Free The Reading Circle by Ashton Lee

kept it soft and cuddly, brushing up against him. “Look at it from my point of view, Locke. I was cheated out of my first marriage to Frank by the Tet Offensive, and maybe there’s this old-fashioned part of me that wants you to make me an honest woman, to use a term you don’t hear very much these days.”
    He looked confused, as if she were suddenly speaking a foreign language. Then came several open-mouthed starts at conversation before he finally settled on the right words. “This doesn’t sound like you at all, Voncille. You don’t need to justify yourself to anyone. You’re practically a Cherico institution.”
    â€œI couldn’t care less about gossip,” she said, the irritation rising in her tone as she reverted to her prickly alter ego. “Although I’ve been an easy target for many years. Still, I’ve always shrugged and walked down the street or in and out of the library for all those ‘Who’s Who in Cherico?’ meetings with my head held high. ‘There goes that crazy old retired schoolteacher whose house looks like a jungle inside,’ I could almost hear them whispering the moment I passed by. But this is just about you and me, Locke. Something inside me wants to make this relationship of ours legal. I’ve been hinting around for weeks now, but between you actually sitting down to read Forrest Gump and enjoying my cooking, you don’t seem to have room for anything else in that distinguished gray head of yours.”
    His face was a perfect blank, his eyes and mouth an inverted triangle of zeroes. “I had no idea you felt this way.”
    â€œMen!” She let her little exclamation lie there for a while. “I don’t know what else to say to you at this point.”
    He made a strange little noise in his throat at first, but she could tell he thought he was being charming when he finally answered her. “We’re creatures of habit. We like the nests our women build for us.”
    But Miss Voncille was in no mood for settling or being summarily dismissed. “Yes, well, I think I’d like some credit for the nest. It’s been gnawing at me, and I can’t change the way I feel about it. I’m just too set in my ways.”
    â€œCould I have some time to think about it?” he said, the color returning to his face. “I’d probably like to sound my children out, if you don’t mind.”
    Miss Voncille couldn’t fight off the displeasure that settled into her features. That was a new one. He had rarely brought up either his daughter or son in their everyday conversations. He had told her that both Carla and Locke Jr. were married, had two children apiece, and both lived out of state with his grandchildren—but had not volunteered much more. Locke remained the reserved, gentlemanly type who would never force pictures from his wallet upon anyone, even if they asked in the insincere manner that people sometimes do, and she had spent enough time with him now to know that there just never seemed to be any letters or postcards lying around, no long-distance phone calls to report—not even any e-mails showing up on his computer to answer.
    â€œWhy does that sound like an excuse to me, Locke?” she wanted to know, refusing to let up. But she realized she had pressed some sort of hot button when he matched her mundane frown with a startling one of his own.
    â€œVoncille, are you trying to ruin what we’ve got going?”
    â€œGood heavens, Locke, I’m not asking you to approve my riding naked the length of Perry Street on a horse,” she said, her prickly temperament now full-blown. She had promised him several months earlier she would try to stop being such a diva and knuckle-rapping schoolmarm around him, and she had largely lived up to that. But he was testing her sorely, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “Why, I was even thinking it could be as