Page 6 of Midnight Surrounds Us

An online shop might be the way to go. Maybe it could be popular on social media if I could figure out how to bully a blogger or two to share the store and hype it up. We could get eyes on Your Local Bookie outside of Wisper. But then I’d have to master social media and learn how to make a website. Who has time for that crap? And there was no way I could afford to hire someone.

It all came down to taxes. I hadn’t paid mine in two years. It was only a matter of time until the IRS came knocking on my door. I had four weeks to come up with nearly ten-thousand dollars, and if I didn’t, well then, I’d be screwed, and not in the good way. The five grand I’d miraculously managed to stash away in a savings account would only pay it down by half.

After giving up trying to untangle my frizzy mop of hair in the mirror, I plucked the midnight-black whisker using the tweezers I’d never again leave home without and heard voices outside my shop.

When I peeked around the corner and looked out the front window, past the display of mystery classics that hadn’t sold for shit, I saw Devo Mescal, my friend Abey’s fiancée, and Rye Graves walking past the store on Main Street.

Sneaking closer, I was hoping for a better look at Rye in his jeans, just as long as no onenoticedme looking. Especially not Rye. I was still blushing from the time he asked me out, eight months ago!

But good God that ass.

I tried to duck and hide behind a shelving unit stacked full of cookbooks, but when he halted on the sidewalk out front, I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the store and stood up straight, completely conspicuous and frozen like Frosty.

Rye looked in at me.

I looked out at him.

My heart rate doubled, my palms began to sweat, and when he tipped his tan cowboy hat at me and flashed me a stupidly sexy grin, a hot flash hotter than the infernos of Hell took over my entire body.

They kept walking, and I was left hyperventilating.

Jesus. That man.

But compared to me, Rye was just a boy. Tommy’s best friend’s little brother. He may’ve been in his mid-thirties, but I was… twenty-nine. If anyone asked, that was my answer. My auntie always said to “leave them guessin’.” And no way would I admit to anyone I had reached well into my forties.

Aw damn. Who was I kidding? Three years away from fifty was a far cry from twenty-nine.

Somebody should probably come and put me out to pasture, which was exactly what would happen if Ryder Graves got his way.

All his nods and tips of his hat couldn’t make me forget about my chin hairs, the ever-expanding menopausal spare tire beginning to encircle my midsection, or the fact that my neck was getting shorter and my jowls longer by the hour. I kept getting a pain in my big toe and was convinced I’d inherited arthritis from my dad and it had set in, and soon the whole house of cards would collapse around me. I wouldn’t be able to walk anymore and my boys would have to put me in an old folks home I couldn’t afford.

And those tight jeans Rye wore—Every. Goddamn. Day? Yeah, they couldn’t make me orgasm any more than I could do it myself. I hadn’t had one in,oh, let me think…five years. Give or take five. Okay, so that was a bit of an exaggeration. I’d had what one would technically call an “orgasm,” when I spent the hour it took for me to work myself up to it, but I wouldn’t call them *orgasms.* Not the mind-bending, “exploding all oversome guy’s cock” kind of orgasm. The kind of orgasm that made a woman scream and mewl and beg.

Who didn’t want one of those? Or ten.

After their father died overseas and I’d been left alone to raise two thirteen-year-old boys, it felt weird having “sexy me time” with them in the house, so it wasn’t like toys had been an option. Those sneaky little shits went through everything. Nothing was sacred to them, certainly not dildos, and then when Benji and Micah moved out, I’d gotten out of the habit.

Oh sure, there’d been a few men since then, but one of them was ten years older than me and couldn’t get it up, which caused all kinds of self-doubt. It lingered still so that every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw was an unattractive oaf with a graying frizz ball on the top of her head. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. I did have good hair, even with the grays peeking through. It was one thing peri- and now full-on-menopause hadn’t stolen from me. Yet.

The second guy was younger than me, and he came so fast, he probably could’ve medaled in the Olympics, which made me think he hadn’t really wanted to have sex with me. He’d probably been thinking of some young woman he’d met at a concert festival, but I was there and would do for five minutes. And the last guy had just gotten divorced when we went out, and he cried through the entire sexual debacle.

So, yeah, you might say I’d gotten over the whole thing. And it was fine. I was fine on my own. Sexless. Husbandless. And about to be businessless and possibly homeless.

At least I had my books. And when the IRS came to take my store and my house away, I could use them to build my funeral pyre.

Ugh, Aubrey. Get out of your head!

Fine.Grabbing my cell from the checkout counter behind me, I tapped on the screen till I saw my best friend’s face, then clicked Call.

“Aubs? Everything okay?” my soul sister, Roxanne, asked. Thank God she’d taken the open deputy job with our local sheriff’s department because, since she’d shown up in town eight months ago, it felt like we’d never been apart. Our standing Thursday lunch dates and the romance book club we’d both joined were the only things getting me through some weeks. “I thought you were meetin’ me at the library?”

“You’re not on duty today, right?”

“No, I’m off. Dan and Frank have the station covered.”

“Good. Screw book club. Come pick my ass up. Let’s go eat fries and get sauced at Manny’s Bar.”

“What about the store? You don’t usually close for lunch this early.”

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