chapterELEVEN   By the time Isobel returned to the kitchen, freshly washed with her hair down, half-covering her face, everyone had finished breakfast, and even Constance and Lewis had arrived, eaten, and left again. Kit was off in Mrs. Pan’s office—as she called it, though it looked more like a kid’s playroom to me—while Mrs. Pan herself stood at the sink with a handful of tools, ready to hand them to me when I asked for them. And me…well, I was stretched under the sink, trying to figure out what was wrong with the garbage disposal.I had just forked up my last bite of pancake when Mrs. Pan had tried to dispose of…well, garbage, I guess, and it had made the most god-awful grinding sound before the smell of burning electrical wires and smoke filled the kitchen.Good thing the new handyman was on hand. Swallowing the last of my breakfast, I’d gotten to work. I had a little experience with garbage disposal repair. The one at the bakery had gotten jam

  chapterTHIRTEEN   Planning bookshelf projects and reading about bookshelf projects were entirely different beasts than actually building fucking bookshelves.“Dammit,” I muttered, tossing down another board I’d cut a fourth of an inch too short. “I suck at this. I so totally suck at this.”You’d think routing fancy edges or aligning and screwing boards together would be the real challenge for me. But nope, I just couldn’t measure and cut worth crap.“Too short again?” Isobel asked from across the room, where she sat at the opened window and brushed wood stain across a freshly sanded shelf. Between us, the floor was covered in plastic drop cloths while sawdust fluttered in the air and the crisp scent of lacquer floated to me from the breeze the window let in.“Yes,” I mumbled, tearing off my hat to run a hand through my hair and trying not to lose my shit. But seriously, you’d think I’d learn not to fuck up the length so badly after the first five

  chapterFIFTEEN   I’d only suggested one, so the fact that Isobel was willing to give up a couple of her roses made my eyebrows lift, impressed.But she must’ve mistaken my expression as me thinking I considered her offer meager. So she sighed. “Fine. I can put together a full dozen.”Holy shit. I hadn’t thought she’d go that far. But I smiled. “Mrs. Pan is going to love this.”Still appearing put out, she huffed, “Which color?”“I don’t know.” Again, this was out of my territory. “What do the different colors symbolize?”I thought she’d give me another look that told me she had no idea about that either, but nope. When it came to roses, Isobel knew her shit. “Well, red is obviously for love, passion, beauty, courage, or respect. White roses are for purity, innocence, silence, or secrecy.”I shook my head. “Nah, we don’t want it to be a secret admirer thing. She needs to know they’re from him.”Nodding in agreement, Isobel ticked off another fi

  chapterSEVENTEEN   Isobel didn’t return to the library for the rest of the day. At first, I was okay with her absence. I mean, hell, I needed a moment to regroup, too.I’d kissed her. Things had changed. We’d probably never get back to the place we used to be. And this new direction could either lead somewhere very good, or very bad. So, yeah, it was scary. I got that. I understood her need for a moment to herself.Maybe even an hour or two to her herself.But when four o’clock rolled around, it was time for me to leave, and she’d never reappeared. I had tried to place as many of her books on the shelves as possible, hoping I didn’t put something somewhere she didn’t want it to go, but it just felt all wrong doing it by myself. We’d started working on this together; we should’ve finished together.The worst of it came the next morning at seven, when she didn’t show up at the lake to run. I stood on the running trail, our running trail, hands on m

   chapterNINETEEN   I might’ve followed Isobel around the rest of the day like an eager little child. I just had this pitch in my stomach, telling me not to let her out of my sight. What if she suddenly changed her mind and decided not to believe me after all? I mean, all she had to go on was my word alone and no physical proof whatsoever. Or what if she decided she felt deceived after all? Or she decided she didn’t like me? Or—Okay, I might’ve been a tad paranoid. But could you blame me? I’d just bared my heart to this woman, fully expecting her to stomp on the organ and throw it back into my face. That’s what I deserved. But, no. She’d taken it all surprisingly well and believed me when I had nothing to back up my story. I wasn’t sure if I could trust such an easy resolution. And so instead, I probably annoyed the hell out of her by refusing to leave her all day.Thank goodness she didn’t seem irritated by my neediness.But I think she un