Everybody Knows (Sunnyside #1) (10 page)

After a very awkward meal accompanied with stilted
conversation and shocked glances about her vegetarian status, Harper returned
to the library and changed back into work clothes.

Now, at the end of the day, she’d had to put up
with Barbara Gentry’s visit and snide suggestions. The woman had finally left,
and the last of the volunteers began to dwindle off.

Harper sat behind the Circulation Desk and powered
up her computer, ready to update her notes and add to a few lists she’d
started. Supplies needed. Names of volunteers. Ideas for renovations. Requests
for jobs.

She’d tried to contact Andrew Berkman again, but
he was on his way to Hong Kong. She texted him with a heads-up about a detailed
email to follow. He’d probably call her when he checked into his hotel. But
with the time difference, it would be much later tonight.

Her cell phone buzzed on the counter. Sending up a
silent prayer that the caller wasn’t her mother, she glanced at the display. In
that freaky-psychic way India had, it wouldn’t be unusual for her to intuitively
know her daughter was a little down about the enormity of what she’d gotten
herself into and disappointed about the lack of welcome from the town. And
Harper was in no mood to go into all that and risk hearing the subtle
I-told-you-sos.

Instead, she grinned. This particular caller she
could talk to and be perfectly candid. “Tell me, I’m begging you, what life is
like in the Windy City today.”

Nathan Quimby, her best friend
and fellow librarian, laughed as she knew he would. “You’re desperate for news
from the real world already? Does that mean you despise life in Smallville and
want to come back?”

“Don’t tempt me.” She rested her head on the back
of the chair.

“Disenchanted already? Tell me everything.” Harper
could just picture him in his cubicle-sized efficiency apartment, shucking his
sharkskin jacket, rolling up the sleeves of his lime green shirt, loosening a
coordinating tie, and kicking back with an interesting drink he’d concocted
from his beloved copy of the
Bartender’s
Guide to A Thousand and One Cocktails
. He’d been working his way through
the chapters for the last couple of years. “Your texts have been cryptic and
infrequent.”

Thinking of Zach and his long hard day of
life-altering or lifesaving tasks, she felt like the worst kind of witch for
complaining. “It’s not so bad, really. I was just trying to decide what to have
for dinner and wishing I could stop by your desk and entice you to walk down to
Aladdin’s where we could share some wine,
baba
ghanoush
, and office gossip.”

“Aching for the familiar on a day that’s been
completely alien.” Empathy was his strong suit. He’d single-handedly held her
together when she’d broken up with or been dumped by her fiancé—depending on
whose version was to be believed. But Nathan always took her side no matter
what. “I know what that’s like.”

“I guess, but this is the path I chose, so I won’t
whine.”

“Whine all you want. Tell Uncle Nathan all about
your new home, town, and library. And I’ll tell you the most delicious gossip
about our tight-assed library administrator being discovered with his pants
down at the regional conference with someone other than Mrs. Tight-Ass.”

“No! Who was he with?”

“You know the new saucy red-haired wench in
Technical Services? She apparently has an extensive collection of colorful
garter belts and bustiers.”

“I wondered what was up with her,” Harper
admitted. “She wasn’t the least bit friendly with the staff and didn’t seem to
work all that hard, but she got the best schedule and her own office.”

“The story gets better,” Nathan promised. “They
were apparently going at it on the floor of their suite at the Hyatt when the
president of the Midwest Regional Librarian Association walked in on them. One
of those embarrassingly ‘double-booked’ rooms and key card mishaps you hear
about but don’t really believe ever happen.”

She cringed at the thought. “I’ll never be
completely comfortable in a hotel room again.”

“Just be sure to attach the security chain before
you do anything that might get posted to YouTube.”

“It’s on YouTube? Really?”

“How’s this for a visual? Old Tight-Ass on the
floor with his pants down around his cowboy boots, and his wrists tied to a
table leg with his very own Brooks’ Brothers tie. She was wearing a red cowgirl
hat and riding him like a rodeo queen. A lemon-yellow lace thong, a bustier
with pointy breast cones, and a stunning little flogger completed her ensemble.
The prez had his wife, his fourteen-year-old son, and a couple of staff members
with him. They all started screaming at the same time!”

