She felt her face getting redder.
She saw Bernie’s smug curiosity.
She focused on her breakfast.
“After all this food, I’m gonna need a nap,” Abe said. “Can’t I persuade you and Daniel to change the schedule?”
“Daniel wants a hike, Daniel gets a hike,” Kevin said.
“Awww,” said Becky and Bernie.
Abe muffled a yawn with his fist. “I don’t know about you guys, but I didn’t sleep too good last night. And I think I actually met one of you.”
“Oh?” Bernie said, as the four pairs of eyes that were not Emma’s swung in her direction.
“Well, I didn’t really meet you. I was fiddlin’ on my balcony last night—”
“He plays the fiddle,” Kevin explained.
“And someone unleashed the wrath of the devil upon my innocent head.”
“It wasn’t that bad!”
Emma realized what she was saying when the words were halfway out of her mouth, but by then it was too late.
“Aha! Mystery Librarian!” Abe said, pointing a biscuit at her with a smile.
“Why’d you unleash the wrath of the devil upon his innocent head?” Becky asked.
“I didn’t! I was trying to work and he was making noise, so I just politely asked him to stop.”
“Sure didn’t sound polite to me.”
“You were trying to work instead of coming to dinner?”
“No! This was after. It was the middle of the night.”
“Why were you trying to work in the middle of the night?”
“Why were you playing music in the middle of the night?”
“I was kinda drunk,” Abe explained. “That’s my excuse.”
“So that’s where you disappeared to,” Kevin said.
“I disappeared under the vengeful wrath of the mystery librarian.”
“Well, you don’t look any worse for wear.”
“Nope. I feel great. I feel even better having met her in person. In fact, I feel so great that I’m going to eat my body weight in biscuits and gravy, and then I’m going to hike the hell out of these woods.”
And then Abe picked up his plate and left, but not before tossing Emma a parting wink.
“Okay, Emma,” Becky said, putting down her fork. “Tell us what really happened.”
Chapter Six
They ate, they laughed, they watched the rain turn to snow and then, finally, stop. Emma looked out the big picture window that showcased a beautiful view of the valley.
Yesterday it showcased a beautiful view of the valley.
Today there was a gray, wet mess.
Her toes curled in her wool socks. This was not hiking weather. This was curl-up-by-the-fire-and-read weather.
She looked longingly at the shelf of battered paperbacks next to the fireplace.
“I call dibs on the Johanna Lindsey,” Bernie whispered in her ear.
“Oh, I have plenty of reading to do,” Emma assured her, even though she had secretly had her eye on it, too. And that was one of the Malorys she hadn’t read yet.
“We might still hike,” Becky said. “That was meant to sound hopeful. Did it sound hopeful?”
They all shook their heads at her.
She shrugged. “I tried.”
“Everyone, can I have your attention?” Daniel was standing on the stone hearth, his hands and his voice raised. “You may have noticed that Mother Nature isn’t exactly cooperating with our plans.”
There was a mild and general “boo” from behind her.
“But we are hearty mountain people, and we’re not gonna let a little mud slow us down.”
“We’re not mountain people,” Bernie pointed out. The boos turned into a hearty laugh.
“Exactly,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to show you the beauty of my home place.”
Chapter Seven
“This sucks,” Pete’s kid said.
“Language,” Pete’s wife said.
“He’s not wrong,” said Pete.
“I can hear you!” shouted Daniel from the front of the pack.
Despite the clear beauty of the night before, the ground was a mess. The trail was nothing but muddy sludge, and while the warm weather was great, it was also causing the snow to melt. Melted snow begets muddy sludge.
Good thing Abe had dug out his hiking boots.
Also, good thing he’d brought another pair of boots to wear to the wedding. Otherwise, he’d be playing barefoot. And after Daniel told him he wanted his wedding to be “country, but not hillbilly,” he reckoned he’d better have a clean pair of shoes.
And yet, nothing could really distract him from how much he loved these woods. Even the heavy clouds couldn’t block all of the light coming through the trees. The muscles in his legs sang as they climbed the familiar path. He wanted to reach down and grab a handful of earth and take it back to Nashville with him.
Well, nothing except that whining kid of Pete’s.
Anyway, it was only two inches of muddy sludge. Granny Sue had predicted six inches and begged off the walk. Ha, so much for being a hearty old woman.
He tripped over a rock that stuck out over the sludge. He caught himself, but not before slopping mud all over the librarian behind him.
The five of them were like a pack. He got that they hardly ever saw one another, and that Kevin’s wedding was an excuse for a reunion. And he got that Kevin’s family was small and not real psyched about Kevin marrying another man—and in West Virginia, no less—and so they weren’t here for the whole pre-wedding weekend thing.
He just never would have thought that a pack of librarians would be so . . . loud.
He shouldn’t be surprised. Librarians were people, too, and they came in all shapes and sizes and volumes. He knew a librarian in Nashville who was covered in tattoos and spent her free time hacking video games. Heck, you could hear Granny Sue coming from across the holler, even when she was in the library.
