"I'm only taking the positive out of it. I'm sure I heard them say I was pretty. Crazy, but pretty," I say haughtily, though I might just cry. "So now what?"
We're standing on the sidewalk of Main Street, and it's barely seven in the morning. He's not particularly happy to be near me, and it shows.
"Look, this isn't exactly a picnic for me either. I would rather never see you again. Also, this is all your fault. If you'd fined me, you wouldn't be stuck with me. But I plan to stay, so I'm going to follow the rules. Now tell me about your town, Sheriff Smith," I say sweetly. "I want to know everything."
He sighs.
"That's Archie's," he says, pointing to a building with a sign of a beer bottle topped with a cowboy hat as he starts walking. "It's the town's only bar. Archie only serves beer, lagers, and ales. Before it was Archie's, it was Murphy's, but a rejected suitor burned it down with a lantern because the woman he loved chose Murphy instead. It was rebuilt in the 1900s by Archie's family and has served two kings from two different countries: Thailand and Denmark."
"That's the clinic and post office," he adds, jerking his chin at the buildings as we walk further down the street.
He may be pointing things out to me in his grumpy manner, but as I try to keep up with his long strides, I can't help but be charmed by the sheer prettiness of Candy Creek.
It's quaint and cozy—small and intimate. The buildings have a curious character that makes me want to smile.
The clinic is actually a Tudor-style building with its timber-framed exterior and tall, narrow windows. The post office is sturdy and square, built with orange brick, and there are little garden beds below the open windows.
"Fire station," the sheriff says next. "Veterinary. The supermarket. And the library."
I don't know what surprises me more: the fact that the library, with a fountain shaped like an otter in front, has a keypadinstead of a good old-fashioned key, or that the sheriff just punched in the code himself.
"You have the keys to the city—well, the codes at least?" I ask as he ushers me inside.
"I'm the sheriff," he replies, which explains everything.
"Were you born here?" I ask, curious about this man when I have no business being curious about him at all.
"Yes."
"And you've lived here all your life?"
"Except when I was in the military."
"What about your parents?" I'm just being nosy as heck.
"My mother ran away with a clown when I was three years old. She never came back. My dad raised me."
"A clown?"
"He worked for a traveling circus."
"Oh. I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it.
"I'm not," he replies, and he means it.
"You're such an open book," I mumble. Why does he make it sound like asking innocent questions is the same as me extracting his teeth with my tweezers?
He steers me inside the library, and it's as cozy as the courtroom and looks more like someone's personal library than a public one.
As I take in the surroundings, charmed all over again, the sheriff disappears into an aisle, and I don't see him for a moment.
When he returns, he hands me a tome.
"Read this. Memorize everything in here. Don't fail the damn exam."
I almost want to spite him, and yes, I don't care that my level of pettiness will screw me over as well, as long as it screws him over too.
I guess he's not going to be a hands-on tutor. I should be grateful I won't be seeing him anymore. Actually, I am.
