Read Online Carry Her Heart by Holly Jacobs - Free Book Online

assured him.
    He was still laughing as he walked back to his truck.
    As soon as the brown truck pulled away with a friendly beep good-bye, I opened a box. There it was.
    Couch Couch’s debut book, Felicity’s Folly .
    I pulled the top book off the pile and admired the cover. Oh, I’d seen it before, but it was always different when the cover was attached to the physical book. I opened it and lost myself for a moment in the smell. It obliterated my fantasy cinnamon and replaced it with the smell of new book.
    I wish they could bottle that scent.
    As always, I checked the dedication.
    And as always it read, For Amanda.
    I reached back into my ponytail twisty and pulled out a pen I’d shoved there that morning. I scribbled an inscription in the front of the book, then skimmed through it and found the passage on page twenty-seven. I dog-eared that page.
    After putting the boxes and my laptop inside the door, I walked across the drive to Ned’s front door and knocked.
    Mela opened it and in an unguarded moment she glared at me, before she remembered to kill me with kindness and pasted a smile on her face. “What’s up, Piper?”
    I didn’t want to give her the book to give to Ned. I wanted to hand it to him myself. I was saved from having to ask if he could come to the door, which would have annoyed Mela, by Ned himself coming up behind her.
    “Hey, Pip, come on in.”
    I shook my head. “I didn’t lock the house up. I just got my author’s copies of Felicity’s Folly and . . .” I thrust the book at him. “Normally my mom claims the first book, but this one’s for you. I know that YA is not your normal genre of choice, but . . . well, read the inscription.”
    I really didn’t want to do this in front of Mela, but she stood glued to Ned’s side and I’d already started, so I continued. “That first day when you pulled in the drive, I was working on this book. When you came over to the porch, I know I seemed distracted, but it’s because when I saw you, I suddenly had a character come to life in my head.”
    “Yeah, that doesn’t sound crazy at all,” Mela said in a teasing manner, but I could hear her animosity bubbling among her forced laughter.
    I ignored it and continued, “Couch Couch.”
    “Couch?” he asked.
    “Coach Divan. Felicity, the main character, mispronounces coach as couch . And she knows that a divan is a couch. As I was writing that first scene, you came over and introduced yourself. Ned Chesterfield. I dog-eared the page for you. Did you know that your last name is a name for a—”
    “Couch. I did. My father considers it a source of pride and tells people our family invented couches.”
    I laughed now, just as I had that first day. “Anyway, that’s why I laughed when you introduced yourself.”
    I’d thought about dedicating the book to Ned, but in the end, I couldn’t. I wrote the books for Amanda and I couldn’t not dedicate them to her. Not even this once. So I settled for adding:
A special thank-you to Ned, who was an inspiration.
    I’d written underneath those words:
Dear Ned, That day you moved in next door, you not only gave me the gift of inspiration for Couch Couch, you also gave me the gift of your friendship. Thank you for both. Pip
    He opened the book and read the dog-eared page, then looked up at me with a grin. “Yeah, I’m going to work tomorrow and telling everyone that I’m an inspiration.”
    “Don’t let it go to your head. I described you as an everyman sort of guy. I mean, I didn’t describe you—Couch Couch—as a male model or anything.”
    He scoffed. “You’ve said before that your books are fiction. And they’re YA,” he added, tossing around the term he’d never heard until he moved in next door to me, “so you couldn’t really wax poetic about my rugged good looks.”
    I snorted. “As if.”
    “I think you’ve got rugged good looks,” Mela assured him.
    Darn. We’d done it again. “I’ll let Mela salve your wounded ego,”