What The Heart Learns Read online

  "What?" she asked, half-turning to find him towering over her, his head ducked a bit intimately, his hand holding out what appeared to be a packet of baby wipes.

  "The fuzz. It makes you itch if you're sensitive to it," he explained. "The wipes help," he added, pushing them closer to her. "Otherwise, you risk a rash that will drive you nuts for a day or two."

  "Wipes it is," she agreed, taking the package, using the cold wipes up and down her arms.

  "First time peach picking?"

  "Expert?" she shot back.

  "No, actually," he admitted, shrugging off her snark. "I usually avoid this. Give Maude a check. She was a bit more," he paused, searching for the right word, "insistent this year."

  "I guess they needed more hands. That's probably why she talked me into it too."

  "Yeah, that's probably it," he said, dryly. Too dryly. Like he knew better. Like Maude might have had ulterior motives of some sort. But what?

  "Still, it's nice that the town does this. Plus, all of this would probably go to waste otherwise," she mused, looking at the rows which still boasted a lot of fat, orange and reddish fruit. "This is a shame, though," she added, waving a not-itchy hand at the piles of half-rotted peaches on the ground.

  "It helps fertilize the ground for next year. In a way, it's a good thing. Plus it feeds all the wildlife. Nature has a way of taking care of everything."

  "Did you grow up on a farm?" she found herself wondering, needing to know.

  "Nah. Grew up above the garage."

  "Garage. Like... the mechanic shop that your brother runs?"

  "Yeah. It was our old man's place before he died. Eric took it over. That was where I grew up."

  It was hard for her to imagine that.

  People who were voracious readers often had a tendency to grow up in households where the parents were readers too, the kind of places that had a thousand books, but no TVs, where the parents scoffed at the school reading lists, knowing their kids would read three times that amount during the summer between grades alone.

  That was how her family had been.

  Her parents had enjoyed books, pushing the habit onto Riley and her sister. Though it stuck better with introverted Riley than her more extroverted sister.

  Then again, it was rather short-sighted of her to assume that just because his father ran a garage and gas station that he didn't enjoy reading.

  "That is hard to picture," she admitted. "Someone like you around all that manual labor."

  "It wasn't the life I wanted," he agreed, but his tone had gone a bit more guarded than usual. If that were possible. His father, it seemed, must have been a sore subject.

  "Your brother enjoys it, though, right?"

  "He's always liked getting messy," Liam agreed. "Figuring out how shit works. That was always something he liked. And when Pops died, he'd needed to provide for me. So he kept up the shop. The town needed it anyway. He fixes all the farm equipment too."

  "That's great. It's kind of neat how this place has its own economy. You don't rely on much from out of town, in a way. Was there always a bookstore, did you just take it over?"

  Why did she want to know?

  Why was she so curious about things that didn't matter - his life story, namely.

  "Eric saved up money for me over the years, scrimped to try to put together a college fund for me, figuring I wasn't meant to stay in Stars Landing like he was."

  "But you didn't want to go?" Riley guessed.

  "Didn't matter that I had good grades, I didn't have any grand plans for my life. I just wanted to have the free time to read. So I took the college savings, and bought the building for the store, and a measly round of stock just to be able to open up, make some more money to buy some more books."

  Given how well-stocked he kept his store presently, he'd done well enough over the years to turn Stars Books into what it was.

  Riley had been to a lot of indie bookstores in her time, most of which were clearly strapped for cash, things looking a bit rundown, paint chipping, floor or carpets in need of refinishing or replacing, caving shelves the books were sitting on, looking as though they were seconds away from toppling.

  You could always kind of tell when a place was just months away from closing its doors.

  Stars Books wasn't like that.

  The shelves were all solid wood, could withstand twice the weight they already held for decades to come. The paint was fresh, the floors flawless, the cafe clean and updated.

  There was real pride of ownership there, and proof of at least a small surplus of money to invest in upkeep.

  "It's rare to get to do what you love," she murmured, not wanting too much truth to slip into her words, too much feeling.

  "I don't exactly love selling books," he admitted, giving her a small self-deprecating smirk.

  "But you love being around them all day, having the freedom to read them when you want to. You're lucky."

  Something flashed across his light gray eyes, gone too quickly to get a chance to interpret it, before he shrugged. "What do you do?"

  "I get to... be around books all day too," she told him cryptically. "Thanks for the wipes," she added, wanting to change the subject. "I should get back to picking," she added a bit pointedly.

  "I'll leave them here. Use them if you need to," he told her, walking off.

  And, as absurd as it was, she felt a twinge of regret seeing him retreat.

  It was another ten or so minutes later that she had the brilliant idea to climb up one of the squat peach trees to try to get to this huge bunch of ripe - but not overripe - looking ones at the very top.

  As was often the case with her, the idea was not thought through fully, leaving her standing on a branch, shirt cradling a half a dozen perfect peaches, realizing too late that she only had one free arm to try to climb back down with.

  "Shit," she grumbled at herself, weighing her options. To attempt to gently toss the fruit, hoping it didn't get ruined. Or to risk a broken limb or two by trying to save the fruit by going down the daredevil way.

