"I'd love kids," Lucy said wistfully. "Someday, of course," she added quickly, with a shy glance at Eren that hastily dropped away. "When the time is right."
Even though he was right there on the stepstool and could hardly consider it eavesdropping when they both knew he was in the room, Eren decided this was his cue to come down. He cleared his throat and stepped down with a dusty box in each arm. "Are these the right ones?"
It was hard to concentrate on Jess's answer, because his bear was too excited about the baby question.
She would be a good mother for cubs,his bear enthused. Look how much she likes that one! She would be wonderful with cubs of our own.
It was strange, but in a good way, to have his bear coming forward and talking to him again. For a while he had almost felt as if he'd completely lost touch with it. For a while he hadwantedto lose touch with it.
But now, in Lucy's presence, he could relax. He had almost forgotten what that felt like.
Lucy picked out a big stack of books. Then she looked abruptly dismayed. Eren could guess what the problem was—again.
"I'll buy them for her," he told Jess.
"You can't just go around buying me things," Lucy said unhappily. She put the books back. "I'm sorry, Jess. I'll come back and get some of these later."
Jess took it in stride. "You don't have to buy anything. We're also a lending library. If you just want to write the names of the books in the ledger there, you can have ten out at a time."
"That's all? I don't need a library card or anything?"
Jess smiled. "I know almost everyone in town, or they know me, or they're related to people who know me. It's no big deal." She pointed to the last column on the page. "If this is your first time checking out books from me, put your address there. Or," she added swiftly, seeing the look on Lucy's face, "the address where you're staying."
Lucy looked up at Eren, who leaned over her and wroteThe Nilssons, 17 Beach Roadon the address line.
After dutifully writing down her titles, Lucy tripped out into the sunshine with a towering stack of dusty books in her arms.
"Want me to carry those for you?" Eren asked.
She offloaded some of the heavier ones, but kept most of them. "I just want to find a sunny place to start reading these."
Eren grinned at her contagious delight, and he tried not to dwell too much on the thought that bubbled up in him, filling him with a joy to match hers: If she had checked out all those books, she couldn't be planning on leaving too soon.
Cubs?his bear thought hopefully.
Eren wished it was that simple. But maybe someday, if she stuck around, it could be.
LUCY
Almost against her will,Lucy found herself settling into life in the Nilsson house and in the town. She didn't want to get too attached to it, didn't want to trust it too much when she might have to run again—but, whether she understood it or not, Eren was right. She did feel safe here.
Sharing a house with Eren, it turned out, was endless sweet torment. She kept coming around corners or out of her bedroom door, only to run into Eren walking around shirtless, a towel slung over his shoulder and a full golden thatch of absolutely lickable chest hair on display. Or he was coming in from working on the boat or hammering shingles on the roof of the family house, wearing a sleeveless sweat-drenched T-shirt that clung to his chest and abdomen, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
She would have thought he was doing it on purpose just to drive her into a frenzy of lust, until she couldn't contain herself and threw herself on his amazing chest muscles—except Erenwasn't like that. She had already known him long enough to realize that. He didn't have a sneaky, manipulative bone in his extremely sexy body.
And he usually reacted to those chance encounters not with coy looks, but instead with a bashful grin and a quick duck of his head that was a thousand percent sexier than any amount of come-hither could possibly have been.
Lucy tried her best to be a good houseguest. She threw herself willingly into learning how to do the chores so that she could help as much as possible. She finally admitted to Inga (after three failed attempts to cook an egg) that she had grown up rich and had little experience with everyday things, which was why she was so miserable at it.
"You've really never cooked anything at all?" Inga asked, scraping out the skillet into the trash with her usual good humor.
"No, there was always someone to do it for me. I've microwaved things?" she offered. It occurred to her as she said it that she hadn't noticed a microwave in the Nilsson house. If they had one, it was used so rarely that it was tucked away somewhere.
"It's okay, nobody is born knowing how to cook," Inga said with a friendly laugh. "We all learned when we were young because we were raised by a single dad who was out on the boat a lot. But there's no reason why you would know. Here, I'll watch and let you know when it's ready to turn. Eggs cook much faster than you think they're going to."
Lucy hovered with a spatula. She was surprised by how easy it turned out to be when Inga pointed out how to tell when it was cooking too fast and when the white was just the right consistency to flip it over.
"You're right, that is fast!" she said. "I always thought cooking took a long time."