A Few Tables Away (Glenhaven #1) Read online

  “Where’s your sister?” Dad began immediately.

  “How am I supposed to know that? I’m across the country,” I replied indifferently, which was much easier to do over the phone than in person.

  “Because you two tell each other every damn thing, son!” he snapped, making me flinch, despite the three thousand miles that separated us. “You think I don’t read the goddamn cell phone bill before I pay it?”

  I shook my head because I knew this wasn’t about Faith. He didn’t care what she did, as long as she brought home decent grades and stayed out of his hair. His problem wasn’t with Faith, and it wasn’t really with Tyler, either. It was with me. However, I’d learned a long time ago that if you gave him something, even something little, he’d back off just a bit.

  “Last she told me, she was going out with Ron Lowe,” I stated firmly because it wasn’t a lie. The party would get her into trouble, but the date wouldn’t, especially with that guy.

  “Oh,” he sighed. “Okay, then. Dr. Lowe’s son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The line went quiet, and just like always, he shifted his ire to me. “You’d better be keeping your grades up, Evan. If I get a report that says differently, I’ll—”

  “My grades are fine, Dad,” I interrupted before he could threaten to bring me back home…or stop sending my funds for school. “We’re just a month into the semester.”

  “Oh, which reminds me. I’ve decided to sell the BMW,” he stated coldly. “It’s not being used, and insuring it is a waste of money.”

  I closed my eyes in frustration. I loved that car, but in all reality, he’d held it over my head since I was sixteen. He wielded it like a weapon. If I made him unhappy, he took it away. If I dropped a tenth of a point in my GPA, he took it away. If I didn’t go to prom, if I burned his toast, if I read a book instead of watching the football game, if Faith or Tyler came to my defense…Once I’d gotten big enough that physically scaring me became almost impossible, the BMW was his choice of punishment. If he sold it, there was one less weapon he could use against me.

  “Whatever you feel you need to do, Dad,” I stated, shrugging a shoulder that he couldn’t see, but it made me feel the indifference I was trying to put out.

  “Well, at least you see reason.”

  I shook my head, almost smiling, because I could hear that my answer had not been what he’d wanted. Apparently he was looking for a fight, and I honestly didn’t have it in me to give him one today. He’d have to find one somewhere else. And I also needed to warn Faith before she got home.

  “Dad, I gotta go. I’ve got a lot of reading to get done before Monday.”

  “Fine, we’ll see you at Thanksgiving,” he stated.

  I opened my mouth to counter that I wasn’t going home for the holidays, but I’d save that argument for later, sometime closer to November. I’d use school as the excuse.

  The call ended before I could say anything anyway, so I immediately dialed my sister.

  “Evan!”

  I smiled but decided to get directly to the point. “Brace yourself when you get home. He’s prickly.”

  “He’s always prickly. What now?”

  “He wanted to know where you were.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I gave him something to shut him up. I gave him Ron’s name.”

  She sighed, and I could hear the noise in the background. “Fine, I’ll head home in a few.” The noise died down a bit, and I heard a door slam. “Now…tell me. Was Library Girl—”

  “Dani,” I said with a grin. “Her name’s Dani.”

  “Shut the fuck up! You talked to her?”

  Snorting, I shook my head. “It’s kind of a long story. Today’s been…weird.”

  “Tell me. I’d rather hear this. The party was stupid.”

  I gave Faith the rundown of my day, including the letter I wrote but didn’t give, the asshole who threw the drink, and meeting my Library Girl face-to-face.

  “You know, I think she was the one who yelled at him when I walked away,” I guessed in a mumble.

  “So…your bookworm is your boss’s cousin? That’s fucking awesome!”

  Grinning, I broke into a laugh. “I guess, but I think she likes that jerk, Brad.”

  “Maybe not. She apologized, big brother. If she were into asshats, she’d have ignored what happened.”

  “Maybe, but now…now I’m gonna be stuck in a room all day with her, Faith. What the hell am I supposed to do?” I asked in a hissed panic. “I’m gonna screw this up so bad.”

