Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel

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Ambleside Publishing, 1427 Bellevue Avenue, PO Box 91585, West Vancouver, B.C. Canada, V7V 3P3.

Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of this author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.

This book was produced using
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Acknowledgments

In spite of what we authors like to think, we are never solely responsible for our own books. There are the librarians whom we pester with bizarre questions, the friends of friends who might know something about some obscure research fact without which we cannot go on. There are our families, our colleagues and our friends.

Wild Ride was typical. I had help from so many sources. I am especially indebted to an Oregon police officer who cannot be named, but I hope she knows how very much I appreciate her patient explanations about police procedure, murder investigation and the day-to-day life on the beat.

I adore librarians. They know such a lot and what they don’t know they can find out. I loved having a librarian heroine in this book and I hope she put to rest a few stereotypes. Thanks to my librarian on the inside, Michelle Olson, for all her help and wonderful stream of consciousness letters about what librarians do all day. Thanks also to Galaxie Library, Dakota County, Minnesota.

Thanks also to Shelley Adina and her motorcycle loving husband Jeff for their help.

An earlier version of this book was written in 2004 for Kensington Brava and edited by the brilliant and funny but sadly departed Kate Duffy. I like to think she’s up there with a cigarette in her mouth, sneakers on her feet, and a good book in her hand.

In a book about masterpieces, I must mention my own two masterpieces: Emma and James. You hold the key to my heart.

Author’s note: An earlier version of this book was published in 2005 under the title Drive Me Crazy. It has been heavily revised because Nancy discovered that in ten years she became a better writer! Imagine.

If you enjoy this book, please consider leaving a review at whatever online places you like to hang out.

Sexy and wonderfully witty
, NYT bestselling author Lori Foster.

This was such a good story that it was hard to set down until the end. (Jutzie, top 1000 Amazon reviewer on Kiss a Girl in the Rain, Take a Chance Book 1)

I loved this book! Nancy Warren knows how to stir up romance with colorful characters tying it all up with family secrets and mystery.
(Amazon review of Drive Me Crazy)

There are many books out there that provide a fun read. There are also many wonderfully written books. Unfortunately, it is rare to find fun and good writing in the same book. Drive Me Crazy is one of those rare finds — a beautifully written book that is fun from front cover to back!
(Amazon Review of Drive me Crazy)

Grab your lipstick and slide into your stilettos and get ready to join Lady Bianca star sales rep Toni Diamond, makeup adviser turned part time sleuth, in a fun filled, murder prone annual sales convention for the Lady Bianca line of cosmetics in Frosted Shadow. It looks like beauty isn’t only skin deep, it can be deadly!
(Novel Chatter review of Frosted Shadow.)

Duncan Forbes knew he was going to like Swiftcurrent, Oregon, when he discovered the town librarian looked like the town hooker. Not a streetwalker who hustles tricks on the corner, but a high-class escort who looks like a million bucks and costs at least that much, ending up with her own Park Avenue co-op.

He loved that kind of woman.

He saw her feet first when she strode into view while he was crouched on the gray-blue industrial carpeting of Swiftcurrent’s library, scanning the bottom shelf of reference books for a local business directory. He was about to give up in defeat when those long, sexy feet appeared, the toes painted crimson, perched on do-me-baby stilettos.

Naturally, the sight of those feet encouraged his gaze to travel north, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Her legs were curvy but sleek, her red-and-black skirt gratifyingly short. The academic in him might register that those shoes were hard on the woman’s spine but as she reached up to place a book on a high shelf, the man in him liked the resulting curve of her back, the seductive, round ass perched high.

From down here, he had a great view of shapely hips, a taut belly, and breasts so temptingly displayed they ought to have a “for sale” sign on them.

He shouldn’t stare. He knew that, but couldn’t help himself—torn between the view up her skirt and that of the underside of her chest. He felt like a kid in a candy store, gobbling everything in sight, knowing he’d soon be kicked out and his spree would end.

Sure enough, while he was lost in contemplation of the perfect angle of her thigh, the way it sloped gracefully upward to where paradise lurked, she looked down and caught him ogling. Her face was as sensual and gorgeous as her body—sleek black hair, creamy skin, and plump red lips. For that instant, when their gazes first connected, he felt as though something mystical occurred, though it could have been a surge of lust shorting his brain.

Her eyes went from liquid pewter to prison-bar gray in the time it took her to realize that he hadn’t been down here staring at library books. What the hell was the matter with him, acting like a fourteen-year-old pervert?

“Can I help you with something?”

Since he’d been caught at her feet, staring up her skirt, he muttered the first words that came into his head. “Honey, I can’t begin to tell you all the ways you could help me.”

The prison bars seemed to slam down around him. “Do you need a specific reference volume? A library card? Directions to the exit?”

The woman might look as though her photo ought to hang in auto garages reminding the grease monkeys what month it was, but her words filled him with grim foreboding. He was so screwed.

“You’re
the librarian?”

