She followed the recipe directions to the letter, something she didn’t always do. Baking was chemistry, and she’d been terrible in science class. But Belle was determined this was going to be the best damned banana cake Rob Campion had ever eaten.
And if it looked funny when it came out of the oven, she could cover up the cracks with frosting. Or, if worse came to worst, go to the Trellis Bakery tomorrow. She was not too high-minded to prevaricate and say she’d cooked it herself.
After pouring the batter into the pan and shoving it in the oven, she put the mixing bowl on the floor, much to Chuck’s delight. Belle was showing considerable restraint. Once she’d made the frosting (whose bowl she would lick) and cleaned up after herself, there was nothing left for her to do but write until the timer went off.
Bloody hell.
Belle was singularly uninspired. She’d written all the usual scenes so far—the feisty bluestocking in the ballroom dressing down the unreformed rake, the stolen and revelatory kiss in the garden, the big misunderstanding. No amount of hand-fed meringue tarts was going to jazz up this book. She didn’t dare to try a change of scenery and write outside on her little patio—her skin was already molting like a lobster. So she adhered to the time-honored tradition all blocked authors succumbed to—she Googled.
There wasn’t much on Robert Campion. He had a bland welcome message on the library’s website, with an accompanying photograph that showed him with slightly darker hair. He didn’t seem to believe in Facebook or Twitter, so there were no personal nuggets to be gleaned, no embarrassing shots of him with a can of cheap beer or a pretty girlfriend on the beach. According to the library bio, he’d grown up in Serenity Harbor and graduated from the local high school. Belle did the math and figured out he was thirty-three, a year younger than she was. He seemed much older somehow.
Really, she didn’t know why she was bothering to do reconnaissance on the guy. When he came over tomorrow, she’d tell him she couldn’t possibly do the talk and book signing. Something was going to come up, if she could think of what it was going to be. She was a master of fiction, yes? Surely she could think of an excuse. FaceTime with her editor? Out of town guests? Murdering Mike? Any one of those would do.
And then, damn her, she Googled Mike. His obituary did not pop up at the top of the page. She didn’t really want him dead, anyway. Their four-year marriage had been a mistake almost from the get-go. She needed to stay home and write and he wanted to go out and have fun. They would have been much better off living together, but Belle’s mother had been collecting Martha Stewart Weddings for most of the twenty-first century, and Belle had been pushing thirty. Well, they’d had the perfect wedding, if not the perfect marriage.
Belle wondered when he was going to make Angelika “an honest woman.” Maybe all that fluffy tulle skirting on her old wedding dress had scared him off. She’d looked like Cinderella but had turned into a pumpkin.
The oven dinged and she pulled the cake out. It looked and smelled kind of delicious, but she was not going to act on any one of her senses. Belle set it on a wire cooling rack and went back to the laptop.
“So, Chuck, what’s next? I wish I was a plotter and not a pantser.” She’d tried bulletin boards and little sticky notes to plan her books, but her characters consistently objected and went off to do other things without her permission.
Which sounded a little insane, even to her. She was supposed to be in control, wasn’t she? She’d made up these damn people, who weren’t even real but fictional. Imaginary. Why couldn’t they behave?
She sighed. “I guess it’s time for a kidnapping.” She proceeded to put her heroine in peril, and then watched a kung-fu YouTube video to block out how the duke was going to defeat the villain. Kung-fu moves were not probably not historically accurate, but Belle had been in a playground fight exactly once in her life and needed inspiration. There had been hair-pulling then, but the duke certainly couldn’t do that. For one thing, the villain was bald, since Mike was getting so thin up top that he’d resorted to shaving his head. Maybe a steady gluten-free diet would fix that.
It was time to jettison Mike from her head. Their divorce had been final for a year, and she was being ridiculously petty fashioning the villain in her current work in progress after him, even if he had cheated on her. But she did have that T-shirt that said “Be nice or I’ll put you in my novel.” Mike hadn’t been nice, but he’d been human. Humans did dreadful things to each other. Which is why romance readers wanted fictional happy endings to give them hope that happiness was possible.
Belle felt like a fraud. She was a romance writer who didn’t believe in romance or great sex. How could she speak in front of a room full of readers who wanted optimism and uplifting sentiment? She would definitely cancel, and Rob Campion would no doubt be relieved.
