Everybody Knows (Sunnyside #1)

by Jacie Floyd

  “Don’t tempt me.” She rested her head on the back of the chair.

  “Disenchanted already? Tell me everything.” Harper could just picture him in his cubicle-sized efficiency apartment, shucking his sharkskin jacket, rolling up the sleeves of his lime green shirt, loosening a coordinating tie, and kicking back with an interesting drink he’d concocted from his beloved copy of the Bartender’s Guide to A Thousand and One Cocktails. He’d been working his way through the chapters for the last couple of years. “Your texts have been cryptic and infrequent.”

  Thinking of Zach and his long hard day of life-altering or lifesaving tasks, she felt like the worst kind of witch for complaining. “It’s not so bad, really. I was just trying to decide what to have for dinner and wishing I could stop by your desk and entice you to walk down to Aladdin’s where we could share some wine, baba ghanoush, and office gossip.”

  “Aching for the familiar on a day that’s been completely alien.” Empathy was his strong suit. He’d single-handedly held her together when she’d broken up with or been dumped by her fiancé—depending on whose version was to be believed. But Nathan always took her side no matter what. “I know what that’s like.”

  “I guess, but this is the path I chose, so I won’t whine.”

  “Whine all you want. Tell Uncle Nathan all about your new home, town, and library. And I’ll tell you the most delicious gossip about our tight-assed library administrator being discovered with his pants down at the regional conference with someone other than Mrs. Tight-Ass.”

  “No! Who was he with?”

  “You know the new saucy red-haired wench in Technical Services? She apparently has an extensive collection of colorful garter belts and bustiers.”

  “I wondered what was up with her,” Harper admitted. “She wasn’t the least bit friendly with the staff and didn’t seem to work all that hard, but she got the best schedule and her own office.”

  “The story gets better,” Nathan promised. “They were apparently going at it on the floor of their suite at the Hyatt when the president of the Midwest Regional Librarian Association walked in on them. One of those embarrassingly ‘double-booked’ rooms and key card mishaps you hear about but don’t really believe ever happen.”

  She cringed at the thought. “I’ll never be completely comfortable in a hotel room again.”

  “Just be sure to attach the security chain before you do anything that might get posted to YouTube.”

  “It’s on YouTube? Really?”

  “How’s this for a visual? Old Tight-Ass on the floor with his pants down around his cowboy boots, and his wrists tied to a table leg with his very own Brooks’ Brothers tie. She was wearing a red cowgirl hat and riding him like a rodeo queen. A lemon-yellow lace thong, a bustier with pointy breast cones, and a stunning little flogger completed her ensemble. The prez had his wife, his fourteen-year-old son, and a couple of staff members with him. They all started screaming at the same time!”

  “Well, I’m frankly shocked.” Harper held onto her laughter as she feigned outrage. “He discontinued providing plastic forks and knives in the break room, but the budget allows for him to stay in a suite when he travels? No wonder he cracked down on our expenditures. He was making use of library funds in purely inappropriate ways.”

  “True, but the president might end up thanking old Tight-Ass. According to one of the staff members, his wife looked on with interest and was slightly flushed with...curiosity.”

  “Whoa, baby, hold on there. That’s more information than I ever wanted planted in my brain about any of their sex lives, but really, lemon yellow, huh? I’m just wondering how good that looked on her. Yellow usually makes redheads look sallow.”

  “Only you would think of that, Harper,” Nathan accused. “All the rest of us are too absorbed by the sordidness, and of course, concerned about the fallout. The administrator has already handed in his resignation. You know what that means?”

  “Open management position! Who will replace him?” She leaned back and propped her feet on the desk, happy to relax and joke with her friend before spilling news about her own life and how the move wasn’t going as smoothly as she’d hoped.

  He commiserated as expected. “And what’s the man situation there? Any homegrown hotties, sultry farm hands, smoldering mechanics, or repressed bankers looking for love in all the wrong places?”

