Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Adelaide
“Okay, what are you smiling at?” Tabitha asks, sidling up to my table for the third time in an hour because I’ve inadvertently sidetracked her from her job.
Tabitha’s worked at Beaver Creek’s one and only lodging, The Nook Bed mostly of him at events, interspersed between book promo. But there’s one photo—one glorious photo—of him beaming in a bookstore. His dimples kill me.
“Addie, he’s cute.” She steals my phone and zooms in on the picture, holds a finger up when I begin protesting.
Do not like it, Tabitha. I don’t say it, but she hears it telepathically.
“Shut up. I was right. He has hot professor written all over him. It’s like he’s worn, all edges and lines.
He’s been through life. He’s got experience.
What does he write? Something hot, I bet?
It’s giving murder with a literary edge. ”
I let out a giggle. “You’re somehow not wrong. Thrillers, but they feel kind of upmarket.”
“Oh my god, are you guys flirting through books?”
“We traded books at the festival. I fear he thinks I’m much cooler than I actually am.”
“You?” Tabitha tilts her head, gives me an unsubtle once-over. My hair is up in a messy ponytail and I’m wearing a patchwork dress I hobbled together out of scrap fabric. “Someone thinks you’re cool?”
“I could go tell Patti you’re not working, if you’d like.”
I eye the doorway into the kitchen, off-white, swinging pantry doors, wooden borders carved with swirls and, obviously, beavers. Patti starts on dinner around now. I can smell the garlic permeating the air. Tabitha ticks up an eyebrow, daring me.
“What’d you do to make him think you were cool?”
“I’m apparently really good at flirting through text and book inscriptions. I believe I told him in slightly different words that he’s mine now.”
Tabitha pauses on her scroll through his page. “Excuse me? Look at you go, Adelaide.”
“I had a brain fart as I was signing his book.”
“No, that’s hot. Go with it.” She looks down at my phone again, taps a manicured nail against the screen. “Why does he look so familiar?”
“Assuming you’ve never read him...” She shakes her head. She reads one book a year: mine. “It’s probably because he used to live here as a kid. His grandma still does.”
“No way! Did we go to school with him? How old is he? He looks older than us. Maybe Simon would know him? I’ll ask when I get home.”
“I actually don’t know. He’s got a few more books than I do, so potentially a few years older, yeah. I don’t remember him, but I could have been totally oblivious. Going by what he’s said, I think he left town around when my mom left, as well.”
Tabitha cringes. We don’t talk about the dark years when my mom ran off with her lover and never came back. I was twelve. Haven’t heard a single word from her since and, frankly, I wouldn’t want to.
“Interesting. He just sent you a picture of a dog.” Tabitha slides my phone across the table. She shifts off her chair and appears by my side, leans close to my ear. “It looks like he’s in town. I bet you could catch him if you left now.”
Sure enough, Zander’s dog Lucy is having a staring contest with a duck right next to the Beverly Beaver statue. Lucy lies flat in the grass, ready to pounce, while the duck just stands there, oblivious. I sigh and make a show of packing up.
“Well, if you’re banishing me, I guess I’ll go accidentally on purpose run into him.”
“That’s my girl!”