She shut the laptop and checked to see if the cake was cool enough to frost. It was, and she smoothed the cream cheese mixture over it, happy to have a substantial white lump left over. Once she ate it, she decided to cut a piece of cake. It would be dinner, covering the grain, fruit and dairy groups. If she was careful when she served it tomorrow night, Rob wouldn’t need to know she’d sampled it first.
She’d contemplate a diet tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. No one was going to see her naked anyway but her doctor, and even then she’d be wearing one of those disposable paper things.
And on that unhappy thought, Belle sliced a second piece.
Chapter 3
“It is my absolute duty to see to your pleasure,” Deverel smirked, raising a black-winged eyebrow.
—The First Sin is the Sweetest by Belle Standish
Rob had felt a responsibility to appear relatively well-informed for his meeting with Belle Standish. He was not going to call it a date. So he’d tried to read The First Sin is the Sweetest last night but had trouble getting through the first chapter. For a while he wanted to scrub his eyeballs and bleach his brain, but he persevered.
And adjusted his boxer shorts. The experience had been altogether unsettling. This Lord Deverel fellow was known as the Duke of Sin, and he had wasted no time in Chapter One establishing that he was the sinniest duke ever.
Sinniest. Look what was happening to Rob’s command of the English language. He’d been corrupted completely. As bad as Deverel, who was sporting in his bedroom with a pair of whores when the heroine came to confront him about some stupid property dispute, all outraged dignity and secret yearning, the faithful butler blithering in the background.
Rob thought of that Johnny Depp movie, The Libertine, where his character’s nose fell off due to syphilis. Were they using protection way back when? He’d read something about sheep guts and ribbons somewhere.
And what the hell was velvet agony anyway? Rob wasn’t sure of the rules of romance, but the whole opener didn’t seem right. Weren’t the stories supposed to be couple-centric? True love conquered all? Deverel was a player, obviously. Rob was proud he could use the colloquialism in context. Hailey had rubbed off on him.
He’d read a few more chapters before the book had fallen on his face. Rob had been tired from the excitement of the day. It was not his habit to be lectured by a feminist firebrand, especially since he considered himself to be relatively enlightened as to the rights of women. He’d have to be, or his mother, three sisters and four nieces would pummel him.
Which didn’t mean he understood women. Hell, he didn’t understand men, either. He wasn’t precisely a misanthrope (or misogynist), but people were messy. He was basically a shy guy, and dealing with the public and working with the library board in their fundraising efforts stressed the hell out of him.
Which is why it was ironic that the successful summer lecture series he’d inaugurated was coming back to bite him in the ass. He usually arranged everything by e-mail, and kept himself in the background, delegating someone else to do the introducing and schmoozing. Having cake and coffee with a speaker was not on his to-do list.
Well, he planned on ta
lking Belle Standish out of doing the program, so she wouldn’t be a speaker. For one thing, there really wasn’t time to put up flyers all over town, though he knew Hailey was itching to design them—she’d designed all those tattoos, after all. The schedule was set, mailed out to all the Friends of the Library way back in May. Some of his sniffier patrons would disapprove of a popular best-selling author, too—they wouldn’t even come if Tom Clancy turned up. Of course, Clancy was dead, which would make for a very interesting evening indeed.
With grave reservations, he’d left the library early. He hoped Hailey could close up without blowing the place to smithereens. The alarm had to be set, and it had killed him to give her the code.
It wasn’t that Hailey was untrustworthy. Her heart was almost always in the right place, and the younger patrons idolized her. But being a rebellious trust fund baby, she thought she knew more than she did. One day, when she got a little more experience and more conservative clothing, she would move on and wreak havoc on a library all her own. In the meantime, Rob was stuck with her good intentions, and everyone knew where they led.
So he’d come home with plenty of time to take a long second shower and brush his teeth after eating a monastic cup of yogurt. He wasn’t much of a cook, and lived off frozen dinners and take-out. Fortunately Serenity Harbor had some great restaurants open in the summer. Winter was a different story—Main Street got pretty quiet, with most of the summer people/tourist-oriented places closing for the season.
Ironically, traffic to the library increased. Maine winters were damn long and people got a little stir crazy, even if they did live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. The library had regular events—quilting classes, a young adult reading club, old movie night, the occasional guest speaker. Rob turned up for all of it, benevolently observing from behind the glass wall of his inner office.
It was still his domain, although Hailey wanted to move a small desk in. Rob had put both feet down—he needed a place to escape from her chatter and concentrate on his work. People thought librarians just sat on their asses and told people to be quiet, but there was a lot more to it than that.
