Her smile wobbled again. “Hot historical romance. You’ve probably never read me. Hailey says you are seriously into literary fiction.”
As he should be. He was trying to write the Great American Screenplay in his spare time.
It wasn’t going well.
Rob loosened his collar, which suddenly felt too tight. “You mean bodice rippers?”
“No one calls them bodice-rippers anymore, Mr.—” she squinted the badge on his chest—“Campion. Romance is a billion-dollar industry. We’re a little tired of being patronized.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No?” She leaned over the circulation desk and Rob felt the wheels of his chair roll back a bit.
“I’m so glad I’ve come of age as a writer in an era where women in fiction and those who write it are no longer necessarily punished for their sexuality. Think about the heroines I’m about to enumerate. I suppose you think the classics are just great.”
“They don’t call them classics for nothing,” Rob mumbled. “They’re, you know, great books.”
“Hah! Only if you’re a freaking misogynist.” Belle poked him in the chest with an unfortunately chipped fingernail. At least she wasn’t wearing black polish. It was pale pink. Ladylike. And at odds with this lady’s current threatening behavior. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“A misogynist! Pay attention!”
Rob was having a little difficulty paying attention with Belle Standish so close to him. He could smell her perfume, something light and citrussy. And a trace of…Noxzema? Her eyelashes were unbelievably long, and her very respectable bosom was actually heaving beneath her baggy pink T-shirt.
He thought the better of pointing that out, and took off his glasses. Good. He could hardly see her now.
Belle raised a finger, or so he thought. It might have been four. “Okay, one. Take Anna Karenina.”
“The Russians are always rather grim. It’s Russia, you know,” Rob said reasonably. He’d taken a Russian writers class in college and had been depressed beyond belief. “Tundra. Wolves. Too much vodka.” He paused. “Putin, although of course he wasn’t alive then.”
“Stop interrupting. Anna Karenina has an affair and has to jump under a train.”
“I admit that was a drastic measure. There was foreshadowing.” He’d seen the weird movie with Keira Knightley. Good thing, because he’d read the book sophomore year, which was a long time ago. He wouldn’t be able to hold his own in the conversation otherwise.
He heard Hailey groan, and that reminded him. Why should she witness this ridiculous lecture and finger-pointing?
“Hailey, aren’t you supposed to be on the phone?”
“All right. But please don’t leave, Belle. I want to firm up the details of your talk.”
There would be no details. No talk. Rob was not going to turn his library lecture series over to this weird woman who wrote…whatever she wanted to call them.
“Two. Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever. Really, Edith should have known better. She was a modern woman for her time. Poor Daisy Miller dies of lung congestion after sneaking out with a man. Too bad, young love. You’re dead.”
“There are always consequences to unwise decisions.” Rob was beginning to feel having this conversation was one of them. “It’s a lesson to be more careful.”
“Careful! What about a man’s responsibility to be careful? Why is Hester Prynne forced to wear that scarlet letter and tote around her illegitimate child, when Reverend Whasthisname goes scot-free?”
Rob couldn’t recall the name of the man either. He did remember Demi Moore in the misbegotten movie, though. Lots of high school kids checked out the DVD instead of reading the book for English class like he’d had to. Cheats.
“Sh. Lower your voice. The library is a quiet zone.”
She looked around the empty room. “Dead zone is more like it. And Edith again. In The House of Mirth—irony alert on the title—Lily Bart falls prey to vicious gossip and drugs and dies alone in her freezing apartment.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“No? Well you should if you want to shoot yourself after. And jolly Thomas Hardy. Tess Durbeyfield kills her rapist and then gets executed.”
“You can’t go around killing people, no matter what they’ve done. And the book only reflected the time in which it was written.” Dimmesdale—that was it, ther name of the minister. Gary Oldman. No point to mentioning it now.
“Exactly my point! Women in real life and novels have been suffering for ages. Why can’t they have some fun?”
“Girls just wanna have fu-un.” Where did that snatch of song come from, and how did it roll out of his mouth? He put his glasses back on, and Belle came into sharp focus.
