Page 33 of Home Town

“And keep it quiet?” she asked.

He drew in a breath, knowing he was going to regret this. “Yes. And keep it quiet.”

For now…

Chapter Sixteen

“I promise you, it’s not up here.” Corey glared down at her from the top of the ladder he’d found stored in a downstairs closet in the library.

Giving up hope, Josie breathed in and let the breath out in a huff. “All right. Just get down from there before you fall and crack open your head. Again.”

The only thing worse than losing the compass, would be losing the compass and having to drive Corey to the hospital and then explain to his mother how and why he’d fallen off an eight-foot ladder in the archives room.

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t have been standing on a damn rolling desk chair,” he chastised, glaring back at her as he climbed down.

“It wasn’t a rolling chair.” She scowled.

“It had wheels,” he said, twisting to shoot her a glare when she wished he’d just concentrate on not slipping and falling the remaining four feet.

“Two. Two wheels. That’s like nothing,” she defended.

“Zero wheels is nothing. Two wheels are two and make it a rolling chair,” he spat as he reached the ground. “And we’ve looked for your compass, just like we agreed. So now we need to call?—”

“We didn’t look in all the filing cabinets yet,” she said, rushing to cut him off.

“Why would it be in a filing cabinet if it was on a shelf yesterday?” he asked.

“To protect it from the light. Or the air. I don’t know. I’m not an antiques expert. Just look.” She moved to the nearest cabinet and yanked the drawer open.

As Corey moved past her, he sent her a frown. “You might want to be a little more gentle about opening those drawers. If that old thing really is in there, you flinging it open like that isn’t going to do it any good.”

“It’s not an old thing. It’s the founder’s compass,” she grumbled mainly to herself.

“I still think someone took it to get it polished for the event or something and you’re panicking for nothing.”

She swiveled to frown at him. “You don’t polish an object that old. The patina adds to the value.”

His dark brows cocked up as he grumbled, “I thought you weren’t an antiques expert.”

“You don’t have to be an expert. Everybody knows that.”

“Everybody knows that,” he said in an unflattering imitation of her.

She slammed the drawer out of frustration. Part from not finding the compass but mostly from being forced to search for it with her nemesis.

Sharing a secret with him—as well as a space this small—was the last thing she could handle right now.

He shot her another glance laden with accusation and judgement at the sound of the metal cabinet banging.

“It’s not in there,” she said preemptively in her own defense.

“Could be in the one below that one,” he said, a cocky know-it-all lilt to his voice.

“I thought you said it’s not going to be in a cabinet anyway.”

“I still think that but you don’t apparently so…” He left the rest of the sentence unspoken but she knew what he wanted to say—stop banging the drawers closed like a spoiled child.

Ugh. Even when he didn’t say something annoying he still managed to annoy her.

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