“Aye, I’m just a touch distracted today.” Agnes fluttered a hand in front of her face.
A part of me hoped she was distracted by thoughts of me. Lord knows all I could do was think about her.
I held up the container. “I brought soup.”
“You brought...” She blinked, her irritation shifting to confusion. “Soup?”
“Lia’s potato leek. It’s still hot.” I set it on the counter and leaned against the edge, crossing my arms. Agnes’s skin was pale and dark circles smudged her pretty eyes. “Was our dinner the last time you ate an actual meal?”
Agnes opened her mouth, tugged on her earlobe, and then closed her mouth again.
“That’s what I thought.” I pointed to the container. “Eat. I’ll wait.”
“I’m in the middle of something.” Agnes gestured to the bookshelves. It took everything in my power not to walk over to her and lift her off the stepladder, throw her over my shoulder, and drag her across the street to my flat over the pub.
First I’d shove food down her throat.
AndthenI’d ravish her.
“Reorganizing your already perfectly organized shelves?” I glanced at the section she’d been working on. “That’s your stress tell, you know. When you’re upset, you organize things.”
“I do not have a stress tell.” Agnes’s brows dropped low over her forehead, and she pushed her lower lip out in an adorable pout.
“You absolutely do. When you’re anxious, you twist your bracelet. When you’re not being entirely truthful, you tug on your left earlobe. And when something’s really bothering you, you reorganize things that don’t need reorganizing.” I nodded toward the shelf. “Those books were in perfect order. They’re nevernotin perfect order, Agnes.”
“Don’t you have other things to be doing thanharassing me? Didn’t I give you a book to read this week?” Agnes glared at me and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go do that.”
“Can’t.” I pulled the book out of my coat pocket. “Finished it last night.”
That got her attention. She climbed down from the ladder, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“You actually read it?”
“Cover to cover. Even the boring bits about ship rigging.”
“There are no boring bits about ship rigging. The technical detail is part of what makes it immersive.” Impatience flared on Agnes’s face. Which was far better than thesad I just kicked a puppy doglook that had been on her face the other night when she’d turned away from me in the car.
“Well, darling, that technical detail nearly put me to sleep three separate times, but I persevered.” I flipped the book open to a dog-eared page. “I did have questions, though.”
Agnes’s expression shifted from suspicious to intrigued despite herself. She crossed to the counter, close enough that I caught a whiff of her scent—honey and something floral today.
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, for starters, Long John Silver. He’s the villain, right? But I found myself rooting for him half the time. Is that normal, or am I just morally compromised from my years of debauchery?”
“It’s intentional.” Agnes skewered me with a look when I mentioned my debauchery, but then angled her hip against the counter, warming to the subject. “Stevensonwrote Silver as charismatic and intelligent specifically to complicate the readers’ sympathies. It’s to show how we romanticize pirates and that charm can often hide cruelty.”
“So I’m not morally compromised?”
“I mean, who can judge that, really?” Agnes rolled her eyes.
I laughed, and something in Agnes’s face softened. She still looked tired—there were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there a few days ago—but for a moment, she looked like herself again.
“What else?” she asked and I realized that I’d just been standing there, aching to kiss her.
“What else what?”
“You said questions. Plural. What else confused you about an adventure novel?”
