“To shoot us if we don’t start bringing in some money. Not that those were her exact words. She’s the polite one in the family. The responsible one. Which is yet another reason why her interest in you is so unusual.”
Skye’s comments were starting to aggravate him. “She told me you wouldn’t bother me again.”
“I never bothered you in the first place.” Skye put her hand on his bare arm. “See? No chemistry.”
She was completely right, but he didn’t have to let her know that. Luke leaned closer . . . and that’s when Julia walked in.
“Skye!” Her outraged voice clearly traveled to Luke’s ears.
Skye just grinned and handed Luke the flyer before hopping off the bar stool and sashaying her way out the door. Luke expected Julia to follow her.
She didn’t. Instead, she honed in on him with the accuracy of a scud missile. “What were you doing with my sister?”
He wiped an area of the bar he’d already cleaned twice. “What did it look like I was doing?”
“It looked like you were about to kiss her.” Julia gave him two seconds to deny it before launching her attack. “Stay away from Skye.”
“You like giving orders,” Luke noted. “Must be a librarian thing.”
“And you seem to like ignoring them. Must be a bad-boy biker thing,” she immediately retorted.
“I’m not the only one who ignores your orders. Your own sister—”
She interrupted him. “I’ll take care of my sister. You leave her alone.”
“You know . . .” He leaned closer to prop his elbows on the bar. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”
She raised her nose in the air as if avoiding a foul smell. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”
He grinned. “Yeah, definitely jealous.”
She lowered her head to glare at him. “Wrong.”
“It’s Halloween, you know. You really should have worn your Bo Peep costume tonight.” Leaning closer, he added, “Or you could have put on a belly-dancing costume.”
Luke was close enough to see the expression in those hazel-with-a-bit-of-green-going-on eyes of hers go from disconcerted to embarrassed to resigned. “Skye told you, didn’t she?”
“That you’re an even better belly dancer than she is?” He grinned. “Yeah. She did.”
“Well, keep it to yourself.”
“Believe me, I will hold that image near and dear to my heart.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I,” he solemnly assured her. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Boy Scout?” She sounded hopeful.
“Are you kidding?” he scoffed. “No way. Listen, how good are you at picking paint colors?”
The abrupt change of subject clearly threw her for a second. “Paint colors?”
“Adele thinks the place could use some sprucing up.” Luke glanced at the dingy walls and the display of mounted plastic fish and had to agree that the décor could use some updating. The equipment behind the bar and in the kitchen had been modernized, but nothing else had been.
“Then you should be asking Adele about paint colors.”
“She’s color-blind.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t want anything weird or pastel.”
“You could go with a warm neutral color. Or a nice hunter green like this.” She pointed to one of the colors on the paint chart he’d pulled out from beneath the bar before scooting onto a bar stool to get a better look.
A customer required Luke’s attention, but when he returned to Julia a few minutes later, he found she’d already filled two paper napkins with notes and was still busily writing away.
Standing there, he noticed the way her blond hair curved against her cheek. She had most of it tucked behind one ear but one bit had come loose, and that made him want to reach out and see if the strands were as silky as they looked.
She was such a golden girl sitting there, all proper and responsible as she studied little squares of paint color with weird names like Canyonlands and Divine and Penny. He couldn’t blame his desire on the Bo Peep costume this time. She was wearing regular clothes tonight—jeans, T-shirt, fleece pullover. You couldn’t get more L.L. Bean than that.
Yet he still wanted to peel that T-shirt off her shoulders and find out what color her bra was and how it looked against her creamy skin.
She merely had to exist, and she got to him. “So what brought you out on Halloween night?”
“My mother told me Skye was coming to see you.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“I didn’t stick around long enough to hear that part,” Julia admitted.
“Too bad.”
“I promised you Skye wouldn’t bother you anymore.”
“So you came charging in here to protect me from your sister?” he drawled. “How . . .
sweet
of you.”
“I did not come charging in here. You make me sound like a rhino or something.”
“No, the rhino is the guy in the corner over there, the one sitting with the giraffe.”
“Why are all these people in costumes?”
“Hello . . .” He gently tapped her temple. “It’s Halloween.”
“I know that.”
“I’m offering a free beer if you come in wearing a costume.”
“Oh.”
“Oh. That’s it? No comments? No insults?”
“When have I insulted you?”
“Too many times to count.”
“Oh, please. That is
so
not true.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I’ve been exceptionally nice to you, especially considering how rude you’ve been to me.”
“Me. Rude to you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Yet you’re still protecting me from your sister.”
“More like I’m protecting
her
from
you
.”
“Because you want me for yourself.”
“Right,” she mocked him. “I don’t know how I manage to keep my hands off you.”
“It’s difficult for you, I’m sure,” he noted with pseudo-modesty.
“But I manage.”
“Yeah, I noticed that about you. That . . . and your mouth.”
“What about my mouth?” She lifted her hand to be sure there weren’t any Pop-Tart crumbs stuck to it.
“I like your mouth. I want to kiss it.” He reached out and brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. “Slowly. Over and over again.”
The costumed crowd faded into the background as Julia was bombarded with a tidal wave of desire. A simple touch, yet her reaction was totally intense.
Her parted lips positively hummed with excitement while shivers of irrational pleasure danced down her spine.
And those eyes of his. They did things to her. Looked at her with such brooding eloquence. Sent her visual messages that bypassed mere words and went directly to visceral passion.
I want you. Naked. Here. Now
.
Not that he was stripping her with his gaze or anything tacky like that. This was totally magnetic, like a force field locking on her and
only
her . . . pulling her in.
Julia had abandoned the prim white blouse in exchange for a light blue velvet trimmed V-neck T-shirt she’d owned for ages. The brown pants had been replaced with a comfy pair of jeans. Clothes for relaxing at home in, not for inspiring a guy like Luke to seduce her. So what was going on here?
