5. Fred
5
FRED
I thought Vince would come to find me, but as it happens, I come across him first.
He looks focused and serious-looking, hunched over a desk in the library, surrounded by a small stack of mystery novels, some old newspapers and what look to be my high-school yearbooks, a few balled-up pieces of paper, and a scribbled-in notebook.
“Hey, stranger,” I say.
He startles and collects his things into a pile, covers them suspiciously fast, and closes his notebook. “Frederica.” His deep, rumbling voice sends a delicious shiver down my spine, and he notices. His throat strains, as he swallows, and he glances around the small library. He spies Luna and Morrissey in the children’s section, and his warm brown eyes get all big and cute, like the eyes of a cartoon character falling in love.
My heart beats twice as fast at the sight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look so adorable.
“These are your girls?” he asks, shifting his gaze between them and me a few times before he spots Raven, asleep on my back. He covers his soft gasp with one of his huge hands and just stares — at Raven, at me, at the both of us together, and then at the girls again. “This is the most beautiful family I’ve ever seen,” he whispers softly, as if he only really says it for himself to hear.
“Thank you.”
He slides his gaze back to me and wets his lips before running his hands over his dark hair and smoothing it back. It’s mostly tamed into a low man-bun, but one long, rebellious lock falls back to frame his handsome face, and he hurriedly sweeps it away again. “I, uh… You look good. I like this… um…” He gestures at my dress, and then crisscrosses the air with his finger to follow the way the baby-sling’s fabric is wrapped around me. I hadn’t paid much attention to how it cinches my waist and accentuates my breasts, but now that he’s pointed it out, I can feel my cheeks warming.
“It’s pretty,” he says. “You’re pretty.” He squeezes his eyes shut, like he said something stupid, and then he opens one just a crack.
I smile and tilt my head at his worn jeans and dark, plaid shirt, admiring the way they sit on his huge, muscular frame. “Likewise. Very pretty.”
He blushes sweetly. “I’m not too big to be pretty?”
“You can be big and pretty,” Morrissey says from near his elbow.
Vince lifts his arm out of the way, to look at her. “Hello, small person. You must be Morrissey.”
He knows her name? That sort of thing would be a red flag in a lot of circumstances, but I can detect zero malicious vibes from this man. He’s obviously been asking around, though. Goodness knows what he’s heard about me, but I can only assume it’s why he hasn’t approached me yet. I like small towns, but they have their down sides.
Vince holds one giant hand out to Morrissey, and she leans around him to look at me.
I give her a nod, and she takes one of his giant fingers in her fist and gives it a shake. “Hello, friend.”
He grins. “Hi. I’m Vince.”
“That’s Lulu,” Morrissey informs him, pointing at her sister, who has crawled under his seat, to get close enough to inspect his giant boots.
Vince lifts his leg out of the way and waves at her. “Hi Lulu.”
She ducks her head and holds her hair out of her eyes to study him a moment, before she says, “Yup.” Then she goes back to tugging on his bootlaces.
Morrissey comes to stand next to me. “And this is Ravee,” she says, lightly stroking Raven’s foot and watching her toes curl.
“Your mama’s very lucky to have three beautiful girls to love.” Vince’s voice sounds strained. Is he getting emotional? He does seem very sensitive. He clears his throat softly and looks back to where they came from. “Are you here for some books?”
“And to play with the puzzles.” Morrissey rises to her tiptoes and looks at his books. “Do you like reading stories?”
He nods. “I love reading stories.”
“Will you read us one? ”
He glances at me, as if asking permission.
“If you’d like to,” I say. “No pressure.”
He turns back to Morrissey. “I would love to read you a story.”
Morrissey grins and reaches for the top book from his stack of mystery novels. She holds it up and looks at the cover. “Is this a good book?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet,” he says. “Should I tell you after?”
She looks thoughtful a moment, and then puts it back down. “No, thank you. It’s not very colorful. Would you like me to find you a better one?”
Vince nods. “I would like that very much. Thank you.”
She scampers off, and he presses a hand to his chest when he turns back to me. “She’s a delight, Fred. Good job.”
The praise makes me feel warm all over, and I catch myself swaying a little. “Thanks. We like her.” I lean back and spot Cadence behind the issue desk at the end of the rows of shelves, but nobody else seems to be around. When Luna goes after Morrissey, I step forward to study the books on his desk and recognize the dates on two sets of classifieds — for births and deaths — not quite covered by his notebook. “I see you’ve been studying up on us.” I nod toward his pile of yearbooks and newspapers.
“I had questions,” he says quietly.
“And I would have answered them, if you’d asked me.” I move my high-school yearbook to cover Paul’s obituary. “I could’ve saved you the trouble of hunting through someone else’s scraps of history for anything relevant.”
Vince has the decency to look ashamed of himself as he tidies the rest of the documents into a straighter pile. “I’m a mystery buff,” he says, putting his book selection on top, as if to prove it. “When I hear wild stories, I like to thoroughly validate them with facts, and then look at things from every angle, before I decide how to feel about them. Which has been very hard in your case, because you basically don’t exist online, the locals at the bar all tell me the only story they enjoy telling, and there have apparently been enough record-storage facility fires since your birth, that there’s very little hard-copy information left about you.”
The hollow gnawing in my stomach makes me ease backward, and I fold my arms over the unsettling sensation. What’s he looking for? And why does he need to look so hard? “Your research is that thorough?”
He opens his mouth, but then shuts it tight. He runs a hand over his beard and exhales through his fingers before showing me his empty palms. “That sounds bad. I promise I’m not being creepy. I scrape people’s historical information from all sorts of databases for work, and sometimes I forget that’s not a normal thing to do. It’s just… I’m that interested in you,” he says quietly, as if he didn’t want to admit it.
