Page 42

I’d kept my book face down in my lap and Stace had hers behind her back. She set the basket of our other books at my feet.

“Wait, how do we decide who wins?” I should have asked before I agreed to this.

“Oh, we’ll know. Or we’ll fight about it. Either way, it’s fun.”

I didn’t think fighting about it sounded fun at all.

“Do you want to go first?” Stace asked, but I shook my head, wishing we’d done something else.

“Okay, may I present…” she pounded one hand on her leg in imitation of a drumroll.

“Fifty Shades of Chicken!” The guy sitting behind the desk near us looked up and glared at Stace, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was waiting for my reaction.

“Oh, that’s…oh.”

The cover was a whole chicken on its side on a platter that had been tied with visible twine.

“Is it actually a cookbook?” I asked. Stace opened the book and paged through it.

“There are recipes, but also smut. I think more cookbooks should be like this, honestly. I’m totally going to get it because there are some good recipes in here. My mom makes a really good chicken and I’m always wishing I could do it at home for myself.”

She flipped through more pages and then shut the book.

“Show me what you got.”

I held up the book and Stace’s laugh was so loud that everyone in the shop heard her.

“Oh my god, that’s amazing. Well done, Eleanor Burns,” she said, referencing the author. “I bet Eleanor is a freak. The ones who look the most innocent and harmless like that usually are.”

I just shook my head at her.

“You are unbelievable.”

Stace just kept grinning at me, those dimples popping and making me want to do all kinds of things. Not just sexy things either. What would it be like if she held me when I cried? Crying wasn’t something I allowed myself to indulge in most of the time, but I bet Stace had good shoulders to cry on. Broad and firm. She wouldn’t cave under that kind of emotion.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked me, her voice suddenly quiet as I realized that I’d been staring at her.

“Nothing,” I said. I’d rather eat the book in my hand than tell her.

Stace let that go, inhaling sharply through her nose. “It seems we have a tie. So I am calling it that we both win.”

I scoffed. “We can’t both win. That’s the whole point of contests. To determine a winner.”

“Says who?” she asked as I stood up.

“Says everyone since the history of contests.”

Stace made a “pft” sound and carried the rest of the books to the desk. “That’s narrow-minded thinking. Contests can be whatever the participants decide.”

The guy sitting behind the desk got to his feet and he seemed annoyed that we were buying things from his shop.

“Did you find everything okay?” he asked in a gruff voice as he punched the prices into an honest to goodness adding machine that was probably ancient when my parents were young.

“Not everything, but we’ll just come back another day,” Stace said, and the guy blinked at her from behind his bifocals and let out a little grunt.

Stace gave me a look and shrugged her shoulders. I didn’t know what to make of him.

He gave Stace the total and she paid with cash. Something told me that this guy didn’t like dealing with credit cards.