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probably scared to death of setting me off on another rant. And who could blame him?
    “Oh, sorry.” I hadn’t even given him a chance to lookat the books, so I handed him
Pilgrim’s Progress
. I set down my champagne glass and looked at the other book more closely. Its cover was tan speckled calfskin and the title and author’s name were gilded onto the black morocco spine.
Gulliver’s Travels
. I opened it up and found the date on the title page was 1726.
    Holy Mother.
    I closed the book quickly. My head was in danger of exploding and I didn’t want to damage the precious vellum.
    “This dent in the front cover is unacceptable,” Nathan said, scowling as he handed
Pilgrim’s Progress
back to me. “But it’s a stunning book. Do you want me to take it to the library with me?”
    “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. But you ain’t seen nothing yet,” I muttered, opening
Gulliver’s
to show him the print date.
    “Whoa. Are you kidding?” he said, then quickly lowered his voice as he took the book and examined it. “What was it doing behind the couch?”
    “That was my question.”
    “Wait,” he said, squinting at the book’s spine. “This says it’s volume two.”
    “Let me see.” I took it back and stared at the spine. It wasn’t gilded so I’d missed it the first time. But now I saw the faint indentation in the pale leather. VOL. II .
    “So there’s at least one more volume around here somewhere.” I clenched my teeth together to keep from squealing again. “This one book has got to be worth thousands, so if there are two volumes, they belong in a museum.”
    “Yeah, I get that.”
    My exhaustion was growing, not only from the adrenaline rush of annoyance at finding the books, but also from my numerous attempts to keep from reacting to that silly phone call. My stomach hurt, too. “I’m hungry.”
    Nathan laughed. “Now, there’s a non sequitur.”
    I shot him a quick look. “Did I say that out loud?”
    “Yeah, but don’t worry. Grace likes to eat early, so dinner should be announced any minute now.”
    “Good. I skipped lunch.” And that was a sentence I’d rarely uttered in my whole life. How had that happened? I never missed meals. But now I remembered I’d been running around the house, packing and getting ready to leave for a week. I must have forgotten to eat.
    “I could sneak you into the kitchen,” he said with a grin. “I’ve gotten to know the chef pretty well.”
    I glanced around the room and saw Grace going from group to group, pointing toward the door. I hoped that meant she was giving directions to the dining room. “I guess I can wait a few minutes longer.”
    But after dinner, I was going to go straight to bed. I didn’t want to inflict my bad mood on any other unsuspecting innocents tonight. I was too tired to tamp down my irritation at finding a rare book being used to hold up a table. Fine, I was willing to accept that in a house with twelve gazillion books, a few would get lost here and there. But stuck under a table? That was a new low.
    I silently vowed to spend part of tomorrow morning searching the house for missing books, particularly that first volume of
Gulliver’s Travels
. I figured I could go through a few rooms every day this week, hunting down wayward books. That would keep me occupied when I wasn’t working in the library with Nathan. More than anything else, I wanted to keep busy this week. I didn’t want to think about Derek with that…person. I would work hard and stay active, and to do that I would need to keep up my strength by eating a lot. Starting as soon as possible.
    “There you are, Brooklyn,” Vinnie said as she came up behind me.
    Suzie was with her. “Time for dinner, kiddo. I’m starving.”
    “You and me both,” I said.
    Vinnie looked Nathan up and down. “Hello.”
    “Hello,” he said somberly.
    I quickly introduced my friends to Nathan and explained that he and I would be working together on book stuff this week.