Page 28 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“You weren’t half-bad in there, by the way,” he said with such a begrudging air that I had to fight a smile. Just in case I got the wrong idea, he narrowed his eyes and added, “You still talk too much.”

“I know.”

“And I didn’t invite you into my home.”

“I know that, too.”

“If it weren’t for Sloane, I’d have you forcibly removed.”

“That’s fair.”

He harrumphed, obviously unhappy to find that I wasn’t going to rise to his bait. Iwantedto, but I’d always been able to see things with painful clarity.

I talked too much. I wasn’t invited. And if people like Sloane Parker didn’t take pity on me, I never would be.

***

“Why do you have so many copies of this one book?”

A few hours later, with my casserole eaten and Sloane’s doctor long gone, I sat cross-legged on the floor of Arthur’s living room, holding a battered paperback of something calledTheRemains of the Day. Dust bunnies marched by at every blast of air, and Sloane’s organizational system seemed to consist mostly of taking books down from the shelf and lining them up in disordered stacks, but my stomach was too full of huckleberry pie for me to move.

“Put that down,” Arthur snapped. “I need those.”

“You need five copies of the same book?” I turned it over and skimmed the description. A book about a butler in post-WWII England sounded about as dry as you could get. I didn’t know who this Kazuo Ishiguro was, but he could have used a few more vampires to liven things up. “What are you going to do with them all?”

“Sloane, please take that away from her before she ruins it.”

Sloane pulled her attention away from her contemplation of a leather-bound volume that looked to weigh as much as she did. “Take what away?” As soon as she saw what I held, she tsked and shook her head. “Don’t be such a scrooge, Arthur. Let her have it. I was planning on tossing the extras anyway.”

“You wouldn’t dare throw a perfectly good book away.”

She laughed. “Okay, I was planning on taking them to a used book store or sticking them in some of the Little Free Libraries around town, but you know what I mean. There’s no need to be so dramatic.”

“Dramatic?Me?I’m not the one who brought that overbearing white knight of a man into a stranger’s home—”

“It’s okay,” I was quick to interrupt. I didn’tthinkSloane was likely to fold under Arthur’s sharp tongue, but I wasn’t taking any risks. “I don’t really want the book.”

I could hardly be blamed for my caution. Sloane had come out of that kitchen earlier looking like a rag doll that had been tossed about in the wind. And her boyfriend—who it turned out was actually her fiancé—hadn’t looked much better. I never did manage to get a glass to the wall, but from the way he’d walked out of here, all rigid and cold, I was guessing their conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted it to.

Which was no surprise, really. That wasn’t the sort of man who was used to being stood up to. And unless I was very much mistaken, Sloane wasn’t a woman used to doing much standing.

“What do you mean, you don’t want the book? Have you read it?” Arthur demanded.

“Well, no.”

“Then take it. Take two. I think it might help.”

“Help with what?” I asked.

He waved a hand in my general direction, treating my dusty black yoga pants and rapidly withering topknot as personal insults.

“Don’t do it,” Sloane warned. “I once asked him what he thought of me, and it didn’t end well. He was ruthless.”

I was agog to hear what sort of things Arthur McLachlan could say about a sweet, inoffensive slip of a girl who’d done so much for him, but no one bothered to enlighten me.

“I meant every word,” he told her, a mulish set to his jaw. “Especially now that I’ve met your young man.”

For the first time, Sloane seemed to feel the sting of his insults. “I beg your pardon? What does Brett have to do with any of this?”