Page 2

CHAPTER 1

JILL - THREE MONTHS LATER

I f it wouldn’t have drawn so much attention, I’d have kicked this guy in the shins.

“I said, half soy , half almond ,” he repeated, slowing his speech as if Rhys hadn’t heard him. His overpriced loafers and pressed navy suit screamed ‘out of towner’ and I watched as Rhys schooled their expression, fighting the urge to bite on their lip ring—a sign of nervousness I’d gotten used to seeing over the years.

“Do you need me to say it again?”

God, I wish I could tell this guy off . The whole café had stalled though, all eyes pinned on him. Which meant they were entirely too close to looking at me. And no matter how still I stayed, barely breathing in my attempt to become invisible, my palms were already sweating. I was about to just bail, make a break for the door, and forgo my favorite morning treat.

“You think he’d shut up if I told him I was ticketing his Jag outside?” My brother’s voice came from beside me as he slipped into my space.

I jerked my eyes over to him, his characteristic smirk on full display. Even though his dark hair was in a neat buzz cut and his jaw was sharper than mine, our light brown eyes and round faces were near copies of each other. No one would ever doubt we were siblings.

“Can you please?”

Joey chuckled, but shook his head. I knew he would never do it. But when he cleared his throat, the guy spun around and blanched at the sight of Joey in his sheriff’s deputy uniform. Joey’s scowl was all it took to get him to accept the drink Rhys was still holding in their hand and leave.

The collective exhale from the rest of the café had my brother puffing out his chest. He lived for moments like that.

“Joey Jordan, our hero,” I teased, stepping up to place my order. “What do you want?” I asked as Rhys gave him an appreciative smile.

“Nothing, thanks. I had breakfast with LeAnn this morning and she’s keeping me to one cup a day.”

I laughed at the scowl on his face as I handed Rhys my loyalty card. My sister-in-law was good.

“The usual?” Rhys asked, their blue hair falling into their face before they swiped it away. It was a blue week, I noticed. Blue hair, blue eye shadow, and blue nail polish on alternating fingers. The shade was a little bright for my taste, but it brought out their eyes.

“Yes, please. And if you have any of those mini Muddy cream pies, can I have one of those for later?”

Rhys chuckled knowingly. “Everything okay?”

Joey’s expression had narrowed on me too. “Yeah, you all right? Adam call you again?”

It was the hazard of never having left the small town I grew up in, that everyone knew I only craved sugar when I was stressed. Some might call it heartwarming. I called it troublesome. Invasive. Ridiculous. Every girl deserved a little private freak out from time to time.

“No.” I eyed Joey, annoyed he’d brought up my ex so early in the morning. “I’m fine,” I told them both, my tone strong enough to send Rhys scurrying away with a sheepish look.

“Now, I know you’re not.” Joey eyed me with his annoying investigator face. The one he’d perfected when we were still kids, long before he got paid to put his mean-mugging to work patrolling the county.

“It’s nothing.” He wasn’t going to drop it, so I sighed and added, “Just work.”

“$2.7 million in town funding isn’t exactly nothing.” He held up the paper, the local budget discussions dominating the headlines.

When Rhys handed me my drink and sugar therapy, they gave me a sympathetic look and I thanked them before turning to head for the door with Joey hot on my tail.

“It’ll be fine,” he said as we spilled out onto the sidewalk, before I even had a chance to turn around.

“I know it will.” I tried to sound upbeat, convincing. But fooling my brother was impossible on a good day. And today was not even close.

“The vote is months away. It’s a little early for you to be this worried.”

I sat my coffee on top of the metal gazette box out front of the Muddy Grounds coffee shop. The broken glass-front caught my brother’s eye and I could almost see him making a mental note to check if any of the other free gazette boxes had been vandalized.

“It’s not just the vote.”

“Then what?”

I groaned. The real reason I’d gotten my Muddy pie was almost too awful to speak out loud.

“They’ve given me a special assignment for the summer.”

His eyebrows rose. “That sounds like a good thing.”

“It’s not,” I mumbled, picking at the tab on my coffee lid. “Cleo made it clear the success of this project will directly impact the outcome of the budget allocations.”

“Then it’s definitely a good thing. You can crush this project and keep your job. What’s the matter?”

With my eyes on the crisp clear blue of the morning sky, I let out a long breath.

“It’s a summer reading collaboration with some professional sports team or something. And it would mean I’d have to speak in front of way too many people.”

Understanding lit up my brother’s face, and for a split second I thought he was going to say something sympathetic and supportive.

“Ah, gotcha. So, you’re worried you’re going to pee your pants in public?”

Should have known better.

“Yes, that’s exactly what my fear is,” I snapped, grabbing my things and spinning away.

He reached for my arm, a laugh rumbling out of him. “Wait, wait. I was just kidding.”

I turned back to tell him off, but my words died in my throat as our old high school science teacher, Max Downey, walked around the corner and came right for us.

“Joey, hey. I saw your mom the other day and she told me LeAnn is expecting?” The old man stretched out his hand, and Joey took it, giving him a warm smile.

“Thank you, sir. She is. Due this fall.”

