Trouble When You Walked In (Contemporary Romance) (8 page)

“He’s helping the team
and
helping Cissie,” gushed Mrs. Hattlebury.

“He’s just being pragmatic, ladies,” said Nana. “Don’t get all starry-eyed.”

“But he’s cute,” said Sally. “And he didn’t have to come to the sit-in. Talk about
nice
.”

“You have to admit, he’s a good sport, Nana,” Mrs. Donovan said.

“He’s charming, I’ll grant him that,” Nana conceded.

“He came with the
chief
,” Cissie reminded everyone. “He didn’t bring food to support us. He
doesn’t
support us.”

Boone bit into a huge cinnamon cookie. “This is delicious,” he mumbled around the chewy morsel, and grinned.

“No,”
said Cissie, her throat working. “No, Mayor Braddock isn’t going to take over here. Sir, I’d like to speak with you, please. Outside?” She indicated the back door.

He swallowed the last of his cookie. “Fine.”

But the back door was stuck.

“Oh, shoot. It always jams when it’s about to rain,” Cissie said. “How about here?” She indicated another door near the magazines.

“All right by me.” He tried not to admire her pert rear as she strode purposefully toward their destination.

It was a broom closet.

“Whoa,” he said when she had to squeeze in next to him to be able to shut the door.

It was pitch-dark until she pulled a string tickling his face. One measly overhead light bulb came on.

“This is the only place we can get any privacy,” she whispered hoarsely, and moved her elbow out of his stomach. “I’m mad, and I don’t want the others to see me this way. I-I’m supposed to be leading this movement, and it wouldn’t be right for me to … flip out.”

“Flip out?” He was getting turned on again. She was close. Very close. “Why would you flip out? What does that involve exactly?”

“Losing my temper,” she hissed.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“There is if you’re a librarian.” She hesitated. “Besides, a Rogers thinks with her head when there’s a problem.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“
You
are. You’re not on our side in this fight, and yet you’ve convinced some people here that you are. And they’ve become complacent. We can’t afford to be.”

“If you want, I’ll tell them I think the library should be moved.”

“You do that,” she said. “Because when I remind them what you think, no one seems to believe it.”

He opened the broom closet door. “The library should be moved!” he yelled.

And shut the door again.

She sent him a droll look. “You’re not funny.”

“Come on. It was funny.”

She refused to admit it.

“Is there anything else,” he asked, “before we leave this meeting?”

“Yes.” She looked down, her lashes fanning her cheeks. “You really need to stop being so…” She looked up and away. Bit her lip.

“So what?” He was honestly concerned.

“So”—she scrunched her eyes closed—“so
sexy
.” She opened them again, and her lids fluttered madly for a second or two.

“Hmm.” It was getting hotter in here. “I’ll try.”

“Don’t think that’s a compliment,” she warned him.

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“As for the boys”—her manner was brisk again—“yes, we need to look like we have a crowd. So they can come. But if they don’t actually want to participate in the sit-in, they’ll have to go home right after Edwina leaves and they get a meal.”

“Fine.” She smelled good. Like cotton candy and spicy fallen leaves mixed up. “How would you feel about them calling the cheerleaders? You could feed a whole marching band out there. We could call them, too.”

“But this is
not
a party,” Cissie said. “You shouldn’t even be here. Chief Scotty should have come on his own. I almost think you did it to torment me—because you have the upper hand, and you have to rub it in.”

There. She’d finally gotten that off her chest. He could tell she’d been bursting with it.

“Your parents did the same thing,” she added.

“My
parents
? What happened?”

“They showed up here this afternoon and tried to intimidate me.”

Surprise, surprise
. “I should have guessed they would. Sorry about that.”

She looked small and vulnerable, and he felt sorry for her. And mad as hell at Becky Lee and Frank. “I’m not like them,” he insisted. “I didn’t come here to intimidate you.”

“But why would you be here?” Cissie’s tone had an edge to it. “It makes no sense.”

“It makes sense to
me
.” He put on his best wise-ruler face. “I’m mayor of this town. I want to be around when stuff happens.” Especially when an interesting woman was in charge, a woman he’d never noticed before, a woman who intimidated
him
.