“Don’t mock. And don’t try to sing again—you’re awful. I’m running out of fingers. Emma Bovary takes arsenic. What, was no train running at the time that she could jump under? Ophelia drowns herself because Hamlet is so mean after they fooled around. Did you know when he tells her to ‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ he’s really telling her to go to a brothel?”
Rob did, actually.
“And of course there’s Snow White, just hanging around for years unconscious waiting for some man to kiss her and rescue her. Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel—fairy tales have a lot to answer for.”
“I see your point. I really do,” Rob said. Or at least he was beginning to.
“And you turn your nose up because romance writers give readers a happy ending. What is wrong with you? Do you want everyone to be as unhappy as you are?”
“I’m not unhappy!” He was pretty sure he wasn’t anyway. But calling himself happy might be a bit of a stretch.
“Oh, yeah? Hailey told me on the phone you’re always growling at her. She’s trying to drag you into the twenty-first century, and you’re like some Victorian killjoy.”
“She should put some clothes on.” Rob slapped his mouth shut. The hole was widening under his feet, and he’d like to jump into it now. What Hailey wore—what there was of it—was none of his business.
“Aha! So you have noticed! There’s hope for you yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Belle’s blinked. “You are a man.”
“Of course I’m a man!” Did she think he was gay? Not there was anything wrong with that. He’d bought three copies of And Tango Makes Three for the children’s collection and had defended it eloquently to an irate group from the Apostolic Tabernacle Brotherhood-by-the-Sea that met in the Chinese restaurant every Sunday morning before the lunch shift. But Rob knew for absolute sure that he was heterosexual, even it looked like he heading toward confirmed bachelordom.
“Hailey says you don’t date.”
Jesus! What kind of conversation had these two had? Belle Standish was a complete stranger, for Pete’s sake, no matter how famous Hailey thought she was. He definitely had to ban her from the phone forever after she got the server situation straightened out. There might even be some sort of reverse sexual harassment thing going on.
“I do too!” He just couldn’t remember the last time he asked a woman out without some coercion. His sisters Tiff, Kris and Ely had even stopped trying to fix him up with their divorced and desperate friends. He got along fine with all of them, but there was no spark. Rob was almost thirty-four years old, and looking at a life of extreme celibacy, without the body odor, beer or pork rinds.
Rob showered twice daily and preferred Merlot and some sharp Vermont cheddar. A little soft sheep’s cheese mixed with herbs on a Carr’s sweetmeal digestive biscuit. He had standards, damn it.
“So…go out with me, then.”
Rob’s mouth dropped open. Go out with Belle Standish, USAToday Best-Selling Author? Who was bossy and passionate and extremely annoying?
“We can discuss my guest appearance here next week. Shall we say seven o’clock tomorrow night? I’m renting Crow’s Nest Cottage on Pine Point Road for the summer. Do you know where that is?”
&nbs
p; Everyone knew the cottages on Pine Point Road. The point itself had been a make-out mecca for generations of Serenity Harbor’s teens. Even Rob had been there once or twice in his high school prime.
“I’ll fix some decaf and bake a cake. Don’t eat dessert before you come.”
Rob never ate dessert. Maybe that’s what was wrong with him. He watched Belle Standish flounce—there was no other word for it—out the door.
“Hailey!” he yelled. He never yelled either, but this seemed to be a day for it.
Chapter 2
“The way to a man’s heart is definitely not through his stomach,” the Dowager Duchess of Whitford warned. “But we shall talk about the correct path another time.”
—The First Sin is the Sweetest by Belle Standish
What on earth had come over her? Belle was generally tongue-tied. Self-effacing. She hated putting herself “out there.” Hated book signings. Hated Twitter and Facebook and all the ways you were supposed to promote your books. All she wanted to do was sit in her yoga pants and T-shirt and write and not talk to a living soul if she could help it.
Her dog Chuck didn’t count. Belle talked to him all day.
