Page 29 of The Lost Book of First Loves

“Oh, there you are. I wondered where you wandered off to. I should have known you would be here in your favorite nook.”

“Where else?” Ali smiled.

“Sorry about that. JoAnn just came back from Phoenix. She’s been there for months, visiting her daughter and grandchildren. Apparently, her Lucy has set up a whole tiny house for JoAnn in the backyard of her place and they had a marvelous visit. She expects to go back every year from now on to avoid the cold.”

Wyoming winters could be brutal. Ali couldn’t blame the woman for wanting to escape those rough months.

“I’m fine,” she assured her grandmother. “I’ve been enjoying my book. I’ve been seeing it all over social media and wanted to give it a try, anyway. I’ve only read a few pages but I’m hooked. I am going to have to buy it now.”

“Music to my bookseller ears,” Loretta said with a smile. “You know what I always say. A good first chapter is like a secret door that opens the way to a magical world.”

She loved that she and her grandmother shared this passion for reading. Without Loretta’s love of literature and the books she had constantly read to her son, Ali doubted her father would have become a reader himself and ultimately a writer of renown.

“What brings you this way?” Loretta asked, taking the armchair next to her with a happy sigh. “I didn’t know you were coming into town.”

Townwas only a few miles away from the ranch but sometimes felt like another world.

With slightly more than four thousand inhabitants, Bridger Peak wasn’t large but it had a grocery store, a few good restaurants, even a decent pizzeria.

Ali had lived here her entire life, had gone to school in town from kindergarten through high school and knew many of those four thousand residents, barring the newcomers who had moved in while she had been away at university.

“I’m supposed to be meeting Xander here in a few minutes. We’re heading next door to the café for lunch.”

Loretta’s eyes behind her glasses brightened. “Oh, that’s nice. I talked to Sylvia on the phone earlier. She said it’s been a total joy to have that boy home. Like he never even left.”

She had to smile when she pictured Xander’s great-aunt, who had raised him.

The two older women had become dear friends after Loretta moved to Bridger Peak, quilting together once a week, serving on a few town committees together and attending the same book club, one of several Loretta had started.

“How is she feeling after her hip surgery?”

“She says she’s fine but I am not sure she’s telling the whole truth. I dropped a couple of casseroles off the other day and Xander was so sweet to me. He sure grew up since he left town, hasn’t he? I believe he’s... What’s the word your generation uses? A thirst trap? A snack?”

Okay, no. She didn’t want to think about Xander as a thirst trapora snack. He was just...Xander.

“Something like that,” she mumbled.

“He used to be so quiet and shy, skinny as a rail with glasses and braces and that wild hair of his. He’s really changed.”

“Yes,” she agreed. Lucky for the women of the world, who apparently flocked to him wherever he traveled.

Before she could say more, the front door to the bookshop opened and the man in question walked through.

Immediately, her day felt lighter.

She hadn’t seen Xander in person since her father’s memorial service, she realized, as effervescent happiness bubbled through her.

More than happiness. She felt a rush of joy at knowing they would be hanging out for at least the next hour. For some silly reason, her throat closed up and she felt perilously close to tears.

He headed straight for them with the same bright, genuine smile that lit up his content.

“Two of my favorite people in the world, in one of my favorite places,” he said.

“Hey, you.” Ali beamed. If the bookstore was her happy place, Xander was her sanctuary.

When he opened his arms, she sank into them, her arms around his waist, all the angst and stress she had been carryingfor what felt like forever evaporating like those puddles on the road would as soon as the sun came out.

Here, with Xander, everything wasbetter.

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