Chapter 5
This wasn’t the first time Hayley had talked Tai into doing something he normally wouldn’t have, but it was the first time he thought about thanking her for it.
He’d definitely not considered gratitude the time she’d persuaded him to play the game Chubby Bunny with habanero peppers instead of marshmallows.
Nor the time she’d convinced him to yell out a random word starting with each consecutive letter of the alphabet on Thanksgiving when he was eight.
The first had sent him into an asthma attack that had made his already overprotective mom hover even closer, while the second saw him meeting with a psychiatrist because that same helicopter parent was convinced he’d developed Tourette’s Syndrome.
Then again, Hayley probably wouldn’t thank him for the time he’d dared her to only speak in pig latin for a whole day.
The same day the most popular guy in school had asked her to go with him to the winter formal.
The quarterback had quickly changed his mind when she’d responded with “Esyay! I’d ovelay otay ogay ithway ouyay! ”
Tai shook his head at the memory, a wry grin tilting the corners of his lips.
They’d been playing this game with each other for years.
Twenty-four, to be exact. He still remembered the first dare she’d ever issued him.
He’d been moping around his room when he was five.
His mom had just pulled him out of T-ball after he’d collapsed between second and third base, coughing and clutching his ever-tightening chest in an effort to drag in a full breath.
He had no idea what asthma was at the time, nor how much it would change the rest of his life.
He only knew his mom was being unfair and that he wouldn’t be able to grow up to be like Derek Jeter if she made him quit T-ball.
Hayley had marched into his room and looked around, an expression of disgust on her preschool face. “Don’t you have any pictures on your walls or anything?” she’d asked.
Earlier that day, his mom had taken down the shadow box of baseball memorabilia, along with shelves that had displayed his Hot Wheels cars, muttering something about dust like it had committed the most atrocious of crimes.
He’d merely shrugged in response to Hayley, too upset to say anything out loud.
She’d frowned at him. “My dad painted a rainbow on my bedroom wall. It makes me smile. I bet if you had a painting on your wall, you’d smile instead of looking like Oscar the Grouch.”
He’d just stared at her.
She’d poked one of his four sad, empty white walls and issued her first challenge. “I dare you to paint a picture right here.”
Tai knew he’d get in trouble. That his mom would be furious. But he didn’t care. He was mad at her anyway. Turned out, that was the start of his and Hayley’s challenges to each other as well as the beginning of his love for art.
Hmm . . . Maybe he should thank Hayley for more than one dare after all.
Tai climbed out of his Dodge Challenger that took the corners of the country roads in the Cherokee National Forest like a dream—or a nightmare, if anyone asked his mom, Missy Davis.
Or listened to her scold him at family dinners.
Which he didn’t. If she had her way, he’d be living his life in a bubble.
He’d taken a needle to that balloon a long time ago, and he wasn’t about to let her shove him back inside a safe little box ever again.
He opened the door to the library, the biography he’d checked out earlier that week tucked under his arm.
A grin spread across his face as he imagined what Evangeline’s reaction would be.
No doubt she’d immediately retrieve the book from the return receptacle and inspect each page to make sure he hadn’t ruined the book in some way.
At first, he hadn’t understood Hayley’s dare.
Returning a book she’d checked out under his account with a bunch of dog-eared pages didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Until he’d done it and then noticed he was being followed around the library by the world’s least stealthy librarian.
That was when Tai realized Hayley had only used him to poke at Evangeline.
His cousin had been talking about her newest coworker ever since Evangeline had arrived in Little Creek, which happened to be only a few months after his own reappearance in his hometown.
He’d heard whispers that his being back was like the prodigal son returning, but he’d yet to see any fatted calf killed on his behalf in celebration.
More like a small uproar that his presence and his newly opened business were going to bring riffraff to their peaceful corner of the world.
He figured time would prove them wrong, so he didn’t plan to waste his energy trying to change anyone’s opinion.
