Broken Resolutions (14 page)

An announcement affecting me? What the hell does that mean?

“Should I be worried?” Angie called after her.

Tina turned and gave her an assessing look. “Maybe.” She flicked a glance at Angie’s clothes. “And no jeans.”

Before Angie could say anything else, the assistant director let the door close behind her.

Angie waited until she heard Tina’s car pull away from the parking lot. Then she staggered back into a chair, planted her elbows on the workroom table, and covered her face with her hands.

The door to the main library opened with a protesting squeak. A slim arm surrounded her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. Penny again. Angie covered Penny’s hand with her own and leaned into her friend. The soft cotton sweater on Penny’s shoulder cushioned Angie’s hot cheek. Breathing in her friend’s familiar, lemony scent, she relaxed a little bit.

“Oh, thank God,” she said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Penny said. “I’m glad you’re relieved. I’m just not sure why you’re so thankful. From what I could tell before you closed the door, Tina was reaming your ass. In the nicest possible way, but still. Are you simply thrilled to have continued gainful employment?”

“Not that gainful,” Angie muttered.

“True enough. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m very happy she didn’t fire me. Trust me on that,” Angie said. “But on this particular occasion, I was giving thanks that Tina came and left through the workroom. She didn’t see the public spaces at all.”

“Why wouldn’t you want her to see the rest of the building? The library always looks great. You make sure of that.”

Angie raised her head and looked at Penny.

Penny gave a little start. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh, shit. Yeah, that would’ve been ugly.”

“No joke.”

Angie stood up, and Penny’s arm slid off her shoulder. The two women walked into the main library and gazed wordlessly at the signs Angie had plastered over every available surface a week or so ago.

Each poster featured Cupid, but not the baby version. No, this particular Cupid was all man. He stood bare-chested, wearing only a tiny white loincloth. Muscles rippled down his tight abs, strong arms, and long legs. A quiver of arrows lay on his back. He’d removed a single arrow and was holding it in one hand while gripping his bow in the other. His blond curls clustered in carefully created disarray around his chiseled features. He gleamed, as befitted a god. Or, alternatively, as befitted a male model who’d slathered baby oil all over himself.

The image: enticing. The professional judgment involved in displaying it: questionable. A firing offense? Given what Angie had heard today . . . maybe.

Below the image of Studly Cupid, she’d written: A
TTENTION
, A
LL
B
ATTLEFIELD
B
RANCH
PATRONS
! A
RE
YOU
INSPIRED
BY
V
ALENTINE
’
S
D
AY
? I
F
SO
,
WRITE
THE
HOTTEST
,
MOST
WELL
-
WRITTEN
SEX
SCENE
YOU
CAN
(
UP
TO
2,000
WORDS
),
PRINT
IT
OUT
,
AND
TURN
IT
IN
TO
THE
LIBRARY
BY
F
EBRUARY
13. T
HE
AUTHOR
OF
THE
BEST
ONE
—
AS
JUDGED
BY
OUR
STAFF
—
WILL
RECEIVE
A
GIFT
CERTIFICATE
FOR
A
COUPLES
MASSAGE
AT
M
OUNTAIN
V
ALLEY
M
ASSAGE
!

The contest: very popular among her patrons. The professional judgment involved in creating it:
very
questionable. A firing offense? Given what she’d heard today . . . probably.

Both the image and the contest itself could potentially lead to Angie’s imminent unemployment. But she had an even bigger problem: the text above Cupid. The text she’d giggled over and typed with such glee.

THINK YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO STIFFEN CUPID’S ARROW? THE LIBRARY CHALLENGES YOU: MAKE HIS QUIVER . . . QUIVER.

The tagline: hilarious. At least to Angie and the patrons who’d commented on it. The professional judgment involved in using it: dismal. A firing offense? Given what she’d heard today . . . abso-fuckin’-lutely.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus
.

“If you cancel the contest, patrons will complain and you’ll get fired,” Penny whispered. “If you don’t cancel the contest and the administration finds out, they’ll fire you anyway.”

Angie pursed her lips. There was no need to respond. Penny had pinpointed the problem with her customary precision.

“You’re fucked,” Penny added, as if Angie didn’t already know that.

“Without a doubt,” Angie said. “Without a doubt.”

2

O
ne more complaint and we’ll fire you. We won’t want to, but we will.

No matter how intently Angie tried to concentrate on the narrow country road ahead of her, no matter how loudly the Beastie Boys howled about sabotage on her car’s stereo, the warning from Tina replayed in Angie’s traitorous brain.

There’s an announcement tomorrow that will affect you.

God knew what Tina had meant. So now Angie needed to survive a good twelve hours of uncertainty and dread before she discovered her fate. Her plans for the rest of the evening: Home. Bra removal. Beer. Bitching on the phone to her besties. More beer. Buying as many filthy e-books as her Kindle could handle. Finally, reading said e-books alongside various personal appliances until she fell asleep in a blaze of horny glory.

Unfortunately, all these plans required the dude driving the little hybrid in front of her to locate his accelerator soon. If he didn’t, she could kiss the prospect of reading
Long Train Coming
—the anthology of railway-themed erotica she’d coveted for weeks—goodbye. Instead, she’d spend her evening following him at the speed of an arthritic sloth. For entertainment, she could look at the piles of boxes visible through his car’s rear windows and contemplate the suitcases strapped to his roof as she made her way home.

Anticlimactic, really.

The extreme slowness of the driver surprised her. She’d caught a glimpse of him when they’d rounded a sharp curve, and he looked young. In her experience, people this averse to acceleration whacked passersby with their canes and called people below the age of sixty whippersnappers.

