Just One Taste (26 page)

A
lice was chewing
the sixth cracker of the package when she heard the heavy front door slam. She wiped the crumbs from her sweater, wishing her breasts weren’t quite so big as to catch stray bits of food. But then, crumbs would probably fall on her lap instead, so it was a lose-lose proposition. She poked her head around the office door, but no one had come in. That meant that Mr. Merrill had left the library, something he had not done in the previous days he’d visited.

Good. Maybe he was getting something to eat. He looked kind of lean and hungry, his cheek bones sharp in a male-model way. She had even thought about offering him half of her supper sandwich. But maybe he was done for the day, or done forever with the Sadie Ryder Library. That would be a pity. He definitely livened up the joint.

She walked to the Reading Room to make sure he was gone. The chair cushion bore the imprint of his attention-worthy butt. Alice touched where his head had rested. The fabric was still warm, and kind off
springy
. She wiped her hand on her slacks and shivered. She simply had been without a man for too long. How lame could she possibly be to be rubbing where his dark hair had been? Maybe he had head lice. Her mother said there was a lot of that going around at Merrills Mills Elementary.

Oh, but she was pathetic. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with Daniel Merrill except for him not having any visible means of support that she could tell, unless he worked nights somewhere. But the mills had closed years ago. Most residents of Merrills Mills commuted to work. In the daytime.

Maybe he was a writer or an artist. Even better, independently wealthy.

She saw herself in front of a huge marble fireplace in his architect-designed Georgian-reproduction house, a yellow Labrador retriever at her feet. In the immaculate designer kitchen, their well-behaved children were making snacks with the nanny. Daniel would emerge from his study, having just transferred funds from their account in the Cayman Islands to a Swiss bank. Did she want to go to Gstaad for Christmas? He could teach the children—the twins, so she wouldn’t have to be pregnant twice—to ski. At night they could eat fondue and drink Merlot del Ticino. She’d read all about it last month in the library’s copy of
Travel and Leisure.

Alice took her head of the romance cloud. She didn’t even like snow and couldn’t ski without falling. And then, she had the damnedest time getting up again. Too bad she lived in Maine and shoveled more than her share of the white shit.

Now, if Daniel took them to the Cayman Islands instead of Switzerland, that would be much better. It would all make a perfect epilogue to
The Mysterious Millionaire’s Librarian Love
.

Better make that billionaire. They were all the rage in romance fiction now. Why not dream big?

Jeez, she really was reading too much crap. Her life was no romance novel, just kind of dreary women’s fiction with a little self-help thrown in. She went back into the office and swallowed the last of her soda, feeling virtuous that it was diet and not regular.

Odd that Alice had never seen Daniel around before. He certainly hadn’t gone to high school with her. His license said he lived on the Merrill Road. Maybe he even lived in the old Merrill Mansion, which was an awful eyesore now. She’d been tempted to drive out there Tuesday night with his wallet, but good sense and
Dancing with the Stars
prevailed.

Alice really couldn’t dance herself. She did some shuffling around and head-bobbing, but couldn’t imagine moving backwards in high heels and sequins with a big smile on her face. But she wouldn’t mind a slow dance with Daniel Merrill. She could fit her head against his chest, could almost feel his warm hand on her silky bare back—

Suddenly he was right in front of her. “The Rotary Club took over the Dugout for lunch,” he growled.

Alice nodded, hoping she didn’t look as dazed and disappointed as she felt. The loss of Daniel’s imaginary hand had been a severe blow.

“Yes, they rotate there every Thursday and fill up all the seats .The Dugout’s the only place in town that’s open all day. The restaurant does take-out, though.”

There were no fast food places in Merrills Mills, which Alice felt was somewhat providential. She’d had an unfortunate Wendy’s addiction in grad school.

Daniel looked disheartened. “I know I can’t eat in here. I read your little signs.”

Alice had placed “Please, no food or drink” in little plastic frames all over the library. It didn’t stop kids from wadding up gum between book pages, however. And just last week Jamie had found a rotting apple core behind the New Fiction display, too.