But what had she done? Asked that snotty stick-up-his-ass male librarian to come over to her house! Now she’d have to cook and clean. Why didn’t she ask him to a movie or a burger at the Starlight Grille?
Why did she ask him to anything?
She had just wanted to donate some extra books. Her publisher was more than generous with author copies, and Belle had to clear out some shelves. Her Portland apartment lease was up in the fall, and she’d decided to move into something smaller. Cheaper, too. Now that Mike wasn’t chipping in on the rent, her bank balance was getting scary. She might even have to go back to teaching. Most writers had supplemental incomes—those ninety-nine cent books split seven ways weren’t making anyone rich. This summer house rental was an exploratory experiment to see if she could leave the city behind and recharge her writing batteries.
And not run into Mike—with his girlfriend and their new baby—every time she went out for coffee. Portland might call itself a city, but it was too damn small to avoid her ex-husband and Angelika and, ugh, Reign Beau. Poor kid. Mike used to be so sensible, but that was before Belle got boring in bed and drove him into the arms of an artisanal gluten-free baker.
You’d think after all her research into creative sexual positions and light bondage, something would have rubbed off, but no. She felt dead inside, as dead as Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina and all the other dead depressing heroines in literature. She’d never admit it to a living soul—except Chuck, and he had no comprehension, thank God—but Belle found sex majorly disappointing. She’d get her romance writer card revoked if she ever admitted that.
The librarian’s assistant librarian had warned her about him before Belle came downtown. TMI, if Belle was truthful—the girl had absolutely no filter. Why had she come to the library at all? She should have sent a note and bugged out. She was always nervous speaking to readers face to face, and shouldn’t have let Hailey talk her into doing a program there.
Rob Campion didn’t seem to know anything about the talk, or her. It was a perfect opportunity to say she couldn’t do it. Instead, she’d terrified the man with a fiery feminist diatribe.
And then asked him out.
*headdesk*
And damn if she hadn’t left her new L.L. Bean canvas tote on the circulation desk too.
He’d probably burn the books inside it anyhow.
“Screw it, Chuck.”
The quasi-terrier of indeterminate parentage looked up at her and grinned, if dogs could be said to grin. His teeth were showing anyway.
“I am so sick of defending romance. But you don’t care, do you? You can’t even read.”
He put his head down on his paws at the insult.
“Lud, it’s not as if I believe in happy endings myself. I mean, my own marriage sucked, did it not?” Belle liked lapsing into Regency-speak on occasion. Her conversations with Chuck were often peppered with “dash it,” “’pon rep,” and “beneath my touch.”
Nothing was beneath Chuck’s touch, though. He’d chewed the paper plate her morning toast had sat upon and tried to eat the empty jar of Noxzema in the bathroom trash. She’d slathered all of it on herself this morning in an attempt to quell the sunburn she’d acquired yesterday in her little fenced backyard overlooking the water. So much for procrastinating in the sunshine, watching the sailboats race by. She’d been punished by the writing gods and had better power up her laptop.
The trouble was, her muse seemed to be on vacation too. Belle had pounded out eleven books and four novellas in seven years, and her well felt perilously empty.
It hadn’t helped that she and Mike had split up in the middle of her Regency reformed rake series. It had been hard to tout the power of redemptive love when all Belle wanted to do was eat a carton—no, face it, a case—of Ben and Jerry’s and wish Mike to the devil as he suddenly eschewed wheat flour and started going to the gym. Belle had apparently married an unreformed rake with dietary issues, and she wished Angelika luck keeping him at home to change the diapers until Reign got old enough to go to pre-school and change his name to Joe.
Okay. Back to work. Belle stared at the snow-white screen in front of her for seven whole minutes. Then she logged onto a cooking site for a cake recipe that would choke the hauteur right out of Rob Campion.
Hm. Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Belle had a four over-ripe—some might say rotting—bananas in a wooden bowl that she should have eaten instead of the gluten-rich jelly donuts from the Trellis Bakery. Even she knew raspberry jelly didn’t really count as a fruit serving. The cake recipe didn’t seem too hard, and she had all the ingredients, even the buttermilk. She’d tried to make homemade salad dressing the other night and was never going to do that again. Commercial additives made everything taste better to her ruined palate.
