Prologue
HAWK
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader in possession of a good book must be in want of an interruption.
Hiding in plain sight had always been my superpower.
“Haaaaawk?” my little sister singsonged from the living room doorway, not realizing that I was a mere two feet away from her.
“Hawkins Sunday, my favorite brother in the whole entire universe? Hawk, pleeeeease? Come out, come out, wherever you are! I have the teeniest, tiiiiiniest little favor to ask you!” she called, clomping up the stairs.
I stuffed a Thin Mint into my mouth and grinned as I pulled the giant quilt more firmly over my head, snuggled deeper into the sofa cushions, and turned the page of my new book.
I loved my family—truly loved them. I would happily take a bullet for Emma, or my uncle Drew, or any of the four giant lummoxes I called my big brothers.
I delighted in helping them with their school projects and their town committees, with chores around Sunday Orchard, or, in Drew’s case, with finding the keys and reading glasses he misplaced on the daily, usually somewhere on his person.
But a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old man had needs, damn it.
Specifically, in this case, the need to eat this last box of Girl Scout cookies I’d been saving since a ravening horde of Sundays had descended like locusts and eaten all eleven of the other boxes I’d purchased, the need to not venture into the January sleety-rain combo for anything less than a life-or-death emergency, and the need to find out if the dastardly George Wickham would actually gain control of heroic, deliciously broody Mr. Darcy’s estate after committing Darcy to Bedlam, or if the intrepid Miss Elizabeth Bennet, racing across England in a stolen phaeton, would arrive to save the love of her life before time ran out.
“Henry Hawkins Sunday! I know you’re around here somewhere,” Emma called again, her heavy snow boots pounding back down the stairs.
“Hey, hey. What’s with the racket, sister?” Drew asked, meeting her in the hallway.
“Porter texted the family group chat that he lost his snow pants and ski gloves, and he wants to borrow Hawk’s,” Em said.
“And Webb called ’cause he’s bringing a friend over to go snowshoeing, and he says it’s about time Hawk got some fresh air ’cause he’s probably looking peaky.
And I wanted to ask Hawk to take me to get ice cream at Scoops since he bought himself a car and everything now.
” She heaved the put-upon sigh of the unlicensed.
“But he’s off somewhere reading his books again. ”
I glanced up from said book, scowled at the inside of the blanket, and angrily shoved more cookies in my mouth. Em said the word reading in the same tone of voice one might say preg-checking the cows or plucking the slugs from the cherry trees.
The trouble with being in a family of lumberjacks (plus one aging hippie and a pint-sized wilderness warrior) was that all of them would rather be slathered in jelly and tied to an anthill than spend a full day indoors, so they couldn’t imagine why I would.
Not long ago, I’d loved the outdoors, too; hiking had been a thing my dad and I did regularly.
But the appeal of the activity had died with my dad.
Shortly thereafter, I’d learned of the existence of Pride and Prejudice variations—not to be confused with the actual OG Pride and Prejudice because the original was still the best—and voilà. Instant love affair.
There’d been no going back for me.
But no matter how many times I tried to explain my fascination—the plots and the symbolism and the love—none of them seemed to get it.
“Don’t need to worry about some character’s love life, Hawklet. Got enough problems of my own,” Webb would say with an impatient grunt.
“But it’s fiction,” Emma would say, wrinkling her nose. “Why read about that stuff when the world’s full of catastrophes and people who need help?”
“You’ve been eating processed food again, haven’t you?” Drew would sigh, like perhaps my strange affliction would subside if I’d just commit to eating more quinoa.
They all missed the point entirely. Of course the world was full of real troubles—earthquakes and political upheaval and pre-calculus tests I was doomed to fail; guys who were too gorgeous and wonderful to acknowledge my existence, and others who didn’t want to take no for an answer; chores to do, and college to consider, and a sweet baby nephew who needed attention; and dealing with all of that while carrying the last name Sunday, which meant something when you lived in the gossipy confines of my beloved Little Pippin Hollow, a town so tiny they put Little in the name.
Who wouldn’t want to escape into a world with a hard-won, well-deserved, guaranteed happily ever after?
And processed food is tasty, I thought as I shoved another cookie in my mouth.
“Poor kid,” Drew said sadly. “He has at least three nice young men who’d love to take him out if he’d just crook a finger in their direction, but Corinne Perkins told Dottie French she’d heard from Camille—her niece, you know?—that Hawk says he’s saving himself for something special.”
