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The skirt doesn’t budge at all.
Alec finally stops talking and shakes my shoulder. “Oliver.”
I should just unlock the door so he can get out and I can drive back to the resort. But if I move, I might miss something.
I see her in profile, her eyes squeezing shut. I know that look. She’s focusing on her breathing. She did that a lot when the shake machine at Shake, Shake, Shake would blow a fuse.
“What in heaven’s name are you up to, Sophie Wophie?” I muse under my breath. “Who are you hiding from?”
“Is that Sophie Lawson? The librarian?” Alec asks, leaning forward and squinting through the windshield.
Her head whips around frantically, as if looking for an escape route. I sink down low so she won’t see me. Why I feel the need to hide is confusing. I should just wave or drive over there and say “hi.”
But I don’t want to make myself known quite yet. She’s hiding from something or someone. And besides, it’s fun watching her. I’ve always liked watching her. Not in an inappropriate or stalker way, of course. We’ve never been more than friends.
I stop myself from rolling my window down and calling her name. I don’t want to give her away. I’ve witnessed many pickles Sophie got herself into back in the day and this seems no different.
Where is a big tub of obscenely buttered popcorn when I need it? This is the most entertaining thing I’ve seen since I arrived in town a couple of weeks ago.
She frowns, then picks a piece of lint off that skirt that is dangerously sexy…do I dare use that word to describe Sophie? If she knew I was thinking that, she’d punch me in the arm.
Continuing to crouch, she shifts her weight to her other side. Her hammies must be screaming. I know mine would be if I were crouching like that. The circulation would be cut off. The dark-haired beauty could lose a limb if she isn’t careful.
She is beautiful. She always has been. But that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. I’m not settling down. Not at least until I’m retired from my job. Sophie wants a husband and family—a point we’ve argued over for years. I’ll let my five brothers buy cute houses in Suburbia and shop at Costco every weekend with their wives and gaggles of kids. I’ve got other things to do.
Not that any of that has happened for us Tate brothers—yet. Alec has had enough heartache for one lifetime, so he’s good with being single. And Henry was married briefly. All he has to show for it is an amazing daughter he rarely gets to see and scars from a messy divorce.
No, thank you.
“You should go over and say hi,” Alec says. “She’s the only friend you’ve got around here.”
“I don’t need friends. I have brothers,” I say. It’s a version of what mom says. That no one would have our back like our brothers. She’s always trying to coax us to get along.
Maybe I should turn the car off and get out? Maybe I should holler her name?
I chuckle again as she peers around the side of the mobile library and quickly straightens back to hiding. I can see her face, in profile, scrunched up with worry. She sticks a pinkie finger in between her teeth. She still bites her nails?
Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.
“Is that the county mobile library?” Alec asks. “It’s—seen better days.”
“According to Sophie, the bus’s name is Scott.” I laugh, remembering that conversation about F. Scott Fitzgerald, or some such author. “When she graduated with her Master’s, she found it in the back of the school district bus barn and renovated it. Without officially being hired on by the county yet. She had to write online articles and waitress to fund it and keep her own lights on.”
Alec wrinkles his brow and nods. “She must really like books.”
“She thinks it’s her personal mission to get people reading. Longdale hadn’t had a library for years at that point, and that wasn’t acceptable to her.” I smile when I remember her raging over the fact that the city librarian had retired to Arizona and Longdale hadn’t replaced her.
He points up the street. “I remember something about the old building on the corner being condemned?”
I nod. “Black mold. It was a mess.”
Alec points to the bus Sophie is crouching behind. “So’s that.”
“You should have seen it before she did her magic. Trust me, this is an improvement. She’s been driving it around for ten years now. And the inside’s actually pretty nice.”
Not that I’ve seen it in a long while.
She’s back on her hands and knees, crawling on the pavement. I cringe, worried about her skinning her knees. Maybe she’s in some kind of trouble and needs help. Except she doesn’t like being saved. Or helped. She’s like a three-year-old learning to put her shoes on. She told the manager of the shake shop, “I can do it myself!” multiple times.
