Carolyn G. Hart Read Online Free

chair. She wished she’d never come to the store today. On Sundays after early church, she usually jogged or swam. Now, she fervently regretted that she hadn’t kept to her regular schedule. Normally, she loved Sundays, especially now that it was October and the island once again belonged to its own. She smiled at her calm assumption of belonging after three months in permanent residence. (Since it had taken Max three months to find her, he couldn’t be too distraught at her leaving New York.) But she almost qualified as an old islander. As a girl, especially when her mother was so sick, she’d visited Uncle Ambrose every summer. That was when he’d introduced her to the delights of mysteries. Everything ultimately comes right in a mystery, and that made those uncertain teenage years easier for Annie. So she had a former summer visitor’s approval for summer people, and now she had an islander’s appreciation for their spending clout. But now that it was October, the summer people were gone. Their generous spending would be missed. Their penchant for dripping mustard from hot dogs or Coke from leaky cups would not. She had a sign at the front of the store, of course, that said No Food, No Drinks, Except for Coffee in the Rear. It was fascinating that people who seemed to be shopping for books were apparently selective in their reading skills. Her part-time helper, Ingrid Jones, never minded scolding, “No food, please, no food,” but Annie found it difficult. After all, these were
customers
. And money was so tight.
    She twisted in the chair. Time was running out. TheRegulars would arrive on schedule at 7:30 P.M . unless she canceled.
    Damn Elliot.
    She was so proud of the Regulars. They had been her invention, too, although under Uncle Ambrose the store had long been the community center for area mystery writers. At first, Annie was astounded at their number, but Emma Clyde, doyenne of the mystery world, had explained.
    “This is the only mystery bookstore this side of Atlanta, Annie. Of course we all come here.”
    Annie had looked at her in bemusement. “How can one little island have all these writers?”
    “This isn’t just any island, my dear.”
    Emma’s point was well made. Broward’s Rock wasn’t just another low-slung swamp off the South Carolina coast. It was rapidly gaining in fame on Hilton Head and Kiawah Island.
    As Emma said, most writers valued exclusivity almost as much as fame—but not quite. Annie’s uncle had been quick to see the possibilities, and his beloved Death On Demand became
the
place for writers to meet, drink choice coffee, tout their latest novels, gossip, argue, and talk shop.
    Uncle Ambrose. She was so very glad she’d come for her regular summer visit this year, since it was to be their last. When he was gone, and her visit drawn out because of the funeral and the need to settle his business affairs, every passing day had made New York seem farther away and less of a home. She had thought about her apartment, a one-room closet, actually, and her valiant but unrewarded efforts as an actress (seventeen tryouts without one callback). Then she had thought about Max and the future. The decision to stay on Broward’s Rock was astonishingly easy to make, and she threw herself headlong into renovating her favorite bookstore in all the world. That was three months ago.
    Until now, she hadn’t regretted it once. That wasn’t to say that some moonlit nights didn’t cause a twinge when she thought of Max, but she was nobody’s fool, and she especially wasn’t going to be Max Darling’s fool.
    Max Darling.
    She’d accused him once of making up the name. He’danswered rather stiffly that the Darlings were a long-established family with illustrious antecedents, that it was his mother’s maiden name, and that he used it in preference to his father’s because he got damn tired of people either resenting him or fawning when they recognized his father’s surname as that of one of