Shattered (Anderson Special Ops #4) - Melody Anne Page 0,69
seeing him again. She hadn’t been brave enough to phone him, so she’d sent him a text. For the past eight days the two of them had messaged each other back and forth. It was scary how much easier it was to be honest with a person through a message, especially after a few glasses of wine.
She was the one to ask him out on a date this time, setting it for Saturday night, which just so happened to be his birthday. He didn’t know she knew it was. He hadn’t hesitated in accepting her offer. Amira hoped she wasn’t stepping on Smoke’s mother’s toes. She was still in Seattle.
Amira was meeting with Smoke in just a few hours, and though she’d had plenty of time to get him a gift already, she’d been struggling with what it should be. It was his thirty-seventh birthday and the man seemed to own it all. Plus, they weren’t a couple. Yes, they’d slept together, and yes, they’d been doing a dance for the past few months, but what did any of that mean?
She wandered the store as she looked down aisles, hoping something would inspire her. What was a good gift that says, yes, I know you, but I’m not expecting anything from you, unless you want something? Ugh. This really sucked.
She left the store and continued moving down the sidewalk. It was a nice day and she preferred an outdoor mall to an indoor one. She liked getting sunshine on her face as she moved from store to store. Of course, Seattle had months on end with no sunshine. It was a good thing Amira was only a fair-weather shopper.
When she moved a few more storefronts down, she spotted a bookstore, and her lips turned up in a smile. A book was a great present. It was small, easy to pack around in your purse, and you could make it incredibly personal or as casual as you wanted it to be. Beyond that, she could see if he was a reader. She wasn’t sure she could fall for a man who didn’t appreciate literature. She wasn’t a snob when it came to what a person read, just as long as they devoured words as eagerly as she did.
She laughed to herself as she moved into the store. That wasn’t entirely true. If the man wanted to read nothing more than comic books she might be a little judgy. To each their own, but she knew people who hadn’t opened the pages of a good book since they were in high school. That, in her opinion was absolutely tragic. She laughed again when she realized she hadn’t actually opened the pages of any books beyond cookbooks in over five years. She listened to audio books or studied on her Kindle. She’d have to rectify that because simply walking down the aisles of the bookstore made warmth flow through her. There truly was nothing quite like turning the pages of a beloved novel.
Moving aimlessly about the small bookstore, she found herself in the military section. Some of the books were old, some were new. She ran her fingers along the spines, a sigh escaping her. When she’d been in college she’d spent many hours looking through used-books bookstores, wondering who’d held the books before they’d been dropped off. Had it been a grandfather reading to his grandchild? Had it been a newlywed on her honeymoon? Had it been a soldier in his cot? After that point when she’d given up some of her books on those rare occasions she’d decided to downsize, she’d put a little note in them, telling what she’d been doing as she’d read that particular book. She hoped to one day find a used book that had the same thing in it.
Amira spent an hour looking for a book that would jump out at her. After about the twentieth book she’d picked up to read the back, she lifted one and felt a little tingle. Was this one it? She read the title: The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II. She smiled, loving the title. There was nothing better than a good hero book. She read the first paragraph on the back next. The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II — when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in