“The day after he moved in, he asked where the books were.”
“Are you saying there are more in the house somewhere?” The dozen or so on his end table wouldn’t take long for Quinn to get through.
“Lower level. Guess you haven’t been down there yet. You got a tour of the grounds but not the whole castle.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Are you offering?”
Wrong phrasing. The heat flickered in his eyes again as he held her gaze. This time she let the spell linger. This time if he moved toward her, she would mold her hands to his biceps, push her hands up to his shoulders, to the back of his neck, and twirl her fingers in his cowlick.
Aaron blinked and turned his head; his chest heaved. Whatever this unsustainable and ludicrous pull was between them, he didn’t want it after all. When he faced her again, his eyes held his usual warmth, but the smolder had faded. A shaft of disappointment lodged in Ember’s chest, but she did her best to shake it off.
“Follow me,” he said.
Ember had thought of the cabin as a ranch with a basement, but the care that had gone into finishing and furnishing it made the place a true bi-level. The lower level had been properly drywalled and painted a cool beige with one accent wall in dark green, a shade almost identical to the front door. The couch and chair were black leather, strewn with green-striped throw pillows and a black fleece blanket. The carpet was plush, not the usual indoor/outdoor stuff found in basements, and a wood stove stood in one corner. And oh look, he did own a TV, though the screen was no bigger than forty inches and positioned in the most out-of-the-way corner rather than as the room’s centerpiece.
More centrally placed were the books. About two hundred of them, nestled on simple pine bookcases. Nonfiction, thrillers and mysteries, a few spine-cracked Star Wars novelizations, and…hm. Most of the works of Dickens.
Ember ran her hand over their thick spines. “Interesting.”
“Malachi gives me flak about those too.”
“What? Why? Dickens is one of the greats.”
“He’s told me a dozen times— If I like one classic author I’ll like others. Always trying to get me into Tolstoy. No, thank you. I know howAnna Kareninaends and I want no part of it.”
She laughed. “That’s not the one I would hand you if I were trying to branch you out from Dickens.”
“About three years ago I triedMoby-Dickfor him.”
“Oh no,” she said, flashing back to a college elective called The American Novel and a professor who lauded it while she pretended not to have skipped the chapter describing whale skulls by species.
“Had to quit for my own sanity,” he said with a grin. “Before that it wasFrankenstein, which I almost got through, but…” He sobered and looked away to the bookcase. “It maybe hit too close to home, outcast versus society, a man viewed as a beast even by his creator.”
For the briefest moment, his shoulders caved, and she saw something deep, something she wasn’t supposed to see. Before she could understand, he shook his head and smiled.
“Anyway, we’d better not leave Quinn out there too long. There’ll be no marshmallows left.” As they walked out to the fire pit, he said, “Tell me about you.”
“That’s too broad.” And she found herself scrambling. Tell him what? In what way could she interest this man—really grab hold of his interest and keep it?
“When you’re not crusading for your nephew against perceived imprisonment, what are you doing?”
“Well, at the moment I’m on vacation from my day job because I have so much time the municipality buys it back every year.”
“So you’re a government worker too then.”
“Yeah, but mine is a soul-sucking desk job. I’m a clerk in the building department, so I get calls all day from builders, residents, our inspectors… I deal with permit paperwork… Yeah, it’s nothing worthy of conversation, but it pays my rent.”
Way to go, girl. The opposite of interesting.
But then he said, “If money didn’t make the world go ’round, what would you choose?”
He couldn’t have asked an easier question. “I’d cook for a living. All day, every day. Try other people’s recipes and develop my own. That’s what I’d do. I’m really good at it.”
“Well…crap.”
She couldn’t stop laughing. He knew. She didn’t have to say it, and neither did he. After a few seconds he joined in her laughter, and she was glad. She had never wanted to mortify him, not even when she tasted her first bite of that fifth chicken breast.
“Aaron,” she said as they settled into outdoor fold-up chairs, Quinn’s bonfire warming their faces, “let me make dinner for you guys while I’m here. I’ll enjoy it, and you’ll enjoy it.”
