Chapter 21
21
DAX
After listening to Dottie explain the complex gossip grapevine of Coal Springs the night before, I realized I couldn’t keep Hannah’s shop closed any longer than I already had. I worried that news of that would somehow reach Jack and Hannah all the way in Hawaii. If Hannah was upset, Jack was upset and people died when that happened.
Because of that, I approached the front of Happily Ever After Bookstore just before ten. I took a gander across the street at the pickle shop, but nothing exciting was happening.
Then I turned my head back to my side of the road. A woman pushing a stroller had to weave around me at my sudden stop .
There was a line.
Of women.
A line of women who were waiting for the bookstore to open. As I approached, they eyed me like I was the lead singer in a boy band they had posters of on their bedroom wall.
Using the key, I opened the door and heard the women whispering to each other. About me.
“There he is.”
“I told you he was hot.”
“I think I just got pregnant by looking at him.”
“Sarah was right.”
I entered, typed in the alarm code, then stepped to the side and held the door open. “Ladies,” I murmured, adding in a welcoming arm gesture. What I was really doing was using the glass door as a shield, protecting myself.
When they entered en masse and started to browse, I went to the counter and got the register going, remembering the yoga woman’s helpful instructions from the day before.
Over the next few minutes, the store not-so-slowly filled. I glanced around in a slight panic at how busy it was. A bookstore couldn’t be this popular, could it?
I barely figured out the register the day before, and I’d needed help in doing it. What if someone asked me about a book or wanted a gift receipt?
“Well, you’ve certainly brought in a crowd.”
Dottie.
I wanted to leap across the counter and hug a familiar person in the crowd. “Oh, thank God. What’s going on here?” I asked her, taking her arm and gently leading her to the side. Two women gave Dottie a dirty look, as if jealous she was the one I was touching.
I was letting a senior citizen who was all of five-two and a hundred pounds soaking wet protect me.
She laughed. Today she wore black pants that ended at the ankle, a t-shirt that was for a breast cancer walk from the previous year and sneakers. “It’s weekly storytime.”
I glanced around. “Um, where are the kids?” I grimaced at the thought of a roomful of germy, sticky little people.
She laughed again. If she didn’t make exceptional rice and insanely good burritos, I’d not like her. But I knew when it was important to keep someone on my side. As a fixer, it was all about the connections.
“It’s grown-up storytime,” she explained.
I blinked. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, you’re reading a chapter from this week’s book.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You work here.”
“I’m filling in. I can’t read a romance book!” I snapped, shaking my head. I’d rather defuse a bomb.
She patted my bicep, then squeezed it like she had the night before. “Use that growly voice and you’ll be a hit.”
I glanced around. While women were busy browsing and chatting with their friends, they all seemed to have one eye on me like they would a toddler in a non-babyproof location. They’d make terrible spies. That made me think of Fiona and how I left her sated and well fucked after returning to her house.
I was the one who walked out when she was sleeping. I’d gone back to Jack and Hannah’s place to shower and change. And feed Pancake, who’d been snoozing on his cat tree living a stress-free cat life.
“Dottie–”
“The book is Their Kidnapped Bride. ” She pointed to a poster on a table-top easel with the storytime info on it. Beside it were a pile of books. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“That a bride was kidnapped?” I countered.
“ Their is a possessive pronoun and indicates plural ownership.”
“Were you a schoolteacher or something?”
“I was the office manager for the Coal Springs Police Department for thirty years.”
Jesus. How the hell did I get myself into this mess? She worked for the cops for three decades? “Of course, you were.”
“Based on your muscles and your lack of knowledge of pronouns, you aren’t one.”
She was fishing. I had to give it to her. She was good.
“Why is a possessive pronoun so important to this conversation?” I asked, then set my hands on my hips. “Wait. All these women are here to listen to a guy getting it on with two women?” I thought I had a grasp on what women wanted really well. Maybe I’d been wrong .