Maybe he was just annoyed because he just wanted to get one of the librarians alone.
Why he was tempted by a woman who’d spent all of last night yelling at him from a balcony, he had no idea. She was obviously the stereotypical librarian—uptight, way too serious, and just generally no fun.
Except that every time he snuck a glance back at her—just to make sure she and her friends were keeping up with Daniel’s breakneck pace, which they weren’t—she was laughing and smiling and shouting with the rest of them. But her laugh and smile and shout, those really stood out.
Unbelievable. He had a crush on a librarian.
Maybe it was just the wedding stuff, making him feel romantic. Or maybe he was thinking too much and he should just go back and talk to her.
“How’re you guys doing back here?”
“It’s not too late to call off the wedding, is it?” Kevin huffed. “I mean, am I seriously going to spend the rest of my life with a man who thinks this is fun?”
“I can hear you, darling!” Daniel shouted from the front.
“That was the idea!” Kevin shouted. “Also, I love you!”
“I’m just saying, if I see a snake, I’m out of here,” the short one said. The blonde threw a rock in some leaves. “What was that?” the short one screamed. They all laughed.
“It’s a bit cold for snakes,” Abe said. City slickers.
“It’s a bit cold for humans,” the blonde grumbled.
“Not for our Emma,” the short one said. “Since she was smart and wore thermal underwear.”
“Sexy,” said the blonde.
Abe looked over at Emma, squinting up at the treetops. She had these little crinkles around her eyes when she squinted, and he wanted to kiss each one of them.
That was definitely just the wedding talking.
He turned to admire her hairdo again, since apparently the wedding was transforming him into the kind of guy who admires hairdos.
Suddenly it was just the two of them on the trail.
And not in a metaphorical way. The rest of the group must’ve gotten a sudden burst of energy and were several paces up the hill.
It was a sign. The woods—and the librarians—wanted him to flirt with the librarian.
* * *
Emma caught Abe sneaking looks at her. She surreptitiously wiped her nose, checked for biscuit crumbs on her mouth. But he still kept doing it.
Maybe Liam was right. Maybe he was actually attracted to her.
She tried to wrap her head around that idea, thinking that, yeah, maybe it was possible. Sure, she was wearing an unflattering extra layer under her jeans and she might or might not have had something stuck to her face, but, dammit, she had parts that worked and she deserved to be flirted with. Even if the guy was way hotter than any guy who’d ever flirted with her before.
The thing was, he didn’t act like a hot guy. He didn’t smile like he knew he looked good when he smiled. When he smiled, it just looked like he was happy.
So that was it. She was being flirted with, and she was going to take it and run because this was a romantic weekend and she was on vacation and she wasn’t going to think about work and—
And suddenly she was on her knees in the mud.
The first thing she thought was a particularly unladylike curse that made the whining kid laugh. The second thing she thought was that her knees felt wet. The skin of her knees felt wet through one layer of waffle-weave and one layer of denim, and she already felt so gross that she just wanted to sit down in the mud and wait for spring.
Then, the third thing. She was upright and standing on her own two feet.
In mud.
Not in her own two shoes, though. No, she could tell even without looking that one of those shoes was definitely not on her foot, and she could tell that because the mud was soaking into her sock, and practically squishing between her toes.
Unpleasant.
“Hey, you okay?”
Dazed and muddy, she looked over at Hot Abe, who was clutching her hands and holding her upright.
She gave a thumbs-up. A muddy thumbs-up. Oh God, her hands were a mess. And now so were Abe’s.
He looked so serious and she was so embarrassed and the only thing she could do was let out a completely unladylike guffaw that ended in gasping laughter. She couldn’t help it. It was the funniest thing she had ever seen.
“Emma!” Her friends came streaming back down the trail to where she had been kneeling, and was now squatting, doubled over in nervous laughter.
“I’m fine! I’m fine.” She wiped her cheek, which she immediately realized was a muddy mistake but too late. And that was funny, too.
Chapter Eight
By the time Emma got down the hill, her pants had dried enough that they were just really, really cold, and really, really heavy with mud. One hand was holding up the waistband of her wet, heavy jeans and the other was holding onto Abe’s arm. She didn’t really need to hold his arm. Her foot didn’t hurt—it was just really muddy and really cold. But he offered and he’d already gotten his flannel shirt muddy trying to dislodge her from the mud, and who was she to deny chivalry?
* * *
“Oh, bless your heart, look at that mess!”
Abe was not at all impressed with Granny Sue’s concern, especially since it came with a healthy dose of teasing laughter. Poor Emma. She was going to be part of a story, he could tell. The time Granny Sue’s nephew got married and that poor librarian got herself covered in mud. Poor thing couldn’t handle the West Virginia hills.
Part of Abe wanted to protect her from ridicule, even if it wasn’t ridicule at all—being part of a teasing story was a great sign of affection around here. Another part of him was really glad that she would be part of a story, that whenever he saw Granny Sue, at least until he did something else stupid, she would remind him of the time he went hiking and came back with a muddy librarian on his arm.
He liked this muddy librarian on his arm.
