Trouble When You Walked In (Contemporary Romance) (16 page)

“Don’t you remember Girl Scouts?”

Janelle finally looked a bit disconcerted. “That was a long time ago. People change.”

“I didn’t change. I still love Thin Mints. Do you?”

“No.”
Janelle shifted uneasily. “I’ve moved on to dark chocolate, if you must know. It’s actually good for you.”

Not as good for you as hot tubs and sex
, Cissie wanted to say.

And that was when she saw a bug stuck in the back of Janelle’s hair, its spindly legs waving frantically.

Luckily, Cissie liked bugs. She felt sorry for this one. It was one of the ugliest bugs she’d ever seen. Janelle had hated learning about bugs and snakes in Girl Scouts.

Cissie tucked a napkin in her fist and put her arm on the back of the booth behind Janelle’s shoulders.

“What are you
doing
?” Campbell’s mayor asked.

“Stretching.” Cissie smiled. “Remember the Girl Scout hug, though?”

“No.”

Janelle was such a liar. She remembered. Cissie could tell by how vehemently she denied it.

Boone said something dreary to Edwina about meetings and recorded minutes. Everything he said sounded sexy, so while Janelle’s attention was diverted by his husky drawl, in one swift motion Cissie pulled the bug off Janelle’s hair with the napkin.

“Ow!” Janelle said, and scooted closer to the wall, away from Cissie.

“Sorry, my ring got caught in your hair.” Cissie tucked the fisted napkin in her lap. She had no idea if the bug was alive or if she’d accidentally killed it. And she wasn’t wearing a ring. Hopefully, Janelle wouldn’t notice.

“Uh-huh,” Boone was saying into his phone. He clicked off and put it away.

“What did Edwina say?” Cissie had been too busy with Janelle to eavesdrop properly.

A look of chagrin passed over the mayor of Kettle Knob’s handsome face. “Edwina didn’t cover that meeting. She was at a baby shower. She sent her fledgling reporter, who’s since been fired for his crummy reporting skills. He’s back working at the video store.”

“So?” Cissie ignored Janelle’s annoyed sigh. “Did
he
cover it?”

Boone shook his head. “He never mentioned the library issue in his article. It was an oversight. And we should have caught it at the mayor’s office.”

“You should have.” Cissie couldn’t let him off the hook, as much as she was totally into falling asleep every night remembering their hot tub encounter and those kisses in the hall at his house. “Edwina should have been more careful, too.”

“
Our
paper in Campbell covered it.” Janelle pulled out her lipstick and reapplied it in the reflection from her spoon.

“But your paper only comes out every two weeks, and it’s for Campbell, not Kettle Knob. I have no reason to read it,” Cissie said.

“Well”—Janelle dropped her lipstick in her purse and snapped it shut—“it was in there. It’s a county issue.”

“I think you should tell the county to slow things down,” Cissie told Boone. “Get the people’s input on the library merger before you follow through.”

He had his thinking face on. “If the county guy ever shows up for lunch, I’ll certainly bring it up.” He called the waitress over.

Her name was Zoe. “Hey.” She smiled at the table occupants. “I’m new in town. Nice to meet all of you.”

Introductions and greetings were exchanged, followed by orders.

Zoe came back a minute later with Boone’s pie and coffee, along with Janelle’s tea.

“My brother’s the news anchor at the ABC station in Asheville,” Zoe said. “I should tell him about you two, Mayor Braddock and Miss Rogers. Your race should make for a good regional story—a Braddock versus a Rogers. I hear there’s an old rivalry there.”

“Not really,” said Cissie faintly. “We’re trying to stick to the issues.”

“She’s right.” Boone’s khaki-clad knees bumped up against Cissie’s, and he didn’t move them.

She didn’t move hers, either.

She looked down at the napkin in her lap.

Move your knees
, she told herself.

But she wouldn’t. No, she wouldn’t. Some deep inner hussy in her didn’t want to.

Why wasn’t he moving his knees? Was he even aware they were touching hers? He had to be.

She couldn’t look at him. A horrible longing came back to her. Went straight to the breathless part of her and then to the warm center of her, which he’d so expertly trifled with, like the cotton candy man does at the circus when he waves spun sugar in your face and you get a whiff of utter deliciousness.