A ray of winter sunlight stole swiftly across the gray ice of her eyes. “Yes.”

“But you’re all wrong for a librarian,” he spluttered helplessly.

“I’d best return my master’s degree then.”

“I mean . .” He gazed at her from delicious top to scrumptious bottom. “Where’s your hair bun? And bifocals? And the crepe-soled brogues and . . . and the tweeds?”

If anything, her breasts became perkier as she huffed a quick breath in and out. “It’s a small mind that thinks in cliches.”

“And a big mouth that spouts them,” he admitted. God, what an idiot. He’d spent enough time with books to know that librarians came in all shapes and sizes, though, in fairness, he’d never seen one like this before. He scrambled to his feet, feeling better once he’d resumed his full height and was gazing down at her, where he discovered the view was just as good. He gave her his best shot at a charming grin. “I bet the literacy rate among men in this town is amazingly high.”

“Is there something I can help you with?”

So much for the charming grin. “Yes. Art.”

If anything, her gaze froze deeper. If he came back here, he’d have to remember long underwear and a hot water bottle. “As in, you’d like to show me your etchings?”

Couldn’t blame her, he supposed. She probably got hit on all the time. And he hadn’t exactly come across as suave. “As in, where’s your art section?”

“Photographic? Plastic? Sculp—”

“Paintings. Impressionist through modern.”

She glared at him as though waiting for the punch line to an off-color joke. When none came, she snapped, “This way.”

She led him past rows of books lined up with military precision, though it was her much more alluring backside that held his attention. He shrugged. If she didn’t want men looking, then what was she doing dressing like that?

“There you are.” She indicated a section small enough that he deduced Swiftcurrent, Oregon, didn’t rate fine arts all that highly.

“Thank you.” A quick glance told him he wouldn’t find anything of interest. The art books were standard small-library fare, enough for a grade-nine essay on “my favorite artist.” Needless to say, his book on Gauguin wasn’t on the shelves.

“Anything else?” How could a package so hot emit sounds so cold?

“Yes.” He turned back to her. “Newspaper files. Are they on computer?”

“For which paper?”

“The local one.” Damn, he’d forgotten the name.

“The
Swiftcurrent News.
Yes. We have files going back twenty years.”

“On computer?”

His hopeful entreaty was met with a bitchy smirk. “Microfiche.”

He might have known.

“If you plan to take anything out of the library, you will of course need a library card, Mr.?”

His ego might wish she were asking his name for personal reasons, but he wasn’t that stupid. She was worried he might pilfer one of her precious books.

“Duncan Forbes.”

She nodded and pointed to a corner. The library was all on one level, small enough that he could see from one end to the other without squinting. It was part of a fairly new-looking municipal building constructed of river rock and cedar that also contained city hall and the police department. The complex was set in a paved courtyard with a few trees in stone tubs and that was set in a larger park area with lawns and seating areas. Across the pedestrian-only square was a row of retail: a cafe, health food store, and an outdoor equipment outlet he’d already patronized.

He felt the urge to head back over to check out more climbing grips. Instead, he followed the icy but sexy librarian once more.

Duncan took a seat in front of the microfiche reader in the area marked Periodicals.

“Which issues of the
Swiftcurrent News
do you require?”

Man, her looks were at odds with her personality. She talked like a seventy-year-old spinster. “Every issue for the past six months.”

With a frown at him, as though she were trying to think of a reason to refuse, she finally slipped a stretchy red thing like a coiled telephone cord from around her wrist and fitted a key hanging from it into the lock of the cabinet below the fiche reader. After carefully removing a plastic file box as though it contained the CIA’s most secret files, she relocked the cabinet and placed the box at his elbow.

She walked away then, but he felt her eyes lasering into his back as he set up.

He was familiar enough with microfiche that he didn’t have to ask the ice queen for anything. Not that it was completely her fault they hadn’t hit it off right away. Tact had never been his strong suit.

“Should wear a pair of support hose at least, and a cardigan,” he mumbled to himself as he flipped through the fiches and started six months back.

A couple of months earlier, an intriguing rumor had reached his ears that a certain art and antiques dealer, Franklin Forrest, had some information on a Van Gogh missing since World War II. The source was reliable: Duncan’s great-uncle Simon, who had better underground connections than the London tube the old man rode every day.

Since the family that was the rightful owner of the missing Van Gogh landscape was among Duncan’s clients, he’d cleared his schedule as quickly as he could and followed the rumor out west.

Before he contacted Franklin Forrest, Duncan wanted to get a feel for the place where the man lived and worked, see if he showed up in local news clippings.

He squinted at the blurry image on the screen and adjusted the focus, then began to read.

Within half an hour he received worse news than he could have imagined when he stumbled across Franklin Forrest’s obituary.

Forrest had been an art student in Paris when the Nazis invaded Poland and, according to the rumor that had brought Duncan here, had known the young man who’d supposedly hidden the Van Gogh—a Frenchman and a fellow art student who was later killed fighting for the Resistance. Now Forrest was dead and with him the first faint lead to the missing painting’s whereabouts in more than half a century.

