The Deputy's Perfect Match

Charlie held his breath, hoping she’d open up. Just a little. A little was all he’d need to get this investigation underway.

Her cherry-red Mini Cooper already sported Virginia plates. No help there. But he memorized the license number in the parking lot in case he ever needed it.

She took a breath and exhaled. “My parents are tenured English professors at Stanford.”

“Hence, I’m guessing, your early and lifelong love affair with books.”

She twisted the paper napkin in her lap. “That must seem lame to someone like you.”

He bristled. “What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

She motioned toward the badge pinned to his uniform. “You are a self-admitted nonreader, Deputy Pruitt. I’m guessing, a man of action.”

“My name is Charlie.”

“Why join the book club, Charlie? Pride and Prejudice isn’t exactly on most guys’ top-ten lists.” She arched her eyebrow. “If they even like to read. Which you made clear from the get-go that you did not.”

The diminutive librarian possessed a bit of steel. Good to know.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m trying to keep a promise.”

She looked at him over the rim of her glasses.

“To expand my horizons. Jane Austen doesn’t have to be only chick lit, you know. There’s a lot in there for guys, too.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Like what?” A literary gauntlet.

“Like...like...” He racked his brain for what he’d digested from his middle-of-the-night, off-duty incursions into Austenland.

She drummed her fingers on the table.

“Like a strong man doesn’t have to be afraid of a strong woman like Elizabeth Bennet.” Challenge accepted. “And it’s funny, too.”

She scowled. “In what way?”

“Her dad cracks jokes all the time.” Charlie rested his elbows on the table. “Any dude surrounded by all those women would have to see the hilarious side of life or go insane.”

“Oh, really?”

“You got any brothers and sisters?”

The librarian hesitated. “It’s just me and my parents.”

“So your dad was outnumbered, too. Is he funny?”

“My father and mother keep their heads in the clouds most of the time. Only thing I ever heard them declare amusing was a play on words in Middle English from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.”

Chaucer? Was Evangeline Shaw for real?

She pressed her glasses higher on her nose. “Once, my mother giggled over a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry.”

“The Bayeux what?”

She fluttered her hand. “Never mind.”

He stared at her.

She fidgeted. “Stop looking at me like I’m from outer space. Theirs is an acquired humor. You had to be there.”

“There where?”

She sighed. “Most of their sabbaticals are spent in the French countryside. That’s where they are now.”

With parents like that, no wonder Evangeline Shaw loved books so much.

If anything, what he’d learned raised more questions in his mind. Like, what was someone like her—who spent vacations in France and probably spoke fluent French—doing in a tiny town in coastal Virginia? He vowed not to underestimate Miss Shaw again.

She cleared her throat. “We still haven’t talked about the book yet.”

“We’ve talked about several books.”

The librarian blinked. “We did?”

“Sure, we did. The Canterbury Tales, Pride and Prejudice and that Bayeux thingy.”

The librarian pushed at her glasses. “It’s a tapestry, not a book.”

Charlie pursed his lips. “I’ll look that up when I get off duty and remedy my sadly neglected education.”

Her eyes, like liquid sky, flashed. “Are you mocking me, Deputy Pruitt?”

Charlie hadn’t meant to rile her. “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t do that, I promise.” His heart hammered.

Then, understanding dawned on her face. “This foray of yours into literature is about a woman, isn’t it?” She fingered the frame of her glasses. “It has to be about a woman.”

He frowned. “Why do you assume it has to be about a woman? Are you mocking me now?”

“Is it or is it not about a woman?”

He fiddled with a duck sauce packet. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“She’s the one who’s the classical reader?”

This one he could answer without any check to his conscience. “She is.” He opened his palms. “Out of my league entirely, but hope springs eternal.”

“And this is where I and the Kiptohanock library come in?”

He gave her the tried and true, ever-reliable Charlie Pruitt grin. “Yes, ma’am.”