What The Heart Learns

by Gadziala, Jessica

  She'd bring it back.

  Eventually.

  Sometimes she waited until she had four or five, bringing them back in a box.

  He was used to Maude's oddness.

  Sometimes, she would even walk out with books without paying, coming back later or the next day to square up.

  And despite the fact that she had been lying to his damn face, that she didn't overhear anyone talking about needing to shuffle the book choices at the inn, he moved out from behind the counter to look over the shelves, curating a few new choices to pack up and bring over.

  "Nice try," Dane's voice greeted him an hour later when he closed the shop for lunch, walking over to the inn to find it quiet as usual, save for Dane coming down the stairs from his room. His room just a few doors away from Riley.

  "I'm sorry?" Liam asked, brow raising.

  "You can cut the shit with me," Dane said, following Liam into the sitting room as he moved through the shelves, pulling out copies that looked a bit worse for the wear, peppering in the new ones.

  He probably should have asked before he did it, confirmed it with Em. But it wasn't like things were back when Marion owned the place. With EM Corp at the helm with their very deep coffers, he didn't feel bad costing them a hundred bucks or so. They could afford it.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Yeah, sure, Romeo," Dane drawled, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. "Don't even try to tell me you don't want in her various and tight-fitting leggings," he said, giving Liam a wicked smile, one that said he knew all about her leggings. Because he, unlike Liam, got the privilege of seeing her every day.

  "Don't have enough going on in your own love life, Dane, you have to wonder about mine?"

  Dane snorted. "What love life?" he shot back with a knowing brow raise. "She comes out of her room for food. That's about it. Otherwise, she's reading and working on her laptop."

  Working on her laptop.

  That was interesting.

  So she wasn't really on vacation.

  Not if she was working on her laptop.

  Curious.

  "If you want to worry about someone, maybe you should worry about Dev," Dane suggested, shrugging. "He's the one she lets into her room." Liam shot him a disbelieving look over his shoulder. "He's always carrying a coffee carafe," he admitted.

  "That explains it," Liam decided.

  "Except he's usually in there a while."

  "What's your game here, Dane?" Liam asked, standing with the used copies of the books, planning on dropping them at the library before heading back to the shop.

  "Game?" he repeated, playing dumb.

  "You've never had more than a handful of words for me over the years, and here you are following me around, giving me information I haven't asked for. What's your game?"

  "Figure you two would be a better match."

  "Right. Because you're known as a matchmaker."

  "I get plenty of ass. You, not so much. Figure I'd step aside on this one."

  "How magnanimous of you," Liam grumbled, turning, intending to walk away, stopping short at seeing someone coming down the stairs.

  In giant fluffy cookie monster slippers, leggings with script all over them, a black tank top, and a giant white sweater.

  Riley.

  Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head, her glasses sitting on a make-up free face, a giant mug in one hand, a carafe in another, and a book wedged under her arm.

  Her gaze found his, making her freeze, almost missing her next step before she righted herself at the last possible second.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, brows drawing together.

  "Curating books," he explained, raising the pile in his hands as Dane moved in beside him.

  "Riley, looking good."

  "Dane," she said, shaking her head at him. "If you and your lady guests are going to play naked tag on the porch at night, can you at least encourage them to remember which room is yours? Not that it wasn't entertaining to be startled awake by some random woman all full-frontal and all, but I think it would only be fun the first time."

  "Hey, if you'd have followed her back, you'd have been in on the real fun," Dane invited, making Riley roll her eyes at him, something that made perhaps a bit too much relief course through Liam's system.

  "There are some new books on the shelves," Liam supplied, turning, and walking away.

  Smooth?

  No.

  Charming?

  Definitely not.

  Then again, no one would ever accuse him of either thing.

  He tended to grate on people, in fact. And, as he had learned from Anna and Lena, he actually had the tendency to be somewhat offensive without even meaning to be.

  He sucked at small talk, at the complete and utter uselessness of it all.

  Maybe he could have tried, observed the way people like his brother, Dane, Maude, countless others in his small town full of even smaller talk and learned how to do it, to fit in better, to be less offensive.

  But there hadn't ever really been a reason to do so.

  He'd always been a bit off. Cold, distant, up in his own head. As far back as he could remember. When he was a kid, everyone just figured it was because of the lack of a maternal figure to help soften him up, make him more human, being the son of a man who was also cold and distant, a hard disciplinarian, a heavy drinker, someone who forced his boys to work at the shop from an age young enough to send up red flags should anyone have investigated, they all kind of attributed the O'reilly brothers' issues to their upbringing.

  Where Eric was wild and crazy, getting into every kind of trouble imaginable, Liam curled inside himself, inside his books, shutting everything out.

  And everyone just shrugged, accepted them as they were.

  So what if Liam was a bit odd, hard to get to know? He didn't get in trouble. He was smart. He - eventually - contributed to the town, gave it something it had needed.

  And when everyone around you simply accepted you as you were, there was really no reason to work to change yourself, was there?

  And Liam had always felt happy enough.

  Well, maybe happy wasn't the right word.

