“What? How is that possible? And yes, those are counting as my questions.”
“My parents and my grandma died in an accident when I was in high school. I came to live with my grandpa, and he died last year. I’m the last living Brooks.”
“That’s really … sad.”
“Yeah. I’m kind of a downer at parties,” he tried to joke. She only frowned, and he didn’t get that same thrill as when she smiled. “What’s your turtle’s name?”Crap.He didn’t want to know her turtle’s name. He didn’t want to know anything about it.
Her sunny smile peeked through the clouds he’d caused with his little-orphan Annie sob story. “Her name is Louisa May Alcott.”
He nearly choked on his drink when he inhaled it too fast with an unexpected laugh. She reached over to pat his back, which was unnecessary, but he might have coughed one or two extra times just to keep her close. “Why?” he finally asked.
“‘Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.’ Louisa May Alcott was ahead of her time. She was single and successful, and when Beth inLittle Womendied, I cried for a week.” She leaned close. “I adore a tear-jerker. Sometimes you need a good cry, you know?”
He did not know. He’d never understood the draw toward sad, depressing stories. He loved an underdog arc—the ragtag hockey team that wins against all odds, the detective no one believes in cracking the case. “Why a turtle?”
“Because they have a hard shell and a soft inside—and I’m a total sucker for that.” She grinned at him like she wanted him to catch the double meaning. Asher had a hard shellanda dried-out husk for insides. “And when they trust you, they’ll poke their cute little heads out and touch their noses against your hand. Louisa likes to follow me around, too, like my own little duckling.” She put her hand in the box and the turtle nestled its head against her finger as if giving her a butterfly kiss.
He wouldnotbe taken in by turtle butterfly kisses.
“What’s your tattoo?” Eliana pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse and rubbed it into her hands.
“Which one?” he asked absently as he peered in her open purse. What else did she have in there?
“You have multiple?” Her eyes went wide and way, way too excited. “I meant the one on your arm, but now I want to know all of them. And where.”
“That’s too many questions,” he said with mock regret. He was definitely not answering that. “I’m sorry. We can’t be breaking rules willy nilly, or else the game becomes meaningless.”
“Willy nilly?” Her eyes lit with pure delight, and he regretted his word choice instantly. “Are you sure you’re thirty?”
“The Palms residents … their ways are contagious.” His grandpa had said willy nilly often. Asher started repeating it to mock him, and then one day, he realized he was using it for real, and there was no going back.
He rolled the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal the red octopus hugging his bicep with its eight tentacles.
“Wait. A. Second. That’s an animal,” she said, accusingly.
“A technicality. They’re one of the smartest animals on the planet, limited only by their tragically short life span.”
“Which is?”
“Four years.”
She gasped. “Louisa could live up to sixty years.”
He whistled under his breath.
“I’m struggling to wrap my brain around the fact that you have an animal tattoo.” She said it slowly, like she was trying to process it.
“They can also kill a person in seconds.”
“Ah. That’s more like it. For a minute there, I thought you were going soft or something.”
None of those reasons were why he had an octopus on his arm, but she hadn’t asked that question.
She twisted her smart watch around to see the time. “One more question,” she told him. “Then I’ve got to work on my book. I spent all afternoon on the wedding, and I’m behind on my daily goals.”
He leaned back into the couch, alarmed as he realized he was disappointed. He wanted to ask her questions all night. Therewasone thing still tugging at him.
“What happened today that made you declare you’d never get married again when you walked in the door?”
