Ainsley shifted uncomfortably. “You know Mr. Grant has depression; he’s been out of work a long time. It’s not her fault. And a purple coat in her size with a fox on it—her favorite animal—just fell into my cart while I was at Walmart. Can I help that, Starla? Huh? Can I?”
Starla just laughed quietly, shaking her head again. “You’re the next Hattie, you know.” At the mention of the town’s unofficial mayor, Ainsley cackled.
“I don’t have the clout to be the next Hattie.”
“Why do you think it’s a her?” Sawyer’s deep voice startled Ainsley. Then again, her cousin was kind of that way: he was too used to being alone.
“Why do I think who’s a her? Hattie?”
“No, your book fairy. How did you gender her?”
Starla shrugged one shoulder. “It’s mostly romance. Hardly any thrillers in the mix. Sometimes we get some women’s fiction, I guess I just assumed . . .”
He nodded sagely. “I see. So you made broad assumptions based on stereotypes.”
She steepled her fingers, leaning forward. “Who do you think the book fairy is?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” He set down his stack of books. “And neither should you.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Starla hissed, pulling the stack toward her indignantly. “Not knowing?”
Sawyer crossed his arms. “Nope. I like a good mystery. Knowing the end isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” That statement made Ainsley’s heart hurt more than a little. Sawyer’s life wasn’t turning out quite the way he’d planned it lately, and she felt terrible for him. Her mom and Aunt Rhea were always saying how he was doing fine considering, but she knew from their whispered kitchen conversations that stopped abruptly when she entered the room that they were worried about him.
Starla rolled her eyes. “Of course you do. You practically live to defy convention. You are a mystery.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He grinned, reclaiming his stack. “See you next Thursday.”
“With shorter hair, hopefully,” Starla said, nudging her tortoiseshell glasses back up her nose with a smile.
His gaze lingered on Starla as he backed toward the door, and Ainsley raised an eyebrow at him. Did her cousin have a crush on the hot librarian? If so, she felt honor bound to disapprove . . . as long as Starla was married to Charlie, anyway. As if he read it in her glare, Sawyer broke his stare and turned for the door, then blasted out without looking back.
“Kyle signed up to build on Saturday,” Starla said, and it took Ainsley a moment to register the change in conversation.
“Kyle who?” she asked, picking up the stack of response cards to sort them.
“What do you mean, Kyle who? Kyle Durand.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ainsley laughed. Starla looked at her over her glasses. “He did?”
Starla nodded. “Right here.” She handed her the sign-up sheet that had been passed around at the town meeting. He’d signed up all right, but she couldn’t imagine that he’d meant to. She knew Kyle. Kyle and his pretty hands did not do tools unless they were scalpels and stethoscopes. This did not make sense. Surely he had meant to sign up for the Turkey Trot; she often saw him out running. It was an honest error.
“I’ll call him,” Ainsley said, holding out her hand for the paper. “It must be a mistake.”
Her friend smiled as she handed it over, then went back to looking through the other sign-ups.
“What?”
“Someone said he was joking with you outside the school the other week.”
Ainsley’s shields went up. “I was doing my job. Cooper had been . . . struggling to obey the recess rules.” She wasn’t going to out the kid; she knew how rumors could get out of hand in a small town. She’d had personal experience with that, and it hurt worse than a rusty nail through the shoe at the Habitat construction site and the tetanus shot that followed it. She knew that one from experience, too. “I had to talk to Kyle.”
“You don’t have Claire’s number? Or Philip’s?”
“Of course I do. They came to Back to School night.”
“Your phone’s broken, then? That’s a bummer.”
Ainsley lifted an eyebrow at her friend. “No, my phone’s fine, what are you—oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
She waved away her friend’s teasing like she was a seagull after her peanut butter sandwich. “He was right there. It was convenient. Also, it was actually him who’d inadvertently contributed to the misbehavior, so . . .” Ainsley trailed off when she saw that Starla wasn’t convinced in the slightest. “Whatever. Think whatever you want. I’m going to go call him now. As part of my organizational responsibilities.”
“Good,” Starla purred. “Then he’ll have your number in case he has construction questions on a Friday night and you have to go with him to a movie that might help clarify the responsibilities. And eat ice cream afterward. And go back to his place.”
She leaned forward. “Look, every other unmarried woman in this town may be clamoring for Kyle Durand’s attention, but I’m not. He’d never be interested in me. And he’s already got my number, so joke’s on you.” Ainsley blew her bangs off her forehead as she left the room and ducked outside into the crisp fall evening.
She was still annoyed with Starla when Kyle answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi. So we got back all the sign-up sheets from the town meeting, and you’d indicated that you were interested in building with us this weekend, so naturally that didn’t seem right, so I thought I’d just call and see which sheet you actually meant to sign up for and then I can direct you to the correct person for information. I’m guessing that it’s the Turkey Trot, but I didn’t want to assume, even though someone said you’d kindly signed up to help us with the first aid booth.” She took a breath. “Oh, and this is Ainsley, by the way.”
“Which Ainsley?” he asked, deadpan.
Why was he always giving her such a hard time, for heaven’s sake?
“There’s only one Ainsley,” she huffed, blowing at her bangs again.
“That’s the truth,” he mumbled, and she noted the rueful timbre of his voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I didn’t sign up on the wrong sheet. I’d like to help build. When’s the training?”
It took Ainsley a full five seconds to process this information, and Kyle grunted. “Ainsley? You there?”
“Yes,” she croaked, then forcefully cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m here. Just show up at the build on Saturday, and we’ll give you your orientation.”
“Do I need a . . . hammer or something?”
Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. “No, we’ll provide the tools.”
The relief in his voice was obvious. “Good.”
“You have the address?”
He muttered something she couldn’t hear, then spoke up. “Can I get it again?”
“Sure,” she said. “548 Parrot Lane, Stayton.”
“Got it.”