“It’s too cold to eat in the park,” she said. It was October. Almost Halloween. Most of the leaves had fallen and the nip of November was not far into the future. Soon little goblins would be crunching leaves along the sidewalks, greedy for treats. Saturday afternoon was Spooky Storytime, too. Alice had a thick stack of books tucked in her office for the occasion. Nothing too scary, though. She wouldn’t want a repeat of last year.

She thought for a minute. Daniel Merrill could go home—did he drive here? Walk? But then he might not come back and she wouldn’t be able to see him.

She liked seeing him.

“I could open up the Meeting Room for you. It’s down in the basement. I’m sure the directors won’t mind.” The directors, all friends of old Mrs. Hussey, were so elderly, so barely ambulatory that their monthly meetings had been cut to just three times a year. So Alice pretty much had carte blanche to do whatever she wanted in the library, which was one delightful perk she hadn’t counted on when she signed her contract. “You’ll have your privacy,” she added. “Just bring your trash up when you’re done.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” He didn’t give her a smile though, and Alice was disappointed. She was sitting down now and ready for it. She watched him as he went back outside, his short suede jacket leaving nothing to her imagination. His worn jeans were perfectly broken in. The man had a most superior posterior.

Alice took the Meeting Room key from her desk drawer, grabbed a handful of paper towels, turned on the stair light and descended into the dank lower level. It couldn’t be good to store things down here, she had reasoned in her expansion proposal to the selectmen; it was too damp. And it must be against the laws of compassion and ADA regulations to expect three eighty-odd-year-old women to meet down here even three times a year.

When they did meet, it was in the Reading Room now, where Alice fussed and, ignoring her own signs, put out punch and cookies for them, sugar-free since Mrs. Ames was diabetic. But the selectmen had nixed the building proposal and had even cut back the library hours. Alice didn’t hold out much hope for progress.

She flipped on the grim fluorescent light and dusted the conference table quickly. Daniel Merrill would probably want to leave his coat on since the creaky heating system didn’t seem to want to extend to this room. She glanced quickly at the mid-nineteenth century portraits of two former town fathers, who stared down disapprovingly at her. Alice had stood on a step-stool and hung them here herself, because she got tired of seeing their grumpy expressions every time she turned around upstairs.

By the looks on their faces, they still had not forgiven her. Ephraim Merrill looked particularly put out, probably wondering where the apostrophe went from Merrill’s Mills, the town’s original name. It used to be the Merrill Memorial Library, too, until Sadie Ryder left the town a bundle for the library’s restoration in the sixties. At that point there were no Merrills left to offend with the name change. Sadie’s handsome black and white photograph hung in the vestibule and her new slate roof over them all. Sadie was smiling beatifically, and Alice had no problem whatsoever looking at
her
every day. She just wished a new Sadie would come along to contribute to a building renovation fund.

Satisfied that she had made the space as welcoming to Daniel Merrill as she could, Alice returned to her chair behind the circulation desk. When Mr. Merrill came in with his Styrofoam containers, she directed him downstairs and got busy reading The New York Times online. She did not hear him mutter, “Oh, shit. Hi there, Dad.”

D
aniel bit
into his well-done bacon cheeseburger in defiance, daring the old tartar to climb down off the wall. It had been hell to sit at the dinner table with him years ago. Even if they’d been invented, there weren’t enough Tums in the world to staunch the indigestion that eating with Ephraim Merrill always produced.

Daniel’s mother had decided early on that she was too “delicate” to eat with her family, and had slipped upstairs to bed with a tray and a very healthy tot of blackberry cordial every evening, leaving them to fend for themselves. Maybe if she’d paid a little more attention, everything wouldn’t have gotten so out of control. Maybe if
he’d
paid a little more attention, Daniel would not have been kicking around for well over a century and a half, cursed by the man who hung to his father’s left.

Daniel had known since his teens that something was wrong with him. He sometimes knew what people were going to say before they said it, and it wasn’t always what they were really thinking, either. It wasn’t until he went to Harvard and realized he’d botched an answer on a test that he found out exactly what his mind could do. The professor handed the blue books back the next week, and there was Daniel’s wrong answer—perfectly corrected. Daniel knew that he’d not written those words, but they seemed to be in his handwriting, with no erasures or blots.