Zoe laughed. “Political issues don’t bring up ratings as much as juicy human interest stories do.”

“There’s nothing juicy about this.” Cissie’s heart pounded hard from the knee situation. She knew very well she and Boone were juicy, but she had to think about the library.

She felt something stir in the napkin.

“Excuse me, I need to go.” She stood and cast a hasty glance at her tablemates. “I enjoyed talking to you.”

And touching knees …

“Likewise,” said Boone politely.

But she saw a glint in his eye. He was remembering her naked, she was sure of it.

“Wish you could stay, Cissie,” Janelle lied, and tossed off a fake smile for Boone’s sake.

Cissie was all steam, heat, and misplaced passion—it belonged on the issues, not on Boone’s body!—when she attempted to wriggle past Zoe and instead bumped hard into a man in a suit—the guy from the county. The napkin fell.

Where?

Cissie couldn’t tell.

But there was a pageant-queen kind of scream. And there was the bug on the tabletop, scurrying toward Janelle, who screamed again and drew her knees up so hard she jostled the table and knocked Boone’s coffee and blackberry pie into his lap onto those khaki pants.

“Dang.” Boone stood and stared at his crotch, which was covered in pie and coffee.

“Where’s the bug? Where’s that damned bug?” Janelle shrieked.

“I’m so sorry,” Cissie babbled, and grabbed another napkin off the table. She shoved it at Boone. “I was only trying to help. I’ll wash those for you tonight—”

Zoe, who was also busy trying to calm Janelle, froze and looked at Cissie.

Janelle instantly stopped screaming. “
What
did you say?”

The man from the county said, “Sorry I’m late. Can I order now?”

“In a minute.” Zoe looked between Cissie and Boone then reached into her apron pocket.

“I’ll bet you’re not supposed to make calls during work hours,” said Cissie.

“Yeah.” Boone threw the waitress his best mayoral look. “Take this man’s order, please.”

“I plan to,” said Zoe, clutching her phone, “just as soon as I finish texting my brother that the two people running for mayor of Kettle Knob are living together.”

“I never said that,” said Cissie.

“Nor did I,” added Boone.

“But she’s doing your laundry,” Zoe said.

“That’s ridiculous.” Janelle chewed her gum faster. “Why is she doing that, Boone?”

“It’s only temporary,” said Cissie.

“You
are
doing his laundry?” Janelle’s eyes widened. She looked at Boone. “She is?”

“No,” he bit off. “I do my own.” He took a breath and looked around. “But she and Nana are living at my house right now until their own gets repaired.”

“What about the Hattleburys?” Janelle’s gaze was indignant.

“Nana and I don’t know proper table etiquette,” said Cissie lamely. “I can’t tell a soup spoon from a teaspoon.”

Janelle’s perfectly sculpted chin jutted forward. “So you’re telling me that out of everyone in Kettle Knob, Boone’s the only one you could move in with when a tree falls through your roof?”

“No,” said Cissie. “But it’s convenient. He’s just up the mountain.” On a crag, one that was actually quite hard to get to. “Nana’s older now, and we did what was easiest for her. And it’s also none of anyone’s business.” She pretended she was in the library and looked down her nose at Janelle and then at Zoe.

Zoe grinned. “It’s a good story.”

“Then what are you doing working here?” Boone asked the waitress. “You should be writing for Edwina at the paper. She needs a reporter.”

“Maybe I will.” Zoe’s eyes gleamed with new ambition.

No one even noticed that the bug was sitting right in Boone’s empty saucer.

Cissie swiped it off the table into another napkin before Janelle could see. “I’m leaving.” She picked up her precious clipboard, then remembered the county guy. “And you shouldn’t move our library,” she said firmly. “It’s a
very
bad idea.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Boone had gone a whole week without interacting with Cissie, thanks to Nana and her house rules. He’d had glimpses of the contrary librarian—two without her knowing. She liked to walk outside, and he’d watched her out his bedroom window, like a sick stalker except he wasn’t one. He was the owner of the property, and he had a right to know where everyone was, especially a single, available woman who dressed in boring schoolmarm skirts and blouses that covered everything up and got his blood hotter than if she’d been in short shorts and a halter top.

