by Rachel Lee
The teen shook her head. “Our history teacher is giving us time to work on our independent research projects this week.”
“What’s your topic?”
“The role of German U-boats in the Second World War.”
“Do you want to sign on to one of the computers?”
“No. Mr. Paretsky wants—” she made air quotes with her fingers “—real sources, actual paper books so that we can do proper page citations and aren’t relying on made-up stuff that someone posted on the internet.”
Cassie pushed her chair away from the desk. “Nonfiction is upstairs. Let’s go see what we can find.”
After the teen was settled at a table with a pile of books, Cassie checked that the Dickens Room was ready for the ESL group coming in at ten thirty and picked up a stack of abandoned magazines from a window ledge near the true crime section.
She put the magazines on Helen’s cart and returned to her desk just as George Bowman came in. George and his wife, Margie, were familiar faces at the library. She knew all of the library’s regular patrons—not just their names and faces, but also their reading habits and preferences. And, over the years, she’d gotten to know many of them on a personal level, too.
She was chatting with Mr. Bowman when the tall, dark and extremely handsome stranger stepped into view. Her heart gave a little bump against her ribs, as if to make sure she was paying attention, and warm tingles spread slowly through her veins. But he wasn’t just a stranger, he was an outsider. The expensive suit jacket that stretched across his broad shoulders, the silk tie neatly knotted at his throat and the square, cleanly shaven jaw all screamed “corporate executive.”
She would have been less surprised to see a rainbow-colored unicorn prancing across the floor than this man moving toward her. Moving rather slowly and with short strides considering his long legs, she thought—and then she saw the little girl toddling beside him.
The child she did recognize. Saige regularly attended Baby Talk at the library with her grandmother, which meant that the man holding the tiny hand had to be her dad: Braden Garrett, Charisma’s very own crown prince.
* * *
A lot of years had passed since Braden was last inside the Charisma Public Library, and when he stepped through the front doors, he had a moment of doubt that he was even in the right place. In the past twenty years, the building had undergone major renovations so that the address was the only part of the library that remained unchanged.
He stepped farther into the room, noting that the card catalogue system had been replaced by computer terminals and the checkout desk wasn’t just automated but self-serve—which meant that the kids borrowing books or other materials weren’t subjected to the narrow-eyed stare of Miss Houlahan, the old librarian who marked the cards inside the back covers of the books, her gnarled fingers wielding the stamp like a weapon. He’d been terrified of the woman.
Of course, the librarian had been about a hundred years old when Braden was a kid—or so she’d seemed—so he didn’t really expect to find her still working behind the desk. But the woman seated there now, her fingers moving over the keyboard as she conversed with an elderly gentleman, was at least twenty years younger than he’d expected, with chin-length auburn hair that shone with gold and copper highlights. Her face was heart-shaped with creamy skin and a delicately pointed chin. Her eyes were dark—green, he guessed, to go with the red hair—and her glossy lips curved in response to something the old man said to her.
Saige wiggled again, silently asking to be set down. Since she’d taken her first tentative steps four months earlier, she preferred to walk everywhere. Braden set her on her feet but held firmly to her hand and headed toward the information desk.
The woman he assumed was Miss MacKinnon stopped typing and picked up a pen to jot a note on a piece of paper that she then handed across the desk to the elderly patron.
The old man nodded his thanks. “By the way, Margie wanted me to tell you that our daughter, Karen, is expecting again.”
“This will be her third, won’t it?”
“Third and fourth,” he replied.
Neatly arched brows lifted. “Twins?”
He nodded again. “Our seventh and eighth grandchildren.”
“That’s wonderful news—congratulations to all of you.”
“You know, I keep waiting for the day when you have big news to share.”
The librarian smiled indulgently. “Didn’t I tell you just this morning that there’s a new John Grisham on the shelves?”
Mr. Bowman shook his head. “Marriage plans, Cassie.”
“You’ve been with Mrs. Bowman for almost fifty years—I don’t see you giving her up to run away with me now.”
The old man’s ears flushed red. “Fifty-one,” he said proudly. “And I didn’t mean me. You need a handsome young man to put a ring on your finger and give you beautiful babies.”
“Until that happens, you keep bringing me pictures of your gorgeous grandbabies,” she suggested.
“I certainly will,” he promised.
“In the meantime—” she picked up a flyer from the counter and offered it to Mr. Bowman “—I hope you’re planning to come to our Annual Book & Bake Sale on the fifteenth.”
“It’s already marked on the calendar at home,” he told her. “And Margie’s promised to make a couple dozen muffins.”
“I’ll definitely look forward to those.”
The old man finally moved toward the elevator and Braden stepped forward. “Miss MacKinnon?”
She turned toward him, and he saw that her eyes weren’t green, after all, but a dark chocolate brown and fringed with even darker lashes.
“Good morning,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for...Baby Talk?”
Her mouth curved, drawing his attention to her full, glossy lips. “Are you sure?”
“Not entirely,” he admitted, shifting his gaze to meet hers again. “Am I in the right place?”
“You are,” she confirmed. “Baby Talk is in the Bronte Room on the upper level at ten.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall, saw that it wasn’t yet nine thirty. “I guess we’re a little early.”
“Downstairs in the children’s section, there’s a play area with puzzles and games, a puppet theater and a train table.”
“Choo-choo,” Saige urged.
Miss MacKinnon glanced down at his daughter and smiled. “Although if you go there now, you might have trouble tearing your daughter away. You like the trains, don’t you, Saige?”
She nodded, her head bobbing up and down with enthusiasm.
Braden’s brows lifted. He was surprised—and a little disconcerted—to discover that this woman knew something about his daughter that he didn’t. “Obviously she spends more time here than I realized.”
“Your mom brings her twice a week.”
“Well, since you know my mother and Saige, I guess I should introduce myself—I’m Braden Garrett.”
She accepted the hand he offered. He noted that hers was soft, but her grip firm. “Cassie MacKinnon.”
“Are you really the librarian?” he heard himself ask.
“One of them,” she said.
“When I think of librarians, I think of Miss Houlahan.”
“So do I,” she told him. “In fact, she’s the reason I chose to become a librarian.”
“We must be thinking of different Miss Houlahans,” he decided.
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check on something upstairs.”
“Something upstairs” sounded rather vague to Braden, and he got the strange feeling that he was being brushed off. Or maybe he was reading too much into those two words. After all, this was a library and she was the librarian—no
doubt there were any number of “somethings” she had to do, although he couldn’t begin to imagine what they might be.
As she walked away, Braden found himself admiring the curve of her butt and the sway of her hips and thinking that he might have spent a lot more time in the library as a kid if there had been a librarian like Miss MacKinnon to help him navigate the book stacks.
Copyright © 2017 by Brenda Harlen
ISBN-13: 9781488014000
His Pregnant Courthouse Bride
Copyright © 2017 by Susan Civil Brown
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