My Beautiful Neighbor (The Greene Family Book 1) by Piper Rayne (android based ebook reader txt) 📗

“I’m kidding,” I say.

The tension leaves her body, but damn, she’s strung so tight right now. When we reach a stoplight, I pick up my phone and text Jed that I won’t be at the meeting this afternoon, but I fail to mention the reason why.

Cade drives slowly down Main Street in Lake Starlight. I try to concentrate on the diner, the tattoo shop, the bakery. Anything but the way his long fingers flex on the steering wheel. The way he taps out a song with only four fingers on his muscular thighs that flex under his jeans. The fact that there’s a scent in his truck. It’s not a specific cologne or leftovers rotting in the back. It’s a fresh scent that I’m scared might be Cade’s signature smell. Scared because I like it a little too much and I hope it permeates my own clothes.

“So is this like recon work?” he asks, passing the restaurant he was going to take me to the other night. The maroon awnings with Terra and Mare in gold makes it look like a fancy restaurant. I wonder how different things would be between us right now had he not canceled.

“I just want to make sure I don’t venture into something that has stiff competition.”

“Makes sense.” He continues inching along the street. It must be driving the people behind us crazy. After Lake Starlight, he follows a sign to Greywall. “There are three towns pretty close together around here. So if whatever you want to do isn’t in one of those, maybe you’ve found your niche. I think it’s smart to do inventory of what’s around, but what do you want to do?”

Do I really want to sit in a car and have Cade try to figure me out? It sounds dangerous.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“What do you enjoy doing?” he asks.

I think back to my life in Connecticut. After college, I had a slew of jobs in offices that I loathed. I didn’t enjoy sitting at a desk for an entire day—or worse, being in meetings where I swear people droned on because they enjoyed hearing their own voices more than they had something useful to say. I can’t count how many times I sat in those meetings thinking this should have been an email.

“Okay, let’s start with the basics,” he says. “What do you do in your free time?”

“Um…”

“Any hobbies?”

I shake my head.

“All right, I guess I’ll make it even easier. If you have a night free, do you go out or stay in?”

“Stay in probably,” I say.

“Do you cook or get takeout?”

“Get takeout.”

“So you can’t cook?” Cade glances over.

“Kind of. Simple stuff, but I wouldn’t enjoy spending my entire night cooking and washing dishes.”

“So a cooking school is out of the question.” He smiles as if he’s saying, “See? I can fix your problems.”

I raise both eyebrows.

He grins. “Television show or movie?”

“Neither,” I say. “I’d read.”

“There you go. On the couch or in the bathtub?” he asks.

“How is that going to help you figure out what would make me happy?”

“It’s not. I was just hoping you said bathtub so I could get a visual.”

I playfully push his arm and he exaggerates the hit, going up against the glass of his window. I roll my eyes. “Nice.”

“Sounds like maybe books is a possibility. There’s one bookstore in Greywall. I’ll drive you by it. We can go in if you want.”

Books? I let that thought resonate for a moment. I do enjoy reading. Always have. And I did want to take English in college before I let myself be railroaded into getting a business degree. A bookstore might be nice. But so many people read off of e-readers nowadays. Would I stand a chance of being successful?

“There are libraries for books,” I say out loud when I didn’t mean to.

“True, but bookstores are popular even with libraries around. Have been for decades.”

He pulls into downtown Greywall and I immediately see where the town got its name. Whereas the mountains in Sunrise Bay are in the distance and at the far side of the water, here the town is set at the base of them and it serves to act as a giant gray wall rising up behind the town. It makes me feel little. I lean forward to look in wonder out of the windshield so I can see the top.

He parks along the curb just outside the bookstore, which just says “Books” on the window. Cade turns off the ignition and climbs out of his truck. I quickly follow him, and he’s a gentleman, opening the store door for me. Walking in, I’m very aware that he’s behind me and could be checking out my ass. A blush warms my cheeks as I politely say hello to the man behind the counter.

As I head down an aisle of shelves, Cade detours straight to the man and says, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

Cade leans on the counter as though they’re friends. “Has the whole e-book business hurt you?”

The man stands from his chair. If he has a chair, does that mean he’s not nearly as busy as he should be? “I sell a lot of travel books on the area. Lots of nonfiction. Greywall’s library isn’t great, so for our residents who don’t want to venture down to Anchorage, this store is a good one to come to. All in all, I would say no.”

“Great. Thanks.” Cade shakes the guy’s hand and joins me in the second aisle.

The guy wasn’t joking about nonfiction. His fiction shelves are sparse and his children’s section nonexistent. For a moment, the Shop Around the Corner from the movie You’ve Got Mail comes to mind. What a great way to fill your day. Story time and helping kids learn to love to read.

“You know, I think I met you about ten years ago,” Cade says from behind me.

I stop and circle around. “Excuse me?”

I haven’t forgotten the one other