Jaded (3 page)

Duke barked again. Lucas recognized the yelp. It meant
Hey, Tall Guy Who Brings Food And Walks Me, there’s someone here! Come see! Come see!
The dog, a cheerful, people-loving, retired K-9 member of the Denver PD was Lucas’s polar opposite.

Whoever it was, Lucas was ready to shoot them first and ask questions later.

Another bark. Alana lifted her head and peered in the direction of his house. Since they were in her living room, all she could see was a wall of bookshelves, but he got the idea. He relaxed his grip and groaned low in his throat. “Someone’s at my house.”

That got an unexpected reaction. She sat up, snagged her bra and sweater, and all but levitated backward into the bathroom, where, based on the sounds of lace and silk against skin, she was dressing like a teenager whose parents had come home without warning. For his part he sat up slowly, rubbed his face with both hands, then stood to button his shirt. Tucking his shirt back into his pants only confirmed how frustrated he was. He took a deep breath, thought about cold nights in cold cars staking out coldhearted criminals.

Not working. Blood thumped slow and hot in his veins as he plucked his tie from the floor and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Lucas?”

Mitch Turner. Lucas blew out his breath and thought about blizzards on the high plains.

Alana reappeared beside him, arms tense with the effort of holding the toolbox. “Here. This will . . . I’m sure it won’t look like . . .”

He took the box before she dropped it on her bare feet, but didn’t move. “Hey. We’re two consenting adults.”

“I know . . . it’s just . . . you have a position to maintain in the community, and I’m not . . .”

Was that some kind of code for
I don’t want anyone to know what we were doing
? He lifted the corners of his mouth in what passed as a smile for him these days. “Relax. I’m fine. You’re fine. It’s all fine.”

“Mayor Turner’s waiting for you!”

He felt his brows furrow. She didn’t seem like the type to get freaked out by a small-town mayor. “It’s still all fine,” he said.

She breathed in, smiled back at him. “Okay. Good. But—”

Next door his screen door slammed. “Lucas? You around?”

“We’ll talk,” he said, and headed for the kitchen door.

The door closed behind him. Still gripping the toolbox, Lucas rubbed the back of his neck and took a deep breath.

Where in the hell did
that
come from? Alana always seemed too—he hated to say innocent because a decade on the Denver PD and five years on the DEA task force had trampled any notions he had of innocence, but that was sure what it seemed like. She blushed, for God’s sake, and she did it a lot. She’d blushed as she signed the rental agreement on the house next door to him, and Lucas hadn’t been able to get the memory out of his mind. It was so completely small-town librarian, which she wasn’t, and so innocently sexy.

He was beginning to suspect she wasn’t innocently anything.

He knew she watched him, but the only time she ever said anything was when something broke. Then after he’d gone over and fixed whatever it was, she’d turn on a throaty jazz singer, hand him a drink, and struggle to make small talk. Which was strange in itself. In his experience, women as polished as Alana knew what they wanted and how to ask for it, but Alana turned pink every time she had to ask him for anything.

And yet she’d come on to him tonight. And he’d let weeks of celibacy dictate his response. She was an enigma he’d have to figure out later—after they finished what they had started.

He inhaled deeply, reaching for his composure, trying to reroute blood from his cock to his brain. Then he crossed their driveways to his house. The purple-blue twilight carried the scent of a greening prairie and texture of starlight. Maybe he’d take a couple of days off and go rock climbing in the Black Hills. It had been years since he’d been cranking, long enough for memories to fade.

He’d go. After Alana left. Just in case she wanted to take what happened tonight to its natural conclusion, then maybe do it again.

That’s an excuse, and you know it. You’re procrastinating.

For a very good reason . . .

“Hi, Mitch,” he said to the man standing on his front porch. He was small and slight, wearing jeans, boots, and a jacket. His gray hair, maintained every week by the barbershop Lucas visited quarterly at best, was neatly parted and combed.

“Lucas.” Lucas climbed the stairs and opened the porch. “Some guard dog you’ve got here,” he said. Duke leaned against his leg, eyes closed in satisfaction as Mitch scratched the sweet spot behind his ears.

