Читать книгу The Deputy's Perfect Match - Lisa Carter - Страница 13
ОглавлениеTuesday evening, Evy was just about to lock up when—
“I’m in over my head, Miss Shaw.”
Evy shrieked. The key dropped out of her hand and fell with a clatter onto the library porch. Spinning around, she fell into the doorframe.
Stooping, Deputy Charlie Pruitt retrieved the key lying between their feet. “Sorry. Are you okay?”
Her breath came in short spurts, and she clutched the strap of her purse. “No thanks to you. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
The deputy nudged the brim of his hat higher onto his forehead. “I thought you saw me through the window when you set the alarm.” His brow creased. “You’re a nervous sort of gal, aren’t you?”
She drew herself to her full height—all five feet three inches. “When somebody creeps up on you in the dark? You bet I am.”
“I didn’t creep up on you.” He handed her the brass key. “And it isn’t dark.”
“Not yet.” She fisted the key. “The sidewalks here roll up at five o’clock. Anyone would be nervous.”
“Depends on what you’re used to, I suppose.” His eyebrow rose. “Kiptohanock’s a pretty safe place. Where was it again you said you were from?”
Her mouth tightened. “I didn’t say.” She stuffed the key into a voluminous tote bag.
“So you didn’t.”
Arms folded across his chest, he leaned against one of the brick pillars bookending the veranda steps. His long legs blocked her exit. Or did she mean, her escape?
“Was there something I could help you with, Deputy?” She gestured at the darkened building. “As you can see, the library is closed.”
She tapped her foot against the wide-planked boards. “Or are you stopping by to let me know you’ve decided to drop out of the book club?”
He smiled.
Evy’s heart ratcheted up.
“Actually, Miss Shaw, I did want to talk to you about the book club.”
“I’d be glad to return the book so you don’t have to make another trip.” She took a step toward him. “Did you leave it in your patrol car?” He didn’t take the hint to move out of her way.
His smile, if anything, grew wider. “I appreciate the personal service—”
She flushed.
“—but I’m not dropping out of the book club. On the contrary, I’ve managed to read through the novel twice.”
“Twice? Really?”
Charlie Pruitt broadened his shoulders and removed his hat. Which he placed over his heart.
Her heart did a minuet.
“Fact is, Miss Shaw, there are a few parts I’m having trouble digesting, and I wondered if you’d be willing to give me a few pointers so I’ll be prepared for book club on Thursday.”
“I’m—I...”
“How about over Chinese at the Four Corners Shopping Center?” He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m on my dinner break.”
Suddenly the space between them felt extremely intimate. As if there weren’t enough oxygen. Was he asking her out?
Of course not. He was asking for her help, her expertise. She was unused to male attention. Especially from someone so... She bit her lip. So male.
His mouth drooped. “You’re probably too busy. I didn’t mean to impose.” He ducked his head. “Or presume.”
She caught hold of his uniform sleeve. “I’m not busy.”
His eyes snapped to her face.
Evy let go of his arm. Could she have sounded more pathetic? “I’m mean, I’m never too busy for a library patron.”
Now she sounded like a cross between Mary Poppins and Margaret Thatcher. “I mean...might as well. We’ve both got to eat.”
Stop talking. She closed her eyes. Just stop talking.
“Great.”
She opened her eyes to find those long-lashed hazel eyes of his smiling at her. Her heart did a tango.
By sheer willpower, she dragged her gaze to the cleft in his chin. Maybe not a safe place to settle, either. Another blush mounted from beneath the collar of her white blouse.
“I’m an old-fashioned chow mein guy. How about you?”
She realized he was talking again. To her. “Umm... I like sweet and sour.”
“Of course you do.” He swept his hat across the length of the steps. “I’ll follow you there, Miss Shaw.”
“A police escort?” She smoothed the cuff of her blue cardigan and gathered her wits. “Should I be nervous?”
His eyes glinted. “Only if you’ve got something to hide.”
The deputy’s words felt like a kick in the gut. She quivered on the edge of the step. Perhaps this was a bad idea.
Hands in his pockets, he waited for her at the curb beside his patrol cruiser. But dinner—even dutch treat—with Deputy Pruitt proved too alluring a prospect for Evy to refuse. Law enforcement had to be suspicious by nature. It was probably nothing personal.
She hurried down the steps to her car and contemplated her next move. It might be smart to open up a tad. Allay any misgivings the deputy might have regarding a Kiptohanock newcomer. Disarm and distract.