It’s almost endearing, but I’m not exactly happy he went digging in my past instead of asking me directly. Goodness knows what he thinks of me after hearing how other people see me. Judgmental fools.
I lift my chin. “And how do you feel about me now that you’ve done your research?” I ask. “Curious? Angry? Disgusted? Is that why you didn’t come and find me sooner?”
His dark eyebrows draw downward and stay there. “I intended to find you once I was done here, and I’d describe myself as more curious than ever. Why would I be angry or disgusted?”
I pick at my short nails and give him a half-shrug. “I know what people say about me — especially the drunk ones from the bar. I know what you may think of me.”
“You have no idea what I’ve been thinking.” His deep, firm tone makes me look up. “If you did, maybe you’d run the other way,” he says, his eyes serious and imploring.
It’s my turn to frown, because despite his words of warning, his size, and his obvious strength, he gives off the warmest, kindest energy I’ve ever felt. “Why would you say that?”
“Our size difference for one. My romantic batting average for another. Maybe you should do some research on me.” He gets to his feet. His size makes him tower over me, and my insides do excited flippity-things in response, but he quickly puts some space between us. “Maybe you’ll figure out what I’ve been doing wrong, so I don’t do that with you.”
He glances at the door and firms his strong jaw beneath his thick beard. I can feel him teetering on the verge of leaving, but he takes a single step back. “I’m sorry my prying pissed you off,” he says. “I like you, but I’ve been hurt before, and I don’t really have the time to make bad relationship choices. I’ll get out of your hair soon, but I said I’d do something, so I need to go do that first. Excuse me.”
Morrisey seems to have forgotten her mission to find Vince a book, but he walks over to the children’s area, flips through a few books, and pulls one out before lowering himself into a beanbag. He clears his throat, opens The Tiger Who Came to Tea, and says, “Once upon a time…”
It’s a family favorite of ours, and that’s not how the book starts, but Morrissey and Luna hear the magic words and get pulled in by their magnetism. They climb onto the sides of the beanbag and lean in close, to see the pictures.
Vince reads aloud in his deep, rumbly voice, but makes hilarious changes in tone for the mother character, which sets the girls giggling and crowding closer. Like me, they don’t seem to mind that this big, flannel-shirt-wearing mountain man is still a stranger. I’m sure they’re simply drawn to the comforting, benevolent energy that radiates from him, same as I am.
His voice for the tiger is very impressive, and when he finishes the story, the girls demand he start over. He looks to me. Eyebrows raised, he waits for approval, and when I nod, he opens the book and starts again.
The girls snuggle in. Morrissey turns the pages for him, and Luna rests her head on his big shoulder and strokes his sleeve. Vince pauses and turns to watch her. She looks up to meet his gaze, they smile at each other, and then she nestles her head back where it was and points to the book. “Peas. ”
“She means please ,” Morrissey translates. “More, please.”
Still smiling, Vince continues with the story, and Luna continues to pat his arm, but by the end of the story, both she and Morrissey are climbing on his shoulders and hanging from his neck, like he’s a jungle-gym.
And he lets them. Sits there and takes it, like a huge teddy bear.
This man is so fucking sweet, he may even be able to convince Mom to reconsider her opinion of men. Maybe then I could ask him to stick around, so I can climb on him too. In a much less wholesome way.
Would he let me? He said he’s been hurt, and he was in a hurry to get away from me earlier. I need to talk to him without worrying about little ears hearing what I’ll say.
By the time he gets to his feet, he’s wearing a kid on each leg, and they’re cackling their heads off as he carefully plods over to me and pretends to shake them off. “I appear to have gained some passengers for the trip over here.”
“I’m not surprised. You look like you’d be a fun ride.”
His jaw drops, and I don’t suppress my smirk.
“I’d ask if you have room for two more” — I twist a little, to include Raven — “but you look near capacity. I’m also curious where we’d go if I tried it solo. But I’m only really alone when I work in the early hours at the?—”
“Is the bakery open tomorrow?” he asks.
I shouldn’t be surprised he knows what I do. If he’s been looking into me, people probably mentioned my baking — after informing him that I’m a scandalous baby factory, of course. In a way, it is flattering that he’s tried to find out more about me, but he isn’t going to learn anything important until he asks me for himself.
“I’ll be there from four.”
Vince takes out his phone. “That’s a.m. Right?”
I nod, and he mirrors the action. “Alarm’s set.” He slides his phone into his back pocket. “Time for me to go, team,” he says, looking down at the girls. He holds his hands out and claps at his palms until the girls take his hands, and then he lifts them off his legs — with sound effects — and sets them onto the floor. “When we meet again, I’d love to see some pictures you’ve made. Can you paint a tiger? Like in the book?”
“ Yes ,” Morrissey says, jumping on the spot until she looks at Luna who’s just staring at Vince like he’s a freaking god.
“Awesome. I’ll do some too and show you mine,” he says, sweetening the deal, even though he’s clearly made the sale.
Morrissey turns to me, her eyes wide with excitement as she slides her hand into mine. “We’re going to need to make more orange.”
Vince sucks his lower lip into his mouth, as he looks me over. “What do you need, to make orange?”
“Orange flower petals, a lemon, organic baking soda. Maybe some turmeric or saffron for different tones.” I shrug. “I’ll use whatever we have available. Nature always provides, and its gifts make beautiful watercolors to paint with.”
“All organic,” he says.
“Naturally.” I smile.
“Naturally,” he repeats, his eyes sparkling.