Page 63 of Hooked
“Only saw him once.” She glanced at Emmie. “In passing.”
“His loss.”
“No loss. You can’t feel a loss if there was never a relationship to begin with.”
Emmie sighed. “Yeah. You can.”
They drove in silence back to the bookstore, and Tayla waited for Emmie to pull around to the east entrance. Ox usually parked his truck on the side of the building in a spot reserved for residents. Tayla parked her tiny Fiat next to it. Emmie jokingly called the two cars David and Goliath when they were both at home.
“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” She hopped out of the truck and immediately felt her eyes start to water.
Ah, Metlin.
“I texted you about the bike race downtown this morning, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry I wasn’t here to help out.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t even know about it until Friday when they started cordoning off Main. We got some good traffic, but nothing Ox and I couldn’t handle.”
“He helped out in the shop?”
Emmie chuckled. “Dude. He sells so many books. So many. Especially anything he suggests in romance.”
Tayla grabbed her bag so Emmie could open the door. “Do you ever feel like you’re taking advantage of your boyfriend’s many muscles and tattoos for purely monetary purposes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She turned to Tayla. “It’s forliteracy.”
“Keep telling yourself that, you pimp.”
“Hey, I didn’t know you’d be back today, so we kinda planned a morning hike for tomorrow with Cary and Jeremy. They want to scout out a new camping spot that has a rock nearby they’ve been wanting to climb. It’s not far, maybe five miles total. You want to come?”
Hmmm. Did she want to spend all morning staring at Jeremy’s ass as they hiked up a trail in the mountains? “How much up and down is there?”
“The trail? It’s fairly flat, but there’s some slope going up. Would be downhill on the way back.”
Tayla nodded. “I can do that. I might bring that new yoga mat and gear Outdoor Om sent last week. That’s right up their alley, and I’m sure there’ll be a good location at some point.”
“Oh! Great idea. I could pack a couple of those middle grade adventure books too. Do some pictures of great outdoor books in the great outdoors. Ox is readingHatchetwith the kids in book club next month.”
“Emmie, what have you done? That man is getting so wholesome he could be a dairy product.”
The first thingJeremy did when he hopped out of his truck Sunday morning was head straight to Tayla and pull her around the corner of the building to kiss her. He pressed her against the red brick, warm from the morning sun, tilted her chin up, and took her lips in a long, slow, lazy kiss.
Her heart was racing by the time he let her go. “Hi.”
He smiled. “Hey. Missed you. How was San Francisco?”
She almost saidwho? “Uh, it was fine. Great. The interview went really well.”
“How’s your family?”
“Ha. The same. How’s Pop?”
“Up at my parents’ place still. I think he and my dad have been hitting the spring fishing hard. They’ve both been muttering about bass for weeks now.”
“Your family cracks me up.”
“There’s nothing funny about bass fishing, Tayla.” He teased a piece of her hair that had fallen out of the messy bun she’d created that morning. “This is cute.”
