He sighed again. “All right. I’ll take care of the paperwork, and I’ll get the new deed to you once it’s done.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll consider this one of the last things we can do for Jess, right? To help her friend?” His voice sounded tight, as if he were close to tears.
When she realized she was nodding, tears in her own eyes, she said, “I think Jess would be delighted. Thank you again.”
“I’ll get back to you.” Jim hung up without saying goodbye, same as he always did.
Liddy disconnected the call but remained at her desk, her emotions in a free fall. Knowing the property still belonged to Jim, and he’d benefit financially from a sale, she was grateful he’d come to see the situation through her eyes. Yet at the same time, she was still angry with him for, oh, so many reasons. She’d wanted to stay angry with him. But his generosity in their daughter’s name touched her when she didn’t want to be touched, made her grateful when she didn’t want to feel any positive emotion for him. Yet there it was. He’d broken her heart, disappointed her to her very soul. And yet today he’d pulled through magnanimously merely because she’d asked.
Damn it. It was so much easier to be pissed off.
Chapter Ten
On Saturday morning, Liddy was showing a customer the greeting card selections when Grace came into the shop, wearing the same clothes she’d worn the week before.
“Sticking with the Mary Poppins look, I see,” Liddy said as Grace walked by.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Grace continued on to the back of the shop.
By ten forty-five, children were filing into the store like tiny soldiers on a mission. Their target was the children’s section, where Grace would be reading from that week’s selection, Davey Wants a Dog. Word of mouth since the first story hour must have been really good, because to Liddy’s eye, it looked like twice as many kids as last week were crowding into the space. The thought of all those potential book sales put a big smile on her face.
Liddy noticed Tuck as he came in holding JoJo’s hand, trailed by Bliss, who once again wore her too-bored-to-be-bothered expression. Which Liddy thought was silly since she was only two years older than her sister. Liddy suspected Bliss used her disdain as a means of asserting the fact she was older than JoJo, which she may have thought necessary since she and her sister were almost the same size. If JoJo liked it, it must be childish, whatever it might be.
“Hey, Tuck. I see you have book duty again today,” Liddy noted.
“Yeah, Duffy has a travel soccer game this afternoon, and the bus is leaving at noon,” he replied. “Linc volunteered to be assistant coach. As if he had nothing else to do.”
“Pop, come on.” JoJo tugged at his hand, her face marked with concern. “I don’t want to be late again.”
“God forbid you should be the last one there again.” Tuck laughed and allowed himself to be pulled along to the back of the shop.
Five minutes later, Liddy was knee-deep in customers when she looked up and saw him standing about five feet away. He raised a hand to get her attention.
“Looks like you’re going to be busy for a while. I’m going to run across the street for a cup of coffee. Can I bring you anything?” he asked.
“A coffee would be great. Thanks, Tuck.”
Liddy assisted a customer who was looking for a book for her sister’s birthday, and another who wanted “a mystery she wouldn’t be able to solve before the end of the book.” Liddy was pointing out several she’d found intriguing when Tuck returned with coffee.
“I left yours on the counter next to the iPad,” he told her. “That shark of yours is making good time on her way south.”
“She was already off the coast of Long Island yesterday.”
“What’s this about a shark?” Liddy’s customer asked.
Liddy noticed a customer waiting to pay for her selection. She looked around but didn’t see Evelyn, so she said, “Tuck, why don’t you tell this nice woman about Rosalita?”
“I’d be happy to.” Tuck launched into the information Liddy had given him about the shark tracker while Liddy stepped around another customer on her way to the counter.
The door opened, and Johanna Hall entered the shop with a small boy in hand.
“Oh, Liddy. Where’s the children’s story hour?” Johanna asked.
“All the way in the back, but it started about”—Liddy barely had the words out of her mouth when Johanna flew past her, dragging the boy, who looked to be about four—“ten minutes ago.”
Liddy wondered if Tuck was having dinner at Johanna’s tonight, and what seductive entrée Johanna might try to lure him with. Whatever that might be, how would it stand up against Liddy’s beef stew?
Damn it, I saw him first.
Liddy rang up several more sales while watching Johanna corner Tuck near the gardening section. Well, at least she had good taste in men, because he did look fine in jeans and a dark-brown pullover the same color as his eyes.
She tried to focus on her customers and stay tuned in to their chatter, all the while trying to keep an eye on the duo moving toward the biographies. Tuck didn’t appear to be saying much, she noticed. Johanna seemed to be doing most of the talking. He was just drinking his coffee and occasionally nodding.
She looked down at the transaction she was completing, but when she looked up again, Tuck and Johanna had disappeared somewhere between history and general fiction.
Story hour ended, and the rush of kids to pay for their books began. JoJo was pulling her grandfather into the single line Evelyn was enforcing like a trooper. Liddy noticed the little boy who’d come in with Johanna had begun tugging on her arm—Johanna’s grandson, she assumed. Ever the gentleman, Tuck allowed them to get into the line before him.
“Was this your first story hour?” Liddy asked the boy.
He nodded.
“Did you like the story?”
He nodded again and held up the book, which Johanna took from his hand and placed on the counter. “We’re going to read it again when we get home, right, Will?”
A third nod.
Johanna paid for the book and took the boy’s hand. She turned back to Tuck and, in a voice that could have been heard in the back of the store, said, “See you tonight, Tuck. Don’t be late. I have a special surprise hors d’oeuvre planned.”
Liddy looked up in time to see Tuck’s face turn beet red. He nodded to Johanna and forced a smile. Next in line, he handed over the book he was buying for his granddaughter.
“Hot date tonight, Tuck?” Liddy said under her breath.
Not raising his eyes to meet hers, he mumbled, “She invited me to some dinner thing.”
“Well, bon appétit.”
Liddy thought, to his credit, Tuck looked as though he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.
JoJo tapped on the book impatiently, drawing Liddy’s attention. “Did you enjoy the story, JoJo?”
“Uh-huh.” JoJo’s ponytail bobbed up and down. “I sat with Miss Grace again. She let me.” Suddenly she yelped and jumped, and her small hand began rubbing her butt. Turning to her sister, she said, “That hurt. Pop said don’t pinch.”