“But nothing’s happened,” she said. “I’m not stupid. I know you and Chief Scotty are going easy on us. And I can guess that old Edwina doesn’t want to come down and report on this. She’s biased. She worshiped you in high school and probably still does.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do.”

“You were looking at me in high school?” he asked out of genuine curiosity.

She blushed. “Who wasn’t looking at you? You were the most popular boy. I couldn’t help seeing you everywhere. You were in the spotlight.”

“Well, now
you
are, so take advantage of it. Take advantage of
me
.”

Oops. That was a dumb thing to say. There was a split second of utter silence. Her pupils widened. And all he could think was that he was in a closet with a hot librarian, every man’s fantasy. Maybe she was wearing black lace panties and a plunging black bra beneath those frumpy clothes.

“I mean, of course, take advantage of my connections,” he segued smoothly. “I’m willing to share since I’m earning brownie points with my students. Starla must have donated six pies out there. And there’s banana pudding.”

Cissie studied his face for a second. “Okay. If your boys are going to call the cheerleaders, could they please also call some other girls? You know, some of the ones who didn’t make the squad? And they might as well call up the entire football team. I feel sorry for the second string. They should have a meal, too.”

“Deal.”

Fifteen minutes later, a bunch of cars and pickup trucks showed up. A
whole
bunch.

It was a party. No doubt about it. The noise level was through the roof. The food was decimated within twenty minutes. Some smart kid had brought a box of big garbage bags—“I told him to,” said Boone—and all the dirty plates and garbage went in there.

But there was no sign of Edwina.

“They can’t go yet,” Cissie yelled to Boone over the sound of teen voices. Every once in a while, she heard, “Boom!” from the children’s section. Sally, Hank Davis, and Charles were surrounded by cheerleaders watching the end of
Frozen
with them.

“Don’t worry,” Boone said. “They’re teenagers. They don’t want to go home.”

“Don’t they have homework? It’s a school night.”

“The football players and cheerleaders all have study hall before practice. A whole two hours to get schoolwork done.”

“Oh, good.” She felt better about that.

And then some music came from out back. Cissie peered through the window. Someone had parked a pickup in the dirt parking lot, opened all its doors, and turned up the radio to a hip-hop station.

“That’s Nana’s truck!” And there was Nana in her red-and-white-striped pajamas, outside chatting with some teens. Many more, both guys and girls, streamed out of the library through the door Cissie hadn’t been able to budge earlier.

“Who got this door open?” she cried.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Boone said.

“Outta my way, everyone. I gotta bust a move.” Sally hustled Hank Davis and Charles out the door.

“Hey, ho … hey, ho,” Hank Davis said over and over, louder and louder.

“Look at Nana and those kids dance.” Mrs. Donovan put her arm around Cissie’s waist. Together they basked in the refreshingly cold night air wafting into the room. “This is a sit-in?”

“It
was
,” Cissie replied. “It’s a party now.”

And it looked like fun. She couldn’t have fun, though. She had to protect the interests of the library.

“Don’t you fret,” said Mrs. Hattlebury. “It’s a sit-in, all right, although I prefer to call it a dance-in now. They’re on library property out there.”

“Yep,” said Boone. “And they’re raising a ruckus. Someone in the neighborhood is gonna call Scotty and complain.”

“Good,” Cissie piped up from the depths of her despair, which was evaporating again. They needed trouble. They needed it badly. “As long as no students get arrested. I don’t want them to ruin their futures. Scotty can arrest me, if he has to.”

All she had to look forward to was being a librarian in a strip mall. And withering away like a prune since she probably was never going to have sex again. Think of all the youth-preserving hormones she’d be missing out on. Sex gave them to you. Nana told her that was why she looked sixty instead of eighty-two.

“Scotty’s not going to arrest anyone.” Boone’s voice was warm and titillating.

For a second, if Cissie didn’t listen to the words, she could imagine him talking dirty to her in bed.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d think about having some fun at your sit-in.”

