RaeAnne Thayne - Sugar Pine Trail

Her lips suddenly seemed eminently kissable, plump and pink and delicious looking. What would she do if he pulled the rest of her wayward hair down, buried his hands in it and pressed her back against that door?

She was impaired, he reminded himself.

“Maybe. If you wanted me to.”

“I would,” she whispered.

She was impaired, plus she was a stodgy librarian and totally not his type, he reminded himself. Still, he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to taste her.

Because she looked so lonely and because he tried to be that nice guy to girl people and girl cats alike, he leaned in and kissed her forehead.

“Good night, Julia. Sleep well.”

She gave a wistful-sounding sigh and closed the door.

Heart pounding far more than it should be, Jamie headed for the stairs.

Julia Winston was trouble.

Who would have guessed? His tight-laced, no-nonsense landlady had a core of passion and heat inside of her. The man who could unleash that would be very lucky, indeed.

He wasn’t that man. He could never be—no matter how hard he might wish otherwise.

CHAPTER FOUR

“HOW ARE YOU holding up, my dear?”

Julia managed a half smile for Barbara Serrano as she scanned her pile of library books into the system.

“I’m here and I’m breathing. That’s something, right?”

Barbara laughed. “That sangria was lethal. Trust Roxy to get us all hammered, right before Thanksgiving. I haven’t had a hangover since my sorority days.”

The very dignified restaurant owner still didn’t appear to have a hair out of place. Lucky.

“I’m doing okay so far. Over the last few hours, my headache has slipped down to this sucks level, which is a big improvement from this morning’s, when I thought I was going to have to borrow a power drill to relieve the pressure in my skull.”

Barbara chuckled. “It was a fun night, though, wasn’t it? I hope we weren’t too loud for your new neighbor.”

At the reminder of Jamie, the vague, unsettling feeling that had been haunting her all day returned with a vengeance.

She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something...untoward had happened with him the night before.

She had these odd snippets of memory, and she wasn’t sure if they were real or some fantasy-fueled dream. She could picture him, clear as day, standing on her stairs in his bare feet, holding a cat.

Would she have conjured that up out of her imagination? Possibly. But what about the masculine scent of him, bergamot and cedar with a little hint of cloves? Why did that seem so clear in her memory bank?

Worse than that, somehow the words Jamie and kiss had become intertwined in her mind. That was ridiculous, of course. Wasn’t it?

She hadn’t seen the man the night before. She was almost positive of it. But then, she only had loose recollections of the evening from about her fourth sangria on.

She hoped with all her heart that she was imagining those little flickers of memory. It would have been beyond humiliating if Jamie had seen her in that condition.

“How are your tatted snowflakes coming for the booth at the Lights on the Lake festival?” Barbara asked.

“Fine,” she lied.

The truth was, while she had loved the craft she learned from Mariah—the delicate knots and rings with thread to make lace—lately she had struggled to summon any enthusiasm. Sitting in her huge Victorian with her cats and her tatting made her feel so old and spinsterish.

“Can you believe it’s Thanksgiving in two days and then all the holiday craziness is upon us?” Barbara’s eyes gleamed with an anticipation that made Julia tired.

“Where did the year go?” she asked rhetorically. She knew too well. It went to working, dealing with the house, fixing the furnace, visiting her mother, then arranging her mother’s estate after her death.

“Are you sure you won’t come over for dinner?” Barbara asked when Julia finished checking out her books. “We’ll have a full house and would love one more.”

“Thank you again for the kind offer but I’ll be fine. I’m already signed up to help out at the nursing home. I’m taking Muriel Randall.”

“Oh, that will be good for her.”

The place in Shelter Springs where her mother had spent her last few months had several patrons without families. Julia didn’t love it there but also couldn’t bear the thought that anyone might feel alone.

“Well, I’d better run,” Barbara said after they chatted a bit more. “I would love to finish a few chapters of that new Nora Roberts book before some of our houseguests show up in the morning.”

“Enjoy,” she said.

Julia was busy most of the afternoon with patron questions and checkouts. She answered three phone calls to the reference desk, asking how to thaw a turkey. There would be more the next day, she suspected.

By early evening, her headache had abated, leaving just an echo of throbbing.

She made the rounds to the few groups of teenagers at the study tables to make sure they knew the library would be closing soon. When she rounded a corner of the stacks, she found Davy and Clinton, the boys from the day before, quietly playing a card game at a table.

She hadn’t seen them come in. Perhaps they had entered the library when she had been taking a break.

Both boys looked up with wary expressions when she headed in their direction.

“Hi, Davy. Hi, Clinton. How are you boys this evening?”

Davy gave a dramatic sigh. “I’m hungry, but Clint says he’ll make me another peanut butter sandwich when we have to go home.”

That particular statement disturbed her on several levels. Julia tried to conceal her reaction. Where were their parents? From what she had seen firsthand and from what she had inferred from Davy’s comments, it seemed Clint was doing more parenting than an eight-year-old boy should.

Something was going on here, but she had no idea how to figure out what or how to fix it. She did know Davy was hungry, and she had the means to remedy that.

“You know,” she said casually, “I happen to have a sandwich in the back. It’s turkey instead of peanut butter, but I think you’ll find it quite tasty.”

“Really?” The little boy’s eyes lit up. “I thought we weren’t s’posed to eat in the library.”

“Food isn’t allowed out here in the book stacks, but you’re fine to eat in the back. I do it all the time. Do you know, if we cut the sandwich in half, I think it would be more than enough for two boys.”

She’d had such good intentions that morning when she packed her lunch, but her hangover had been too wicked earlier in the day to tolerate anything solid. She had ended up heating a cup of soup in the microwave.

“Did you hear that, Clint? Miss Winston has a sandwich she said we could eat!”

While the younger boy looked thrilled, his brother’s reluctance showed through. He shook his head with a stubborn look. “No. We’d better not. Thanks anyway, Miss Winston.”

“Nonsense,” she said in a brisk tone. “You’re hungry, and I have an extra sandwich that will only go to waste if you don’t help me out by eating it. Think of it this way—you would be doing me a favor.”

Davy looked at his brother. “Mom said we’re supposed to help other people out when we can, especially this time of year. Remember? Miss Winston needs someone to help her eat her sandwich.”

Clinton didn’t look particularly convinced by that argument, but after a moment he shrugged. “I guess it would be okay. As long as we’re helping you.”

She smiled, touched beyond words that these two boys in their threadbare coats were concerned about helping others—but she was also undeniably troubled. She admired their mother’s sentiment about helping people out, but where was the woman? And why was she allowing her young boys to go hungry?