And what better way to disarm and distract than a Regency-era book discussion?
* * *
In the alcove booth, Charlie edged back from the table. “You’re a total purist, aren’t you?” Aromas of soy sauce and stir-fry permeated the restaurant.
Evangeline Shaw paused midbite.
She gave him a sidelong look from beneath the eyelashes brushing her cheekbones. “What do you mean?” She lowered her chopsticks to the placemat adorned with Chinese characters.
“From classical literature to those.” His eyes cut to her eating utensils.
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Habit, I guess. Our housekeeper was Chinese, and when we went into the city, she always took me with her to visit her relatives in Chinatown.”
He pursed his lips. “So they owned a restaurant?”
The librarian pushed the plate away. “What was your question about the book, Deputy?”
“The two most famous Chinatowns being in New York and San Francisco.” He locked eyes with her. “But you don’t sound like a New Yorker.”
Evangeline Shaw held his gaze. “That’s because I’m not from New York.”
“So you call California home?”
The librarian lifted her chin. “As much as anywhere else, I suppose, Deputy Pruitt.”
“Please, I insist you call me Charlie. It’s the polite Kiptohanock way.”
He took a sip of the hot green tea and made a face. “This would be better with sugar.” He allowed a slow smile to spread across his face. “Everything’s better with sugar, don’t you think, Miss Shaw?”
Charlie enjoyed watching the librarian squirm in the seat across from him. He waited a beat before adding, “Or may I call you Evangeline since we’ve broken egg rolls together?”
Her lips quirked as if she fought the urge to laugh.
Maybe he hadn’t lost his touch, after all. “Were you a military brat?”
“No.”
Charlie held his breath, hoping she’d open up. Just a little. A little was all he’d need to get this investigation underway.
Her cherry-red Mini Cooper already sported Virginia plates. No help there. But he memorized the license number in the parking lot in case he ever needed it.
She took a breath and exhaled. “My parents are tenured English professors at Stanford.”
“Hence, I’m guessing, your early and lifelong love affair with books.”
She twisted the paper napkin in her lap. “That must seem lame to someone like you.”
He bristled. “What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”
She motioned toward the badge pinned to his uniform. “You are a self-admitted nonreader, Deputy Pruitt. I’m guessing, a man of action.”
“My name is Charlie.”
“Why join the book club, Charlie? Pride and Prejudice isn’t exactly on most guys’ top-ten lists.” She arched her eyebrow. “If they even like to read. Which you made clear from the get-go that you did not.”
The diminutive librarian possessed a bit of steel. Good to know.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m trying to keep a promise.”
She looked at him over the rim of her glasses.
“To expand my horizons. Jane Austen doesn’t have to be only chick lit, you know. There’s a lot in there for guys, too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Like what?” A literary gauntlet.
“Like...like...” He racked his brain for what he’d digested from his middle-of-the-night, off-duty incursions into Austenland.
She drummed her fingers on the table.
“Like a strong man doesn’t have to be afraid of a strong woman like Elizabeth Bennet.” Challenge accepted. “And it’s funny, too.”
She scowled. “In what way?”
“Her dad cracks jokes all the time.” Charlie rested his elbows on the table. “Any dude surrounded by all those women would have to see the hilarious side of life or go insane.”
“Oh, really?”
“You got any brothers and sisters?”
The librarian hesitated. “It’s just me and my parents.”
“So your dad was outnumbered, too. Is he funny?”
“My father and mother keep their heads in the clouds most of the time. Only thing I ever heard them declare amusing was a play on words in Middle English from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.”
Chaucer? Was Evangeline Shaw for real?
She pressed her glasses higher on her nose. “Once, my mother giggled over a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry.”
“The Bayeux what?”
She fluttered her hand. “Never mind.”
He stared at her.
She fidgeted. “Stop looking at me like I’m from outer space. Theirs is an acquired humor. You had to be there.”
“There where?”
She sighed. “Most of their sabbaticals are spent in the French countryside. That’s where they are now.”
With parents like that, no wonder Evangeline Shaw loved books so much.
If anything, what he’d learned raised more questions in his mind. Like, what was someone like her—who spent vacations in France and probably spoke fluent French—doing in a tiny town in coastal Virginia? He vowed not to underestimate Miss Shaw again.
She cleared her throat. “We still haven’t talked about the book yet.”
“We’ve talked about several books.”
The librarian blinked. “We did?”
“Sure, we did. The Canterbury Tales, Pride and Prejudice and that Bayeux thingy.”