He chuckled to himself, remembering the way Evangeline had tried to hide behind a large tome on the life of Sir Isaac Newton.
The only thing she’d managed to conceal had been her pert little nose and her rosebud-shaped lips.
Her wide expressive eyes, however, had been impossible to miss.
Even if he hadn’t seen her, he’d have been alerted to her presence by the steady weight of her gaze, which he felt on his skin as keenly as if she’d touched him.
Hayley might’ve orchestrated his encounter with Evangeline because of the dare, but now that he’d met her, he found himself thinking about her more than Hayley might have intended.
Or maybe not. A part of him wondered if her dare had been twofold—mess with Evangeline while also attempting to set Tai up with her.
If that were the case, Hayley could be two for two.
There was something about Evangeline that intrigued him.
Something different about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He’d noticed immediately she was a list of walking contradictions.
Perfectly poised and tightly controlled on the outside but a current of live wires just waiting to spark underneath.
Her mouth said one thing while her eyes spoke something entirely different.
But it wasn’t the juxtaposition of her that he couldn’t pinpoint.
While she was like two sides of a color wheel, opposite and yet alluringly attractive, there was also something . . .
Something.
Like he’d said, he couldn’t put his finger on what that was.
He just knew it was there and that he couldn’t stop thinking about the anomaly.
About her. He needed to study her more. Figure out the mystery or the hidden piece of the picture that she presented.
It was just an added bonus that she was easy on the eyes and that getting her decorum to slip a bit, letting what she tried to hide on the inside shine through, was the most fun he’d had in ages.
Hayley stood behind the information desk, pecking away at the keyboard. She looked up with a smile of greeting on her lips as the front door slid shut behind Tai. When she registered it was him, she tilted her chin in a signal for him to come over.
“I thought you were loyal to your Kindle,” she said as he approached, an undertone to her voice that made him wonder if she suspected he had ulterior motives in showing up at the library.
He held up the book in his hand. “I have to return this.”
“Oh.” A hint of disappointment in her tone made him feel like his suspicions weren’t off base.
“Why? Did you think I stopped by for a different reason?”
She plucked the biography from his hand. “Of course not.” She scanned the barcode and returned the title to the system. “There. I’ll see you Friday night for dinner at your parents’ house.”
He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and leaned a hip on the desk. “Any particular reason you’re trying to get rid of me?”
She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said you only needed to return the book. Well, it’s returned.” She paused, her gaze turning calculating. “Why? Is there some other reason you might need to linger?”
The way she watched him was telling. He wasn’t mad at her meddling, but he also didn’t mind messing with her either. “Yes, actually, there is.”
Hayley straightened, almost surprised but certainly delighted. “Really?”
Tai nodded.
Hayley’s grin spread across her face like a river after a rainstorm. “I knew it.” She began to throw a fist in the air in victory.
“I need another book.”
Her hand made a sudden detour to smoothing her hair. She cleared her throat, trying to look with all her might like his response was the one she’d expected. “I knew it. I mean, what other reason is there to come to the library, right?”
Tai pointed to the pods of computers to the left, smashing his lips together to keep from grinning. “I could have needed to print something.”
Hayley scowled but waved her arm toward a mural of kids reading under an oak tree. “Or wanted to get a head start on making Lorax trees from pipe cleaners and pom-poms? You’re a few hours early for crafternoon.”
“Pity.”
“Isn’t it just.”
Tai stared at his cousin. Hayley stared right back.
“Hayley.” He tried for a serious tone, hoping she’d crack and confess to her interference.
The problem came when one’s cousin was more like one’s sister and could still remember the days of watching cartoons together in their superhero and princess pajamas. Serious tones didn’t lead to pressure-induced confessions.
The corner of Hayley’s lips twitched, but her laser beam eye contact never broke. “Tai.”
Laughter erupted from the sitting area in front of the multimedia section. Both Hayley and Tai’s heads swiveled in the direction of the sound. A little old lady with the style of the late Queen Elizabeth sat in a wingback chair, presiding over her court of a half dozen rapt listeners.