Shit.
Shit, shit shit!

Automatically, Duncan started scribbling notes even as he tried to take in the depressing probability that he’d come all the way to this backwater for nothing

Mr. Forrest had been an old man, more than ninety when he died, but still Duncan couldn’t believe his bad luck. He’d missed the man by a mere two months.

Shit
^-
.

“Mr. Forbes!”

The sharply shouted accusation made him jump a mile. He glared at the red-faced librarian standing over him like
Playboy’s
version of the wrath of God.

“Aren’t you supposed to whisper in a library?” he asked. “You damn near gave me a heart attack.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice vibrated with loathing

“Research, sister. What do you call it?”

“I call it defacing public property.”

He blinked, then followed the accusing line of her arm right down to her red-painted fingertip which pointed, like a blood-tipped arrow, to the open reference book on which he’d mindlessly scribbled notes.

“Shit. I mean damn. Sorry. Forgot it wasn’t my own book.”

“Apparently.”

“Hey, it was a mistake. I’ll replace the book.”

“You certainly will. Come this way.”

“Wait, I’m not—”

But he was wasting his breath. She snapped the book closed, picked it up as though he weren’t worthy to touch the thing, and marched to the checkout desk.

He followed. “Now, just a damn minute. I still need that book.”

“That’s lucky. Because you’re purchasing it.”

Fair enough. He was willing to buy the book. He wanted his notes. He pulled out his wallet and waited as she ran the bar code through a scanner. He wondered sourly why they could computerize that and not the newspaper archives.

She pushed a lot of buttons on her computer/cash register combo while he stood there feeling like a kid who’d pulled detention.

At last he heard the whir of a printer.

“That will be one hundred and forty-eight dollars,” she said crisply. “How do you wish to pay?”

What did she take him for? “A hundred and forty-eight bucks?” He glared at her and grabbed the book, flipped it over. The price was printed on the back cover. “Look. Right there is the price. Forty-one dollars.”

“That’s right.” She sounded cheerful for the first time since they’d met. “Forty-one for the book,” she said in her clear, musical voice. She grabbed the printout and slapped it in front of him. A couple of older women strolled by and shot him a suspicious glance. He grit his teeth.

“Plus a seven dollar restocking fee.” She pointed to the last item with relish. “And a one hundred dollar fine for defacing municipal property.”

He placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward until he was close enough to see the flecks of gold in the center of each iris, close enough to smell—he wasn’t sure what. Jasmine, maybe. Some kind of flower much too sweet to lend its fragrance to this woman.

“You don’t have the authority to issue fines.”

She didn’t appear remotely intimidated as he towered over her, or ruffled by his temper. “As a matter of fact, I do. But, if you like, I can call city hall and have Sergeant Perkins issue you the ticket, or if he’s not in, the chief of police himself will take care of it. Then you’ll be escorted next door to pay your fine and it’s up to the law enforcement officer whether he wants to add vandalism or public mischief charges. Those carry jail time.” She shrugged elegant shoulders. “Up to you.”

He pulled out his wallet and glared at her. “I don’t suppose you take credit cards?”

“Cash or check.” She glanced at him. “Certified.”

It was obvious she was hoping he had neither, so she could toss him in jail.

He dug out bills, glad he’d hit the bank yesterday, slapping three fifties down. While he waited for his change, he tapped his fingertips on the counter top. Everything was all neat and orderly, color-coded and Dewey-decimaled within an inch of its life. A small brass-and-wood plaque read A. M. Forrest, Head Librarian. Not so much as a finger mark smudged its shining brilliance.

His fingers stopped tapping.
Forrest?
There was only the one librarian that he’d seen. In a town this size, chances were everyone who shared a name was closely related. He recalled the obituary. There had been two granddaughters. One was Genevieve, Germaine, something with a G. The other was . . . Alexandra. That was it. A. M. Forrest looked to be in her late twenties, which put her about the right age to be one of Forrest’s granddaughters.

This day just kept heading south. Inside his head he shouted every foul curse he’d ever heard. He kept his lips firmly clamped, though. Let one of those curses escape and the librarian would have him locked up on death row.

While she meticulously counted out his change, he decided to find out if his dreadful suspicion was true. “A. M. Forrest,” he said as pleasantly as a man who’s paying a punitive fine for an honest mistake could. “What’s the A. M. for?”

She paused and he kept right on looking at her, his brows raised. She must know if she didn’t tell him he’d find out easily enough what her name was. “Alexandra Michelle.”

He was never sorrier to have made a correct assumption. Well, if she was the granddaughter of Franklin Forrest, and a remaining link to the man he’d hoped to see, he was going to have to grovel himself into her good books. He’d traveled a long way. If she knew anything about her grandfather’s affairs, there was hope he could still salvage some scrap of information from his trip. He swallowed his annoyance. “Can I call you Alex?”