Did she? Emma felt exhausted most of the time and was fairly sure her appearance reflected that.
“I love that tattoo.” A younger woman whose name tag read Lindsay pointed to the moon and heart on Emma’s forearm with the cursive “To the moon and back.”
Emma smiled. “Thanks. It helped me get through some tough times.”
“I have a tattoo,” the librarian said.
Emma gazed at the quiet woman, surprised. “Do you? What is it?”
To her delight, Candace pushed up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo on her upper arm of an open book with planets rising out of it.
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Emma exclaimed. “I love it.”
“Mel was quite astonished when I came home with it after I went on a girls’ trip with my sisters to Seattle. Now he likes it, though.”
Before Emma could respond, their host tapped a spoon against a glass to catch the group’s attention.
“Everyone, please take your seats. I know we love to chat but we’re going to be here all night if we don’t get started.”
Somehow, miraculously, there were enough seats for them all. When everyone seemed to settle, Barbara cleared her throat and spoke.
“It is my great honor to welcome our special guest, who is also our town’s newest resident. We’re so pleased to have the amazing Andrew Morgan with us. If you have not read his books, you are definitely missing out. They’re full of adventure, intrigue, great characters and fabulous writing. Andrew has kindly agreed to give us a short reading from his latest book that will be coming out next month and then he is happy to answer some questions. I thought we could maybe have a short Q and A for ten or fifteen minutes to ask him about his process.”
Andrew, Emma saw, didn’t look particularly happy to be the center of attention but he gave a polite smile. Emma glanced at her mom and saw Rosie offer a bright, encouragingsmile. As if some secret message passed between the two of them, the corner of Andrew’s mouth lifted and he straightened slightly as he moved to the front of the room.
As Emma listened to him introduce himself and his book, she was struck again by what a handsome man he was. He would be perfect for her mother.
If Rosie could maneuver behind the scenes to throw Emma and Bryce together by sending them both to the same remote beach, Emma should be able to do something similar for her mom and Andrew Morgan.
She listened with fascination to his reading, a continuation of his Starbound Chronicles. She couldn’t wait to read it and wondered if she could finagle an advanced reader’s copy out of him for the bookstore.
She had already ordered one hundred copies for the store and would love to persuade him to come and sign some of them for her.
Even better would be a book launch event where he would sign them for the public. She would have to work on that while she tried to come up with some creative way to push him together with her mother.
After he finished his reading, he answered a few questions about how he started writing and why he chose to write the kind of books he did. Barbara cut off questions after twenty minutes and everyone continued socializing.
Emma was glad she had made the effort to find a babysitter for Olive and carve time out of her schedule to come. Besides the chance to listen to a fascinating author she admired, she had been able to chat with several people she knew, and she had made a few new friends.
Through it all, she had been able to avoid Pam—until the end of the evening, anyway.
After three glasses of sparkling water, Emma found herself in need of a bathroom break. Barbara pointed her down a hallway and around a corner to a guest bathroom. As she headed that way, the door opened and someone came out.
Pam.
The two of them were alone in the hallway, and Emma had nowhere to go. She braced herself to be as polite as humanly possible.
Pam gave her a bright smile. “Emma, darling. I feel like you’ve been avoiding me all night. I’m sure I’m imagining things, but it felt like every time I tried to approach you, you moved to the other side of the room.”
Oh, she’d noticed that, had she? Apparently, Emma had not been as subtle as she had hoped.
“Is everything okay?” Pam pressed.
No. Everything was not okay.
“Sure,” she mumbled. She would have moved past the woman and locked the door of the bathroom, but Pam held out an arm.
“I get the impression you’re mad at me for something. What did I do? I would love to clear the air.”