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“Kinda.”
Her eyebrows dipped down when I didn’t say anything else. I wanted to, but I was so struck by her that sometimes I forgot to speak. The urge to swipe my thumb across her cheek was intense. I’d bet it was soft as silk.
I forced conversation out of my mouth. If there was anyone I wanted to talk to, it was Samantha. “Got the day off ’cause I had to take Grumbly to the vet, but then I took a call since Sheriff Michaels was busy. Always work to be done.” It seemed Abey wasn’t as busy as Shelley had thought, hanging out with her friends at the damn library.
“Is Grumbly sick? And are you really going to call him Grumbly?”
“No.”
Her eyebrows rose this time, higher and higher, while she waited for me to say more. It wasn’t my nature to be a chatterbox. I’d been alone a long time.
“Deputy, it’s cool that you come to the library every week. In a way, it gives me hope. Nobody else does. But do you think you could talk to me? I mean, I get kind of lonely here, and you’re here every Tuesday. We might as well talk.”
“That’d be nice,” I said, but talking wasn’t what I wanted to do with her. “And call me Frank.”
I’d been dreaming about kissing her for way too long. But I was out of practice talking to women, at least women I wanted to take to my bed, and that was the crux of the matter.
I’d thought for the longest time that Samantha’s friend Brady was a suitor, so my plans to visit the library every week so I could get to know her had kind of died. But then I found out that, no, in fact, Brady was gay. Abey had filled me in when he and Theo Burroughs had gotten together, so I kept at it. Kept showing up. Maybe my divorce had put a damper on my confidence a bit, but it seemed to be making a comeback the longer I looked in her eyes.
“So, Frank,” she said and smiled, “what else are you doing on your day off?”
I cleared my throat, trying to ignore how much I loved hearing her say my name. “I was gonna take Grumbly for a hike. Would you like to come with us?” Valentine’s Day was only a couple days away, and I was betting she was a fan of the ridiculous holiday, but now that the words were tumbling out of my mouth, I didn’t want to wait that long to take her out.
Her eyes grew huge, and she blinked. “Go with you?”
I winced. That had probably seemed pretty abrupt to her after more than a year of my Tuesday library visits. It wasn’t like we never spoke. We did, of course, but just not a lot. Not after that first day. I never felt like she’d want to hear about my life. What could we possibly have in common, an old man and a beautiful young woman like her? When I was there, she was always on her laptop or busy setting up displays that she took pictures of for the library’s Instagram page. I’d downloaded the stupid app just so I could see what she posted. The pictures rarely featured her, but I liked knowing what book she was talking about or what new thing she was into. Lately, it was growing herbs. She’d posted about starting up a seed exchange program for the library patrons.
She was still looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish asking her on a date. Damn, man. You really are outta practice. “The vet told me he needs to go on a hike. Thought I’d take a walk out toward the river. There’s a nice path from here to there.” Now I was groaning inside, realizing I sounded like I was ninety years old. Why didn’t I just ask her to go shuffleboarding with me? Like I needed one more thing to make me seem older to her. Truth was, she had to be at least ten years younger than me, maybe more. I still didn’t know her age. She probably had no clue what shuffleboarding was. I wasn’t thrilled that I did.
“Thank you for the invite,” she said, “but I can’t leave work. There’s an after-school tutoring group that comes later on Tuesday afternoons. Plus, there’s a lot of snow left on the ground, maybe even ice.” She turned to set her phone down, and when she turned back around, she blushed again. “But maybe we could go for a walk downtown after I get off? They salted the sidewalks down Main Street. I went for a walk last night.”
I was nodding before she’d even finished speaking. I’d known that. I was the one who’d called the county street department when they took their time getting to us. Wisper was a blip on their schedule, so sometimes they’d make us wait days for salt and plows.
“Yeah?” she asked in a tentative voice.
I wanted to say yes with conviction, but the only response I could seem to find was another nod. The little sparkle in her eye made the rest easy though. “Sounds good. Dinner?”
“Pick me up here at six-thirty?” She smiled at me, and my dick got hard. Oh, how I wanted Samantha Russo.
I wanted her bad. What in the hell had taken me so long to ask her out? And who knew it would be a damn dog to give me the courage?
A date wasn’t a big deal. A nice meal with a nice woman. It didn’t mean we’d get married. What was the harm?
It was occurring to me that my distrust of women, the thing that had convinced me for eleven years not to put myself out there, wasn’t distrust at all. As I looked at the smile on her lips, I knew it was a fear of being disappointed, a fear of rejection, and a deep-seated fear I’d had since I was a kid that, once someone really got to know me, they’d leave.
But when I looked into her eyes, I wondered if Samantha Russo could be worth it all, and it seemed I was finally ready to take the risk.
CHAPTER FOUR
SAMANTHA
When he and Grumbly left the library, Frank put his hat on and tipped it, then nodded at me. He did that a lot. He smiled, though, and my responding grin must’ve looked ridiculous.
Like it mattered. I’d been trying to rouse enthusiasm, but the library still wasn’t very popular with the residents of Wisper, so as usual, Frank and I had been the only people there.
He was so cute when I’d mentioned breaking a rule. His nose crinkled up, his eyebrows crunching down, like it went against his very nature. Hm. It was the first time I’d ever considered him cute. He was always hot, no doubt about it, but today was the first time I’d pictured him as a little boy.
I’d always seen him as this hard, stern, giant of a guy. But he was cute. Adorable, really, the way he hung on my every word, the way his smile started in his eyes and then moved down to his mouth, and the way he pet Grumbly so lovingly without even noticing he was doing it when the puppy had sat next to him and leaned against Frank’s leg.