But now his muddy librarian was starting to shiver.
“I fell,” his shivering librarian said.
“I see that,” Granny said. “Looks like you took half the mountain with you.”
He felt Emma shrug against his arm. “I wanted a souvenir.”
Granny Sue threw her head back and laughed. Now Emma was definitely going to be part of a story. Getting a big laugh like that from Granny Sue meant you were friends for life.
“Well, come away from that door, you’re going to freeze. Here, there’s a fire going inside. Go on and stand by that.”
Emma looked like she wanted to protest, but she let go of his arm and allowed herself to be led away.
And now he was cold.
Well, it was cold out. And he was kind of covered in mud. Oh, nowhere near librarian-level, but he’d done a pretty good job messing up his jeans in his brief rescue attempt.
Hmph. Why wasn’t Granny Sue making a fuss over him? He was cold, too, dammit. And he practically carried her down the hill!
“Quit that assy face, mister,” she shouted over to him. “Come over here and get warm.”
Emma gave him a shy smile, and he felt warm all over. Sure, he’d go stand next to her. He’d even help her get out of those wet clothes if she needed him to.
Chapter Nine
“While your drawers are dryin’, you wanna run me over to the library?”
Abe looked up from the ancient dulcimer he was trying to tune for Granny Sue. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the old thing had played its last session, especially since she had offered up her washing machine to him and Emma and their mud-soaked hiking clothes. “Granny Sue, you’re supposed to have the day off.”
She waved Abe’s concern away. “Just for a minute. I promised Miss Elsa Mae I’d bring her books to her. She’s older’n the hills; you can’t expect her to wait to find out what happens to Jack Reacher.”
“The library?”
Emma was in the doorway of Granny Sue’s kitchen, Granny Sue’s giant wool socks on her feet, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.
He’d never been jealous of a mug before.
This wedding stuff was really getting to him.
“Oh, that’s right! You’re studyin’ country libraries, aren’t you?” said Granny Sue in a way that indicated to Abe she hadn’t forgotten for a second that Emma would be interested in seeing their tiny library.
Abe pulled out his phone to check the time. He was two digits into the four-digit unlock password when the battery gave out. “I guess we have plenty of time,” he said with a shrug. Which was a nice way of saying that Granny Sue had made up her mind, so he didn’t really have a choice.
Plus, Emma looked like someone had just told her she’d won the Nobel Prize and it came with a pack of fluffy puppies and twenty pounds of chocolate. It was a good look for her. Heck, if visiting a crummy library put that look on her face, what would she look like if she was really excited?
Man, he was in trouble. This wedding stuff was really getting to him.
* * *
A library! A real, rural library! Emma knew she should try to keep her nerd flag from flying too high—she’d just met these people, and one of them was really hot and she would probably try to flirt with him later, and no reasonable sexual being should get that excited about the prospect of visiting a library. She just couldn’t help it. And if Abe was turned off by her enthusiasm (which was perhaps an understatement) (okay, definitely an understatement), then forget him. She’d rather have a library than a man any day.
Oh God. Was that true? She’d never actually articulated that thought before. It seemed wrong. But it felt right.
Of course, so did Abe’s arm, helping her down the hill.
She shook her head. She was not required to make a choice. She was just required to put on shoes (and relinquish Granny Sue’s fabulous wool socks), get in the truck, and go visit a library.
A library!
As they bounced over the country roads, Granny Sue explained t
he history of the area.
“Coral Bottom used to be called Coal Bottom, on account of the coal mines up the road. The county was dotted with company towns, up until World War II, when the men of Coal Bottom all went off to fight, and most of the women left for work in a munitions factory outside of Charleston.”
“Everyone just left?”
“Well, not everyone. But enough left that the mine shut down. Least that’s the excuse they gave for shutting down the mine. Had nothing at all to do with the lack of coal and the union agitators.”
“Don’t get Granny Sue started on union agitators.”
“Your great-grandfather was a union agitator, and you better be proud of that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Anyway, the mine shut down, so most people left. Only a few stubborn Tates stayed up in the hills and hollers.”
“I don’t want to shock you, Emma, but those stubborn Tates are where Granny Sue comes from.”
“They’re your kin too, Mr. Fancy Musician. And don’t you forget it.”
Abe gave Granny a quick salute.
“So everyone came back after the war was over?” Emma asked. There were driveways and dirt roads along their route—surely people still lived here.
“Well, yes, everyone but the coal company. But while most of the county was at war, the Communists moved in.”
“Communists?”
“Oh, yes. My daddy was blind in one eye—he had a little run-in with the company’s union busters—so he couldn’t serve his country. I guess some Communists decided they’d try to grow the movement in small places. Though what they expected to get out of a town that, at its peak, had less than a thousand people, I have no idea.”
“So this is a Communist enclave?”
“I’m not finished. The Communists came, and my daddy was excited at first, because they had ideas about workers’ rights and community property that felt right to his ol’ West Virginia heart. We’d been taking care of each other since long before the company moved in, so why not make it official?”
“He was pretty optimistic.”
The Most Wonderful Time Page 21