Belle had to admit Rob was kind of good-looking in a foxy professor way. Tortoise shell glasses, thick graying-at-the-temples hair, light tan, fit body. He must do something else besides sit in his chair and lord over the library all day. He didn’t look like he ever ate a whole carton of Chunky Monkey in one sitting.
Did he even like bananas?
Belle had gained twenty pounds since her divorce. She’d given up trying to be perfect for any man. So what if she wished they made bathing suits with sleeves? She’d never had Michelle Obama arms, but things were getting a little out of hand in the batwing department. But really, who cared? Chuck didn’t, as long as she gave him his Milk Bones.
“Screw it. I know, I’m repeating myself, aren’t I, Chuck? I suppose I’d better quit not- writing and clean the toilet or something. Bake a cake. I’ll wash my hands first, of course.” She sent the recipe to her printer.
She then proceeded to give her cottage a very thorough going over, starting with the bathroom. Belle had been lax lately, living alone and impervious to dust. Anything that fell on the floor in the kitchen Chuck ate, which was helpful.
Chuck was a perfect life companion. He never cheated on her with a redheaded bakery owner—although if a butcher happened by, Belle wasn’t sure he’d be faithful—greeted her with enthusiasm, and didn’t hog the bed. He cocked his head and looked like he was listening to her, even if his vocabulary was severely limited. None of these things could have been said about her ex-husband Mike.
Was she turning into a manhater? She remembered a Facebook meme that alleged Mr. Darcy had raised unrealistic expectations in the fluttering hearts of women everywhere. Her own heroes were equally unrealistic—a head taller than anyone in the room, dashing, filled with honor even if it was not immediately recognizable, and in possession of magic penises that knew exactly where to thrust and throb. She avoided the word throb though—throbbing manhood was such a cliché.
It was tough to write six point five sex scenes a book and not plagiarize from oneself. There were only so many action
verbs in the English language, and every now and again Belle wondered if she should try writing inspirationals instead.
If only she had more faith.
She hauled out the vacuum cleaner and Chuck scampered off to hide under her bed. The cottage was fully equipped with everything vacationers might need, and handy to downtown if one broke the corkscrew (which Belle had done the very first night) or ran out of toilet paper (ditto). She made sure she bought plenty of paper products now, particularly since Chuck enjoyed strewing toilet paper throughout the house in search of that delicious inner cardboard core.
Perhaps he wasn’t the ideal companion after all.
Since the cottage wasn’t very large—it was basically one big open-plan living-dining-kitchen combination and a separate bedroom with a bath—it didn’t take her long to get it ship-shape, which was apt. The owners had furnished it from Nautical-R-Us. There were enough buoy and lobster and fish decorations to choke Captain Ahab and his entire crew. It was charming in its red-white-and-blue way, and the view of the bay was sublime. She’d had to move the little painted desk so she didn’t stare out the window when she was supposed to be writing.
She would write tomorrow. She would. Before Rob Campion came over, there were hours and hours to kill, especially if she made the banana cake today. Belle would have to limit herself to licking the bowl. How awkward would it be to present the cake tomorrow night with one big wedge taken out?
She tied on a faded apron that hung on a hook by the back door and assembled the ingredients on the granite countertop. Chuck had crawled out from his vacuum-avoiding hiding space and now, stationed in front of the pre-heating oven, was giving her a look of interest.
“Don’t get any ideas.” Chuck had been known to steal softening blocks of cream cheese off counters and consume them, silver foil and all. She mashed the bananas with undisguised viciousness, idly wondering how long it took to whip meringue with a wooden spoon in 1820—one of her heroines had a fondness for it, and the hero was going to woo her with tartlets. When had egg beaters been invented? There would have been cooks and kitchen maids for that sort of thing, and Belle was pretty sure she would have been one of them as opposed to being the lady of the manor if she’d lived back then. She’d have Michelle Obama arms then from all that stirring.
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