“Well, I’m frankly shocked.” Harper held onto her
laughter as she feigned outrage. “He discontinued providing plastic forks and
knives in the break room, but the budget allows for him to stay in a suite when
he travels? No wonder he cracked down on our expenditures. He was making use of
library funds in purely inappropriate ways.”

“True, but the president might end up thanking old
Tight-Ass. According to one of the staff members, his wife looked on with
interest and was slightly flushed with...curiosity.”

“Whoa, baby, hold on there. That’s more
information than I ever wanted planted in my brain about any of their sex
lives, but really, lemon yellow, huh? I’m just wondering how good that looked
on her. Yellow usually makes redheads look sallow.”

“Only you would think of that, Harper,” Nathan
accused. “All the rest of us are too absorbed by the sordidness, and of course,
concerned about the fallout. The administrator has already handed in his resignation.
You know what that means?”

“Open management position! Who will replace him?”
She leaned back and propped her feet on the desk, happy to relax and joke with
her friend before spilling news about her own life and how the move wasn’t
going as smoothly as she’d hoped.

He commiserated as expected. “And what’s the man
situation there? Any homegrown hotties, sultry farm hands, smoldering
mechanics, or repressed bankers looking for love in all the wrong places?”

He made her laugh, as he always did. “None that
I’ve seen yet.” She suppressed the images of the handsome doctor and the
burnt-out stockbroker.

“Hah. I can read you like a book. There is someone
who’s got your attention. Who is it?”

“Out of the thirty people I’ve met—twenty or more
of them being men—only two seem worth a second glance. One is a washed-up
stockbroker who now manages the local strip joint. So while he has that
brooding bad-boy thing going on, that’s a little icky. And peeking below the
surface, he has too many demons.”

“And the other one?”

“Well, the local doctor might have potential.”

“Is he hot?”

“Yes, very hot. Kind of Daniel Craig, but not in
that sleek and polished James Bond persona. Real and complicated, not a pretty
boy, but...intense.”

“Intense is good.” Nathan laid on the heavy
breathing. “Why can’t I meet a guy like that?”

“Talk about looking in all the wrong places,
sweetie.”

“I know, I know. So gay bars and the Internet are
not the best places for meeting the guy of my dreams. But they do offer the
opportunity for impersonal sex with just the right amount of kink, which is
kind of my specialty.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she objected. “I respect your
personal boundaries—not that you have any—so please respect mine.”

“All right, we’ll discuss my sexual issues another
time. Is the Hot Doc available? Interested in you? Hetero, I take it?”

“Hmmm, good questions, I’m not sure about the
first two, but definitely hetero. For reasons I don’t understand, the town
thinks he’s partnered with this lesbian he’s known forever. And he only makes a
token effort at changing their opinion. And sometimes he seems attracted to me,
but he fights that inclination too. Since I didn’t move here specifically to
improve my love life, I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. If sparks
fly, great. If they don’t, that’s fine, too.”

“How’s the town? Is it as great as you hoped?
Quaint, charming, and cute from the pictures you posted, but is it friendly,
warm, and welcoming, too?”

“The jury’s still out on friendly, warm and
welcoming. I know you won’t believe it, but it doesn’t seem like the people
here like me all that much.”

“They don’t like you?” He gasped his surprise.
“Little Mary Sunshine? Impossible!”

“They don’t embrace vegetarianism, that’s for
sure.” Or vegetarians, apparently.

She remembered the looks on everyone’s faces when
she’d thanked them for the lovely lunch, then explained she couldn’t eat any of
it. Anyone looking on would’ve thought she’d confessed to being a serial
killer.

“But maybe I’m misreading their natural reticence.
There’s a Fourth of July celebration on Wednesday. I’ll meet them
en masse
and use my natural charm to win
them over then.”

“They’ll end up loving you, I know it.” Ice
tinkled in a glass on his end. “Chicago’s loss is their gain.”

“You’re prejudiced in my favor.”

“Damn right. Maybe I’ll wander my way downstate
and set those hayseeds straight.”

“I’d love for you to visit!” she exclaimed. “I
move into my place tomorrow, and it is truly fabulous. Way better than anything
I could afford Chicago. And you know that because you’ll be moving into the
place I could afford in Chicago. Try to remember that the oven switch is only
on/off. It doesn’t really do temperature control.”

“The hot/cold faucets in the bathtub are reversed.
And I shouldn’t forget to duck if I get up on the left side of the bed because
the ceiling is lower on that side. I remember. And it’s still better than the
place I’m in now.”

