“Come with me,” I told him, turning to walk up the aisle.
He followed behind me silently, but I felt his eyes burning into my back, the question looming in the air, as we neared the circulation desk. I veered around the counter and pulled my purse from the bottom cabinet. I took out my wallet, searching through it until I found my library card.
I scanned it, then picked up the book Cowboy had left on the counter and did the same with it. Only then did I shove the book into his hand. “There. I’ve checked the book out for you. It’s due back in two weeks. There’s a drive-up book return drop outside under the portico.”
He glanced to the book, then back to me. “What’s the catch?”
I sighed heavily, letting out the irritated breath I had been holding in my lungs. “In return, I ask that you don’t come back into the library again.”
Chapter Six
Cowboy had probably expected me to turn him down, not banish him from the library altogether. But the day before, I’d done just that. Lucky for him, today was Sunday, which meant the library was closed. Unlucky for me, I forgot to also ban him from my home.
It was almost dark outside when he pulled up, and I was stretching a garden hose across my front lawn. Fresh from the shower, I’d put on a white terrycloth robe and left my wet red hair hanging loosely around my shoulders. Both were decisions I immediately regretted, but I didn’t detour from my mission.
By the time he joined me on the side of my little white cottage, I was doing something he undoubtedly found rather strange: watering my house. He stepped up beside me and glanced at the wet rooftop and dripping eaves. “Think it’ll be ready to harvest by the end of the season?”
“What are you doing here?” I frowned, my face already heated and my body vibrating with anger. “I thought I told you I wasn’t interested.”
Cowboy held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa. No need to get pissy. I just came by to talk.”
“We did enough talking yesterday. Good-bye.”
But he ignored me. “Where are your glasses?”
“Huh? Oh.” I reached up to my face, realizing I didn’t have them on. “They’re reading glasses. I don’t wear them all the time, just at work and…” I shook my head, feeling even more frazzled than I’d been before he’d shown up. “Never mind. I don’t know why I’m explaining anything to you. You’re leaving.”
His brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. It’s my problem, and I’m handling—”
Loud, thumping music sounded from up the road. Within seconds, a dark blue Bronco appeared and pulled into the driveway next to mine. I put one hand on my hip and watched the Barlow brothers climb out, hooting and hollering, and carrying a brand new eighteen-pack of beer.
Sloppy. Rowdy. And drunk, as usual.
Joe Barlow wore his cap backward. Stray tufts of his dark hair poked out between his eyes, his sideburns, and the back of his neck. His dirty white tank top left his tattooed arms exposed, though I couldn’t make out the red ink blob on his left bicep. As he rounded the hood of the Bronco, he guzzled the last of the beer in his hand, then crushed the empty can on his chest. His brother chortled at the sight.
Clay was shorter than Joe, heavily overweight, and laughed like a snickering hyena. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and the too-tight jeans he had squeezed himself into only emphasized his large pot belly and tanned ass crack. A toothpick dangled from his yellowed teeth as he turned, set down the case of beer, and did something with his hands I couldn’t quite make out.