  But content.

  Satisfied.

  He had money, freedom, and the ability to spend his life between pages - all he had ever really wanted.

  It had never - not even for a moment - occurred to him that maybe that was not enough, that there was more to life he wanted to discover.

  But as he let himself back into the bookstore that had been his sanctuary for so many years, he didn't feel the same feeling of comfort he used to.

  And he had a feeling he knew who to blame that on.

  SIX

  Riley

  She was conned into it.

  Really, there was no other way to put it.

  Maude came into the inn working her psychic, witchy mind magic, and somehow, she was agreeing to go peach picking.

  It wasn't that Riley wasn't charitable.

  She'd spent every weekend while living in Seattle working to help teach adults to read. She did a stint at Habitat for Humanity before she realized they were really just better off taking her money than having to up their liability insurance because of having her on the site. When she couldn't make it home for the holidays, she spent them in soup kitchens instead of holed up in her apartment by herself.

  She'd been blessed in life.

  She believed in giving back to those who had not been so fortunate.

  She just had no idea how she had been talked into this particular little outing that would have her hauling around baskets of peaches.

  Manual labor and Riley had never really been good friends.

  But she wasn't going to go back on her word, either.

  Especially since it sounded like the town practically shut down just for this kind of thing.

  Charity in a small town, apparently, meant all hands on deck.

  "What do they
do with all the peaches?" she asked Devon Saturday morning while they shared a carafe of coffee. Well, Devon got one cup and a growl if he tried to top off his mug when it went warm. He had yet to learn to bring a separate carafe one for himself

  "Well, some of them go to the food banks or pantries in the surrounding areas. They're always in need of fresh produce. But there is usually too much for them even. They'd all rot. So a lot of the people in town agree to take them home, make jam, can them, make pies. Anything that can extend the shelf-life or be frozen. And then the finished products get distributed to the kitchens and pantries as well."

  "And this is all out of the goodness of the farm owner's heart?"

  "Yes and no. Old Man Darkening has a pick-your-own farm. All of the berries, apples, peaches, pears, apricots, the works. There is usually a lot leftover once the picking season is over. But he is getting up in age, and doesn't have the energy to go out there to collect all the good stuff up to sell - and he made his money off the pick-your-own crowds anyway. So Maude came up with this idea years back. It's been a tradition ever since then."

  She had to admit, that was nice.

  The whole town coming together for a worthy cause.

  And, from the sounds of it, this was not the only charitable thing the town did as a group.

  They had the Spring Into Summer dance where a ladies' dance card was a set fee, then any man who wanted his name on it also had to pay. Then there was the bachelor auction slash game night. All the profits went to charities. And, out of it, the townspeople got a day or night out, having fun, doing something good for the world at the same time.

  That was what was wrong with society, Riley decided. Everyone is so busy being out for themselves that they didn't stop to try to better anyone else's lives.

  Hell, she knew better than anyone, living in a city full of thousands of homeless individuals. People who had bare feet in the middle of winter, and no one stopped to give them socks.

  She felt suddenly guilty for not wanting to participate as she took her final coffee cup upstairs to get ready for the outing. So what if this wasn't her town, these weren't her people. They were still all doing something good, and offering to let her be a part in making a difference.

  She rummaged through her bags, realizing that leggings and sweaters weren't going to work when she planned on spending the day outside and - according to the weather outlook that was pinned to the board downstairs, it was going to be the icky back-sweating kind of gross out leading up to a thunderstorm in the early evening.

  "Ugh," she grumbled, finding the sole pair of shorts she had packed - generally abhorring the very idea of the garment as a whole, but still understanding their necessity at times - a dark, almost black denim that she knew was going to ride up on the thighs all day, making her drag the material back down as modestly as she could. Pairing those with a simple dark blue Ravenclaw tee, she slipped into her ballet flats, wound her hair back up a little more neatly, grabbed a book - for an emergency like awkward silences - and made her way back downstairs to find the whole inn crew waiting.

  Em, her man James, Devon, Meggie, some guy who waited tables in the dining room, an older couple who were staying in the inn to visit their niece who was home from college for the summer, and, whether she could quite believe it or not, Dane.

  "Really? You are going peach picking?" The second it was out of her mouth, she realized the mistake. "Don't. Don't. We can all use our imagination for the filthy comment you might be making about ladies' butts," she told him, making his wicked smile get all the more devilish.

  "You can follow me, pretty lady," Devon told her, offering her arm to lead her out to her car.

  The drive was short, just eight or ten minutes out of the main area of town, back where all the properties were farms of varying sizes, boasting various types of produce.

  There was one that sold organic tea and bath goodies butted up against one that sold goats milk and cheese.

  All the way at the end of that road was the Darkening farm - twelve acres of fruit trees, some heavy with produce, others picked clean.

  As if that wasn't proof enough she was in the right place, there was a giant part of the side yard that was dug up to create a makeshift dirt driveway where what looked like every single car from Stars Landing was parked, everyone filing out, laughing, happy, carrying their own baskets.

