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“I’ll settle for the ‘madly in love’ part, and we’ll work on the decades,” Quinn replied.

“Hey, you’re not moving in just yet. We’ve only had two dates, Quinn Elizabeth.”

Quinn chuckled and said, “What about Simon?”

“I haven’t looked him up yet. But do you want to see if we can call him?”

“It’s Sunday. He’s not working.”

“Babe, he’s a real estate agent. They work weekends. I’m pretty sure they work all the time.”

“Oh, right,” Quinn replied. “Yeah, if you want to. But what are we going to say?”

“Maybe we just tell him that we have some questions about some of the items in the box or something; see if he can tell us more about them.”

“What if he can’t or isn’t interested?”

“I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”

“Okay. You want to call him now? I’m about to open the shop.”

“Can we?”

Quinn nodded, walked over to the desk that Abby was sitting behind, and leaned back against it. When Abby looked up the same website she’d been to before to get his number, Quinn took her hand, and Abby used her other one to dial and put the phone on speaker.

“You’ve reached the office ofYour Dream Home Realty. We’re not available to take your call right now. If you need to reach a particular agent, please enter their extension at thebeep. If you don’t know their extension, please wait for the menu.”

“What do we do?” Quinn asked.

“Wait?” Abby asked back.

Three names were read to them by the autoresponder machine before the name Simon Litchfield and his extension number were mentioned. Abby pressed the three numbers and the pound sign before she even thought it through. Then, the phone started to ring again.

“Simon Litchfield,” he greeted.

“Uh…” Abby looked at Quinn with wide eyes. “Hi. Is this Simon Litchfield?”

Quinn laughed silently.

“Yeah, this is Simon. Can I help you?”

“Um…”

“Simon, my name is Quinn Jordan. You came into my antique shop not all that long ago and dropped off a box of photos and books.”

“Oh, yes. Hi. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I was hoping you might be able to tell me a little more about the box and the items inside it. I’ve… got some questions about… things.” Quinn shrugged at Abby.

“I don’t really know much about it. It was in the attic of a house I’m selling, like I told you before.”

“Right. Um… Maybe you could still stop by sometime and we could ask you some questions?”

“Questions about what? It’s just some old pictures and an old romance novel, right?”

“And a book that looks handmade,” Abby added. “Like someone typed it themselves and bound it.”

“What?” Simon asked. “Is it, like, a pale blue on the outside?”