Her gray head popped above a rack of young adult paperbacks. “He just came in.”
For part-time help I’d hired two University of Wisconsin college students, Sara and Paoze. Sara was as German-looking as you could get: tall, blond, blue-eyed, and pale of face. Paoze, a young Hmong immigrant from Laos, was her reverse image with short black hair, black eyes, and dark-toned skin. He stuck out in Rynwood like a snowball in a coal bin.
Paoze materialized in front of me. “Good morning, Mrs. Kennedy. I hope I am not late.” Until he’d started high school, Paoze hadn’t spoken much English beyond “yes,” “no,” and “I need bathroom.” Now a literature major, he yearned to write a novel based on his family’s struggles.
“No, Paoze, you’re not late. How was the bike ride?”
“Fine, thank you.” He nodded, almost bowing.
I opened the drawer and removed the phone. “It’s all yours. I’m going to lunch.”
The phone rang, and I practically sprinted to my office for purse, coat, and gloves. The weather had turned in the last couple of weeks; Indian summer was a thing of the past. That morning I’d seen a skin of ice on a pond and there’d be snow before we knew it.
“Good morning, the Children’s Bookshelf,” Paoze said. “How may I help you?”
I pulled on my coat and headed for the front of the store. “Not here,” I stage-whispered.
“I am sorry, madam, but Mrs. Kennedy has stepped out.” Paoze smiled, showing brilliantly white teeth. “Would you care to leave a message?”
The kid deserved a raise. Too bad I couldn’t afford to give him one. I pushed the front door open, rushing into fresh air and freedom. No phones, my heart sang. An hour with no talk of Agnes or the Addition or—“Ooomph!” I banged into an immovable object that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the sidewalk. The impact sent me staggering.
“Oomph, yourself,” the object said. I felt a grasp on my arms, and my lurch for balance ended. “Are you all right?”
It was a male object. Straight ahead of me were white buttons on a blue denim shirt. I looked up and saw an attractively muscled neck—higher, a wide, clean-shaven chin. Higher yet there were firm lips, straight nose, blue eyes, wide forehead, and curly blond hair with the lightest touch of white at the temples.
“You look a little stunned,” he said.
“Yes. I mean, no. I’m fine.” The heat from his hands was burrowing through my clothes and into my skin. “Sorry. Usually I look where I’m going.” I stepped out of his grip.
“But not always?” He lifted one side of his mouth in a devastatingly attractive lopsided grin.
“Afraid not. I’m often in a hurry, and once I almost ran right into Auntie May’s wheelchair.”
“Auntie May?”
“She’s not my real aunt. She’s everybody’s aunt. Everybody in Rynwood, anyway.” I was babbling, but couldn’t stop myself. Happened every time I was embarrassed. If I didn’t turn bright red, I babbled. In bad cases, I did both. “She’s about a hundred and fifty years old and lives in Sunny Rest Assisted Living. It’s a couple blocks over, and on warm days she gets a nurse’s aide to wheel her downtown.”
“She sounds like a nice lady.”
“She’s a holy terror.” Stop, I told myself. Stop. “That day I almost ran into her, she screamed bloody murder and started whacking me with her umbrella. If the wheelchair hadn’t started rolling away, she might have killed me.”
He laughed and held out his hand. “Evan Garrett.”
Tentatively, I put my hand in a palm twice the size of mine. “Beth Kennedy.” He must have had experience shaking hands with normal-sized humans; his grip didn’t even make me wince.
“You own the bookstore,” he stated.
My neck was getting sore from looking up at him. I took a step back. My chiropractor would give me a gold star. “Yes, but—”
“How did I know?” He did that half-grin thing. “Spies.”
I glanced up and down the sidewalk.
“Or,” he said, “it could be that I saw your name on the Chamber of Commerce members list.”
“The spy story is better.”
“But we don’t want our relationship to get started on a lie, do we?”
His gaze was on my face, and I felt the familiar heat moving up my neck. “You’re new in Rynwood?” I blurted.
“Signed the papers on the hardware store last week.”
“I thought . . .” The heat continued up my neck and onto my face.
“That Stanley was trying to unload it on some unsuspecting moron? That’s me,” he said cheerfully, “the new moron in town.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of a thing to say. The best-looking man ever seen in Rynwood was standing in front of me and my mind was empty. I’d never known what to say to Beautiful People. They belonged in a different solar system and lived by different rules. Mr. Evan Garrett was too good-looking not to know he was good-looking, and I knew what that meant: He was most likely a jerk. Yup, a jerk. As soon as I passed judgment, my tongue loosened and my voice returned. “Even morons can run a business. Look at me.” I took another step back and rubbed my neck. “It’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Garrett. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“Evan,” he said. “And I say there’s no time like the present. What do you say to lunch? I could use some advice on restaurants.”
“Oh.” I glanced at my store. At my watch. At the copy of Breaking Dawn I’d picked up on my way out the door. At anywhere but at this stunningly good-looking man, who was no doubt trying to suck local knowledge out of my brain and leave me a spent husk. “Thanks, but I have some errands to run.”
Just then I saw a nightmare marching toward me: Claudia Wolff, mother of Tyler, Taylor, and Taynor, and her compatriot-in-arms, Tina Heller, mother of Brytny and Tyfanni.
“Beth!” Claudia shouted. “Beth, is that you? I want to talk to you about Agnes.”
“On second thought,” I said, looking up into eyes the color of a summer sky, “I am hungry. Have you eaten at the Grill? No? Then you have a treat coming.”
With a quick “Call me tonight” to Claudia, I made my escape.
“This isn’t what I expected from a place called the Grill.”
I turned to see Evan ducking under an accordion that dangled from the ceiling. With a quick step left and back right again, he avoided both a tray-laden waitress and a collection of skis stacked into a tepee shape.
“Well,” I said, “the proper name is Fred’s Eclectic Collections and Food from the Grill, but no one ever calls it that.”
The hostess waved us to a table underneath a shelf of toasters, laid out our silverware and napkins on the paper place mats, and hurried off.
“She forgot our menus.” Evan started to rise. “I’ll go get a couple.”
I pointed at his place mat. “She didn’t forget.”
He sat and ran his finger down the short list. “Hamburgers. Hot dogs. Brats.”
Hmm. He’d pronounced “brats” the Midwestern way, rhyming it with “hots.” So much for my just-formed theory that he was a transplanted New Yorker trying to bring life back to a small town.
“And French fries.” He looked up at me. “That’s it?”
“Yup. Fred sticks to what he knows.”
“Hello, my dear.” Flossie Untermayer, who was eighty if she was a day, pulled off a multicolored knit hat and shook out her silvery hair with the grace of the ballet dancer she’d once been. “Ask me to sit, will you, please? I’m aching to know about last night’s PTA meeting. Hello, young man.” She turned to Evan, who’d stood as she approached. “You’re the new owner of the hardware, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Evan Garrett.”