“Wait,” he said. “You don’t have to—”
But it was too late. He heard a door being opened somewhere above his head, and turned to see Molly on the second-floor balcony, wearing only an overlarge Denver Broncos T-shirt and what appeared to be men’s boxer briefs. Even more startlingly, she had on a large pair of glasses in tortoiseshell frames.
It had never occurred to him before that Molly wore glasses, but evidently, she did. Possibly she wore contacts during the day. This would at least partly account for why her eyes always seemed so large and dark.
“What is it, Mrs. Filmore?” she called down to the women in a slightly irritated voice, then noticed John.
“Oh,” she said, in an entirely different tone. “It’s you.”
Their gazes met, and it was as if the rest of the world melted away. The only thing that existed was her, and the smell of the night-blooming jasmine.
At least until the woman in the hot tub behind him shouted, “He brought you pie!”
John wished the earth would open and swallow him whole.
He heard Molly laugh in confusion. “What?”
He raised the insulated bag. “Key lime pie,” he said. “By way of apology. Can I—may I—come up?”
It was a bold move, asking to be let into her room, especially with that bubbling vat of tourists behind him, remarking on every little thing he did. Regardless of her answer, there were going to be comments, possibly even catcalls.
“Sure,” Molly said. “Come on up.”
The ladies in the hot tub were quick with their “Ooooohs” and “Yeah, babys,” but John did his best to ignore them, mounting the stairs two at a time and feeling glad that the darkness would—hopefully—hide the burning he felt in his cheeks.
When he reached Molly, he saw that she was grinning.
“Sorry about the Greek chorus down there,” she whispered, gesturing toward the hot tub below. “They’ve been in there since happy hour. I switched them over to plain tonic water a while ago for their own good, but I don’t think they’ve noticed—or that they care.”
John nodded. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone look as beautiful in glasses as Molly did. Behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyes seemed larger and darker than ever.
“I’m sorry about earlier.” He thrust the pie at her. “I acted like an idiot.”
Molly looked down at the object in her hands. It was difficult for him to read her exact expression because with her head lowered, her dark hair cast her face in shadow, and the only light source on the porch was coming from the open doorway behind her, the one leading into her room.
“A pie?” she asked, in what sounded to him like a skeptical tone.
“A pie.” He had known this was going to be hard, but he hadn’t thought it would be this hard. “Key lime, from the Mermaid Café. Freshly made this morning by Ed. If you haven’t tried one yet, you really should, they’re delicious. I just saw it and thought of you because . . . well, I thought you might like it, and also because . . . well, you were right.”
Her head popped up at that. He wasn’t certain because her face was still slightly shadowed in darkness, but he thought he saw her eyebrows raise. “I was what?”
“You were right. About the photos. I talked to Katie about them, and then I took them over to Meschelle at the Gazette. She’s going to make sure that they run one on the front page tomorrow morning—”
Molly took a step backward, and at first he thought it was because she was going to ask him to leave.
But the movement brought her face into the light, and he could see that she was smiling.
“Why don’t you come in,” she said, gesturing toward the open door to her room, “and have a piece of this pie with me?”
John glanced at the warm, inviting glow coming from inside the room, and swallowed. He could hear Pete’s voice in his head, urging him to accept her invitation.
But a stronger voice was telling him that if he did, he wouldn’t come out until morning. There were things he wanted to do with Molly Montgomery that would take all night, maybe days, and he had responsibilities, to his daughter, to his community. He couldn’t throw all of those away just because he wanted to—
“Okay,” John said, and, smiling, stepped through Molly’s door. “Thanks.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Molly
Molly couldn’t believe it when she opened her door and saw the sheriff standing down there in the courtyard holding what appeared to be an insulated bag of fried chicken.
Then she’d been even more disbelieving when she learned it was not fried chicken but pie—key lime pie, her favorite.
But the absolute kicker was when he’d climbed the stairs to her room and stood in front of her and said the three words she most loved hearing in all the world—the three words she was pretty certain every librarian, or at least lover of knowledge, adored more than any other in the human language:
You were right.
They were words she’d never, ever heard her ex utter. Even on trivia nights when Eric had given an answer that was incorrect, he would argue that he was not wrong, that instead there’d been some flaw in the way the question was worded.
This should have been her first sign that the two of them were not suited for each other, because a reasonable person should always be willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake.
But she’d been blinded by Eric’s good looks and—she might as well admit it—wealth. He’d not only had a truly incredible two-bedroom loft in LoDo, but a ski condo in Breckenridge, and time shares in both Tulum and Kauai.
It was a mistake she’d sworn she’d never make again.
So when the sheriff admitted he was wrong and she was right, what could Molly do but invite him inside?
“So I know it’s not much,” Molly said, rushing in ahead of him to switch off the TV so that he wouldn’t see what she’d been watching—a marathon of Forensic Files. “But it suits me perfectly fine for now.”
John took two steps inside, said, “Oh, I’m sure it’s—” then froze, looking around the hotel room with the same horrified expression Molly imagined he might have worn while viewing a particularly gruesome crime scene for the first time.
Confused, Molly swept her gaze over the room, trying to see what was so upsetting him. True, the room was small. But it was a hotel room! It wasn’t supposed to be huge.
And true, she had been forced to cram over thirty years’ worth of possessions and belongings into the tiny space, excluding the things she’d left at home with her mother and in storage until she could find a more permanent living situation, like all her furniture and most of her cooking utensils and of course all of her winter clothes.
In fact, the only things she’d brought with her to Little Bridge, besides her summer clothes, were—
“Books,” John said in a slightly stunned tone, looking around the tiny space in wonder. “You have so many . . . books.”
“Oh.” Molly followed his gaze and realized that if she looked at it from his point of view, the number of books she’d brought with her from Colorado might seem excessive. Because hotel rooms came with few bookshelves, her books were piled up all along the walls until they reached almost to the ceiling, stacked in every imaginable nook and cranny, including around the bed and—though John didn’t know this yet—in the bathroom.
Was this particularly odd, though? Molly didn’t think so.
“I know it might seem like a lot,” she said, taking the pie to the kitchenette—where she’d stacked her cookbooks and of course cooking-related mystery novels, though she’d left some room for food preparation. “But I couldn’t leave my books in storage until I found an apartment. What if I thought of something I’d read and needed to reread it?”
Behind her, John was wandering around, looking at the titles of all the books. “You have something against e-books?”
“Oh, no, they’re fine. Lots of people like them, I know. But I love the smell of real books, you know? And the feel of paper, turning the pages over in my hands. Drink?”
He looked up from her piles of science fiction, startled. “Excuse me?”
“I was wondering if you wanted something to drink with the pie. I’ve got everything here.” She opened her mini fridge to show him. “Beer, wine, soda, hard stuff—or I can make coffee, tea—”
“Oh, no, thanks.” He seemed fixated on the books. “Don’t you work in a library? Couldn’t you check out whatever you wanted whenever you needed to—for free?”
“Of course. But these are my books. I’ve had some of them since I was kid. They’re like friends, you know? I’ve never gone anywhere without them. Oh, watch the Miss Marples!”
He looked down just as his foot was about to hit a pile of books that seemed to be supporting another pile of books under one end of the coffee table. “The what?”
“Miss Marple.” Now that Molly had cut two large slices of key lime pie, she hurried over to give him one. “You must know Miss Marple. She’s one of Agatha Christie’s most famous amateur sleuths.”