  He made her laugh, as he always did. “None that I’ve seen yet.” She suppressed the images of the handsome doctor and the burnt-out stockbroker.

  “Hah. I can read you like a book. There is someone who’s got your attention. Who is it?”

  “Out of the thirty people I’ve met—twenty or more of them being men—only two seem worth a second glance. One is a washed-up stockbroker who now manages the local strip joint. So while he has that brooding bad-boy thing going on, that’s a little icky. And peeking below the surface, he has too many demons.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Well, the local doctor might have potential.”

  “Is he hot?”

  “Yes, very hot. Kind of Daniel Craig, but not in that sleek and polished James Bond persona. Real and complicated, not a pretty boy, but...intense.”

  “Intense is good.” Nathan laid on the heavy breathing. “Why can’t I meet a guy like that?”

  “Talk about looking in all the wrong places, sweetie.”

  “I know, I know. So gay bars and the Internet are not the best places for meeting the guy of my dreams. But they do offer the opportunity for impersonal sex with just the right amount of kink, which is kind of my specialty.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she objected. “I respect your personal boundaries—not that you have any—so please respect mine.”

  “All right, we’ll discuss my sexual issues another time. Is the Hot Doc available? Interested in you? Hetero, I take it?”

  “Hmmm, good questions, I’m not sure about the first two, but definitely hetero. For reasons I don’t understand, the town thinks he’s partnered with this lesbian he’s known forever. And he only makes a token effort at changing their opinion. And sometimes he seems attracted to me, but he fights that inclination too. Since I didn’t move here specifically to improve my love life, I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. If sparks fly, great. If they don’t, that’s fine, too.”

  “How’s the town? Is it as great as you hoped? Quaint, charming, and cute from the pictures you posted, but is it friendly, warm, and welcoming, too?”

  “The jury’s still out on friendly, warm and welcoming. I know you won’t believe it, but it doesn’t seem like the people here like me all that much.”

  “They don’t like you?” He gasped his surprise. “Little Mary Sunshine? Impossible!”

  “They don’t embrace vegetarianism, that’s for sure.” Or vegetarians, apparently.

  She remembered the looks on everyone’s faces when she’d thanked them for the lovely lunch, then explained she couldn’t eat any of it. Anyone looking on would’ve thought she’d confessed to being a serial killer.

  “But maybe I’m misreading their natural reticence. There’s a Fourth of July celebration on Wednesday. I’ll meet them en masse and use my natural charm to win them over then.”

  “They’ll end up loving you, I know it.” Ice tinkled in a glass on his end. “Chicago’s loss is their gain.”

  “You’re prejudiced in my favor.”

  “Damn right. Maybe I’ll wander my way downstate and set those hayseeds straight.”

  “I’d love for you to visit!” she exclaimed. “I move into my place tomorrow, and it is truly fabulous. Way better than anything I could afford Chicago. And you know that because you’ll be moving into the place I could afford in Chicago. Try to remember that the oven switch is only on/off. It doesn’t really do temperature control.”

  “The hot/cold faucets in the bathtub are reversed. And I shouldn’t forget to duck if I get up on the left side of the bed because the ceiling is lower on that side.
I remember. And it’s still better than the place I’m in now.”

  “Yes, but when you compare that apartment with my new house, you’ll think I’m rich. It has a fireplace and stained-glass windows and hardwood floors! And a garage.”

  “All that sounds great, but you could have had all that here. Because, honestly, you are rich.”

  “No, I’m not.” They’d had this discussion before. “Fiona is, sure, but that’s her money. And her father is rich, but he’s not responsible for me.”

  “Despite the fact that he raised you and is the closest thing you have to a father figure,” Nathan muttered. “I’d let that gorgeous piece of manhood pay for anything of mine he wanted.”

  “Keep your sex-deprived fantasies about my stepfather to yourself, please.”

