Page 36 of Last Call For Love

“I’m sorry about my sister,” I said, leaning against the archway leading into the open kitchen and living room. “She can be a lot.”

“I like her.” Sierra smiled, a touch of longing tinging her words. “I never had many friends who were just… my friends, because they wanted to be.”

“What do you mean?” I chuckled.

“Where I grew up, people either wanted something from you or wanted to be you. Keely seems like she just wants to share love. That’s… new for me.”

“I guess she’s not so bad,” I agreed. “She thinks you’re best friends now.”

“Good,” Sierra said softly as she snuggled into the blanket. “Maybe coming back here wasn’t so bad after all.”

Chapter Fourteen

Sierra

Dust speckled the autumn sunrays beaming through the front windows that faced the bustling street. I slowly stepped down off the step ladder I’d found in a back storage room and moved it to the next row of shelves, a feather duster in my hand.

I’d started tending Pete’s bookstore roughly a week ago and this was my third day working open to close. The other employee filled the other three days at the shop but hadn’t bothered to ever clean the place, it seemed. The dust in some spots was a knuckle-thick, and I’d been sucking in dust and paper particles for the better part of my shifts as I made quick work of tidying up the place.

This was no Barnes & Noble, that was for sure.

Books older than my parents sat in dusty corners, mostly old western novels and non-fiction. A wide, solid wood counter housed an old cash register and pamphlets about the market schedule and events in town. Next door was a bakery, andoccasionally passersby would stop in with their coffee and baked goods to look around, but that was it.

I mostly spent hours alone, scanning through the books and cleaning until my wrists ached and my back throbbed from carrying that stupid ladder around.

No, I shouldn’t be climbing ladders while pregnant, but what else was I supposed to do? Let it stay dusty and grimy?

Just as I started to climb the ladder again for the millionth time but stopped as the little bell above the entrance to the shop chimed and Pete stepped inside, a to-go bag clenched in his hand.

“Get off that damn ladder, Sierra,” he growled, stalking forward.

I rolled my eyes and hopped down, crossing my arms over my chest. “Well, the shelves aren’t going to dust themselves!”

“I didn’t put you here to climb the walls all day while pregnant,” he said with a grunt as he set the food on the counter.

“You’re paying me to work. That’s what I’m doing.”

It had been a week of this. Pete bossing me around and me fighting him at every turn. Maybe it was my hormones flaring, or maybe it was the obvious sexual tension building between us, but we couldn’t even look at each other without making some sarcastic remark.

It was fun if I were being completely honest. I couldn’t let him think that, though. Especially when he was avoiding me like the plague unless he was telling me to stop doing something he deemed dangerous or taxing for a pregnant woman.

Not that anyone could tell. I was barely seven weeks pregnant—barely.

“Here, I brought you some food—”

I blanched and turned away from him, shaking my head. “Not today.”

“You gotta eat something,” he argued, pressing his palms against the counter as I wanted around it and pulled out the tablet I used to check people out. The antique cash register was just for show, I guessed. I put a twenty-dollar bill in there recently and still couldn’t figure out how to get it out.

“I know, but I can’t.”

“But you can scale the walls—”

“I wasn’t scaling the walls, Pete.”

He waved a hand in dismissal and gave me a side-eyed look before examining the work I’d done today. “It does look good in here.”

“I reorganized everything. The most popular books are there, by the window. The weird stuff all the cowboys like is closer to the counter so I can ogle at their asses when they walk by.”

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