Sheila Roberts - What She Wants

What do you care if they see you looking through a romance? They’re only high school kids, he reminded himself. Kids who’d go home and tell their moms about the dork who’d come in looking for love between the covers of a book.

“Oh, my gosh, here’s a Vanessa Valentine,” said one.

No, don’t take that.

She handed it to her friend.

“I haven’t read this,” the other girl said, and dropped it in her bag.

So much for that book. So much for all the books if he didn’t make his move soon. He sauntered casually over. A forty-something woman he’d seen around town had joined them now, and he was aware of both her and the girls staring at him like he was some kind of freak as he studied the titles. He could feel himself beginning to sweat. Just take a book and get out of here.

He snagged a book about a vampire and another with a cowboy on the cover and was about to leave when, suddenly, he saw it. What was this? Two shelves down in the corner, a few inches past the woman’s thighs... Yes! One last Vanessa Valentine.

He bent and made a grab for it just as she leaned over. Oh, no! Boob graze.

“Excuse me,” she said in a tone of voice that told him he was done here.

“Uh, sorry,” he mumbled, and snatched back his hand.

She took advantage of his consternation and plucked the Vanessa Valentine off the shelf. Then she scooped another half dozen novels into her shopping bag.

That left two and one of the teens got them. The woman was right. He was done here. Face still flaming, he walked to the card table where the library volunteer was taking money.

She was somewhere in her twenties and dressed in black. Her fingernails were black, too. She had piercings all over her face, a collection of earrings running up her ears and wore enough eye makeup to give her a head start on Halloween. Not that Jonathan was an expert on eye makeup, but hers seemed like overkill to him. He preferred a more natural look, like what Lissa wore. Liss, always the gold standard.

But this woman was friendly enough. He’d seen her volunteering before. He nodded in response to her greeting of “Back for more?”

She took the books to total them and noticed the vampire on the cover of the top one. “Oh, I love this author. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never read her.”

“You haven’t? Well, you’re in for a treat. Her vampire is really sexy.”

Did she think he was into guy vampires? He opened his mouth to explain that neither guys nor vampires were his thing, but he found it impossible to wedge the words into their conversation.

“He’s right up there with Sookie’s Eric. Gotta love Eric, don’t you?”

Jonathan was aware of the teens tittering behind him. His face began to heat. “Well...”

“I suppose you’ve read all the Twilight books. Are you on Team Edward or Team Jacob?”

“Huh?”

“I say vampires win every time. Werewolves aren’t that sexy.”

More tittering produced more burning on Jonathan’s face. “These aren’t for me.”

“Sure they’re not,” came a whisper from behind him.

“They’re for my sister.”

The volunteer’s face fell. “Oh.”

Okay. She was embarrassed, he was embarrassed. He held up the vampire. “But I’ll have to give this one a try.”

“You should,” she said, nodding her head and making her earrings jingle. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

He paid his buck and got out of there. At least he’d managed to get a couple of books. But what he really wanted was a Vanessa Valentine novel. He wandered upstairs to see if he could find any of her works in the fiction section to check out.

Lo and behold, he discovered a copy of one of the books Juliet had found downstairs. He took it off the shelf. Everlasting Love, the title read, and beneath the cursive script a beautiful couple posed, dressed in the garb of another century. No bed. This pair was standing in a moonlit garden. From the way they were gazing at each other, they wouldn’t be bothering with a bed.

For a moment, the woman’s dark hair lightened to a honey-blond and the guy’s face lengthened and acquired a pair of glasses. Jonathan blinked.

When he glanced down again, the couple had reclaimed their original looks. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he turned the book over and read the summary on the back.

Lorinda Chardonnay’s life lies in ruins. Her father has gambled away their family’s fortune and betrothed her to the Earl of Ryde, shattering her hopes of marrying her childhood love, Sir James Noble. Little does she know that the Earl of Ryde has a terrible secret that will cost Lorinda her life if she learns of it. But James is not about to let her go into danger without someone to watch over her. And if he must ride the King’s Highway by night and face his rival’s sword to do so, then he will.

Hmm. This sounded kind of interesting. Sword fights, secrets, saving the girl. What the heck. He’d give it a try. He took that one and a couple of other Vanessa Valentine books from the shelf and went to check them out.

Halfway to where Mrs. Bantam, the librarian, stood smiling at him his feet faltered. He’d already gone through enough torture downstairs. He needed cover for his romance novels.

He made a quick detour to the do-it-yourself section and picked up a book on patios, then he went back to— Oh, no. Mrs. Bantam was no longer at the checkout desk and in her place stood Emily Ward.

Emily was fairly new in town. A couple of weeks ago he’d fixed her home computer. She’d supplied him with coffee and then pulled up a chair right next to him so she could watch him work. Customers did that sometimes, but they weren’t usually wearing perfume or tops that pouffed out when they leaned forward, showing breasts wrapped in lacy black. She’d gotten him so distracted he’d knocked over his coffee, drenching everything on her desk. She’d been okay about it but he’d felt like a total moron and had been trying to avoid her ever since.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and forced himself to get in line behind an older woman checking out several books, all the while wondering what happened to the good old days when librarians looked like librarians. The only thing even remotely librarian-like about Emily was her glasses, but they were fire-red and were more like some kind of fashion accessory than an aid to sight. She had short, auburn hair with a feather dangling from it and she wore jeans and a clingy top and a ton of bracelets on her wrist. She wasn’t as beautiful as Lissa, but she was still pretty enough to make him sweat.

“Hi, Jonathan,” she greeted him. “Looks like you’ve got some reading planned for the weekend.”

“Uh, yeah.” That was articulate. Say something else, idiot. “I bet you’ve got plans.” Wait. Did that sound like he was asking her out? He wasn’t trying to start something, not with Emily, anyway.

“Not really,” she said, smiling at him.

He nodded. “You getting to know people yet?”

“Slowly.”

She took his pile of books and started checking them out to him. Once she’d finished with the book on patios and got to the first romance novel, her eyes widened.

“I’m getting some stuff for my sister,” he said. That was his story and he was stickin’ to it.

“What a nice brother. I bet you’re doing something nice for your mom for Mother’s Day, too.”

If a box of Sweet Dreams chocolate counted, then yes. He shrugged. “Family dinner.”

Now Emily spied his bag of library book-sale treasures. “I see you’ve been to the sale.”

He left the romance novels he’d purchased downstairs in the bag and instead pulled out his earlier acquisition, The Kingdom of Zoon, thus proving he was no sissy who read chick books.