“What’s up?” Lucas asked. He opened the front door and walked inside. Mitch and Duke followed but stayed in the living room as he stowed the toolbox in the hall closet.

“I thought we’d head to the meeting together,” Mitch said.

Lucas narrowed his eyes at the mayor. Maybe Alana was more savvy than he thought, because Mitch played the political game with the ruthlessness of a Washington insider. Most of the time he went to council meetings on his own. There’d been a small but noticeable spike in burglaries lately, which meant that the discussion about renovating the library would face opposition from people more concerned with public safety. While Mitch wasn’t one to sell his seed corn to pay for the harvest, he’d been pretty tight-lipped about why he hired Alana temporarily, or how committed he was to a large-scale library renovation. Tonight he wanted to show up with the chief of police by his side.

“What are you up to, Mitch?”

“Just wanted some company.” Mitch unwittingly copied Alana’s move and glanced significantly at the living room wall. “Problem next door?”

Lucas kept his face blank. “Just seventy-year-old plumbing,” he said noncommittally.

“You should replace it, or just sell the house.”

“I’ll replace it when Alana leaves and I renovate the kitchen,” Lucas said, “but you keep extending her contract. Are librarians that hard to find?”

“The right one is,” Mitch said easily. “Look how long it took me to hire you.”

Lucas called bullshit on that one, because Mitch took exactly two minutes to offer Lucas the job when he called to ask about it. At the time it seemed like a good career move that just might save his marriage, too.

He’d been wrong on both counts.

“Let’s go,” Mitch said. “We can talk on the way.”

Once the meeting started, Mitch morphed into Mayor Turner in formal business mode and ran efficiently through the agenda. A few minutes after the meeting started, Alana slipped into the back row of the high school auditorium, still dressed in her work clothes. Lucas had his moment in the spotlight addressing the burglaries, reminding people to lock their doors and report anything suspicious. Alana picked up a handout discarded by local rancher Jack Whiting, and paged through it, seemingly half listening to the various line items and totals. The general rustling of people slipping into spring jackets and tucking handouts into purses and coat pockets halted when Mitch spoke.

“Ms. Wentworth, I read through the information you compiled on the options and costs around renovating the library. Would you run through the situation for us?”

Clearly surprised, Alana got to her feet. When she moved, her perfume drifted into Lucas’s nose, straight to his back brain. Not possible. They were thirty feet apart, maybe more, but there it was. It took a moment, but he realized her perfume was on his skin.

“As you know, the building’s in dire need of renovation,” Alana said. “The plaster needs repairing, and the brickwork and roof are long past their best days. The Carnegie libraries are a national treasure. It would be an absolute shame to lose that building. The budget for books is adequate, but the shift in technology to e-books and e-readers means making a commitment to new technology. The computers are adequate, for now, which means in a year they’ll be hopelessly obsolete.”

“And what exactly do you recommend?”

Alana blinked, and Lucas’s radar went off. Mitch was up to something the contract librarian didn’t know anything about. “I didn’t . . . that is, all I did was update Mrs. Lancaster’s proposal to incorporate current digital strategies. But the real question that must be addressed before any renovations or shift in fund allocation occurs is what purpose does the library serve in the community? Without an answer to that question, you can’t direct the funds you have to best meet your needs.”

Don Walker, the local bank owner and spokesperson for the fiscally conservative segment of the town spoke. “Ms. Wentworth, we barely have the money to do that, let alone upgrade computers or repair a hundred-year-old building.”

“I’ve applied for a variety of state and federal technology grants,” she started, but Mr. Walker cut her off.

“We’re not in the business of supporting national treasures. What percentage of the community uses the library?” he asked. “We’ve got high-speed Internet access now. Based on what I’ve heard from Chief Ridgeway, we need to upgrade the police department’s vehicles and consider making David Wimmer a full-time officer. You’re asking us to commit a fairly sizable investment into a resource that, as you said, is well on its way to become obsolete.”

