CHAPTER EIGHT
The first customers came in ones and twos, hands in pockets, collars up. They ordered their coffee without much conversation and went on their way. Freddie found this arrangement deeply agreeable. The espresso machine steamed. The chalk menu board had developed a slight lean overnight that he'd corrected twice and would correct again before noon.
"Morning," Oliver said, leaning against the cart with the ease of someone who had established this as a regular position.
"The usual?"
"Actually, can you do something with cinnamon today? I'm in an autumnal mood."
Freddie added cinnamon without comment.
"I was just in the bookshop," Oliver said, in the conversational way he said most things — pleasantly, without agenda, information offered freely because it had not occurred to him to withhold it. "Picked upThe Wizard of Ozafter our chat."
Freddie tamped the espresso with slightly more pressure than was strictly necessary.
"Got any plans for the weekend?"
Oliver often did this: tried to engage Freddie in friendly conversation. Freddie didn't mind grabbing a beer with the man, but he didn't want to discuss his feelings or his aspirations. He liked the silence. But he also realized it wouldn't hurt him to practice being human every once in a while. It had seemed to delight Wren the few times he’d given more than one-word answers.
"No. You?" Two words. It was practically a poem. And it allowed Oliver to talk more, which was preferable to Freddie.
"As a matter of fact, I do. Going to dinner with this woman I met in Millfield last week. She'd heard about the Purple Heart Ranch. Apparently word gets around further than you'd think. She knows about the ranch and their—" he paused, seeming to choose his phrasing, "—practical arrangements for living there."
Shortly after the first batch of soldiers had come to live and heal on the Purple Heart Ranch, the property had been zoned for families. Dylan Bank's solution: everybody who wanted to stay needed to get married. Surprisingly, it had worked out for each and every man and woman who had sought a marriage of convenience.
"Took most of the first round of drinks to clarify that I don't live on the ranch, and I have no intentions of marrying anyone for at least—" he considered, "—five years. Possibly ten."
Freddie looked at him.
"She seemed disappointed," Oliver added. "But she still wants me to take her out this weekend."
"You have no plans to marry?"
"Not until I'm forty, at the absolute earliest. Maybe fifty." Oliver appeared entirely unbothered by this. "I enjoy dating. I enjoy it a great deal. I see no reason to stop. Does that seem unreasonable to you?"
"No," Freddie said, and turned back to the machine.
At least it wasn't a problem for Freddie. It might be a problem for Wren, who was even now watching Oliver from the window of Pages & Prose. Oliver was, by his own cheerful admission, a man who considered long-term commitment a project for his later decades and collected dates the way other people collected pleasant weekends. Oliver was not writing anyone letters. Oliver was not paying a particular kind of attention to anyone. Oliver was, in all the ways that mattered, entirely the wrong answer. Yet Wren was arriving at him with the confidence of someone who had done the working out.
The door of Pages & Prose opened. Wren came out in her rust-colored cardigan, the one that had a small moth hole near the left cuff that she'd mended with orange thread slightly the wrong shade, which he knew because he had twelve feet and seven weeks of accumulated detail about Wren Banks stored in his brain. She had her hair up today, escaping in the way it always escaped, and she was carrying nothing, which meant she had come out with a purpose and not on an errand.
"Oliver. I'm glad I caught you." She smiled, and Freddie found something to do with the chalk menu board. "I've been thinking about hosting a book club. Nothing formal. Just a few people, once a month, in the shop after closing. I wanted to ask if you'd be interested."
Oliver blinked. Then he smiled — easy, warm, the smile he gave everyone — and Freddie kept his eyes on the board and his attention on the conversation.
"I would be, actually. Though evenings are difficult for me — I'm often on call. Would a weeknight work? Late afternoon, maybe?"
"Wednesday, perhaps. After the Autumn Market committee meetings wind down."
"Wednesday works." Oliver glanced sideways at Freddie with the particular expression of a man who considered includingpeople a moral position rather than a social courtesy. "Freddie — book club. Interested?"
Freddie looked up from the menu board.
Wren was looking at him. Not with the analytical watch she'd had on Oliver. Her gaze on him was less structured. She had entirely written Freddie off as a potential suspect.
He shook his head once. "No."
Mrs. Hendricks appeared at the end of the cart. Coat buttoned to the chin, the expression of a woman who needed coffee and had opinions about waiting for it. Freddie turned to her with the relief of a man handed a legitimate reason to stop being where he was.
"I'll let you know a date," Wren said to Oliver.
"Brilliant." Oliver straightened, raised a hand to Freddie, and headed off down the street with the easy momentum of a man who had no idea he'd just been cast in a role he wasn't playing.
Freddie pulled the shot for Mrs. Hendricks.
From the corner of his eye — and he was not looking, he was specifically not looking — Wren paused before she went back inside. She turned toward the cart. He was already looking at the machine. She smiled at him anyway. A friendly smile. Were they friends now?
Freddie set Mrs. Hendricks' coffee on the counter and did not think about the smile, or the book club, or Oliver's ten-year plan, or the letter he'd slipped into her mail slot.
Wren thought it was Oliver. Oliver, who dated serially. Oliver, who was friendly with everyone. Oliver, who actually talked to her. And that was fine. Except if Wren went on a date with Oliver, and Oliver broke Wren's heart because she'd come ten years too soon, Freddie would have to kill Oliver. And that probably wasn't the best outcome to the mess he'd made. But neither was confessing to Wren.