The words
fun
and
sex
each had three letters, so they were pretty closely related, right? What if he’d said, “I’d think about having some
sex
at your sit-in?”

Cissie almost giggled, but then she remembered she was acting absolutely deranged due to extreme sensual deprivation.

“No,” she told him, standing firmly in her Hanes white cotton bikini briefs. “This is serious business. As soon as Edwina shows—”

And then a country song came on, a slow one. Boone grabbed her hand. “Come with me,” he said, and pulled her out the door. “We’re gonna dance.”

CHAPTER NINE

A big gust of wind lifted Cissie’s skirt. “I don’t really know
how
to dance—” she began.

“Shush,” said Boone.

Wait—
she
was the shusher!

He pulled her up against him. “Don’t think. You just have to feel it. Like this northwest wind. It’s been blowing across the mountain all day.”

His warm drawl reminded Cissie of a scratchy wool blanket, the kind every Kettle Knob family kept in their car trunk in wintertime. You didn’t want it … but you did. No other blanket would do when it came to saving your family if your car was stranded in a snowstorm. It had to be the old army blanket or nothing.

“But if Edwina sees me—” She couldn’t get her foot action right.

“She’ll think you’re bold.”

The wind tugged at his hair, and Cissie felt its wildness,
his
wildness. In another life, maybe he’d been a Celtic warrior and she’d been a princess he’d kidnapped and made the cook in his camp, and they’d fallen in love inside his crude tent made of elk skin.

“This is a helluva sit-in,” he said. “Not some boring one. Anyone can have a boring one.”

“True.” Cissie felt herself being drawn in against her will. Her feet were moving in the right direction finally. And now … now she was swaying, and bumping up against Boone—against that zipper of his that she’d noticed behind her prescription sunglasses. His chest was broad, his arm around her back strong and possessive. He had rhythm—the type that made a girl think in directions she probably shouldn’t. This was only one dance. But she couldn’t help it. She was mere flesh and blood.

“Coach! Looking good!” The catcalls were endless.

“Ignore ’em,” Boone said. “I’ll get them back later.”

“Fine,” she mumbled. He was so cute and naturally good at everything. And she was awkward, just like she’d been in high school. She’d thought she’d outgrown it, but it always came out, this insecurity of hers, at inopportune times.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Boone said, probably to break the weird silence.

“Yes?” She was glad to say
something
, especially because the song, which up until now, she’d found completely harmless, was romantic enough to be embarrassing.

“You know what you said earlier, about how I need to stop being so sexy?”

She nodded, and her heart beat painfully fast.

“Normally, that’d be a come-on if a girl said that to a guy.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said. “Please. Don’t think that.”

“I don’t. You made it painfully clear it wasn’t.”

“Right.” She desperately wanted to adjust her glasses on her nose, but she restrained herself.

“Why is that, though?” he asked. “Why should I stop being so … sexy? Your words, remember. Not mine.”

He grinned, and the warmth in her belly blossomed to a flame that traveled to her nether regions. Had Elizabeth Bennet ever had that happen when Darcy looked at her?
Nether regions
sounded nice and Austen-esque.

Cissie looked quickly down. “Because it gives you an unfair advantage. Look how all the women behaved when you were inside.” She forced herself to look up again. “You charmed them,” she said lightly.

“But not you?”

They danced another few seconds.

“No,” she said. “You’re a rogue even to ask.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Rogue. How many people say that these days?”

“I read a lot,” she said with a genuine smile. “I get caught back in other centuries quite easily.”

She looked over his shoulder. By God, maybe she’d just participated in some flirtation. And she hadn’t been half-bad. But she was flirting with the man who was going to wreak havoc with her future, one way or the other, if she didn’t get her act together.

Nana, Sally, and Hank Davis were holding hands, swinging them high, and singing along with the chorus, which was all about kissing, while Charles stood in the middle of their circle, sucking his thumb and swaying back and forth.

Cissie pulled away. “I need to get back inside.” She really didn’t because Mrs. Hattlebury and Mrs. Donovan were keeping an eye on things around the shelves. “But thank you for the dance.”