Chapter 8
BOOKER
“As long as it’s not the kind of cake a stripper jumps out of, I don’t care what kind it is,” I said, watching Seth shove a forkful of pancake into his mouth, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk.
I’d invited him to the café for breakfast ostensibly to talk birthday plans.
He’d politely chosen to accept that excuse.
He knew better, of course, and he’d get my real reasons out of me eventually.
For the moment, though, he was enjoying his pancakes.
Enthusiastically and without restraint, maple syrup dripping down his chin.
Uncaring about who might see it. That was Seth all over.
I’d never once known him to give a damn about anyone else’s opinion—either you were with him regardless of what he did, or he didn’t care.
It was times like this that I could see what Mark saw in him.
Well, no, that was unfair. I could always see it. I could see the way Mark looked at him. He’d never looked at anything in his life like Seth before. And I could see the way Seth looked at Mark, with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store.
It would’ve been so easy to dismiss Seth as a gold-digging sugar baby, but I’d never been able to. He loved Mark. He would’ve loved Mark anyway, no matter how he’d found him.
“You’re planning on inviting Miles, right?” Seth asked between mouthfuls of breakfast. “Because I will if you don’t.”
“I…”
I looked around the not-quite-bustling café for a distraction.
Nothing stood out, which seemed rude. It was normally more crowded in here around this time, but I’d clearly picked the one Saturday brunch time when everyone else in town had decided to do something else instead.
Which left me with no easy escape from the conversation.
I had been fantasizing about inviting Miles to my birthday. Planning was too strong a word. I liked the idea of doing it.
But what if he said no? What if he only said yes because he thought he had to?
I didn’t want him to feel obligated to me. I got the feeling he was the kind of man who felt like he had to earn his keep for anyone to want to spend time with him.
Not that a birthday invitation was a demand, or anything. It was just…
“Okay, well, in that case, I’ll—”
“Don’t,” I said before Seth could set the decision in stone.
He raised an eyebrow, holding my gaze as he poured enough syrup to drown himself in on his pancakes. For the second time.
“I’ll do it,” I said, resigning myself to my fate with a sigh. “I’m turning forty, I’ve gotta be old enough by now to hand out my own birthday invites.”
“Speaking of which,” Seth said, wiping his fingers on a napkin and grabbing the tote bag he’d brought with him, pulling out a stack of envelopes.
“I’m planning to write most of them myself, but I figure there are a few people you’ll want there that I might not think of.
Or have just been banned from inviting.”
I ran my thumb over the thick paper of the top envelope before flipping it open to find a beautiful, gilded invite inside.
“These are incredible?” I said, looking up at Seth again in surprise.
Seth shrugged. “Anything for my big brother.”
I smiled at that. I’d always been the little brother, but now I had Seth as well. The in-law part never seemed to matter. It was exactly like I imagined having a little brother would be, as though we’d been family all our lives.
I already had so much to be grateful for. A family who loved me, a successful business, a community where I belonged. Asking for more felt greedy.
Not that I was asking. I was just… starting to think about wanting.
“Well, if you’re in the mood to do me a favor…”
Seth broke into a broad grin. “I knew you didn’t invite me to brunch just because you wanted my company while you ate your scrambled eggs.”
“I like your company,” I said. I did like Seth’s company. I would’ve been happy to have brunch with him every morning-slash-afternoon.
But he was right, I hadn’t asked him to meet me just for the pleasure of his company.
“You’re really good at this whole… design, thing,” I said, nodding to the envelopes I’d set down on the table.
“I am,” Seth said. “One of my many skills.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. Yeah, I could see why Mark had fallen for him.
“How quickly could you make up the world’s most basic flyer?”
Seth raised an eyebrow, and then extracted his laptop from the tote bag as well like something out of Mary Poppins.
“What else have you got in there?” I asked.
“Aspirin, Band-Aids, protein bar, hair ties—”
“You don’t have enough hair to tie,” I pointed out.
“No, but other people do,” Seth said. “Planner, pen, scrap paper, a cool rock Iggy gave me, my tarot reading for the week—”
“Okay I wasn’t… seriously asking you to list all your worldly possessions,” I said, lips twitching. I loved Seth with my whole heart. I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling otherwise. “But you sound like me. Aspirin, Band-Aids, and snacks.”
“If Miles gave you a cool rock, you’d keep that too.”
“I—”
I wanted to argue, but Seth knew me too well. If Miles gave me a cool rock, I would have kept it. I would have put it in pride of place somewhere. “Well, it’d be rude not to,” I allowed.
