itself to being a passionate loose cannon.”
Ronan’s own mother would beg to differ, no doubt. “How many siblings?”
“Four, but one is off on her own adventures now. She’s studying at Duke.” Audrey’s proud smile made Ronan like her even more. “The twins are seventeen and getting ready to start college applications. Deanna is fourteen. She started high school this year.”
“I bet they look up to you,” he said.
“They don’t have much choice,” she said with a rueful smile. “But I try to make sure they have everything they need. The wants are a little harder, but we make do. We’re a good family.”
We’re a good family.
Her words had a hint of defensiveness to them, like she’d been told otherwise at some point and felt the need to stand in front of her family name with sword and shield.
He wondered what happened to her parents—were they sick, dead? Or just deadbeats, like his own? For a moment, Ronan felt a kindred connection with Audrey. Although he’d never had the responsibility of looking after Keira, as Grandma Orna had been there since they were born. And she’d been an entire family wrapped up in one person.
“And that’s about as much talking about myself as I like to do, thank you very much,” Audrey said, cutting into the questions forming a tornado in his head.
Ronan held up his hands. “Got it. No more personal questions.”
They moved toward the back of the store, where yet more shelves sagged under the weight of a seemingly infinite number of pages and spines. He found the mystery section and scoured the Agatha Christie titles, looking for anything his grandmother might not own. She’d collected first editions of plenty of the later Christie novels from the sixties and seventies, but those from the thirties and forties were much harder to come by, often being snapped up by collectors and rare-book dealers to be sold for an exorbitant price.
“You’re a mystery reader?” Audrey asked, peering around his arm.
“My grandmother is. She’s got quite the collection, so I always keep a lookout for anything special when I find a new bookstore.”
“You’re looking for books for your grandmother’s collection?” Audrey shook her head. “Could you be any more of a cinnamon roll?”
“A what?” He blinked.
“It’s very sweet, that’s all.” She laughed.
“She was the one who taught me to read,” he said. Orna had done it in her typical fashion, thrusting a book upon him when he hadn’t been the least bit interested and forcing him to sit still until they’d made it all the way through.
Unlike a lot of grandmothers, she wasn’t warm and fuzzy. She didn’t fill her house with the scent of fresh-baked cookies, and she certainly didn’t let her grandkids get away with whatever they wanted. But she’d prepared Ronan for the world—she’d loved him in the way she knew how, with her tough attitude and concrete work ethic and her survival mentality. She was the reason he got into Harvard when most were turned away. She was the reason he wouldn’t stop until he’d achieved his lofty ambition for a tenured position at an Ivy League school and gotten his work into mainstream bookstores.
He owed her everything.
Just as Ronan was about to further question her on what exactly made him a “cinnamon roll,” there was a commotion at the front of the store.
And the sound of something distinctly animal.
He swung his head toward Audrey, who’d frozen beside him. “What the hell was that?”
Chapter Six
Llamas don’t bite, but they can spit up to fifteen feet.
“It’s the llama,” she whispered, her green eyes wide.
She said it with the same level of awestruck yet fear-filled reverence as if she’d announced that Satan himself had walked into the bookstore.
“A llama?” He raised a brow.
“The llama.” She sucked in a breath. “We only have one—our college baseball team’s mascot. She’s mean.”
“Aren’t llamas supposed to be all fuzzy and cute?”
Audrey made a scoffing noise. “No. You’re thinking about alpacas, which are sweet-natured little bundles of fleece and eyelashes. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. I love alpacas. But llamas… They’ll cut you.”
For some reason, he had this vision of a llama wielding a butcher’s knife, Psycho style. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”
He walked past the rows of books. There was a startled yelp from the front of the store and something that sounded like a stack of books being knocked over.
“Stay back, Lily!” Mr. Hart yelled.
Ronan glanced back over his shoulder at Audrey, who shrugged as if to say: it’s your funeral. He’d seen llamas