  Faith laughed, but it was soft and not really at me. “You…God, Evan, you make way more out of stuff than you need to. I’m telling you, if she’s worth any-damn-thing, she’ll accept you just as you are, ’cause you are a good guy, big brother. Just be you and be honest, no matter what, because you don’t want to be a liar. Mom always said—”

  “It’s much easier to remember the truth than the lies,” I whispered with her, closing my eyes. “God, I miss her.”

  “Me too.”

  The silence between us was heavy, filled with an old grief. I’d only been twelve when it happened, which meant Faith had been ten and Tyler fourteen. Faith had been home that night with Dad, but Tyler and I had almost died with our mother. I shook my head to get rid of the old memories of screeching tires, crunching metal, and the splash of cold, dirty water.

  “Evan…Big brother, come back to me…”

  “I’m…I’m okay.”

  “I know you are, and you’ll be even better now that you don’t have to hear the shit every day,” she stated wisely. “And you aren’t here as a slap to the face…You look—”

  “Just like her. I know.” I smiled, in spite of it all. My whole life, people had told me how much I looked like my mother. Robyn Shaw had given me her hair, her eye color, even her love for reading and writing. I was her made over. And it pissed my dad off something fierce.

  “Evan?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Evan, just…go be you tomorrow. Don’t sweat that you think you’re different. Don’t worry about your past. Go be that funny, smart, sweet guy I love.”

  After taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly. “I’ll try. Love you too.”

  The next morning, I was a mess of nerves. No matter what Faith had said, I still couldn’t shake the fear of working all day with Dani in Wes’s office. I was afraid she’d see how weird I was, that my pickiness for organization would make her laugh, and that she’d catch me staring at her. That last one was the scariest because I knew for a fact I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. She was just that pretty.

  I used my walk to Sunset Roast to try to clear my head, but it didn’t work. I thought maybe I should get myself a bike while I was saving for a car. It would come in handy. It didn’t need to be expensive; maybe a secondhand from a pawn shop or something. And then I thought about how lame that would make me seem. Not only was I socially inept, but I had no car, either.

  By the time I made it to the boardwalk and inside the coffee shop, I’d pretty much come to terms that I was going to embarrass myself in front of Dani in one way or another, so as my little sister would say…

  “Fuck it,” I sighed to myself, reaching for the time clock and punching in.

  “Evan,” Wes greeted with a big smile, gripping my shoulder. “My cousin is already here, so I’ll let you two just…” His face heated, and he opened the door to his office with a grimace on his face. “Good luck,” he blurted out, pushing me inside and starting to close the door.

  “Wes Harper, you’ll stop right there!” Dani yelled from behind his desk, and when she stood, I could see smooth legs and shorts, so I broke my gaze away quickly.

  However, I wanted to laugh at Wes’s paling face as he poked his head in the doorway. “Look, Dani, I…”

  “Don’tchoo Dani me…” She stepped away from the desk and pointed to a few open drawers of the filing cabinets that lined the walls of the small office. “Seriously?”
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  Glancing at Wes, I walked to the open drawers to peer inside. My stomach knotted at the folders that were completely out of order. There were employee files in with the bookkeeping stuff, banking stuff in with the vendor files, and dated folders were not in order at all.

  I looked up to see Dani peering in with me, but then her pretty eyes locked with mine as she shook her head.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Who does this shit?” she yelled at her cousin. “You’ve made my OCD shoot into orbit, you jackass!”

  He laughed, and despite the fact that it was a nervous laugh, he truly was amused with her. “Well, I think you two are probably going to be a bit, so…”

  Her nostrils flared as she glared at the door he slammed closed. He’d essentially just locked us in there. I was pretty sure her eye twitched, but I couldn’t get past the fact that she’d said she had OCD.

  “You too?” I asked softly, pointing to the atrocious filing system.

  Her gaze broke from the door to meet mine. “What?”

  “OCD?”

