Written in Ink (Montgomery Ink #4)(7)

Damn sisters knew exactly where to draw blood.

He put his hands on his hips and looked around his office, ignoring the mess as he always did. He’d deal with the clutter once he finished his book. Of course, he said that after each book, and after each one, he got just a bit messier and a tad more desperate. At one point, he’d hired a cleaning service but had let them go after they kept interrupting his work.

Since he lived alone and didn’t have anyone to rely on him when it came to being taken care of, he worked on his own schedule. So the service hadn’t been able to pin down a time that would be good to show up and start the deep clean. After the third time of Griffin freaking out and yelling, they’d cancelled the service for him.

His family didn’t know the exact details of how it had ended, but he knew they were disappointed that he couldn’t function as a civilized person in society.

Well, f*ck that. He was a writer. He didn’t have to be civilized.

And look at that, he had a new tagline for the website his editor had wanted him to update a year ago.

He honestly wasn’t that much of a loser. He went on dates when he felt like it and made it to family dinners and other events. Every few weeks he threw away most of the trash in his house, and up until recently, he’d been on top of his job and all that came with it. Only it turned out that after a few books, writing wasn’t just writing anymore. He had to deal with…people.

Yes.

People.

He might look like a people person, considering he could smile and have fun once he was outside his home, but he’d rather be alone and confined to his thinking chair with a good book. Or, preferably, writing a good book.

He didn’t have time to deal with social media, book tours, contracts, and other important things that came with being a writer, but he still did what he could with them. Most people in his line of work after his kind of success had a personal assistant or team that could help him with some of that, but he’d never felt the need to hire another person. He could do what he had to. Alone. He didn’t need anyone else.

He looked around at his dirty room and thought of his lack of book, his outdated website, the stack of letters he knew were in his PO Box that he hadn’t checked in four months, and various other things that he knew he was sorely behind on and cursed.

Maybe he wasn’t handling it all.

Maybe he wasn’t handling any of it.

But damn it, he didn’t want to rely on another person. Why couldn’t he just write what his characters needed and call it a day? Since when did writing become work?

Probably around the time he’d gotten his first advance and figured out that writing could earn him a living rather than just fill endless notebooks under his bed.

Of course if he could just write like he wanted to, would letting writing become fun and not work actually happen? The blank pages staring at him and judging were evidence that maybe he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Maybe he sucked ass and needed to go into the family business.

Of course, he couldn’t draw for shit, and though he loved getting ink, he wasn’t a fan of blood. So, joining Austin and Maya at their tattoo shop was out. And then there was that one time with the saw that shall never be mentioned again so he wouldn’t be joining the twins and the crew at the construction company either. He’d already said he didn’t much like people; so becoming a teacher where he’d work with little ones and Miranda wouldn’t work. He could take a decent photograph, but he didn’t have the talent Alex did when it came to being a photographer, so Griffin was pretty much screwed when it came to joining one of the family businesses.

He loved writing. He really did.

Or perhaps, he loved having written. It was the writing that sucked.

Hard.

“Knock knock!”

Griffin turned on his heel at his mother’s voice at the front door and again wondered why he’d given his parents the key to his home. All of the Montgomery kids had in case of emergencies, and usually, his parents knocked and even called ahead before coming over. However, his mother knew him well. Knew him enough to realize that he probably wouldn’t have answered the door if he were in his writing cave. It was a bad habit, but he didn’t think he was about to stop it any time soon.

He looked over his shoulder at his mess of an office and knew the rest of his house wasn’t fairing much better. It hadn’t been quite this bad in a while, but this was a hard book and an even tougher deadline.

He was a thirty-something-year-old man and was still worried about how his mother would react to seeing the mess he’d made in his own home. He wasn’t sure the bedroom he’d shared with his brothers in the past had been this bad, but hell; this wasn’t going to end well.

“Come in,” he said dryly as he made his way into the living room. He stopped short when he saw that his mother wasn’t alone.

The M&Ms were with her—Maya, Miranda, and Meghan. The only Montgomery woman missing was Sierra, but he figured she was home with the new baby.

When most of the women in his life showed up unannounced with scowls on their faces and hands on their hips, it couldn’t end well for Griffin.

“Seriously, Griffin?” Maya clicked her tongue ring against her teeth and raised her brow. The ring there glittered under the sunlight peeking through his dark blinds.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels. He was big, bearded, inked, and could fight with the best of them, but damn, his mom and sisters knew how to make him feel like he was a kid again. Just two words and a look and he knew he was in deep shit.