Looking for Trouble (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 1)
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, this is almost over. One more day. Right?”
“Right. And then you’re going to tell me how you ended up in bed with that woman’s son.”
Sophie shook her head, suddenly feeling the horror fall over her. That woman’s son. She’d stopped thinking of him that way, somehow. He’d just become Alex to her. But Lauren was right. He was Rose’s son. The child of a woman who’d made her life hell. A woman who had every reason to hate Sophie’s family, because Dorothy Heyer had damaged her. Hurt her. Broken her heart.
“I’ve got to get going,” Lauren said. “If I’m late, Jean-Marie will kill me.” She pulled Sophie into a hug. “Are you going to be all right?”
Sophie nodded.
“Everything will be fine. I swear.”
She nodded again and pulled back before she started crying. “I know. I’m good.”
“Hey, just be glad she didn’t volunteer the whole staff to serve drinks or something.”
Sophie laughed. Lauren was always good at making her laugh. “God, Rose might’ve loved that.”
“See? Things could always be worse.”
“All right. Enough with the sayings from cat posters. We’ve got enough of those around here.”
Lauren winked. “Some day Jean-Marie will retire and I’ll take over. We’ll put up posters of shirtless men in glasses reading books.”
“I love you,” Sophie said.
“Don’t be maudlin. You’re a librarian, for God’s sake. Toughen up.”
Right. Toughen up. If she could deal with all the bored children whose parents treated the library as a drop-off day care in the summer, she could deal with one day of mild emotional discomfort. And the avid interest of everyone in town. She could do that.
And it turned out not to be that difficult. The library was quiet today. Maybe because everyone in town was at the dedication. Or maybe because it was a sunny day in fall, and the locals all sensed winter coming. They didn’t want to be indoors with books. They wanted to be out under the clear sky.
Normally Sophie would want that, too, but today she took comfort in the quietness of the library. The scent of books and copy paper and the old documents that held the history of the whole region.
She had sun here, after all. It streamed in through the side windows and warmed the bean-bag chairs in the corner of the children’s section. She stuck close to that area, putting out new displays of kids’ books for fall. She always enjoyed September. The kids were back in school and the section was quiet and not yet filled with books about Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas. Sophie could choose her very favorite kids’ books on any subject.
After she finished the kids’ display she felt calm enough to work on reorganizing the Spanish language section of magazines and popular novels. It took a little more concentration as she didn’t read a word of Spanish. In fact, she was focusing so completely that she didn’t register that her phone was buzzing in the pocket of her cardigan until it had stopped.
“Oops.” She looked guiltily around to be sure no one was watching. No cell phones in the library, after all. Just as she was pulling it out, it buzzed again. When she saw that it was Lauren, Sophie rushed toward the office and closed the door.
“Hey, is it over already?”
“No! Oh, my God, Sophie, I don’t know if I should tell you this.”
A dozen possibilities raced through her mind in a split second. Rose had ranted about Sophie, or Alex had shown up with a wife, or Wyatt Bishop wasn’t really dead, or—
“Your brother is here.”
“What?” she yelped.
“Your brother is right here in the audience! It’s really crowded, and I’m not sure if the Bishops have noticed, but—”
“Oh, my God. Why would he go?”
“I don’t know. I tried to talk to him, but he just brushed me off. Right now, everybody is just hanging out and looking at the displays. No one has started speaking yet. You don’t think he’s going to get up and say something, do you?”
Horror slammed through her. “No,” she breathed. He wouldn’t do that. Why would he? It would be hurtful and wrong and—
“Sophie?” Lauren said.