She’d noticed Skye’s absence when Toni had refused to go to bed by eight, which seemed more than a reasonable bedtime for a four-year-old in Julia’s opinion and that of the various experts who posted such things on parenting sites on the Internet that Julia had checked out.
When she’d asked her mother where Skye was, she’d heard the alarming news that her sister had headed off to speak to Luke.
Julia hadn’t waited to hear more. She’d grabbed a fleece pullover from a peg by the door and headed straight here.
Only to find Luke leaning toward her sister as if he were about to kiss her.
The memory made her jerk back from his tempting touch. “Oh, no, you don’t.” Her words were meant as much for herself as for him. “What were you talking to my sister about?”
“You.”
She wasn’t really sure she wanted to know more than that. But she had to ask anyway. “What did she say?”
“That you’re attracted to me.”
“And you believed her?”
“I believe what I see when I look in your eyes.”
Aggravating as he might be, Luke did have a way with words when he wanted to. And then he had those deep Dylan Thomas, I’ve-got-secrets blue eyes. He only had to look at her to make her want him.
“Don’t.” Her voice was unsteady.
“Don’t what?” He gently traced the line of her jaw with his index finger. “Don’t notice your mouth? Don’t believe what I see in your eyes? Don’t long to kiss you every time I see you?”
“All of the above,” she croaked.
He just smiled and shook his head before cupping her cheek in the palm of his big hand. “Sorry, but I don’t do well following orders. One of the reasons I didn’t re-enlist in the Marine Corps when my time was up.”
“I didn’t know you were a Marine.”
He shrugged and let his hand slip away, looking as if he regretted letting that bit of information slip. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
“I’d like to change that sometime.” The words were out before she could stop them.
“You might be able to kiss a few more secrets out of me. It’s worth a try. Care to give it your best shot?”
“Here?” She looked around. “In the middle of Maguire’s?”
“Wherever, whenever.”
His gaze captured hers, and she had a hard time breaking that visual bond. Knowing when it was time to retreat, she slid off the bar stool. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.” He sounded ultimately confident that she’d come around to his way of thinking.
As she walked out of Maguire’s, Julia reminded herself that it was Halloween night, a time of madness. That was the reason for her momentary foolishness in flirting with Luke.
Tomorrow things would calm down, and everything would return to normal. That’s what she wanted. Not Luke.
Chapter Six
Julia
had just finished going through the three most recent issues of
Publishers Weekly
for selection purposes when she happened to look out the library window, the one located beside the reference desk.
Blinking, she removed her reading glasses and scooted her rolling chair around the deep bookshelves that created a half-wall behind the desk. She needed to get closer to the window . . .
What Julia saw made her want to turn and run in the other direction. Or hide in the rarely used anthropology section back in the 572 area of the stacks.
But that would be irresponsible of her.
Her house was located right across the street. The sun was shining down on it . . . and on the mob gathered on the sidewalk in front.
The rolling chair zoomed across the floor as she leapt out of it. On her way out the library’s front door, Julia told the part-time assistant at the circulation desk, “I’m taking my lunch now.”
Without even bothering to grab her coat, Julia raced home to find out what was going on. People blocked her way. “Excuse me . . .” she said.
“Hey, no cutting! The line starts back there . . . Oh sorry, Julia. I didn’t realize it was you,” Mabel from the video store said. She had a bright red-and-black tartan cap jauntily perched atop her pink hair.
“What’s going on?”
“Sue Ellen says she saw the image of Jesus in the fur of one of the llamas.”
This might sound more impressive to Julia had she not known that Sue Ellen Riley was several pancakes short of a stack. She was also someone who loved the limelight. “Where is she?”
“Up there.” Mabel pointed toward the head of the line.
“Well, Sue Ellen is mistaken. These are just two llamas named Ricky and Lucy.”
“Do they have a manger? Maybe we should use them in the Christmas pageant at St. Mary’s?”
“The pageant at our church is better and bigger,” someone else stated. “The llamas should be at First Baptist.”
“Everyone is welcome at the Unitarian Church,” another person piped up.
“Listen, everybody,” Julia said, “this is all just a big misunderstanding.”
Mabel’s expression turned rebellious. “Are you charging money to see the llamas? Is that it?”
“No, of course not. At least I don’t think so . . .” With her family, anything was possible. “Let me go sort this out.”
“You do that. And see if you can’t get this line to move a little faster,” Mabel told her. “I’ve been standing here longer than I do at Wal-Mart on a crowded Saturday afternoon.”
Julia had no trouble spotting Sue Ellen, who still sported the big hair look so popular in the ’80s when she was a cheerleader. The sunshine glowed off her golden hair like a huge halo.
No wait, she
was
wearing a halo.
“Sue Ellen, this is getting out of hand.”
“Not my doing. A greater force is at work here.”
“I don’t see it,” Dora Abernathy from down the street was saying, squinting through her bifocals at Lucy. The female llama stood primly by the fence, looking perplexed by all the attention. “All I see is a bunch of fur.”
“Because that’s all there is to see,” Julia said in exasperation. “Remember that incident with the Rueben sandwich?”
Sue Ellen’s expression turned defensive. “That image was easy to see.”
“Because you rigged it that way to increase sales at your brother-in-law’s diner,” Julia retorted.
“Those were all false accusations. And I certainly didn’t rig this. Why would I?”
“How should I know?”
“I’m telling you, I still don’t see it!” Dora’s voice turned querulous.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s right there.” Sue Ellen pointed, the glitter stars on her lilac acrylic nails reflecting the sunlight. “Here, on the right side.”
“Whose right?” Dora demanded. “The llama’s or mine?”
“The llama’s.”