Page 32 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” he said, his arm still draped in that casual, carefree way that was so close to touching myshoulder. “Thanks for letting me be a part of it. I had no idea that families like yours existed in the real world.”

I took this for the insult I felt sure it was. “You mean dysfunctional, hell-born babes who are too smart for their own good? Yeah. They can be a real handful. Feel free to abandon them before they get too attached.”

“Beforetheyget attached, or before you do?” he asked. He must have seen my Trixie-like blush because he grinned and added, “Uh-oh. On a scale of one to lamprey, how stuck are you? I feel like I should prepare accordingly.”

“I know this isn’t what you had in mind when you gave me your phone number,” I said, refusing to rise to the bait. “But I really needed the night out, and unfortunately, we’re a package deal.”

He shrugged in a careless way that felt more authentic than any number of reassurances might do. “I don’t mind. I’ve only read about families like yours in books.”

“Whichbooks?” I asked warily.

He raised his hands in a laughing gesture of surrender. “Only good ones, I promise.Little Women, maybe, orI Capture the Castle.”

“You’ve read both of those?”

“I’m not just a pretty face, Sampson. I told you—the nights get long out on the mountain. If I didn’t have books to while away the hours, I’d go full Robinson Crusoe out there.” He paused. “I check out books at the library all the time, but you’re usually too busy to notice me. Once, I read the first page of every single book in the True Crime section hoping to get your attention.”

I didn’t buy this any more than I bought his other nonsense. “Our True Crime section is only like eight books.”

“Well, I had a team coming in from Fairchild, so time was tight. I’ll linger in Westerns next time. That should keep me on-site for at least four hours. People around here seem to really love their cowboys.”

I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing out loud. It was no secretthat our Louis L’Amour reading population outnumbered most of the libraries in the country. We were a horse-loving people. “You’ve really readLittle Women?”

“I’m a Jo March fanboy,” he said solemnly.

“AndI Capture the Castle?”

“Couldn’t put it down,” he vowed.

“What aboutThe Haunting of Hill House?” I asked, unable to resist.

His brow wrinkled in an effort of concentration. Like most of his other expressions, this one seemed calculated to elicit a reaction from parts of my body wholly unaffiliated with books, libraries, and men who desperately needed a shave. “Why that one?”

I aimed for a nonchalant shrug, but I didn’t quite stick the landing. “Just a thought.”

His gaze stayed on me so long that I was starting to fear there must be something stuck in my teeth. “Wait. It doesn’t have anything to do with it being a modern-day Gothic from the fifties written by a certain SJ, does it?”

I gasped aloud, equal parts annoyed and delighted that he’d worked out the same clues as me. “You mean youknew? And you didn’t say anything?”

He held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I didn’t know anything until this exact moment. I saw the same notes as you, but I didn’t piece them together until you said something.” He paused only a moment before adding, “Does that mean your two scribblers kept writing inThe Haunting of Hill House? Their little love notes? Can I see?”

I could have kissed him for his easy reading of the situation. Truth be told, I could have kissed him for a lot more than that, but I wasn’t going to. I’d already lured him out on false pretenses for a date with my three younger siblings—a privilege he’d cheerfully paid for, and with such a convincing air of good grace that Ialmostsuspected him of meaning it.

“I wish,” I said. “I haven’t been able to track that copy down. Wedon’t carry it at the library, and all the used bookstores I’ve called only have recent editions on their shelves. Imightbe able to find it at a thrift store or estate sale, but that’s like searching for a needle in a haystack—without knowing for sure whether or not the needle even exists in the first place.”

“Damn. That’s rough. And there’s nowhere else it could be hidden?”

“Well, there isoneplace…” My nose wrinkled as I considered a final option.Jasper Holmes.If my neighbor was willing to pay five grand per copy for the books that he and his lost Catherine had written in, then there was a good chance he was sitting on that particular one—possibly even that he’d been sitting on it for decades. “Can I trust you with a secret?”

Zach lifted his hand in an unironic Boy Scout salute. Becauseof courseZach would have been a Boy Scout on top of everything else. He’d probably carved his Pinewood Derby cars by hand and painted them with crushed wild berries and fermented lichens.

“I’m a vault,” he said. “I carry more secrets than the presidential archives.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re messing with me again?”

“Because you’re a cynic. Acutecynic, but still.” At my sudden squeak, he laughed and crinkled his eyes at me again. “You do know what I do for a living, right?”

Grateful for a chance to use my voice for something other than girlish nonsense, I was quick to answer. “Yeah. You contract with the Air Force to provide wilderness survival training to their pilots. Like Bear Grylls but with government clearance.”