Carrie Alexander - Three Little Words

“Yes,” she said faintly, looking worried, as if she suspected him of backing her into a corner.

Rightly. He was enjoying bantering with her a lot more than he should have. “Can I check these out?” he asked, sliding his books across her desk.

“You may, with a temporary guest card. You’ll have to provide some personal information and pay ten dollars.” She bent, rummaged through a drawer, then handed him a pale green card and a pen. The process seemed too trusting to Connor, but that must be how they did it in small towns.

He wrote down his New York address. Luckily, there was no line asking for his occupation.

Tess read over the card, then requested two forms of ID. Trust wasn’t what it used to be. He gave her the money first, then added his driver’s license, a credit card and threw his New York Public Library card in for fun.

She fingered it contemplatively. “Do you go to the branch with the stone lions?”

He said yes, on occasion, although usually he used the 115th Street branch closest to his apartment. “Have you been there?”

“Just once. On my senior-class trip. I was seventeen and already planning to be a librarian. The New York Public Library seemed so glamorous.” She caught his skeptical eye. “Well, it was! For a library. I thought someday I’d be working there, if I didn’t get in at the Smithsonian first.” She gave a short laugh. “You know how it is when you’re a kid. Anything seems possible. Even a sophisticated life in the city.”

“What stopped you?”

“Nobody stopped me. I changed my mind.”

Connor noted the switch of words. Tess seemed to have no ability to shield her inner thoughts. Already he knew that she’d once dreamed big, but had settled for small. Probably because of a guy. It was always a guy.

Briefly, Connor let himself envy Tess’s guy, which was tolerable because the poor slob obviously wasn’t hers any longer.

Tess had gone prickly. She straightened items on the checkout desk—the same ones she’d just pushed into disarray—with a brisk, thin-lipped efficiency. When there was nothing left to straighten, she stepped back, well away from him, folding her hands together in a gesture that could have been peaceful if she hadn’t been gripping her fingers so tight. His questions had upset her more than innocent questions ought.

“We’re settled, then?” She pressed her thumbs together, turning the nail beds white. “I’ll bring my notebooks and a literacy test to the nursing home.”

“No, don’t do that. Not the first time. We can’t rush Sonny.”

“But I thought this was his request. Why shouldn’t we begin tonight…if time is short?”

Connor answered easily enough since he was telling the truth. “Because he’s crotchety Old Man Mitchell and his illiteracy has been a shameful secret up to now. We’ve got to take this slow.”

“I see. Yes. I understand.” Her words were clipped. She was waiting for him to go.

He took the books and started to the door. “I’ll pick you up. What’s your address?”

She closed her eyes for an instant and he thought she was giving in. Instead, her lashes lifted and she stared him down. “Did you forget? I’m taking my own car. After all, I barely know you.”

“You’ve seen my ID.”

“Which proves nothing.”

“What kind of lawbreaker do you take me for?”

“That’s yet to be determined.”

He laughed. “Well, then, thanks for the free books.”

“Don’t be smart with me, Mr. Reed.”

“Yes, Marian.” He looked back once more from the open doorway and saw that she was muttering to herself. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she said the word smuggler. He shrugged to himself. Smuggler was better than some of the names he’d been called lately.

TESS WAS GRATEFUL the library had emptied for the usual early-afternoon lull. She’d get a trickle of patrons wandering in and out the remainder of the afternoon and a final rush before closing time—which consisted of anywhere from two to five stragglers, most of whom would hurry in with a movie to return.

She wasn’t sure why she’d let Connor Reed talk her into scooting off to meet his grandfather right after work, except that her heart twinged when she thought of the old man, alone for all those long, lonely winters in the lighthouse and not being able to read. She’d have gone crazy if she hadn’t had books to keep her company all this time on her own, and she was nowhere near as isolated as a lighthouse keeper.

She went into her office, a small room on the other side of the entryway. It was a nook really, formed out of a coat closet and several borrowed feet from the dining-turned-periodical room. There was space for a desk and little else. Usually the office felt too tight, but for the moment it was a welcome haven.

With a few probing questions, Connor Reed had turned her inside out.

Suddenly she felt out of sorts with what had been a cozy, settled life. Was it because she found Connor disturbingly attractive, or that his questions had brought up old memories of the time before Jared?

Both, most likely. The attraction was interesting, even exciting. The other…

She thought of life now as A.J., After Jared, forgetting that she’d once been a different person. A girl. Silly, lighthearted and ambitious—even a little bit daring. Connor’s curiosity had brought all that back to mind.

Tess’s gaze went to the framed photo beside her computer. It was a classic pose—a proud young man in flannel and jeans holding up a gleaming rainbow trout, the lake behind him speckled with sunshine. Jared Johnson—her fiancé. Forever a fiancé, frozen in time because he’d been killed in a car accident the week before the wedding.

Tess stopped, making herself breathe, remembering when the thought of Jared had caused her actual physical pain. She was long past that now, but somehow she’d never quite moved on.

She’d been just twenty-one, Jared two years older. Young to marry, but the timing seemed right. She’d graduated from college that spring and Jared had immediately proposed. She knew he’d been pushing for marriage mostly because he didn’t want her to accept a job out of the area, but she hadn’t felt stifled. She was in love. An entry-level position at a large library system far from home wasn’t as appealing as she’d once imagined it to be. Whereas the prospect of marrying her high-school sweetheart and officially joining the large, boisterous Johnson family had been irresistible.

Tess propped her chin on her hand. Eleven years had provided enough distance for her to see that marrying Jared had been the safe choice. A good choice, a happy and probably satisfying one—especially when she thought of the children they might have had—but mostly safe.

As the only child of divorced parents, security was important to Tess. Her father was long gone, barely a memory. Her mother had moved away more than a decade ago right after Tess’s high-school graduation, satisfied that she’d finished raising her daughter and was therefore free to leave a town she despised. Tess had been okay with that—she was busy with college, and besides she’d had Jared’s family, in many ways closer and more supportive than her own.

Then the accident had happened and the wedding was canceled, and she’d realized just how alone she really was. The Johnson family hadn’t wanted anything to do with her because of her part in Jared’s death. She might have been even more stricken by their abandonment if the mere sight of them—especially Jared’s brothers, who looked so much like him—hadn’t made her fall apart. The only way she’d survived was to cut herself off from contact with the life that had almost been hers.

Her new job as the one and only librarian of the Alouette Public Library had been a godsend. The structure and duties had helped her through the worst of her grief. Eventually, she’d found her place in the world again and had learned to be happy with all she had—friends, a home, her health, a steady job.