There was no good place to pass the hybrid, though. Despite the fact that she hadn’t seen another car traveling in either direction for a few miles, the twisting road made it dangerous to go around him. Unless he turned onto a side street, she was stuck until she reached her neighborhood. She might as well relax and resign herself to a long, boring ride home.

As their little two-car parade neared the railroad tracks, Angie prepared to brake for the millionth time. To her surprise, though, the hybrid’s taillights didn’t illuminate. The car didn’t slow down. In fact. . . was he accelerating? What the hell?

The car ahead of her jolted over the tracks, the packages in and on the car shifting wildly.

“Oh, shit,” Angie said, darting a quick glance at the shoulder up ahead. Just in case.

For a moment, she thought she’d dodged a bullet. But then, right after she crossed the tracks herself, a suitcase from the car ahead of her rattled loose and flew straight toward her windshield.

“Fuck!” She jerked the steering wheel hard to the right and stomped on the brakes. With a piercing screech, her car shuddered and fishtailed. Her head snapped forward, and the sharp smell of burning rubber made her eyes water. Finally, her car came to a sudden and jarring halt on a patch of grass.

Angie took stock of herself. The seatbelt had locked her into place, and her car hadn’t hit anything. Her neck might prove a little sore in the morning, but all in all, no permanent harm done. The same couldn’t be said for the navy suitcase that had flown off the hybrid’s roof, however. The case itself lay near the side of the two-lane road, splayed open by the impact. Its contents had landed all over the asphalt. A hundred feet ahead of her, the silver car—sans roof suitcase—had pulled off to the shoulder. So far, the driver hadn’t emerged.

Angie’s hands shook from the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Clearly, she couldn’t get back on the road for another minute or two. Not without risking an accident. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, attempting to calm her pounding heart. The faint crunch of feet on gravel filtered into her ears, but she paid no attention.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out
.

A tentative tap on the window next to her made her jump. She opened her eyes and looked up. And up. And up.

A miracle stood beside her car. Or at least what passed for a miracle in rural Nice County, Maryland. The setting sun lit the man from behind, transforming his curly, dark hair into a halo around his head. As she watched, he bent at the waist to peer into her window, but she could still tell that he was tall. Well over six feet. Even in the dusky light, his blue eyes stood out in sharp relief against his pale skin.

Tall. Dark-haired. Handsome. Standing by her window with furrowed brows and his attention completely and utterly on her. Only her. Exactly what she needed to forget her terrible day at work.

Men like this didn’t exist in Angie’s small community—or if they did, they didn’t come her way too often. If he wasn’t a miracle, she could only conclude she’d died in the accident. Decapitation by suitcase wasn’t how she’d pictured going. It seemed kind of undignified. But she supposed most deaths lacked dignity, when you got right down to it. It wasn’t as if she’d lived her life with such a surfeit of decorum anyway.

She took another glance at his blue, blue eyes. Yup. No doubt about it. Death or a miracle. The only other options that sprang to mind, given her usual luck with men: he was going to carjack her. Or attempt to sell her magazines. Or proselytize. Or invite her to his upcoming wedding with Larry.

Of all those choices, a heavenly visitor seemed the best option. So when he tapped on the window again, she rolled it down to meet her Miracle Man. He leaned in closer and surveyed her with worried eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t believe I—Jesus. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Sadly, the same can’t be said for your suitcase. What happened?”

Not that she really cared. No harm, no foul. She only wanted to get him talking so she could admire him for a few minutes more.

He sighed. “I dropped my sunglasses on the floor. I tried to pick them up and accidentally hit the gas. Also, I’m terrible at strapping things to my roof. Or so the evidence would indicate. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m Angie. Happy to meet you, handsome stranger.”

She held out her hand through the open window, and he stared at it for a moment without moving. Then he reached out and gave her fingers a careful squeeze.

“Grant Peterson. Again, I apologize for nearly beheading you with my luggage.” His deep voice rumbled through her ears and sent pleasant vibrations through her body.

At the touch of his skin against her own and the sight of that large hand encompassing hers so fully, she suppressed a shiver. “How tall are you?”

“Six feet and change,” he said, looking startled by the sudden change of topic.

“Because just looking at you makes me feel tiny. I loom over a lot of men, and it’s hard to feel dainty and feminine when you could crush a guy with one gigantic paw.” She waved her hand.

The corners of his lips tugged upward. At the same time, his eyes discreetly swept downward, taking a quick but careful inventory of all her important bits. “Dainty is overrated. And I don’t think any man would doubt you’re a woman. Not even if you were ten feet tall.”

Right after he spoke, his expression changed. He suddenly looked. . . confused. Disoriented. Why, Angie had no idea. She sympathized, though. At the moment, she felt a bit befuddled herself. Unbelievably flattered, but still. Befuddled. This guy seemed too good to be true. Hot, well spoken, and sweet... There had to be something wrong with him. But what?

Everything about this man is absolutely right
, her instincts insisted.
Come on, Burrowes. Gather ye studs while ye may.

She couldn’t trust her own instincts, though. After all, they’d almost gotten her fired earlier today. So before she did what they were screaming for her to do—claim this man before he got away—she needed to address a few key issues.

“What a lovely compliment,” she said. “Grant, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

He blinked at her. “I . . . suppose so. Okay.”

“Are you single? And straight?” she asked. “It’s fine if you aren’t straight, by the way. I can admire you in a different way. Like you’re a statue. Or a hot priest. You know, gorgeous but out of reach.”

“Yes. To both questions.” The tips of his ears had turned pink, only adding to his adorability.

“Are you a serial killer? Be honest.”

“Of course not,” he said. “But wouldn’t I say that even if I were?”

“That’s true.” She tapped her chin with her index finger. “I’ll have to hope if you
are
a murderer, you only hunt other killers.”

“I think those types of murderers are less common than television would have us believe.”

She laughed. “You’re probably right about that.”