The statement startled him. “Yeah?”

“I mean, because the Larrabees are coming for their medal—that rare one you found.”

“That’s cool, Natalie.”

“Since you’re the one who found it, they’ll want to meet you.”

It was good to see her looking animated. It was good to see her, full stop. She’d cleared off the counter that was usually covered with incoming books and invoices. Apparently the family coming to claim the medal was into historical artifacts and genealogy, so this find was a big deal to them.

Although he didn’t say anything, Peach wondered if the value of the piece—upward of ten grand, according to that pretty-boy appraiser—accounted for their keen interest.

Mind your business, he cautioned himself. Usually he had no problem doing that with clients. He did his job, collected his fees, and moved on to the next. Every once in a while, a lady client would come on to him, but he knew better than to go down that path. Even with the ones who weren’t clients, come to think of it. He was so snakebit from the demise of his marriage that he tiptoed around relationships the way he would around a pit of vipers. It was remarkable to him that a love that had once been the center of his world had disappeared without a trace. The one good thing that had come of it was Dorothy, and she was worth all the drama and strife dished out by Regina and Regis.

Suzzy and Milt tried to tell him not to keep the door shut against other women, other loves. They pointed out that there could even be more kids one day, a whole new life. He didn’t need a new woman. Or another kid. Or a new life. The life he had was just fine. But since meeting Natalie, he’d been having thoughts.

He’d been writing, too. One day he’d observed Natalie and her grandfather sitting across the table from each other, the vintage typewriter between them, going over the family history her mother had been working on. At one point, Andrew had reached over to briefly cup her cheek. He’d called her Blythe, and she hadn’t corrected him. She’d smiled, and it was the saddest smile Peach had ever seen. And that became the basis for a song—a good one, according to Suzzy, who was always bluntly honest about such things.

That afternoon, the bell above the door rang, and Peach craned his neck over the bookcases.

He saw four people come in, and Natalie greeted them at the door. The Larrabees, he assumed. There was an old lady, a middleaged couple, and a guy in his twenties who homed in on Natalie, checking her out like a wolf that hadn’t eaten in weeks. Peach took an instant disliking to him.