Page 11 of Falling

“Bookshelves?” I repeated aloud, baffled.

Ward paused a second, glanced at the bare wall he’d obviously been measuring up, and then looked at me again. “Seth sent me.”

Seth sent him?

“To build bookshelves for you. Don’t worry, he says it’s part of your sign on bonus.”

Okay, my very tired brain was starting to untangle some of this.

Except I hadn’t complained about the bookshelves to Seth. I’d complained about them to Booker.

Was that just a coincidence?

“Did you also bring the couch?” I asked, sitting up and looking around. “And…”

“Just the coffee table, I had one already made,” Ward said. “If you hate it, you can tell me.”

I looked at the beautifully crafted coffee table sitting between the couch and the fireplace that I’d told myself would need cleaning out and was now sparkling and artfully stacked with logs, then looked at Ward again. “You made that?”

Ward broke into a broad grin. “You like it?”

“I love it,” I said, still marveling at the craftsmanship. It was… possibly walnut, with a delicate inlay in a darker wood that made me think of William Morris prints.

“Great.” Ward kept beaming at me, as though I didn’t look as much like hell as I felt. “Well, I’ve got measurements and Seth gave me your email. I’ll send you through the options,” he said. “And then I can put them in sometime while you’re at work? Saves you having to live through the noise. I could do it Thursday, if you let me know tomorrow what you want.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re an angel?” I asked. I couldn’t believe this man was standing here offering me bookshelves and smiling at me like we were old friends while he did it.

Ward laughed. “My husband has,” he said. “I’ll tell him the new librarian has great taste. You’ll probably meet him soon enough. He’s writing his own romance novel and he’s wanted to work in the library since forever, but it’s been closed. His name’s Ryder.”

“Well,” I said, trying to picture the kind of man who might have been married to someone like Ward and coming up more or less blank. He couldn’t be as much trouble as the toddlers, though. “Tell him he’s welcome. The library is for everyone. It’s just… not especially quiet.”

“He’d like that, he mostly works in the coffee shop or the bar before it gets busy, now,” Ward said with an affectionate little smile playing around his lips. Whoever Ryder was, he was clearly loved.

Was everyone in this town gay? I didn’t think I’d met anyone who I was absolutely sure wasn’t, yet. Including the toddlers.

“I’ll look forward to meeting him,” I said, partly because that was the kind of thing I was supposed to say, partly because I kind of was looking forward to it, now. Every new person I met in this little town was an experience. Curiosity was my biggest vice. “And, uh, thank you. I can’t tell you how important my books are.”

“You’re a librarian,” Ward said, grabbing his things. “I’ve got some idea.”

I walked him to the door just as there was a knock on it.

When I opened it, I found Booker standing on the other side. Holding a rabbit’s foot fern with a yellow bow tied around it.

“So then I ended up giving them the one about the gay penguins at the zoo? Because I remembered Evie mentioning it and I remembered seeing it while I was reshelving stuff. I don’t know anything about children’s literature and it makes up fully half the catalogue,” I explained to Booker’s back as he knelt down in front of my hot water system while I held the flashlight for him.

He chuckled, but it wasn’t a mean chuckle. “It’s a good book.”

“Well, you officially know more about picture books than me. But I should probably stop boring you with work talk.”

“You’re not boring me,” Booker said. “This is where you need to light,” he added, pointing to a spot in the dark before flicking on the long, bendy-necked firelighter he’d arrived with. “If it ever stops again. You wanna do it?”

I laughed nervously. “You’d trust me with lighting a boiler while you’re within explosion distance?”

“Why not? You’re an adult, you’re obviously smart enough to follow basic instructions.”

Oh.

Well, I supposed those things were true.