The librarian pushed at her glasses. “It’s a tapestry, not a book.”
Charlie pursed his lips. “I’ll look that up when I get off duty and remedy my sadly neglected education.”
Her eyes, like liquid sky, flashed. “Are you mocking me, Deputy Pruitt?”
Charlie hadn’t meant to rile her. “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t do that, I promise.” His heart hammered.
Then, understanding dawned on her face. “This foray of yours into literature is about a woman, isn’t it?” She fingered the frame of her glasses. “It has to be about a woman.”
He frowned. “Why do you assume it has to be about a woman? Are you mocking me now?”
“Is it or is it not about a woman?”
He fiddled with a duck sauce packet. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“She’s the one who’s the classical reader?”
This one he could answer without any check to his conscience. “She is.” He opened his palms. “Out of my league entirely, but hope springs eternal.”
“And this is where I and the Kiptohanock library come in?”
He gave her the tried and true, ever-reliable Charlie Pruitt grin. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, then. Because that’s what I’m about.” Her cheeks reddened. “As a librarian, I mean.” She reached for the ticket.
He was a split-second quicker.
“This is supposed to be dutch treat,” she protested.
“Next time you can treat me.”
Her eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “Next time?”
“There’s next week’s book selection. I may need more tutoring.” He smiled. “By the way, what is next week’s Jane Austen book club pick?”
“You’re in for a treat.”
He got a sinking feeling.
“Another classic, Sense and Sensibility.” She batted those fabulous blue eyes at him. “You’ll have fun explaining to the group which you like better.”
Charlie slid out of the booth, the bill in his hand. “From your tone it sounds as if you’re assuming I won’t like Sense and Whatever.”
She scrambled after him. “My point, I believe.”
“Forget male pride. It’s your own female prejudice that makes you think guys can’t enjoy Jane Austen.” He laughed. “Did you catch what I did there?” He stuck his thumbs into his duty belt. “Pride...and prejudice...”
The staid librarian rolled her eyes.
“And there’s one other reason guys should read Jane Austen.”
She reached for her purse. “What’s that?”
He stuck a toothpick into the corner of his mouth. “It proves men and women can be friends.”
She planted her hand on her hip. “You got that from Pride and Prejudice?”
He twirled the toothpick between his thumb and index finger. “I think underneath the witty banter, the reason the chemistry worked between Elizabeth and Darcy was because they valued each other as friends first and foremost.”
Charlie shuffled his feet. “Maybe we can be friends, Miss Shaw.”
She tilted her head. “You think because I’m new here, I don’t have any friends?”
He remained silent, caught by the blond tips of her ponytail brushing across her shoulders.
She grimaced. “You wouldn’t be far wrong.” She extended her hand. “Call me Evy.”
He reached for her hand. “Evy it is.”
And she snatched the bill from him. With a triumphant glance over her shoulder, she marched toward the register. Where she proceeded to pay for both their meals while conducting a conversation with the cashier in a tongue he presumed to be Mandarin or Cantonese.
Middle English. Probably French. And now Mandarin?
Charlie held the door for her as they exited and shook his head.
Wow...not only out of his league. More like out of his galaxy.
Clapping his hat onto his head, he escorted her to the parking lot.
She dug through her purse, searching for her keys. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“A Southern gentleman always waits. And it’s been fun.” Surprised, he realized it had been fun. With no urgent call from Dispatch, he found himself wishing dinner hadn’t had to end.
Finding her key ring, she held it up for him to see. “I look forward to hearing more of your Jane Austen insights at book club.”
“You and me both.”
She laughed.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “What I meant to say was, I look forward to seeing you Thursday, too.”
And he did. He’d not imagined the quiet librarian would be such good company. Or so entertaining. She was easy to be with. Despite her enormous brain, Evy Shaw wasn’t pretentious.
Clicking the key fob, she unlocked her car and got inside. With a small backhanded wave, she pulled out of the parking lot and drove off into the sunset. He watched her taillights turn south on Highway 13 toward Miss Pauline’s.
What was the elusive Evy Shaw after here in good ole Kiptohanock? But recon mission accomplished, he’d managed to learn enough background to call on one of his PI buddies from California who owed Charlie a favor.
His shoulder mic squawked. He responded and jogged toward his cruiser. As he headed to investigate a reported prowler, he reflected that his unofficial undercover assignment might not be so unpleasant after all.
Who’d have guessed Jane Austen could grow on a guy?