Seth smirked. “So what am I putting on this flyer? Sounds like you have a plan.”
“I do.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting to find in the library, but Miles being chased around the children’s section by a band of preschoolers with aluminum foil swords hadn’t been on my list of possibilities.
Not until I’d seen it with my own eyes, at least.
I hesitated a second, wondering if it was a game. Then, I saw the look on Miles’s face and my heart sank. There was real fear in his eyes—it was obvious he wasn’t having any fun and couldn’t work out how to make it stop.
He’d said he wasn’t used to this. I hadn’t really understood what that meant for him until now.
Without thinking about it, I strode over and inserted myself between Miles and the kids, pushing him behind me and holding an arm out to stop them. Even with my attention on the kids, I could feel him close behind me, using me as a shield.
Damningly, I didn’t hate that at all. I was glad Seth hadn’t been here to see this, or I would never have heard the end of it.
The four preschoolers stopped dead. Maddy, the ringleader—who was a good kid, mostly, but had a personality the size of Texas—looked me up and down, then dropped the sword.
A heartbeat later I was being hugged around the knees by three of them. Noah, the shy one, hung back until I waved him over.
When I twisted around to glance at Miles, he was staring with his mouth open.
I broke into a grin, happy I’d managed to rescue him and thrilled to be surrounded by kids. Even if they had just been terrorizing my friend.
“You know if you slay the librarian, they’ll close the library again,” I said to Maddy, who looked up at me with her most innocent face.
“He’s a dragon!” she insisted, wide eyed.
I snorted at the thought, imagining Miles curled up on a pile of books, guarding them from all comers.
It… probably wasn’t the least accurate thought I’d ever had.
“He is,” I agreed, since there was no point arguing with a four-year-old. “But you know what? He’s a good dragon.”
Maddy looked at me suspiciously.
“Tell you what,” I began, turning to Miles again to offer him some reassurance. He looked about twice as grateful as he had when I’d changed his tire for him, blue eyes shining with it. “If you leave him alone for five minutes, I’ll read all of you any book you want. Deal?”
The gleam in Maddy’s eyes told me I’d figured out just the right bribe. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I said, offering my pinkie finger to her. “Go pick one while I talk to Mr… Miles,” I finished, realizing then that I didn’t know his last name.
Maddy shook my finger with her whole hand—she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of pinkie-swearing—and tugged Noah away. All four of them ran towards the picture book shelves to make a choice.
“Wow,” Miles said behind me. He’d put me between himself and the kids, as though I was a shield. I didn’t hate that idea at all. “You’re good.”
“I’ve had a little more practice than you, that’s all.” I shrugged. “Besides, they know me.”
“Are you really going to read them a story?” he asked, looking between me and the children’s section.
“Nothing better to do until the bar opens. But uh. Speaking of the bar…”
I held the stack of flyers out to him and watched as he read the one on top, waiting for a reaction. My gut twisted as his eyes tracked the lines back and forth, afraid he’d hate the idea after all. Seth had thought it was good, but Seth wasn’t Miles.
“I can’t ask you to do this,” he said, looking up at me with those gorgeous, wide summer sky blue eyes.
“You’re not asking,” I said. “I’m offering. Because you obviously don’t love asking for help, but…”
“But I need it,” Miles finished for me, looking down at the flyers again. He didn’t sound upset, or defeated. More like he hadn’t quite absorbed the information yet. Like he couldn’t possibly have expected anything like it. “Did you design these? They’re really good.”
I laughed. “No, that was Seth. If I’d done it, they’d be a disaster.”
I’d watched Seth put the flyers together like he was performing a magic trick. No matter how many times he said they were just quick and unrefined, I couldn’t help thinking they were flawless.
Even if they weren’t, they got the message across: sign up for a library card, get a free drink. Simple and, I figured, effective.
“This is too much. You barely know me,” Miles said, turning his gaze on me again. “Why would you help me?”
“Well, first of all, it’s not just about you,” I pointed out. “I want this library to stay open. I want the kids to have somewhere to come.”
“To harass me,” Miles said wryly.
“To harass you.” I grinned. “It’s good for you, it’ll help you lighten up. Libraries… they’re sacred places, I think.”
“Yeah?” Miles asked.
“Yeah.”
His lips twitched as he stared back down at the flyers again.
“What?” I asked, ducking to look at his face. “Am I being a dork?”