“That’s not what I said at all,” Alana replied. “Libraries become more relevant, not less, as information is digitized and democratized. Nearly a quarter of the county’s residents live below the poverty line. Those who can afford the service have high-speed Internet access. Many in Walkers Ford and the surrounding county cannot. Access to information is one of the greatest divides between rich and poor in this country. I think we’d all agree that poverty fuels crime.”

“Don’s got a good point,” Mitch said. “We’ve got an expert here, and it doesn’t cost us anything to work up a proposal. Ms. Wentworth, why don’t you put something together for the renovation project, talk to people, give us something to work with? Present it in a couple of weeks, just before you leave. How does that sound?”

As one, the audience turned to look at Alana. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “I could do that,” she said.

“Good,” Mayor Turner said. “I’m calling a special session in two weeks. Ruth, make sure the meeting announcement is posted in all the appropriate places, and book the auditorium. Talk to Ms. Wentworth about the A/V setup she’ll need for the presentation. Folks, if you have any questions or ideas, feel free to contact Ms. Wentworth. For any other business, you can contact me, or any of the council members, or Chief Ridgeway.”

Mitch’s final comment meant Lucas was surrounded by people with questions about the break-ins, information about suspicious activity occurring down every remote dirt road in the county, and a whole slew of other questions. He glanced past Don Walker’s shoulder at Alana, who was similarly surrounded. Mrs. Battle, the former English teacher who’d come out of retirement to work part-time at the library, stopped to talk to Alana before leaving.

Alana looked over Mrs. Battle’s head, straight at him. Electricity sparked along the invisible connection between them, an involuntary tug of attraction he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Ever so slightly he lifted one eyebrow at her.
Later?

She gave him a compact shake of her head, just enough to indicate
Not now
, and loosen her hair from its mooring behind her ear. The shiny blond strands slid forward in slow motion, setting off a sympathetic flex in his fingers as the nerves remembered the sleek feel of her hair between his fingers, the curve of her hips in his hands.

If secrecy mattered to her, they could work something out. She’d leave in a couple of weeks, which was plenty of time for him to explore every nuance of her blushes. Hell, thanks to the plumbing, they had a good cover story to explain him in her house.

Based on their chemistry, he had even better reason to be in her bed.

2

S
EXUAL FRUSTRATION RUINED
sleep.

Cell phone firmly in hand, Alana scuffed her feet into her slippers and pulled on her robe over her cotton nightie, then shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen. Sunshine poured through the window over the sink, glinting off the worn gold rim of her Syracuse University coffee mug as she got the mug from the cupboard, then ran water into the electric kettle. No chamomile or herbal teas this morning. Today was an Earl Grey Breakfast Blend day, probably two cups. She found her strainer in the drying rack, added the loose-leaf tea and set it in the teapot, and stared at the kettle. Little bubbles but not boiling. Cream. She needed cream.

“You’re such a librarian,” she mumbled.

When the water reached boiling, she poured it over the strainer and pulled her phone from the pocket of her robe while she waited for it to steep. Where was Freddie this week? The last time she’d talked to her sister, she was preparing for a three-week trip to South America. The Women’s Development Network annual meeting was being held in Sao Paolo, which meant site visits to various local organizations funded by the Wentworth Foundation, appearances on local television programs, meetings with politicians and dignitaries, and banquets. Lots and lots of banquets. If the devil himself took a few minutes to create Alana’s special, personalized version of hell, a conference and all the meetings scheduled around it would be an apt description.

Freddie thrived on it. Freddie was probably already awake, or perhaps hadn’t gone to bed.

She tapped through to her sister’s mobile number and pressed Call.

“Where are you, and when are you coming back to work?” her sister said without preamble.

“I’m in the kitchen, and soon,” Alana replied. Lucas’s grandmother’s kitchen, to be precise. Beulah Ridgeway had had her kitchen gorgeously renovated in 1970s avocado and orange, and fashion hadn’t quite circulated back around to the ’70s yet.

“The one with the orange and green floral wallpaper and the fridge like the one in our cabin when we were kids?”

“It’s not so bad when you get used to it. The window faces east, and I’m watching the sun rise over the backyard. Where are you?”