At first he thought nothing of it. Perhaps he’d had too much rum punch with his cronies and imagined it all. He had learned to block out the disconcerting mental exertion all around him. He thought it not particularly cricket to be privy to one’s private thoughts, despite the undeniable advantages he might have. And he would have gone quite, irrevocably mad had he been required to listen to the most of the nonsense around him.

But it in secret, stealthy experiments, he concentrated in company. Altered text and watched for results. He found out that couldn’t change people’s minds, but it seemed he could change what they wrote down. One of his classmates, as officious a prig as had ever deserved a set-down, was mortified as he read what turned out to be a paean to Sapphic love aloud in philosophy class instead of his treatise on Plato.

Delighted with his prank, Daniel set about to test his new-found powers. He was limited to the written word. He couldn’t make the ink pot fly or lift the skirts of a pretty girl. But he could alter an invitation and the names on a dance card.

His social life became considerably more robust. Daniel tried to use his new-found skill for good, but it was inevitable that his parlor tricks would have serious consequences. And when he married Rebecca—

Best not to think on it.

Daniel wondered if the adorable librarian who had such a crush on him knew the irony of pairing those two bristling mustachioed men, their muttonchop sideburns practically quivering in indignation at the disrespect their banishment to the basement, and their propinquity, aroused. He seemed to remember they were upstairs the last time he was visiting the rechristened Sadie Ryder library back in the seventies.

He’d missed the Summer of Love in the sixties. No love for Daniel.

It had taken him a while to realize that his yearly attempts at intervention here were useless. It seemed he was on a forty-year cycle. Forty was that magical, Biblical number. If he’d understood the curse more clearly, he would not have wasted so much time trying so hard to get back home. The Reverend Porter Gosford had clearly strayed from his erstwhile theological ideals, but perhaps God had forgiven him for consorting with the Devil. Daniel hadn’t, but then he’d had a very long time to carry a grudge.

Since 1847, precisely.

And it wasn’t a forty-year cycle from the time of the curse. Oh, no, that would have been too easy. It had taken Daniel a century to figure out it was based on his birth year.

His cheeseburger now a lump in his stomach, he washed down its accompanying chips with a diet soda. There was some irony there, Daniel thought. He was behaving a bit like Alice upstairs, imagining a Coke Zero somehow negated the effects of the consumption of an entire Sara Lee frozen cheesecake.

He shook his head. He’d really have to tune her out if he expected to get his shot at fixing things this time around. He only had until Saturday. Her incessant inner babble, while charming, was a distraction.

Actually, all of her was a distraction. From the Bic pen she’d tucked into her curly hair the first day he’d wandered in, to the shine of her lipstick (and he hated lipstick, usually), she was an unlikely candidate for Daniel’s lust. But it was lust he felt. He suspected it was mutual, too. Hell, who was he kidding? He
knew
. She was as easy to read as a book.

Well, not the damn books he’d been wrestling with.

He balled up his napkin and shoved the remains of his lunch into the empty brown paper bag that lined a plastic trash can. Then remembering Alice’s instructions, he pulled out the bag, saluted his father with it, turned off the light and went upstairs. The basement was obviously off-limits to the public. He would have frozen to death—
oh, if only he could—
if he hadn’t been wearing his jacket and muffler.

The object of his desire was sitting behind the circulation desk, worrying a lip.
Trouble in Africa.
She was so awfully soft-hearted. A girl like her shouldn’t ever even read the news. Waves of pity and guilt were rolling off her. Lord, she didn’t have enough money to go throwing it around, and he could tell she wanted to. He’d seen enough of the world to question whether there was enough currency minted to correct all its woes.

He squared his shoulders. He was here to correct one specific thing, and he’d better get at it.

“Hi. Where do you want me to put this?”

He saw the blush suffuse on her cheeks. She reached for the bag and put it under the counter. “Did you enjoy your lunch?” she asked, her voice all perky and bright.

He should ask her out. Tonight. She hadn’t had a proper date in ages. Or a proper fu—

Damn it. He’d just be taking advantage. There was no doubt in his mind he’d wind up over the garage in bed with her, her damn cat kneading its claws into his ass. And then he’d be gone on Sunday. By the time he rolled around here again she’d be seventy.

“Do you want to go to dinner with me later?” he blurted. He watched her brown eyes widen, then crinkle with disappointment.

“I can’t. I have to work until nine.”