  "Didn't think that one, through, huh?" Liam's voice called from below, making her angle her head down to see him standing there looking up at her, eyes bright, lips twitching the barest bit. Like he was enjoying her predicament.

  And why shouldn't he be? There she was with her shirt hauled up to show off half of her stomach, her thighs starting to shake a bit, her hand raised above her to hold onto the tree limb right overhead, half her hair escaping the messy bun it had been contained in before her climb, the increasing heat making every inch of her feel sticky and uncomfortable.

  She must have been an amusing sight, as much as her pride didn't like the idea.

  "Not in the least," she admitted, figuring being grumpy about the situation certainly wouldn't help solve it. "Now I either need to attempt to channel my inner Tarzan, or risk the fruit."

  "Figure Tarzan is likely not your inner Disney spirit animal," Liam said with a smirk. "Maybe you should hand down the fruit to me. Then come back down like Belle off a library ladder."

  "That does seem like the most prudent plan," she allowed, pressing her side into the base of the tree to free her arm that wasn't holding up the front of her shirt, carefully tossing down each peach, watching as Liam gently put them in his basket. "Alright, that's all of them," she declared, watching as Liam bent to put the final one in the basket as she pushed off the base of the tree, immediately overestimating her sure-footedness, feeling her stomach plummet even as her heart flew up into her throat, feeling her body pitch and fall before she even had a chance to reach upward to grab the branch again.

  Her mind flashed with the possibility of another trip to an emergency room, another broken bone. She'd had half a dozen in her life - mostly due to clumsiness or absentmindedness.

  Determined not to have that happen again, as her body lurched and fell, she grabbed the limb she had been standing on a second before, grabbing it under the armpits, feeling the bark scrape at the sens
itive, exposed skin, making her let out a string of curses that people in this sleepy town had likely never heard before.

  "You're alright," Liam's calm voice called up to her as her legs swung a bit frantically, looking for solid ground or another limb to step on to ease the pressure on her arms. "I'm gonna pretend that was an accident," he added, sounding amused, when her foot collided with some part of him. "Here," he added, hands closing around her hips, fingertips sinking in, making her chest get tight with something that had nothing to do with panic moved its way through her system. "Let go," he demanded softly, confidently. "I've got you," he added, fingers squeezing as if you emphasize his words.

  Feeling a telltale tightening in her core, shocked enough by it, she flung her arms off the limb, feeling a second of a drop before his arms solidified, holding her aloft for a long second before slowly lowering her down onto her feet.

  "You can take a breath now," he reminded her.

  But she couldn't.

  His hands were still sunken into her hips right there on her bare skin, the contact sending off little electrical currents all over her body. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he had settled her down right in front of him, her backside brushing his hip, his breath on the side of her neck, making a shiver course through her even though it was about a thousand degrees out.

  And there was no way he didn't feel it - not with his hands still on her, with his body so close to her.

  She braced herself for some snide comment about the reaction to his nearness, but none came.

  "You good?" he asked instead.

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks," she added, taking a step forward, feeling his hands fall from her skin.

  "How are your arms?" he asked as she turned to face him, lifting her arms up to check under them. There were a few long, thin cuts that had a few beads of fresh blood, but weren't actively bleeding.

  "I'll survive," she concluded, shrugging it off as she put her hands down at her sides. "Your basket is full," she observed, wincing when she realized what that was. A dismissal.

  "Yeah. I earned my snack, I think," he agreed, moving the foot or so to the side, hauling up his basket, and moving away.

  "That's one surefire way not to get laid," Dane's voice called, making her turn to find him moving between the rows of trees.

  And if she wasn't completely mistaken, a woman in a sundress was shuffling down the row he had come from, moving away from him as fast as she could.

  "I know this is hard to grasp, but I'm not trying to get laid."

  "Not like that, you're not," he agreed. "Had his hands all up your shirt and everything. And you shut him down."

  "He was saving me from breaking a limb, "she corrected. "And - for about the fiftieth time - I'm not interested in Liam."

  "No?" he asked, ducking his head to the side, his ear nearly meeting his shoulder. "I was a good fifteen feet away, doll, and even I saw that shiver of yours. So, you want to try again?"

  "A physical response doesn't mean anything. Aside from that I haven't been around a man in a while. It takes more than that to be interested."

  "Not in my experience," he told her, smirking.

  "Yes, well your interest in a woman starts and ends with what she has between her thighs. Do I need to ask why Miss Sundress was hustling away while you walked over here?"

  "Who doesn't like a good fuck out in the fresh air now and again?"

  "There are children here," Riley insisted, but couldn't find the conviction to actually be outraged.

  "Got to love easy access," he told her with a satisfied gleam in his eye. "No scarring of children - or your revirginized ass - due to our nudity. Maybe if you and O'reilly took a page out of my and... ah..."

  "You don't even know her name," Riley tisked at him, shaking her head.

  "Ammaleigh or some shit like that. If you'd have taken a page out of our book, maybe you wouldn't be this sexually repressed ball of nerves right now. Just something to keep in mind."