So when she showed up at the diner, he’d been a little discombobulated by actually being in the same room as her, and then he was seriously impressed that she’d had the balls to follow him and Janelle to their table and ask them what they were talking about.

Things started to get weird when she’d been so awkwardly friendly with Janelle while he was on the phone. But he put two and two together when he saw the bug on the table and the squashed napkin in Cissie’s fist.

The girl had to get herself into everything.

The best part had been sitting directly across from her in the booth. He was taken right back to the hot tub, especially when their knees had knocked together—and neither one of them backed off.

It was a highly erotic experience.

Either that, or it was a silly game of Who’s the Most Stubborn and Weird About Not Moving Their Knees, and he dug that, too.

He felt the absence of her when she left the table. It made him realize he’d been bored for a very long time. But after he exited the diner—gossip flying right and left about him and Cissie—and headed to his parents’ house, he forced himself to think about other things that stressed him.

As he walked past the life-sized portrait of Richard in his parents’ entryway, which he’d only done a million times before, he didn’t need to look at the painting to recall that his late brother’s thirteen-year-old gaze was compassionate, brave, outright heroic.

And Boone had never known him.

He wasn’t one to fall into self-pity telling his family’s tragic tale about Richard’s cancer, or get psychologically wrapped around the axle, especially as his parents were straight out of psych textbooks themselves: for as long as Boone could remember, they’d tried to make Richard live on in him.

But Boone was used to it. Carried the weight lightly. He loved his parents. The more mellow he stayed about the situation, the less weird they were. It was only when he didn’t call them on it and let them play out the fantasy too long that they ran into trouble.

So far his method had worked pretty well.

Except for one thing.

And there was really no way out of it now. It was embedded so deeply in their family story, Boone forgot that the lie was wrong to hide—except on a certain day in the autumn, when the weight of it was too heavy. It was a day he hated to go through every year, and that day was coming up.

He refused to think about it now. He had something else he had to do, something almost as painful. He wouldn’t do it if it weren’t necessary, but it was. He knew when he was in over his head.

“In here!” his mother called to him from the kitchen.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked when he crossed the threshold.

“In his study.” Mom leaned her cheek up for a kiss. “How’s everything at your house with those two guests of yours?”

“Just fine,” he said, “but the cat’s out of the bag. Everyone knows. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Becky Lee sighed. “What will people think about you living with your opponent? It’s all very strange. What’s the world coming to?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. None of this is a big deal.”

She pressed her lips together. “I think you’re wrong. It
is
a big deal.” She put down her paring knife. “I hear you were invited to the country club for lunch with some VIPs, including that lovely young singer back here for a visit—”

“Who’s had a string of loser Hollywood boyfriends—”

“And the lieutenant governor. My goodness. Yet you turned them down.”

“Yep.” She didn’t have to know he turned them down because he was overwhelmed at work. “Hey, I need to get a book from my room.”

“Be my guest.” Her tone was terse.

`Everything was fine. Boone was Richard’s brother, but he was his own man, first and foremost, and his parents didn’t have the power to sway his choices anymore.

He knew full well Frank and Becky Lee’s flaws. He could scorn their sometimes selfish, boorish ways and love them and forgive them, all at once. They were only human.

Boone was an ambitious, bright thirty-two-year-old male.

He also read at a fourth-grade level.

He had dyslexia, and he hid it well from the world. It used to be his parents’ choice.

Now it was his.

He wasn’t ashamed of having serious reading challenges. But his parents were. And rather than risk getting rejected by anyone else—not in that mushy emotional way his parents had held him at arm’s length, but on the job, on the team, at school, or in town—he kept it to himself.

He was a practical man who’d learned to work with his strengths and minimize his weaknesses.

He went to his old bedroom. Found the faded Hallmark card in his desk drawer. Sat on the edge of his bed and reread it twice. Three times.

Then he took out his cell phone and dialed. “Hey, Ella. It’s Boone.”

“Boone! How are you?” Ella was a potter, a few years younger than Boone. She had her own little business from home.

“Good. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has.”

He paused and looked at the card. “Your mom once told me that if I ever got painted into a corner to talk to you. She said she’d let you know I might take advantage of that offer someday.”