“Negative associations?”
“Yeah. They have all these positive associations with each other because they’re having fun, but if they do some stuff and don’t enjoy it, maybe it’ll help them start to be a little more objective about each other.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He leaned forward, putting his arms on the table just as she had. Those were some nice arms he had. Flutter, flutter, flutter. Damn it.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say you go to a movie and eat all your favorite candy. That will make you like the movie more because your brain links it to pleasure you get from the candy. But if you ate brussels sprouts, you’d enjoy the movie less. And if you ate brussels sprouts every time you saw a movie, eventually you’d be convinced that you don’t like movies. It’s a positive association versus a negative association. We need to create negative associations between my dad and your sister.”
“You sound like a psychologist. Is that your background?”
“Nope.” He smiled. “But I watched a TED Talk once, so now I’m an expert. ‘Train Your Brain in Three Easy Steps,’ or something like that. It makes sense, though, right?”
“Sort of. So you’re suggesting we try to stop them from having fun? How do we do that?”
Ryan tapped his fingers together, as if it helped him concentrate. “Does your sister golf? My dad is horrible to golf with. It’s the only thing that makes him lose his temper.”
“My sister loves to golf.”
“Hmm. It might be worth a shot, but they might have fun. I know”—he snapped his fingers—“maybe we could get them to go horseback riding. My dad hates horses. He got kicked once when he was little, and he’s just sure it’s going to happen again. He’d be miserable for sure. If we could arrange for the four of us to go together, you and I could help each other out in making sure they, you know, didn’t have fun.”
“You would make your dad go horseback riding knowing he won’t like it?”
Ryan nodded sadly. “Tough love time.”
Emily pondered this for a moment. She didn’t like the idea of manipulating her sister, but she also didn’t like the idea of Lilly falling deeper into a doomed relationship. She knew from firsthand experience how much that sucked. She had been in Lilly’s spot, falling for a guy who wanted to whisk her away from the only home she’d ever known. Promising her a life of fun and excitement, when the reality was anything but. She knew how it felt to be rejected by someone else’s family, and the pain of dealing with the consequences of Harlan’s disappointment.
“Create negative associations,” she said, almost to herself. “It sounds pretty far-fetched, but I guess it’s worth a try. Of course, the other option is for me to tell my dad the truth, and then he’ll get his police rifle and shoot Tag right in the groin. Problem solved.”
Ryan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Um, let’s leave that as plan B for now, shall we?”
Emily smiled. “I guess. If you say so.”
She was wearing a snug, faded gray T-shirt with a cartoonlike picture of a hammer about to strike a nail. Stretched right across her breasts were the words Nailed It! Quite frankly, Ryan didn’t think it was fair that faded jeans and an old T-shirt could be so sexy on a woman. It didn’t seem fair that her hair was every bit as shiny in the sunlight as he’d expected it to be, either. She had it pulled up in a ponytail that swung back and forth every time she moved. It was adorable, and the very fact that she seemed to be utterly unaware of her God-given adorableness made her twice as adorable. So how was he supposed to concentrate on the problem with his father and her sister when Emily was sitting there looking so . . . you know. Adorable? And the real kicker was, he couldn’t do anything about it. Emily Chambers was off-limits. She was obviously not a hit-and-run kind of woman, and since that was all he’d really have time for, it just wasn’t going to happen.
This made him irritable. It made him twitchy. It made him want to empty his pockets of any electronic devices and take a walk right into the cold water of Lake Huron. He’d just have to settle for a cold shower back in his hotel room.
“Well, hello, Peach.” Ryan heard a voice that sounded as if it came from deep within a rusty tin can—nasal and hollow, and not very pleasant. “I missed you at the lecture the other night. Remember? The one about the island’s bat population? Hmm?”
Ryan looked up at a rather severe-faced woman with straight gray hair that hung nearly to her waist. Her skin was red and splotchy with pores large enough to sink a golf ball into, and she wore a navy cardigan sweater even though it had to be eighty degrees outside. She squinted in the sunlight, giving her a very vicious expression, although Ryan suspected that was the expression she went around with most of the time anyway. He was so distracted by her appearance that it took him a second to register the fact that the woman had called Emily Peach.
Emily turned in her chair and offered up a tight smile. “Good morning, Mrs. VonMeisterburger. I’m sorry Chloe and I couldn’t make the meeting. We were still getting settled in at Gigi’s.”
“Well, be that as it may, white-nose syndrome is no laughing matter, and it’s up to each of us to do our part to reintroduce our nocturnal winged friends back to Wenniway. You know we need our bat population to take care of the flying insects. If your sister is serious about running for mayor, she needs to make sure this crisis is at the top of her political platform. We librarians are not a force to be ignored.”
Emily nodded somberly. “Yes, Mrs. VonMeisterburger, I’m sure of that. I’ll definitely pass your concerns on to Brooke.”
“If we wait too long, the mosquitoes will be so voracious they’ll drive away the tourists, and she’ll end up being mayor to a ghost town. You tell her I said so. And you tell her if she’s interested in my vote, she should come over to my house to see my bat cave.”
Ryan felt himself squinting just as squintily as Mrs. VonMeister-whatever.
“Your . . . your bat cave?” Emily responded.
“Yes, I’m quite proud of it. I put those visiting Boy Scouts to good use building bat houses, and now I’ve got dozens and dozens of them lining the walls of my tool shed.” She ran a hand down her long, witchy hair. “Bat houses, I mean. Not Boy Scouts. I don’t have any Boy Scouts in my shed.” She looked around, and Ryan couldn’t help but wonder if anyone might indeed be missing a Boy Scout. “I’ve applied for a grant to reimburse me for my efforts, of course, but since those Lansing bureaucrats in the Department of Fish and Wildlife can’t seem to get their guano together, I guess I’m on my own. But you’re not on your own right now, are you? Hmm?”