  She giggled, and sweet God, she was gorgeous when she laughed. “Oh hell yes! Since I was a kid. I mean, I don’t flip light switches off and on like three times before bed, but this kind of stuff…Ugh.”

  Chuckling, I nodded. “Me too. My brother used to turn in homework that was wrinkled and stained, and it drove me crazy. He’d come into my room when we were kids, just to mess it up.”

  What I didn’t add was that Tyler stopped doing that after I got into trouble with Dad for having a messy room. It only got worse when Tyler owned up to the mess; my dad punished us both.

  “We’ll never, ever get your brother and my cousin in the same room. It’ll be anarchy.”

  A loud laugh escaped me, and I couldn’t help it. Her sarcasm was sharp and quick but funny. I caught her stare at me, and her cheeks were flushed pink, but she seemed to shake some thought out of her head as she pointed toward the cabinets.

  “I think…maybe we should just empty them, sort the folders, and then refile everything correctly.”

  “Clean slate,” I agreed with a nod, glancing over the drawers. “We’re going to need some room…on the desk and the floor. And maybe a permanent marker for labels and such.”

  Dani smiled, and it was secretive and sexy. She went to a backpack hanging on Wes’s desk chair and reached in for something.

  She held up a plastic piece of equipment, still wearing that wickedly sexy smile. “Label maker, Evan. I’m not sure I could live without this bad boy.”

  I was pretty sure my neat-freak side just fell in love with her completely. I had imagined and dreamed for weeks as to what my Library Girl’s personality would be like, but the truth was far better than I could’ve created in my head. She was smart and sassy, but she was kind too. I was beginning to wonder if there was anything that wasn’t attractive about her, except maybe her taste in men. And that only served to remind me that she wasn’t mine, except in my head.

  With a deep sigh, I said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

  “Why don’t I take the floor? You can bring me stacks of folders, and I’ll sort them,” she suggested.

  “Then we’ll re-label the cabinets and put stuff back,” I finished, smiling when she nodded happily.

  She paused before taking a seat on the floor, a small, slow smile gracing her features.

  “What?” I asked nervously, rubbing the back of my neck.

  “You have…the prettiest smile, Evan,” she stated, and my eyebrows shot up.

  My heart sputtered in my chest, and there were shocks in my stomach, never mind the heat on my face, but I smiled again. “Um…th-thank you. So do you,” I said softly.

  She laughed. “Thanks, but you act like no one’s ever told you that.”

  Turning toward the first drawer, I reached in, pulled out a great number of folders, and stacked them in my left arm, only to do it again. When the stack was about as tall as the length of my torso, I turned to set them down in front of her, but she was still watching me with concentrated interest.

  “Seriously? No one’s told you? Like…ever?”

  I shook my head. Her open-mouthed stare made me self-conscious. I shifted nervously on my feet, waiting for her to say something else. She let her gaze drop to the stack, and I darted back to the filing cabinet.

  “So…” she said, looking up at me with a smile when I handed her more. “Where’re you from, Evan?”

  “A…um…a really small town in Montana. You?” I answered her, keeping my eyes on my work.

  “Right here. Glenhaven.” She smiled again, nodding as she pulled all her hair up into a long ponytail. She started stacks of different folders, creating a semicircle in front of her. “You mentioned a brother…Is that it?”

  “Oh, no,” I said with a shake of my head, setting another stack into her awaiting hands. “I have a baby sister too. Faith.”

  “Ah, the dreaded middle kid. Is it true what they say? That the middle child is the most trouble and the overlooked one?”

  An ugly, humorless snort rocketed out of me. “Uh, no. Hardly. What about you?” I changed the subject quickly. “Siblings? Parents?”

  I couldn’t believe, despite how nervous I was being in the same room as Dani, how easy it was to talk to her. She made me nervous, only because I didn’t want to say something stupid, but I wondered just for a moment if she didn’t know how to keep the conversation going.

  “Only child, but my parents are teachers. Professors at Edgewater.”

  My eyebrows shot up at that. “Really?”

