Page 150 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
The box wasn’t too heavy, but it was just out of Delaney’s reach. “Sure.” I picked it up and put it on the bed.
“Oh my God, Marc. These are the romance novels she read. We had a running joke since I was a teen that she was hiding them from me until I was old enough to read them. Little did she know I snuck them, read a few, and put them back. Even as I got older, I still secretly read them without her knowing. It was fun to keep it a secret even though I didn’t have to.” The laughter that spilled from her lips was lighter than I’d heard all night.
She opened the box and picked up one of the books on top.
The Billionaire Rancher’s Secret Baby.
I read the title again to make sure I’d understood it correctly.
I had.
She handed it to me, and I read the back cover with the same focused attention I gave to anything I was trying to understand, which apparently was the premise of this book, which raised several topics by the title and blurb alone.
“How?”
Delaney looked up from the next book she’d grabbed from the box.
“How is a baby a secret and from the rancher specifically? She lived two towns over.” I turned the book over again. “And he’s a billionaire rancher. How realistic is that?”
She made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “It’s a romance novel.”
“I understand that. I just don’t get the internal logic.”
“There isn’t—those were probably popular tropes at the time.”
“Tropes?”
“They’re specific plot points in a book like billionaire, secret baby, or enemies to lovers. They tell a reader what’s in the book before they even read it.” She chuckled. “Just give it back if you’re not going to appreciate it.”
I held it slightly out of reach. “Enemies to lovers, huh? Kind of like us,” I grinned at her scoff and picked up the next one with my other hand.
The Duke’s Forbidden Temptation.
“The duke,” I said.
“Yup,” she answered, not bothering to hide her smile.
“Why is it forbidden?”
“Because he’s a duke.”
I waved the book around. “That seems like it would make things easier, not harder. He has resources and money.”
She was laughing now—a real laugh-out-loud, holding-her-stomach chuckle, and had to sit down on the bed before she fell over. “Oh my God. We should play a game sometime where I cover the title of a book and have you guess what it might be. There’s a bookstagrammer that does that with her husband, and it’s hilarious.”
I placed both books in the small pile Delaney had created next to the box. “These are fascinating. You may need to point out specific ones for me to read so I can better understand all of these tropes.”
Delaney grinned and grabbed a few books from the box. “She had excellent taste in books. I bet we can find a few you’d enjoy.” She sifted through the ones in her hand until a soft, “Huh.”
She’d gone still again.
This was different than before. This time her hands stopped moving, the book hovering in her grip. Her mouth parted—just slightly—like she’d forgotten what she’d been about to say.
“What is it?” I asked.
She turned it over before holding it up to show me. The cover was worn, the edges and spine soft from being read. The title wasNo Rings Attached. “She was finishing this one the last time I was here. I’d planned to grab it next. I’d completely forgotten?—”
She opened the front page, and her mouth dropped open before snapping shut.
