“They always get back together,” Jace said quietly, though he didn’t seem to take much joy in repeating the same assertion he’d made earlier in the week. And suddenly, Grayson understood Jace’s reaction to him insisting Lark was the one. He wasn’t Team Tommy so much as he’d been trying to protect Grayson from getting hurt.
“You said as much,” Grayson said, a hollow feeling opening up in his chest. He knew the path to happily ever after hadn’t been smooth for any of his brothers, but they hadn’t been competing with other men, any long-standing boyfriends.
He couldn’t understand why Lark continued to take him back when she’d been so hurt by Tommy’s continual attempts to change her, to mold her into someone more acceptable to him.
Then he felt a bit like a hypocrite. Grayson wanted to say he accepted her for who she was, but he considered this past week…and all the weeks prior to the festival. That Lark drove him as crazy as she did Tommy, so was he any better for her than the man she just left with?
Watching her from afar was doing him no good. He needed to come up with some sort of game plan about how to proceed. First, he needed to discover if she truly was getting back together with her ex. The fact she hadn’t taken Tommy’s hand gave him a bit of hope. If the breakup stuck, then he needed to stop waiting to make a move.
Nora and Gretchen were always after him and Maverick to host “special” wine tastings, where people could get an in-depth understanding of the wines and the process of making it. He could offer to do one of those, asking for Lark to serve as his assistant. Perhaps working together side by side, the same way they had at the festival, would spark some sort of reaction from her.
It was worth a try, because the last week or so of her freaking ignoring him was getting fucking old.
Satisfied that he had a possible way forward, he decided he needed a distraction. Because obsessing over Lark spending time with Tommy wasn’t accomplishing anything except making him miserable.
An unexpected grin tugged at his lips as he stood. “I think I’m going to take a long lunch.”
Jace frowned, confused by his about-face. “Where are you going?”
“The library.”
“The library…” Jace repeated, as if he’d misheard.
“I finished the book Wren gave me.”
“Wren? Lark’s sister?”
Grayson nodded. He’d spent the last week, reading the thriller Wren had suggested, welcoming the diversion from fretting over Lark and her apparent split personality. He’d been hooked instantly, and the book had done something nothing else had managed this week—it had quieted his brain. “I returned some books for Mom last Monday. Wren suggested one to me. I finished it last night.”
“You voluntarily read an entire book?”
Grayson chuckled. “I read. Occasionally.”
Jace snorted when he added the last word. “Very occasionally.”
“Whatever. I want another book,” he declared.
He’d enjoyed the temporary entertainment, and if he spent one more minute thinking about Lark, he was liable to lose what little sanity he had left.
Grayson was instantly hit by a calm peace as he walked into the library and saw Wren typing on the computer behind the circulation desk.
He wasn’t sure if it was the scent of old paper or the hum from the bank of public-use computers or the fact that libraries simply operated at a slower pace that calmed the chaos in his head, but it didn’t matter. For the first time all day, the stiffness in his shoulders loosened.
Wren glanced up as he approached the circulation desk and smiled.
Not the polite customer-service smile Lark had been giving him lately, either. Nope. Wren’s smile was genuine and immediate and made him feel like she’d been hoping he’d show up.
“You’re back,” she said, her eyes twinkling. Unlike Lark, who wore heavier makeup, Wren was fresh-faced, her beauty all natural.
Grayson held up the paperback she’d checked out to him. “I finished it.”
Her eyes widened. “Already?”
“It was good,” he said.
“Good?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “That book was a masterpiece.”
He laughed. “It was. The ending nearly killed me, by the way.”