  “You’ve already met my dad.” She laughed lightly. “Creative Writing.”

  “What? Your dad is Professor Bishop?” I gasped, smiling a little. He was my favorite instructor so far. He’d given me high marks on my first couple of papers. “And your mom?”

  “Mom is head of the art department. She doesn’t teach much anymore. She home-schooled me before I started here.”

  “Makes sense,” I said with a chuckle. “Your parents would’ve made better teachers than the public-school system.”

  “They thought so,” she agreed with a laugh.

  I continued to empty the cabinets until they were finished, turning back to Dani to see how the dividing was going. She pointed to the stacks, and I sat down across from her to help finish. Then we took each stack and put them in their correct order. The work was easy, though a bit tedious, and we stayed in a comfortable silence for a bit until I suddenly made a mental connection.

  I glanced over at her, and she looked up at me with raised eyebrows as she waited for me. “You…Um…Bishop Library. That’s…That’s you!”

  She grinned. “Well, not me, but my grandfather. My dad’s dad. He donated the library a long time ago, but…yeah. Dani Bishop.”

  I sorted a few folders—accounts receivable, accounts payable, vendors, employee files—only to feel her gaze on me again.

  “What about your parents?” she asked innocently.

  “It’s just my dad. He’s a doctor—chief of staff.”

  “Mom?”

  My brow furrowed, and I shook my head. “M-My mom died when I was twelve.”

  “Oh.” She shifted a little, placing her hand over mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “S’okay,” I whispered, shrugging a shoulder. “How could you know?”

  “I know. I just…” She set the stack of folders on the floor beside her and shifted to her knees in front of me. “I don’t like that I hurt your feelings.” Her clear blue eyes were sweet and sincere. “You must be close to your dad.”

  Smiling ruefully, I shook my head. “Dani, I moved three thousand miles away from home by choice.”

  “Oh, Christ, I just keep fucking up more…” She trailed off but put a hand on my shoulder. Her touch seemed to shoot everywhere on me, like a buzzing shock, and I swallowed thickly. “I’ll shut up now so you won’t hate me.”

  Grinning, I shook my head. “I don’t hate you.”

 
“You might if I keep saying stupid shit.” She laughed at herself, which made me laugh with her. “There, that’s better. Wow…Evan, that’s some powerful stuff, that smile of yours,” she said, shaking her head. “You never smile like that in the library.”

  I sighed, fighting another smile, but she caught my eye roll. My stacks were in order, so I stood to start labeling and putting the folders back in drawers. Starting toward the cabinets, I gasped a little when she grasped my wrist.

  “You have no idea, do you?” she whispered, standing in front of me. “All the girls, all the flirting aimed your way…You have no idea. You don’t see them…in class, in the library, borrowing your notes.”

  I huffed a nervous laugh, looking away from her. “Dani, I’m…I don’t know what you’re talking about. I…” Frowning down at the floor, I shook my head again. “I don’t see anything. In high school, I was a pariah. Here, I’m just…me. In the library, I only see…you.” It was honest, and I wished I could take that last part back, but her sweet smile told me she wasn’t offended.

  “Yeah?” she asked in a whisper.

  I nodded, shifting my gaze to the floor. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said through a giggle that made me start to smile. She grinned again. “Do me a favor, Evan…If you ever figure out the power you have, make sure you use it for good and not evil. Okay?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. She thought my smile was pretty? I opened my mouth, only to snap it back closed. “Umm…okay?”

  She playfully shoved me, and we got back to work, only this time it was filing stuff back, labeling the folders and the cabinets, and putting some sort of order to Wes’s desk.

  Wes poked his head in the door just as Dani was turning on his computer. Both of us looked up to laugh at his fear-filled face. “I haven’t received a stapler to the face yet…”

  “You still might,” Dani countered, not bothering to look away from the monitor in front of her, which made me grin.

  “So I guess you guys figured it out,” he finished, narrowing his eyes at his cousin but ignoring her jibe at him. Stepping fully into the room, he gazed around. “Wait, you’re done?”