“That’s okay. I can wait. I had a big lunch.”

“Uh, uh…”

Impulsively Daniel reached for her hand. He felt a searing, liquid burning in his chest. Maybe it was the cheeseburger. Or maybe it was actually Alice. “Please say yes. I know you want to.”
I want you to
.

A
lice tugged her hand away
. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy. Like her junior-high tongue when Tommy Levenseller had slow-danced with her at Kelly Pottle’s fourteenth birthday party. Kelly had not been happy. There was a whole “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” vibe about the evening. But Kelly needn’t have worried. Alice had been nearly mute, until she finally spoke up when Tommy tried to slip his hand under her sweater.

Tommy and Kelly were married now, and Kelly was even fatter than Alice was. Of course, having three kids in three years could do that to you.

“Y-yes. I’d love to,” she stuttered. “But it will have to be the Dugout for you again. No place else in town serves that late.”

“Fine,” he grinned. “I’ll walk you there after work.”

“Are you staying in the library the whole time?” Alice was just
itching
to ask him what the hell he was doing here, day after day.

And now, night.

“If I have to,” he said, shrugging. “It depends on if I make any progress this afternoon.” He raised a finger to her lips and Alice felt a little buzz. Kind of like the sensation of her secret facial hair remover wand. She wasn’t shaving, she
wasn’t
. She licked her lips once he removed his finger and felt a lingering tingle. “Don’t ask me that question yet. I’ll tell you later. Maybe tell you everything.” He turned and went into the Reading Room.

That question?
How did he know what she was thinking? Well, anyone might wonder why the guy was hanging out in the library four straight days in a row. It wasn’t like he was psychic or anything.

Eight hours later, Daniel stood by patiently as she did the million little things she’d undo tomorrow morning. The afternoon had been extraordinarily slow. The only constant had been the steady ticking of the grandfather clock and the occasional deep sigh coming from Daniel Merrill in the Reading Room.

Alice had actually trolled romance writers’ sites and played
Words with Friends
for part of the afternoon. She should have looked up dating advice but couldn’t quite stoop that low. She remembered talking old Mrs. Hussey into getting a subscription for
Seventeen
magazine when she was a library aide, and Alice guessed dating advice couldn’t possibly have changed that much in fifteen years, except for the safe sex part. And she certainly wasn’t going to bed with Daniel Merrill. She was just sharing a meal. She’d even offer to go Dutch treat.

When they went out into the night, he offered her an elbow as they strolled down the sidewalk. She slipped her arm through and felt that same zippy, warm feeling that she experienced every time she had come near him. Come to think of it, his wallet had sort of vibrated in her hands, too, the night she slept with it. It must be kismet, she giggled to herself.

“You know, I think you’re right.”

Alice tripped on an uneven concrete slab and stopped. “What?”

“Kismet. Fate. Maybe you’re what I’ve needed all along.”

“Huh?” She was feeling particularly inarticulate. How did he know what she was thinking? This was no way to impress a date. She knew she was supposed to be a good listener, but surely at some point she would be expected to talk and make sense.

“Don’t worry about all that
Rules
, hard-to-get
crap. Just be yourself. You’re very sweet, you know. Very.”

Standing still, they were bathed in the glow of an old-fashioned lamppost. Daniel bent and brushed his lips to hers. Zing. Sparkle. Verve. Vim. Alice’s mind whirled like a little thesaurus as Daniel held her upright in his arms, his hand stroking her back just as she had imagined. Of course, her back wasn’t bare. She had her L.L. Bean three-in-one parka on. Suddenly she felt way too hot.

Pep. Zest. Omigod, he was delicious. Better than Swiss wine. Better than
anything
. Certainly better than her ex-fiance Brad. Brad Pitiful.

“Thank you,” he murmured into her lips, nipping a corner.

She pushed him away. She didn’t really want to, but she had to.

Questions. She had several. But all she was able to manage was “What, how, why—”

He put a finger on her mouth again, and the lightning bolt went right down to her toes with a brief stopover in the weeping center of her womanhood. Her precious pearl. Her silken folds.

God, she really had to read other stuff besides romance novels
.

“Shh. You won’t believe me if I tell you the truth.”

“Okay.” Alice looked up. “Lie to me then.”