“Very funny. I’m sure if he met the right woman, he’d make her a wonderful husband.”
Olivia tuned Flo out. She had books to order and snacks to unpack for the vending machine in the seating area away from the bookshelves, and she had to catalog the shipment of magazines they’d received earlier in the day. And she had to get all that done before she met up with her friends at Knots and Tangles in—she glanced at her watch—less than ninety minutes. The Chick Clique, they called themselves. Well, Riley, Anita, and Harper did. Olivia hated the cheesy name.
“Olivia? Olivia?” RaeAnne said.
She continued typing. “What?”
“Maybe you should give Beau a chance.”
“Exactly what I’ve been telling her for over a year now,” Flo huffed.
“Not interested.” She tapped on the keyboard.
RaeAnne sighed. She was ten years older than Olivia and married with two young boys. Blissfully married, as she liked to remind Olivia and Flo at least twice a week. “I don’t understand. You’re cute as a button. You should be hitched to some handsome man by now.” She turned to Flo. “Is Beau handsome?”
“I think so. His mother does too.”
Olivia resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“You know who she reminds me of?” Flo went to stand next to RaeAnne. “The actress in that mummy movie. What was it called?”
“The Mummy?” RaeAnne supplied.
“Yes, that’s it.” Flo snapped her pudgy fingers. “She wasa librarian too. Very smart. Knew Egyptian. She was also pretty. Had dark hair, right?”
“Yes.” RaeAnne rearranged two of the hardback books. “But she was English, not half Hispanic.”
“I’m a quarter Hispanic.” Olivia continued to type, unable to let the error pass. “Puerto Rican. On my mother’s side.”
“The English librarian was also taller,” Flo pointed out.
“And adventurous,” RaeAnne added.
“Well, we all know Olivia’s not adventurous.”
Olivia glanced up from the computer at Flo’s regretful tone. “Not everyone has to be adventurous. There’s a lot to be said for staying close to home.”
“You mean staying in a rut,” RaeAnne mumbled.
Olivia winced. The rut thing again. It had been a year and two weeks since she’d taken a chance on getting out of her rutand ended up crash-landing into heartache. Twice.
“You know,” Flo said, turning off the lights in the children’s section of the library, “maybe what Beau needs is an adventurous woman. That might be just the thing to get him out of—”
“His mother’s basement?” RaeAnne chuckled.
“Hisrut. I’ve been reading about analysis paralysis in this month’s issue ofPsychology for Everyone, and some people overanalyze everything that might go wrong. Therefore, they never take a risk. Sometimes they don’t move forward at all.”
Olivia’s back teeth clenched as she shut down the computer. “It’s 5:30 p.m.,” she said, eyeing both busybodies. “Quitting time.”
RaeAnne saluted her. “Off to the store I go. Trent and I are taking the boys to Lake Catherine for the weekend, andI have a mile-long list of things I still need to get. At least we have the tent and two coolers already.”
“Don’t forget the sunscreen.” Flo fell into step beside her as she headed for the break room next to Olivia’s office in the back of the library. “It’s going to be a scorcher on Saturday.”
Olivia took a box cutter off the shelf under the counter and walked over to the vending machine. As she opened the box, she tried to ignore RaeAnne and Flo’s remarks. First off, she wasn’t going out with Beau. She didn’t even want to meet him. While he might be a nice guy, even if she was interested in going out—and she absolutely, positively wasn’t—she couldn’t see herself with someone who didn’t have the gumption to move forward with his life. She might be in a rut, but hers was comfortable. Necessary. And she owned her own house.
Her conscience kicked in. For all she knew, Beau could be living in the basement for legitimate reasons that Flo didn’t know about. Who was she to judge?
She made quick work of filling the machine with various chips, crackers, and candy, then broke down the empty box and took it to the back storage room. Two words kept coming to mind—analysis paralysis. She didn’t have the same interest in psychology that Flo had, but she had heard of the term, and it didn’t apply to her. She wasn’t paralyzed. She liked her life the way it was. And the last time she’d listened to people who thought they knew better, she’d made a mistake. A huge mistake, one she would never repeat again.
