Page 54 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“Yeah.” Anxiety touched the lines around Maisey’s eyes. “I know that one’ll be a stretch, but you should be able to get an idea about the rest, right? His pulse and breathing and stuff?”

“Uh, why would I want to do that? I’d like to leave here with all my limbs intact, thanks. I still need them.”

Maisey and Greg exchanged a meaningful look. “Oh dear,” Maisey said. “Didn’t Sloane brief you on your duties?”

“My…duties?” I echoed, mistrusting the direction this conversation was taking. “I read the book. Isn’t that enough? Or was I supposed to prepare a monologue? No offense, but I try toavoidthe stage these days.”

“No, it’s not that.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I meant the nursing stuff.”

My Spidey senses started to tingle then—and by Spidey senses, I meant a prickling of tiny sword points up and down my spine. “What nursing stuff?”

Maisey took her lower lip between her teeth. “Sloane didn’t tell you?”

“No, she didn’t,” I said. I was starting to get the feeling there was a lot Sloane hadn’t told me. Blood pressure cuffs. Enchiladas. Tall, strange men who weren’t her fiancé. This was turning into averyintriguing book club.

“Please tell me I was invited to this book club because of my wit and intelligence,” I said.

“You were!” Maisey was quick to say. “You definitely were. It’s just…Adult Protective Services is involved. We don’t know what else to do.”

I tipped my head back with a groan. I was going tokillSloane for this.

Greg coughed gently. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with, I promise. They’re just asking us to get a licensed medical professional to sign off on his care. To make sure he’s being properly looked after. Sloane thought you might be able to discreetly look over him while you’re here.”

Maisey clasped her hands in front of her. “We’d ask that chiropractor of Sloane’s to do it, only he’s…well…you know.”

I flung up my hand. “Say no more. I’m in.”

Both of them stared at me, understandably surprised at my sudden about-face. “Wait,” Greg said. “Really? Just like that?”

“Brett Marcowitz is a lump of wet beige clay,” I said by way of explanation. “If this plan is something he wouldn’t approve of, then it has my full support.”

Instead of finding anything strange about this, Maisey giggled. “You don’t like him, either?”

I really didn’t. I’d only met Sloane’s fiancé a handful of times, but every encounter left me with a stronger feeling of distaste in my mouth. I was no authority on happy, thriving relationships, obviously, but even I knew better than to affix myself to a guy like that. He was bland and condescending, the sort of man who’d un-ironically wear a popped collar and read trade magazines about architecture.

I hated that Sloane was settling for that. I hated even more that I was oh-so-slightly jealous that she could.

“Let’s just say he and I don’t share a lot in common,” I said. “I’m fun. He’s not. I introduce joy and light into people’s lives. He sucks everything good back out again.”

Maisey clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Grinning along with her, I began to metaphorically gird my loins. I might have been lured here under false pretenses, and Sloane was going to owe me big time for this, but if there was one thing I was good at, it was pretending I knew what I was doing.

When you were a Sharpe, there was only one rule: The show must always go on.

18

A brush with death hadn’t improved Arthur McLachlan in the slightest.

“Idoknow who you are,” he grumbled the second I set foot inside his cluttered, disorganized mess of a living room. It looked exactly like I’d expected—crowded with furniture and books, everything tilted as if shaken by a recent earthquake. Most of the furniture was well past its shelf life, but there was an umbrella stand by the door that I coveted with every part of my being. It wasgorgeous—one of those old Victorian ones made from a real elephant’s foot, all hollowed out and macabre. “You’re the librarian who’s always trying to get me to sign up to take needlepoint classes when I check out my books. I’ve never understood why you’re so persistent. Do Ilooklike I want to take needlepoint classes?”

Every instinct I had warned me to run for cover before he started to get really nasty. Every instinct except the one that had me locking eyes with Sloane, that is. One glance at her guilty, pleading flush, and I had no other choice.

Save me, that look said.Protect me.

And underneath it, a very determinedor else.

“I have to ask everyone who checks out a book if they want to join that class,” I said with an apologetic shrug. “The woman who runs it is one of the biggest donors at the library. We have to make her feel appreciated or she threatens to invest her money in the arts instead.”

“Harrumph,” Arthur said by way of reply. Like, literally. He enunciated both syllables.Har-rumph.Noun: A way for irritable old men who knew themselves to be in the wrong to avoid admitting it.