  Plenty of people, men and women, had been obsessed with Wexley Wilde’s pouty lips and sinuous moves for more than a couple of decades.

  But to Harper, Wex was the person who had taught her to swim, took her skiing over Thanksgiving breaks from school, and sang beautiful, incredible lullabies to her at bedtime. Many of the songs were Grammy-winning gold records he’d written and sang in a universally recognized voice, sure. But the fact of him being there for her was more important than the low-pitched growl that translated into pure sex for the millions of anonymous listeners that loved him. As a six-year-old, she hadn’t known about the millions of fans. She’d just known he had a gentle touch and a soft heart and hadn’t blinked an eye when his beautiful baby daughter came into his life accompanied with a scrawny big sister.

  “He’d contribute financially if I needed or wanted him to, but I’m a grown-ass adult with my own career, you may have noticed,” Harper insisted. “He’s already given me way too much over the years.”

  “Forget about him, then, but your mother is rich.”

  “She’s not! People think she is because she hangs out with wealthy people and got a huge settlement when she and Mega Rock Star mistakenly divorced, but it takes everything she makes to support her lifestyle.”

  “She and Wexley got back together years ago.”

  “Yeah, but she keeps her finances separate from his in case things between them go south again.”

  “Admit it, your biological father is rich, too.”

  She sighed. “True, but as you know, I’m an embarrassment to him, and he doesn’t like to be reminded of my existence. Every once in a while his Anglo-Saxon conservative guilt forces him to buy me an extravagant gift or send some money my way or attend some major life event. But in the end, he’ll leave his piles of money to his legitimate, permanently repressed offspring by his snooty socially acceptable wife.”

  Nathan coughed and cleared his throat. “Despite the trust fund he set up for you that came into your control when you turned twenty-five.”

  She winced. He had her there. “I don’t know why I ever told you about that.”

  “It was a weak moment,” he reminded her. “You were drunk and despondent. A terrible combination.”

  “But I also told you I don’t touch that money.”

  “Yes,” he said, sighing, “but I don’t know why. You could touch it, and it would make life so much easier for you. And your friends.”

  She didn’t really know why either. It would probably take years of therapy to figure out, or it was glaringly obvious and she didn’t want to acknowledge the truth. “I don’t need his money. I don’t need him.”

  “Bingo.”

  “I know.” She blew out a breath of exasperation. “I made my peace with our non-relationship a long time ago. I manage on my own quite well.” She purposely stated the claim out loud every so often so she didn’t forget it. “But my financial status isn’t the issue at this moment. My furniture’s supposed to arrive in the morning. Everything went well with the movers yesterday, right?”

  “Right,” Nathan agreed. “I supervised the whole operation and made sure they loaded every single box, book, and shoe. All the things you treasure.”

  “You only did that so my stuff would be out of your way and you’d have a clean slate when you move in.”

  “Well, we always agreed your place was better than mine, and it’s more convenient to the library. It made sense for me to take over your lease. Why let a stranger have that location when I need it so badly?”

  “No reason at all. When will you be moving in?”

  “This weekend, which means I need to work on more packing tonight. My life is so glam.”

  “The envy of us all,” she agreed. “Thanks for calling. I feel much more like myself again.”

  “Good, then you need to check our word game. I used all my letters and made ‘quiz’ on a triple word score for oodles of points. Take that, girlfriend.”

  “I bow to your greater skills, but I’ll look at the game tonight and take my best shot at beating the pants off you... Not ‘beating the pants off you’ in the same context as the Tight-Ass library administrator, but beating you nevertheless. Eww, I may never be able to use that phrase again without conjuring up disturbing mental images.”

  Zach’s dad and brother hadn’t returned from the farm yet. The place echoed with emptiness when he entered the back door of the house the three of them shared. Dad had even taken Molly, their ancient collie, with him for the weekend. Nothing but silence greeted him.

  Sometimes, he preferred being alone, since it so seldom happened.