“Yes, but when you compare that apartment with my
new house, you’ll think I’m rich. It has a fireplace and stained-glass windows
and hardwood floors! And a garage.”

“All that sounds great, but you could have had all
that here. Because, honestly, you are rich.”

“No, I’m not.” They’d had this discussion before.
“Fiona is, sure, but that’s her money. And her father is rich, but he’s not
responsible for me.”

“Despite the fact that he raised you and is the
closest thing you have to a father figure,” Nathan muttered. “I’d let that
gorgeous piece of manhood pay for anything of mine he wanted.”

“Keep your sex-deprived fantasies about my
stepfather to yourself, please.”

Plenty of people, men and women, had been obsessed
with Wexley Wilde’s pouty lips and sinuous moves for more than a couple of
decades.

But to Harper, Wex was the person who had taught
her to swim, took her skiing over Thanksgiving breaks from school, and sang
beautiful, incredible lullabies to her at bedtime. Many of the songs were
Grammy-winning gold records he’d written and sang in a universally recognized
voice, sure. But the fact of him being there for her was more important than
the low-pitched growl that translated into pure sex for the millions of
anonymous listeners that loved him. As a six-year-old, she hadn’t known about
the millions of fans. She’d just known he had a gentle touch and a soft heart
and hadn’t blinked an eye when his beautiful baby daughter came into his life
accompanied with a scrawny big sister.

“He’d contribute financially if I needed or wanted
him to, but I’m a grown-ass adult with my own career, you may have noticed,”
Harper insisted. “He’s already given me way too much over the years.”

“Forget about him, then, but your mother is rich.”

“She’s not! People think she is because she hangs
out with wealthy people and got a huge settlement when she and Mega Rock Star mistakenly
divorced, but it takes everything she makes to support her lifestyle.”

“She and Wexley got back together years ago.”

“Yeah, but she keeps her finances separate from
his in case things between them go south again.”

“Admit it, your biological father is rich, too.”

She sighed. “True, but as you know, I’m an
embarrassment to him, and he doesn’t like to be reminded of my existence. Every
once in a while his Anglo-Saxon conservative guilt forces him to buy me an
extravagant gift or send some money my way or attend some major life event. But
in the end, he’ll leave his piles of money to his legitimate, permanently
repressed offspring by his snooty socially acceptable wife.”

Nathan coughed and cleared his throat. “Despite
the trust fund he set up for you that came into your control when you turned
twenty-five.”

She winced. He had her there. “I don’t know why I
ever told you about that.”

“It was a weak moment,” he reminded her. “You were
drunk and despondent. A terrible combination.”

“But I also told you I don’t touch that money.”

“Yes,” he said, sighing, “but I don’t know why.
You could touch it, and it would make life so much easier for you. And your
friends.”

She didn’t really know why either. It would
probably take years of therapy to figure out, or it was glaringly obvious and
she didn’t want to acknowledge the truth. “I don’t need his money. I don’t need
him.”

“Bingo.”

“I know.” She blew out a breath of exasperation.
“I made my peace with our non-relationship a long time ago. I manage on my own
quite well.” She purposely stated the claim out loud every so often so she
didn’t forget it. “But my financial status isn’t the issue at this moment. My
furniture’s supposed to arrive in the morning. Everything went well with the
movers yesterday, right?”

“Right,” Nathan agreed. “I supervised the whole
operation and made sure they loaded every single box, book, and shoe. All the
things you treasure.”

“You only did that so my stuff would be out of
your way and you’d have a clean slate when you move in.”

“Well, we always agreed your place was better than
mine, and it’s more convenient to the library. It made sense for me to take
over your lease. Why let a stranger have that location when I need it so
badly?”

“No reason at all. When will you be moving in?”

“This weekend, which means I need to work on more
packing tonight. My life is so glam.”

“The envy of us all,” she agreed. “Thanks for
calling. I feel much more like myself again.”

“Good, then you need to check our word game. I
used all my letters and made ‘quiz’ on a triple word score for oodles of
points. Take that, girlfriend.”

“I bow to your greater skills, but I’ll look at the
game tonight and take my best shot at beating the pants off you... Not ‘beating
the pants off you’ in the same context as the Tight-Ass library administrator,
but beating you nevertheless. Eww, I may never be able to use that phrase again
without conjuring up disturbing mental images.”