdoor? Or what about a skylight? Put in a trapdoor or a skylight and he somehow—”

“Yes!” Teddy shouted, erupting from the pool with a violent splash. Her brain exploded with ideas and images and answers. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s perfect!” Exhilaration and relief burst over her, and she was filled with joy. That was it.

Before she realized what she was doing, she surged toward Oscar and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him, then pulled back and smacked a kiss onto his warm, damp lips. “Thank you! You’re amazing! You’re—”

He pulled her back to him and kissed her again…this time much more thoroughly. His lips were warm and full and he tasted faintly of salt and sulfur. His torso was warm and wet against hers. And firm. When she pulled away, she saw droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes and that his pupils had widened.

But her brain…it was on fire. It was furious—unleashed, undammed, and finally, after months, the ideas were flowing and spilling free. The energy pulsed through her like the roar of pool churning around her.

She had to go.

She had to write.