I turned toward the street, holding my coffee in front of me, like I wasn’t even there. My brother tended to draw attention and I could never shrink away from it fast enough. If we weren’t in the middle of a conversation, I’d have just slipped around the corner and caught up with him later.

“That’s great. The Jordan clan grows. I bet your dad is just proud as hell.”

“He is. He’s excited. We all are.”

“Cash didn’t want to be the first, eh? Decided to let his little brother take the lead on that one?”

Max meant well, but my oldest brother’s refusal to conform to normal society was a sore subject for my family, and Joey in particular. I’d never gotten either of them to admit it outright, but I was fairly certain Cash had been arrested more than once by my brother’s colleagues. They could not have been more different. And the image of him as a father was almost laughable.

“I’m sure my brother doesn’t want anything to do with kids, Max. You had him in school, you know.”

I looked back to see Max shrug good naturedly, a glint in his eye like he knew something we didn’t. “I don’t know. I think he might surprise us all one of these days.”

“Well, if he’s going to surprise us , let’s just hope it’s not a surprise to him too.”

I slanted a look at my brother. The suggestion Cash would be that reckless was a bit much, even for him. He caught my glare, his jaw muscles working as he fought to keep his mask in place for Max’s sake.

Max laughed, as if what Joey had said wasn’t at all offensive. “No, no. I’m sure he’d do better than that. Your mother would kill him and bury him in the backyard if he made that big of a mistake, I think.”

Now Joey smiled for real and I curled tighter around my coffee. If only I could dip out without drawing attention to myself.

“Alright, Max, it was great seeing you. I’ve got to get to the station,” my brother said, using his innate charm to get out of the conversation.

“Of course, of course. Tell LeAnn I said hi.”

“Will do,” Joey called as Max tugged open the door to the café and disappeared inside. When he was gone and I finally let out a breath, Joey took a couple of steps toward the center of town. “Walk with me?”

I looked behind us at his cruiser sitting in a parking spot two feet away.

“You just said you had to go?”

He nodded. “I know. Walk with me first.”

It felt like he was about to have some sort of heart to heart and I braced for the guilt trip. Joey was as good at those as our mother.

“I don’t need you to walk me to work,” I protested, my eyes landing on the massive brick library two blocks away.

It wasn’t a pretty building—too modern and out of place among the rest of the historic downtown. But it used to feel like a fun place to play among books, and people who loved them as much as me.

Unlike some of the others, I wasn’t there for the events we did or the social support we offered, though both of those were needed and amazing. I just liked books. Reading them. Sharing them. Spreading the word about new authors and helping folks appreciate the classics. Our romance section was woefully small, considering it was my favorite genre. But I’d managed to get a few more shelves added since I’d joined.

Thinking about having to start that journey all over again at a new library was enough to make me want to rip open the bag in my hand and eat my Muddy pie right there on the street.

“I get that you don’t like public speaking.”

I stopped short, glaring at him so long he finally relented.

“Okay, fine, you hate it. And I get that?—”

“No, you don’t. You seek out attention like a Labrador looks for someone with a tennis ball and a good arm. You can’t get enough. And it’s not just that I don’t like it. It doesn’t like me either. You’ve seen the colors I turn. I should just quit and save myself.”

His chuckle was light, and his expression softened.

“You can’t quit, Jilly.”

He started to walk again and I fell into step with him, but my legs suddenly felt like lead. “If this program doesn’t do well, they’re just going to shit-can me anyway. And we know if I have to give speeches, it’s going to tank. So, what’s the difference?”

“The difference is you don’t know that’s what they’re going to do. And,” he paused, looking at me and waiting until I met his gaze. “My daughter is going to need a better example than an aunt who quits the first time things get hard.”

Told you: guilt trip master.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. His daughter was still months away from gracing this planet and already I was being held to a higher standard for her benefit. This was the most Joey Jordan argument I’d ever heard.

“Fine. I won’t quit. I’ll let myself get disposed of like every other poor slob who’s forced to work for the man. Hired and fired on a whim. Lives reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet. Grist for the mill.”

My brother did not fight the urge to roll his eyes, and he threw in a dramatic sigh to go with it.

“You’re a librarian. Not slaving away in the mines. And it’s talking to kids about reading, not facing a firing squad. Buck up.”

Ugh. I’d heard that mantra my whole life. Grow up. Man up. Buck up. It was like nothing I’d just said mattered. My fear of public speaking was never going to go away. It wasn’t something I didn’t “enjoy,” I got light headed and nauseous. The last time I had to stand on a stage to accept an award my anxiety felt like it was going to kill me. The idea of spending months in a state of constant dread was more than I could handle.

“You know it’s not that simple.”

He took a step around me, heading back toward his car. “That’s the thing, Sis, it is. Make this program so damn good they can’t possibly let you go, and you won’t have to find a new job this fall. Simple as that.” He gave me a wave, his expression lit like a beacon of arrogant superiority.

Simple as that.

Only facing my biggest fear was as far from simple as I could imagine. And yet, that’s what I was about to do. Because I had no other choice, and if I didn’t my life would get a lot more complicated.