  But not tonight.

  Not content with his own company, he showered, changed clothes, and went back out. He intended to go for a walk, with no particular destination in mind. Instead, he found himself trudging toward the library, pondering his bitch of a day.

  They all were lately, but today was worse than most. He’d made at least three trips out to the hospital, spent several hours in surgery, conducted an hour-long phone consultation, as well as seeing patients in his office. Exhaustion urged him to go home and sleep for about twelve hours straight, but he was still too keyed up.

  Typical for the life of a small-town doctor.

  He was on call every day, everywhere, all the time, anytime he was awake. And even when he wasn’t. For the most part, it was rewarding. He loved the medical part. He even loved his patients. But it was wearing to have everyone constantly look at him with big imploring, worshipful eyes as their potential savior.

  And that wasn’t just his ego talking.

  He knew the town looked at him that way. Maybe that was the case with all small-town doctors, everywhere in the country, but it was especially true here in Sunnyside.

  They knew him too well and expected too much.

  Everyone in Sunnyside loved him. He knew they did. But they never saw him as himself. To them, he’d always be who they wanted him to be. Although he was that person in many ways, he wasn’t perfect, and he was weary of faking it.

  They forgot that when he was a child, he was light-hearted and carefree, just like every other kid in town. He played pranks and got into mischief and screwed up just like everyone else.

  As an adult, all he wanted was to practice medicine to the best of his abilities someplace where no one had any other expectations of him, where people didn’t look to him to save everyone’s life no matter how dire their medical condition, to solve everyone’s problems, or to be perfect all the damn time.

  He wanted to tell them “no” sometimes. To make decisions without being paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake. To kick back and watch all nine innings of a ball game and drink more than two beers without worrying he’d be called to the hospital. To kiss a pretty girl with mischievous eyes and plump sexy lips without having to look over his shoulder to see who was watching. And most of all, he wanted to have head-banging unforgettable sex without having to leave town to do it.

  Was that too much to ask?

  Apparently.

  Because if he looked at any Sunnyside woman for more than a minute, the church ladies would have him in a tux with the wedding, reception, and honeymoon planned before he could ask th
e woman out on a date.

  Of course, that would have to be after he explained to everyone how he and Kate hadn’t really been dating for the last of couple of years. How it was all just a ruse they’d maintained to keep every blasted matchmaker in town from trying to fix him up with any woman with a pulse between the ages of twenty and forty, no matter how unsuitable.

  Lately, he’d been attempting to downplay the notion of him and Kate being a couple without spelling out the whole truth for them, but nobody seemed to buy his denials. Even though his old friend was happy to keep up the subterfuge, he didn’t want to leave her in an even more awkward position than she was already in.

  For just as many years as Zach had been the most eligible bachelor in town, the busybodies had been trying to fix Kate up with someone, too. Not with the concerted effort they made for Zach, but with just as much success—which was exactly none.

  Poor Kate. In just another few months he could escape, but he doubted she ever would. And she had even fewer opportunities to have a real relationship in Sunnyside than he did. A lot of people here were just as open-minded as they were anywhere else and wouldn’t care that she was a lesbian, but some would care. Big time.

  People like the high-school principal. And the school board.

  Some of her students. And the parents of those students.

  He didn’t know what Kate would do after he left, but she’d always known that was his plan. She would be better off moving away, too, but she had her own reasons for wanting to stay. Just as he had his reasons for wanting to go.

  Which was why he had an absolute rule of being polite to everyone and flirting with no one. And never, ever, under any circumstances, asking out any Sunnyside female.

  He’d never escape if he married, or even dated, someone who lived in town, although who that someone would be he couldn’t imagine. He intentionally blocked the knockout image of Harper in her workout clothes that threatened to surface.

  Half of the single women here were like sisters to him. The other half he’d seen naked in a professional capacity. Which sort of took the romance out of it.