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"Are you in love with Gunnar?" Colby's voice was a whisper against my hair, gentle as the touch of his fingers on my back. "If you are, I think you should talk to him."
I trembled, the heat of embarrassment coloring my cheeks. "I don't know…" I admitted through quivering lips, "but I'm in love with this bookstore."
"If that's true, maybe it's time for you to take a risk, Mira," Colby murmured, pulling back just enough to look into my eyes. "You said it yourself. The heroines in your favorite books make bold moves. Except for you, the risk isn't about a man, not really—it's about you, about who you are and who you want to be. Gunnar may be part of that, or he may not, but are you going to be happy back at med school? You said you were so stressed and burnt out that you nearly had a breakdown."
"I know," I sighed, thinking about how awful that had been.
"Well, my dear," Colby said with a grin. "Earlier this week, you pulled two sixteen-hour shifts in a row earlier just to get the romance books organized. Were you close to a breakdown from that? Were you even stressed at all? Because you looked happy."
"I was happy. Tired, but happy." I stepped back from Colby's hug, my gaze drifting to the shelves stacked with tales of women bolder than I dared to be, lives lived fiercely between the covers, passions that scorched pages. I thought about those long days,about how exhausted I'd felt after shelving books all day. It was a different kind of exhaustion, one that came with the satisfaction of accomplishment, of embracing something I loved. So different from the constant overbearing stress of medical school.
It was then that the static-crackling bleat of a police scanner pierced the quiet of Tangled Pages. A gruff voice rattled off a code, one I didn't understand, and I startled, looking around the room for the source of the noise. Wanda and Daisy had left their police scanner sitting on a table in the corner of the coffee shop, where they'd been listening the morning before.
Colby chuckled, the sound warm and unexpected amidst my turmoil. "That Wanda."
Before he could turn the scanner off, a voice bleated back. "Hope this is a normal robbery, not those crazy old ladies again, I can't handle the stress."
Someone on the line came on, a woman's voice this time. "Wanda and Daisy just love to make that vein in your forehead pop, Carl. But they're still in the holding cells."
Colby frowned down at the radio before flipping it off. "Did Gunnar say Wanda and Daisy got arrested?"
"No. I didn't see him this morning. He disappeared. I thought he was ditching me…" I trailed off.
Colby smiled. "Ditching you, or racing off to rescue his crazy grandmother? Did he leave a note? Text?"
"I don't know, I haven't looked at my phone." I dug through my purse and found it. Texts from Gunnar flooded the screen, a chaotic cascade of words and images. I thumbed through them, my breath catching on each message. There were Wanda and Daisy, the most unlikely jailbirds, flipping off the camera. My finger hovered over the photo, tracing the outline of Wanda's rebellious grin, then moved to the texts. Gunnar's words were peppered with concern—and something more intimate, more possessive. He spoke to me not as a casual fling, but as if I were already part of his tumultuous world.
"Shit." Had I misjudged him?
Gunnar
I was refereeing anintense argument between Harold and my grandmother, negotiating a price for the motorcycle, when Mira stormed into the jail, grabbed my hand, and dragged me into an empty holding cell.
"Why didn't you wake me?" Mira growled, jabbing me in the chest with her index finger. "I thought you ditched me again."
"What do you mean? I woke you and told you what was going on. Don't you remember?" Outside, I heard Daisy shout that Haroldwas an asswipe for keeping Wanda's motorcycles from her when he didn't even ride. I blinked, trying to focus on the woman in front of me, who looked rather pissed off, instead of the chaos outside.
Mira was staring at me, confusion on her face. "Huh," she said. Then she frowned again. "Okay, that's on me."
"Let me get this straight, you spent the morning pissed off that you didn't remember me waking you and telling you where I went? I texted you a bunch of times to check in."
Her smile was sheepish and sweet, and I couldn't resist a kiss. I was so falling for this woman. "Maybe next time leave a note, like on my forehead or something. Did you tell Luna to sell me her half of the shop?"
I shook my head. "Not really. I bumped into her and was talking to her about how she could sell her half of the shop to a willing buyer, and use the regular loan payments to fund her dream of being a travel blogger. And I maybe mentioned that I might know a willing buyer who had a small nest egg."
"I don't have a small nest egg!" Mira hissed, slapping my chest. "My nest egg is gone, eaten up by med school."
I bit my bottom lip, then sighed, reaching into my wallet and pulling out the check and the note. She stared down at it for a long moment, blinking.
"Is this fake? The check is in your name. You don't have to bribe me to love you, I already--" Mira cut herself off and cleared her throat, looking at the note again.
"It's not fake. Your father basically told me he was running from his responsibilities. I flipped out, and it wasn't pretty. All I could think was that you were in the back room, waiting to hear from him. Long story short, he signed over his last paycheck and left you two of his three motorcycles. Maybe he feels a little guilty, I don't know."
She snorted. "The sperm donor doesn't experience guilt. I've long ago come to terms with his narcissism. He left them because it's tough to run from your responsibilities. on three motorcycles."
"That, too," I said, chuckling, searching her face to make sure she was okay. She seemed resolute, not wrecked. "Anyway, the check is for the value of that paycheck, plus the blue book value on the bikes. Neither of them is running, but they'll be worth a pretty penny if Jay and I fix them up. This is all assuming you agree to sell them and sign over the titles."
"Why would you do all this?" Mira whispered. "The date on this check, that was… Was it the first time in your shop, when he came in?"