“What’s going on over there?” Tai asked.
“It’s a new program that Evangeline established. Mrs. Goldmann is the first living library book that patrons can check out and listen to her tell her story.”
Tai felt his brows rise. He’d never heard of such a thing. Being able to check out a person at the library? Definitely a new concept. Although by the spellbound look on the five patrons’ and one librarian’s faces, the idea held a lot of success.
Tai let his gaze settle on the niminy-piminy woman perched on the edge of a folding chair, the eraser end of a sharpened pencil lightly tapping against rose petal–pink lips.
Evangeline’s posture was one any beauty pageant contestant would be proud of.
He had a feeling that the word slouch wasn’t in her vocabulary.
Her skirt hugged her thighs, her legs pressed together and slanted at an angle until her toes touched the floor, the epitome of ladylike decorum.
What would it take for her to lose her tightly bound control?
To give in to the hint of free spirit she showcased with the graphic tee and canvas high-tops?
“I think I might need help finding a specific book,” Tai murmured without taking his eyes from Evangeline.
“What’s the title? I can look it up in—”
But Tai didn’t wait for his cousin to finish offering her help. When it came to librarians, there was only one who could give him the assistance he was looking for.
He approached Evangeline, loving the way her eyes rounded the moment she spotted him advancing in her direction. She stood, pressing the notebook she’d been writing in close to her middle, as if it held her deepest, darkest secrets.
Her throat worked as she swallowed, then she gave him a practiced, polite smile. “May I help you?”
He looked pointedly at her notebook, grinning as she pressed it even more tightly against her stomach, her arms crossing over the cover. When he lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, her chin rose in a defiant tilt.
The change in position gave him the perfect angle to inspect her features.
There was symmetry to her heart-shaped face.
Her green eyes were evenly set. A proud turn to the slope of her jaw and the elegant angle of her neck flowed into a stark contrast with the sharpness of her collar bones.
Her skin was smooth, with three small freckles in a tiny triangle on her right cheek.
What some may call an imperfection only added allure and character in his opinion.
That niggle he couldn’t place came back to him. The feeling that he was missing something right in front of his eyes. But what?
“Mr. Davis?”
Evangeline’s voice made him blink, and he focused again on her eyes. “Tai.”
She tucked her chin a notch to let him know she’d heard him.
“I’m looking for a book.”
One corner of her mouth twitched in a barely there smile. “Then you’ve come to the right place. Any specific title that you’re looking for?”
Hayley had been right when she’d said he preferred reading on a Kindle. However, with art books, he liked being able to closely inspect each stroke and study the craft of the artist, and that was better done on printed pages than pixels. “Henna art.”
Evangeline pursed her lips in thought. He could imagine her brain riffling through a mental card catalog.
“I think we have a couple that might interest you.” She turned, an unspoken invitation for him to follow.
They passed a few shelves before stopping in the center of a nonfiction aisle. Evangeline grazed a finger along a row of spines, then stopped at a thin hardback and tugged the book from its cozy spot wedged between a treatise on watercolor and a how-to for pen and ink.
“Will this work?” she asked as she handed him the book.
Tai opened the cover. He paged through the history and culture of henna, slowing to take in the tiny details, scrollwork, and symmetry of the designs. Yes, this would do nicely for his purposes.
“This is perfect, thank you.” He looked up and smiled.
But he found Evangeline’s focus decidedly lower than his eyes—on his rose tattoo, to be precise. He tucked his chin to give her a better view, then leaned in slightly.
“You know, I’m not one of your living books,” he whispered.
She startled, her gaze finally rising to meet his. “Pardon?”
He grinned. “You were checking me out.”
“I wasn’t . . . that’s not. . .”
He laughed as her cheeks reddened to a deep rosy hue.
“Thanks for the book.” He winked and left her sputtering on the spot.