She huffed, waved her hand as if I was ridiculous. “Honey, that’s a guy’s fantasy. Do you see a guy here?”
I shook my head, suddenly lost. No, I was lost the second Mrs. Metcalf came to the front door and told me I had to fill in.
“The bride is kidnapped by two men,” she exclaimed.
Two–
“Holy shit.”
“You’re reading chapter three.”
“Why that chapter specifically?”
“Sex. And they start right in with anal. I know, because I read it already.”
“A–” I sputtered.
What the fuck happened to my life? I was talking with a seventy-something woman about anal sex. Oh, and the way she was starting to push me toward the back of the store where there was an empty wingback chair. About thirty women sat in rows of folded chairs–plus on the floor and leaning against the walls–as if they were waiting for a visit from Santa.
“There’s no sword crossing or anything,” Dottie assured me.
While it seemed important to the topic, I had no idea what that meant.
I turned and faced her. Narrowed my eyes. “If I’m going to do this, I want a home cooked dinner.”
She arched a brow. Considered. “Spinach stuffed shells. ”
I grimaced and shook my head. “Spinach? Not a chance. I need meat.”
There was a soft repeated murmur of chapter three, chapter three, chapter three coming from the crowd. Were women always like this when they got together? No drinks were even involved.
“So do these women,” Dottie added.
My mouth dropped open. Holy shit. Did Jack know about this adult storytime? Was he tapping into the security cameras from Hawaii and laughing right now? Shit, I hoped he hadn’t been watching any of the feeds live.
“What about Fiona?” she asked when I couldn’t get any words out. “She doesn’t eat meat.”
Yes, she does.
“How do you know I’m having dinner with her?”
She gave me the look of a woman who didn’t have time for stupid questions.
“Fine. I’m having dinner with her.” Not that Fiona knew that. She’d ducked out on me twice, so it was possible she took my words early this morning to heart and was on her way to a tropical destination for those mai tais.
I wasn’t ducking on her. Hell, no. I wasn’t going to think too hard at the moment as to why I was hooked on her and her sassy mouth and sexy body, but all I knew was that I was doing crazy things for her–like volunteering to scope out a pickle store–and wasn’t interested in any of the man-crazed women in front of me. I could have my pick. Or two.
“But she’s not reading a polyamorous sex scene to a roomful of slightly feral women, so she gets what she gets,” I added.
She considered, then nodded. “I’ll make her a salad. For you, spaghetti and meat sauce. Hamburger and sausage. Speaking of sausage–”
I held up my hand close to her face, just as Fiona had for me early this morning, although this was a little less rude. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say about sausage.”
She shook her head and gave me a sly–no, sinister–smile. “All I was going to say is that it’s spicy.”
I rolled my eyes. What the hell happened to my quiet cat sitting?
“Just how all these ladies like it,” she added.
Now I groaned, then bargained. “Dinner for chapter three.”
She nodded. “Deal.”
I took a deep breath and worked my way to the comfortable chair. I liked women looking at me. It sure built up a man’s ego seeing the pleased or interested gleam in a woman’s eye. Compared to Jack, I was the charmer, the easy going one who could get into a woman’s panties with a smile and a wink. But this? Holy hell, the women of Coal Springs were in heat or something. I didn’t need thirty pairs of panties tossed on me for reading chapter three aloud.
I also didn’t want a revolt, so I smiled, settled in, and thought of spaghetti and Fiona and my sausage. “Ladies, welcome to, ah, storytime.”
A woman popped to her feet and brought me the book .
“Thanks.” The cover was western themed with a woman dressed in vintage Wild West attire with two cowboys flanking her. “Okay, um, today’s book is Their Kidnapped Bride. I heard chapter three is what you all want, but should we start at the beginning?”
Like actual anal sex, foreplay was needed before I jumped right in.
Unlike Fiona who constantly bickered with me, not one woman disagreed.