Chapter 12
Natalie
“Hey Nat, have you seen the—what is that?” Kathy pointed accusingly at the ring on my finger and the head of every one of my coworkers turned in my direction.
So much for flying under the radar. I knew it wouldn’t be a secret for long.
There was more gossip flying around a library than at a hair salon.
Still, I expected it to last more than five seconds.
“I had a very good weekend.” Foolishly, I thought this would hold off the hounds long enough for me to put my purse down.
I was mistaken. Gwen and Kathy followed me as I attempted to walk past the circulation desk and headed for the staff room.
They pulled some sort of military formation, and I found myself cornered against the Thanksgiving book display.
Gwen studied my face, and I knew my skin was glowing crimson. “Your skin looks fabulous today. Either you had a facial or you took a little trip to orgasmville. Given the ring on your finger, I am going to assume it’s option two.”
“I may have gotten married last week—”
They both start clucking like hens. “The library opens in five minutes, so we are going to need the Cliff Notes version here. We know what and when. The why is pretty clear since you are glowing like a freaking night light. We need the where, and most importantly the who.”
I licked my lips, once this secret was out, there was no pulling it back. “We had a small ceremony at my condo. And the who is…” I swear they leaned forward in anticipation, salivating over the thought of something to talk to death over lunch. “Jake. I married Jake.”
Silence, for a beat of three, and then the clucking begins anew.
“Who’s Jake?” Gwen’s eyebrows come together
“Oh, my God! The patron who always comes in to see Natalie. The hot audiobook guy! That Jake?”
I nod, a grin spreading across my face.
“Holy shit, how did that even happen?” Kathy’s eyes darted from my face to my stomach, and she twisted her lips to the side. “Should we be expecting the pitter-patter of little feet seven or eight months after the nuptials?” She elbowed Gwen whose eyes went wide.
“Ohhh, the wedding color was pink, as in two pink lines?”
Kathy snorted. “The bride threw up before the wedding but not from nerves?”
“You wanted to call him daddy so badly you made him one?”
They both collapsed into a fit of giggles. They were wrong, obviously, but I would rather they assumed we got married because I was pregnant than dig too deep into the real reason.
“You two are ridiculous.” I sidestepped them and headed for the staff room.
An unexpected pang went through my gut. Jake wasn’t really mine. There was no whirlwind romance or unexpected pregnancy. Hell, we hadn’t even gotten past a little mutual friction. How I was going to get through this when today was only day one?
******
Over the next month, we got into a routine of Jake coming by the library to have lunch with me and get more audiobooks on his days off work.
Even though they weren’t helping with his anxiety, he liked to listen to them.
He would make a point of listening to a book I had read so we could talk about the story over lunch.
It was a bookworm’s fantasy come true. He would tell me about his work and his therapy appointments, and I would tell him funny things that happened at work and the next books I thought we should talk about.
I found myself texting him when we weren’t together, and he started kissing me hello and goodbye even when there was no one there to see it. One by one, every piece of my life was becoming twisted and bound with his.