  "Shit," she mumbled to herself, noting her utter basket-less-ness as she pulled into one of the few empty spots, wondering where the rest of the inn crew was going to park.

  "Don't worry. I got you," Devon declared, opening his trunk as she moved past. The trunk of a very late model, very nice car.

  Moneybags, that was what she'd heard Emily call him. Though if he had money to spend on luxury cars, she couldn't fathom why he was working the front desk at an inn.

  "Family money," he said, reading her mind. "I generally donate most of it, but I splurge every now and again. But here, pretty girl," he went on, hauling out two rolling carts with milk crates attached. "I figured you weren't the hauling sort."

  "My idea of heavy lifting is carrying stacks of books around," Riley agreed with a small smile as Devon handed her one of the rolling baskets. "So... we just walk around and pick peaches?"

  "And have snacks. And a cup or two of whatever concoction Maude has cooked up. Fair warning, for a rookie, half a cup is more than enough. More than that, and you'll be on your ass."

  "Noted," Riley told him with a smile. "Hey Dev..."

  "Yeah?" he asked, brows drawing together slightly, picking up on the hesitation in her tone.

  "I've never actually... picked peaches. How do I know if they're good or not?"

  To that, his smile went sweet. "City girl. Pretty easy. No holes. And when you grab it, if your fingers sink in and break the skin, leave it."

  "Simple enough."

  "Hey Dev!" a young, pretty woman called, waving him over.

  "Go," Riley told him, giving him a smile. "I'll catch up with you later," she added, moving to follow the crowd down the path which led to - she assumed - the peach orchard.

  "There you are, girl. I see Devon hooked you up," Maude greeted her, pulling a giant glass drink dispenser full of some kind of liquid a peachy lime color - if such a thing existed - with ice cubes, raspberries, and lemon slices floating around within in a Red Flyer wagon.

  "Hey Maude," she called, offering the woman a genuine smile. The sun was shining, after all. And while the sun was high, there was a bit of a breeze that made the heat tolerable. She found herself glad to be out of the inn for a bit. She wasn't even sure the last time she had spent anytime outside.

  If nothing else, she would get some much-needed vitamin D while doing something good.

  She let Maude talk her into having her half cup as a pre-game, wanting to be sober enough to drive back to town later.

  So about half an hour later, she was riding a pleasant buzz off of the lime/peach/raspberry/vodka/rum/tequila punch Maude brought, moving down the lines of trees, trying to find a row that wasn't completely packed with locals that she didn't know, having this odd desire not to get attached to anyone.

  Or, more accurately, anyone else.

  She was finding she liked this ragtag group of small town people.

  She found herself slowly getting attached to them. Most notably, Devon who brought her coffee and hung around for an hour or so each time, and Meggie who she spent her evenings with in the kitchen, gorging on leftovers.

  But she'd even grown to like crazy, invasive Maude, manwhore, unpredictable Dane, and the manically active Emily.

  She'd made more connections in a week in Stars Landing than she had years back in the city.

  Eventually, she'd have to leave.

  And she had this niggling suspicion that she was going to miss these people.

  As odd as that was for her to think given her usual commitment to her anti-social tendencies.

  So she didn't need to get attached to anyone other than the ones she
had already gotten attached to.

  She picked the second to last row, grumbling a bit at the sheer waste of fruit rotting on the ground - pick-your-own people clearly taking a bite or two, then leaving the rest to rot, drawing a swarm of flies that she found herself swatting away as she tiptoed around the waist, reaching up into the trees for the remaining good peaches further up.

  She was coming out of the tree, her shirt lifted to create a basket, walking back to her cart when she realized she hadn't picked an abandoned row after all.

  No.

  Of course not.

  She'd picked the only row where she'd have to see someone she had actively been avoiding even as her curiosity ate away at her for doing so.

  Liam.

  Stripped of his grandpa sweater, he wore simple dark wash blue jeans - the kind that actually fit, not too loose, not too tight, just right - and a dark blue tee with faded gray lettering on front that she couldn't quite make out.

  He was fit, she realized, under those usual layers he hid under because he had this weird urge to pay too much for air conditioning, keeping his store just barely above frigid at all times.

  Maybe to keep customers from lingering too long, annoying him.

  That seemed entirely possible actually.

  But yeah, under his grandpa sweaters, he had a lean build with arm muscles that looked like he did slightly more than haul around big tomes all day. She'd bet that under that somewhat loose shirt he had on, there would be fine - not overly defined, but noticeable - outlines of abdominal muscles, and those delicious ones that went down the back - a personal favorite of hers to drool over.

  As if noticing her inspection, his head started to swivel, making hers shoot downward as though she hadn't noticed him at all, walking over toward her cart, carefully layering in the peaches, trying not to bruise them.

  "Ugh," she grumbled, rubbing her forearms across the material of her shirt, trying to ease the itchiness overtaking them.

  "It's the fuzz," Liam's voice said, sounding much closer than he had been a moment ago, in fact, right beside her. His nearness sending a small shiver through her insides, as ridiculous as that was.