  With that, he swaggered off. Likely to go find yet another skirt to chase.

  She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like for a man like him to be caught by the balls by some woman someday, how hard it would be for him to give up his old ways, see that there was more to life than casual sex. That sometimes sex with someone you genuinely cared about was actually better than dozens of random lays.

  Riley couldn't ever claim to be a casual sex person. She generally preferred to keep that between partners she liked spending time with outside of the bed as well.

  That being said, there was no denying her body was a mass of frazzled nerve endings, unfulfilled desire that was making her jumpy and grouchy as she carefully filled up the rest of her cart.

  It wasn't the dry spell that bothered her. She'd been through them before, had dealt with the mood swings associated with the need for physical human contact.

  It was the fact that the first person her body had responded to with little sparks in almost a year was the absolute last person she wanted to have that response to, a person she had sworn she hated, a person she was supposed to learn just a tad more about. But not intimately. Not knowing what his hand might have felt like if it slipped inward and down. Not wondering what his lips would have felt like on the side of her neck.

  Those things were never supposed to be a factor.

  Because he was supposed to be some grumpy old woman who was miserable and enjoyed making everyone else miserable too.

  But no.

  Of course not.

  She had to be a he.

  And not some grumpy old man either.

  A grumpy man of the right age with a face carved by gods who loved reading and made amazing coffee. And, for some reason, seemed to enjoy her presence, no matter how prickly she had been around him.

  "Girl, you need another glass," Maude declared as she moved her way around the snack tables set up from a bunch of the local farms boasting everything from cheese and crackers to desserts, making her have to remember that these were snacks and that she couldn't gorge herself on them.

  "No, really. I don't want to get dru..." she lost her sentence when another glass was pressed into her hands.

  "You just go ahead and enjoy yourself. You haven't left that inn in days. You're on vacation," she added, putting an odd emphasis on the word that Riley couldn't quite interpret. "Besides, the day is young."

  It was young, alright.

  But after she had one glass in her system, making everything floaty and happy, when Maude gave her a second, she didn't even try to protest, just drank it up as she drunkenly picked peaches all afternoon.

  "Whoops," she giggled to herself when stumbling forward almost into the tree after trying to reach over her head to snag a few good pieces of fruit.

  "You're so drunk," a voice declared, making her turn over her shoulder to find Liam standing there, hands in his front pockets, watching her with the smallest of smiles on his lips.

  "I always liked the term 'sloshed' better myself," she declared. "Though 'schnockered' has a nice ring to it too. Or we can be all British and say 'pissed'," she suggested, swaying a bit on her feet as Liam got closer, brows drawn together.

  "How much did you sneak?"

  "Sneak? Sneak! Nuh-uh. Miss Maudy Maude over there kept filling up my cup when I wasn't looking. I don't know for sure how much I've had, but it is safe to say I am about two-and-three-quarters sheets to the wind."

  "You don't say. Did you happen to notice that just about everyone has filed out of here?" he asked, getting closer still. And while she knew he wasn't supposed to get close because her lady bits went all haywire when he did, she couldn't seem to muster the strength to tell him to go away. In fact, she was a bit glad not to be so alone while she was swaying on her feet.

  "I'm still collecting peaches!" she objected, waving a hand over to her cart.

  "Looks like you missed the cart about ninety-percent of the time," he informed her, gently pushing one of the smushed peaches forward with the tip of hi
s shoe.

  "Carp," she grumbled.

  "Carp?" Liam repeated.

  "Why are you talking about fish?"

  "You said carp first."

  "I did not. I said crap."

  "You said carp."

  "You, sir, are a liar. A well-read and handsome liar."

  She was pretty sure there was some reason she wasn't supposed to call him handsome, but he was close and he was handsome, and she couldn't think of a good reason not to say so.

  "Oh yeah?" he asked, lips curving upward. "And what are you, Riley?"

  "I'm a liar too, but you're not supposed to know that," she told him with a firm nod, making him let out a small chuckle.

  "This would be the perfect time to get some information out of your stubborn ass, but I am going to try to be the good guy here."

  "I don't know what you're implying; I hold my liquor very well."

  "Considering this was Maude's punch we're talking about here, it is actually a bit of a miracle you are still standing on your own two feet and fully clothed."

  "Fully clothed," she mumbled. "Oh! Hey. Did you know Dane was having fully-clothed sex one row over while you saved me from the tree?"

  Liam's gaze flickered in that direction, his brow raising a bit. "I can't say I'm surprised."

  "He thinks we should do that too," she declared, watching as Liam emptied her cart.

  His body went stiff at that, his upper half turning to face her slowly.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Mmhmm."

  "And why's that?"

  "Because I'm tense and prickly, I think," she declared, brows drawing together as she tried to drag up the memory, failing spectacularly, succeeding only in remembering what had preceded that conversation - Liam's hands on her, his body behind her body, his breath on her neck.

  Her system - already heated from the alcohol - warmed even more, making her clothes feel scratchy and oppressive.

  "Nothing wrong with being tense and prickly," Liam told her, shrugging it off.

  "Besides, I just am tense and prickly. It has nothing to do with not getting laid."