“I say he should spend more time with his friends,” Emma decided. “He’s got bunches of ’em.”
I rolled my eyes. Yes, I did, and I liked them a lot… but sometimes, it felt like my friends didn’t always understand me any more than my family did.
Feisty but perfectly polite Elizabeth Bennet, on the other hand…
Now, there was a woman who understood what it was like to have expectations on your shoulders.
Elizabeth Bennet knew what it was like to have high standards for one’s romantic partners.
Elizabeth Bennet understood what it meant to have…
“Aha!” Emma yelled, snatching my blanket off my head triumphantly. “Gotcha!”
… really annoying siblings.
“Hey.” I blinked innocently, shoving my cookies behind the sofa cushion before Emma could see them. “Hi. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Hawkins, man.” Uncle Drew shook his shaggy gray head. “What are you doing?”
“Just… you know… chilling. Pondering life. Deep philosophical questions. Like, should your lacrosse team really be selling wrapping paper for their fundraiser again, Em? Because I tried my hardest last year as the fundraising volunteer, but the Hollow is really more of a ‘chuck it in a gift bag with some tissue paper’ kind of place. Don’t worry, I’ll come up with a better idea for this year.
” I tapped my temple. “Best leave me to it.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Emma set her hands on her narrow hips. “You think you’ll find the answer in…” She grabbed my hand and turned my book over to read the title. “Mr. Darcy’s Wild Ride: A Romance Novel?”
“Hawk.” Uncle Drew narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to me. “Why do you have chocolate dust on your mouth?”
“Uh…” I licked my lips. “Well, actually…”
“And you smell like artificial mint flavoring,” he accused.
“Fine. Fine!” I jumped up from the couch and stood beside the sofa.
“I was eating cookies and reading, okay? I admit it. Reading is not a crime, people! It’s not a sign that I’m bored or depressed.
It is not a cry for help. I’m not secretly longing to run an errand or do a chore.
I do not want to slog through the snow to get ice cream—an activity, I might add, that runs contrary to millions of years of human evolution.
I do not wish to eat quinoa. I have no desire to clomp through a snowy field, working up a sweat that will freeze to my body instantly while trying to keep up with Webb, whose legs are way, way longer than they have any right to be—”
“Er. Hawk, maybe now’s not…” Drew began in a placating voice, looking over my head like he couldn’t even meet my eye.
“Now is the perfect time!” I insisted.
It took a lot to get me angry, but once I was riled up, my frustrations needed to be vented entirely before I could move on.
“Look, I could be spending my days doing truly terrible things. Like… like…” I searched my brain for the worst crimes I could think of.
“Shamelessly pilfering someone’s precious boxes of baked goods, even though they’d taken the time to hide them in eleven different places throughout the house!
Or, worse, toying with men’s affections, leading them into dalliances, and then ruining their reputations forever before casting them aside. ”
“Hawk,” Emma said, low and insistent. “You need to chill. Now.”
But I was beyond chill. Chill had deserted me along with my peace and quiet.
“I’m not a monster, you guys! I’m simply a man attempting to read a library book in solitude.
If I could,” I said passionately, “I would have a library of my own. A whole room filled with books. And a sofa. And cookies. A room whose function was specifically and solely to do my very favorite activity so that no one ever needed to look for me or wonder what I was doing because everyone would know. Hawk is in his reading room, you’d all say, and you’d say it respectfully, because when a whole room is dedicated to a task, suddenly we realize it’s important.
But for now, I do what I must. And I don’t need everyone and their freaking uncle getting up in my face with their delightful suggestions for what I ought to be doing instead.
And yes,” I said, pausing long enough to draw a deep breath, “I’m using implied air quotes because none of your suggestions were at all remotely—”
“Uh. So. This is my family, Jack,” Webb said from behind the sofa, startling the crap out of me.
Mouth still open, I whirled around, grabbing a pillow from the sofa as a makeshift shield.
There in the doorway stood the most enormous of my four giant brothers, looking amused and disapproving and a little embarrassed.
Beside him stood a man—a man nearly as tall and broad as Webb—with blond-streaked hair, startlingly blue eyes that crinkled with intelligent good humor, and the most engaging smile I’d ever seen on another human being.