His family and friends had thought he was nuts when he told them that he wanted to get an MLS. He’d been a film major in college, but four years of that had proved he was no auteur. Watching movies with enthusiasm and discernment had not translated into making them, nor had it helped him overcome his reticence. The more flamboyant his friends were, the quieter he got. A library seemed the perfect place to…well, he was thinking hide, but that wasn’t right. Rob had made a good life for himself, was close to his family, and contributed to his hometown. What was wrong with that?
He had no reason to feel inadequate. Somehow less than a man. Just because he had refined taste and a thirst for culture didn’t make him an oddball.
Did it?
Okay, fine. He was an oddball. He really didn’t give a shit about the Patriots or the Red Sox—soccer and lacrosse had been his sports in school—and usually didn’t use the word shit (or fuck) if he could help it. He didn’t watch Spike TV. Or much TV at all. The Kardashians horrified him, and he was ashamed he inadvertently knew their names from standing online at the Serenity Harbor Market. He guessed he was a finicky fussbudget.
No wonder he wasn’t getting laid.
There. See? Five and three-quarters chapters of Belle Standish’s book, and all he could think of was sex.
He still had half an hour to kill before he’d walk over to her cottage. He had a car, of course, but liked to walk or bike around town when the weather was good. And it was pretty perfect out there, the sun still bright, and the air cooled by sea breezes. Motorists got stuck in traffic on Serenity Harbor’s summer streets; population quadrupled from June through August. It was best to pedal or walk if you wanted to get somewhere in time.
The walk home under a blanket of silver stars would be fine too. Visibility of the night sky was excellent in Maine, and Rob had a decent telescope pointed out his bungalow’s sunporch window. He’d memorized the constellations as a kid, and still took an interest in astronomy. The stars made him feel simultaneously insignificant and part of something vast and mysterious.
But it still might be daylight when he left Ms. Standish. How long could it take to eat cake and drink coffee? His sisters hated him for it, but he didn’t have a sweet tooth and could withstand the frosted temptations of the Trellis Bakery just fine.
He’d be polite with Belle. Make small talk. So he sat down at his kitchen table with an index card, listing possible topics of conversation. Talking about the weather was always good. Maine weather turned on a dime, and it wasn’t inconceivable that tomorrow could bring a torrential downpour. Thunder. Lightning. Hell, hail and maybe even snow. Look at that crazy storm just last month. Maine was a meteorologist’s dream.
Work. Pretty boring for him. Maybe she wrote a lot today or had an epiphany of some sort. Let her explain her plot. Let him try to keep a straight face.
Favorite movies. Rob had seen a million and had written research papers on them, but nothing much lately. He could ask her for a recommendation, not that he’d necessarily follow it. She seemed like a chick-flick sort of woman. He was not ever sitting through Fifty Shades of Grey.
Favorite books. Well, probably a subject to avoid. For sure they didn’t share the same literary preferences. And he wasn’t brave enough to tell her he was trying to write a screenplay. He doubted her experiences as a published romance author would be helpful to him in any way. He was serious, damn it. Maybe too serious—not on the same level as the depressing Russians, but close.
Her favorite places in Serenity Harbor. He could fill her in on some local history if she seemed interested.
How lame was he to have to make a list to have “spontaneous” conversation? He probably wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise anyhow—Belle was pretty opinionated.
Rob sat back in his chair and sighed. Maybe he should just call to cancel. The problem with that? He didn’t have her number. He’d have to go all the way to her house to tell her he couldn’t be there, and she’d know right off he was lying, because he was already there, right?
Lately, he’d been wondering if he was on the autism spectrum. It would explain a lot. But Rob figured he just had a garden-variety reluctance to call attention to himself. If he’d been in one of Belle’s books, he’d be a wallflower, a true beta hero, not the sinful duke.
What would happen if he turned up early? He could leave sooner. Might as well go. He brushed his hair one more time and checked his teeth. He’d changed into a navy golf shirt (He played a little at the community course. Not too badly.) and khaki cargo shorts. Boat shoes, no socks. He looked like every other summer person vacationing on the Maine coast, blending into the scenery just as he liked it.
Some of his neighbors were out on their flower-decked front porches, and he waved and smiled but didn’t stop to chat. They knew him by now and didn’t expect any more than a quick hello. He’d bought his house three years ago from an old friend who moved to California, lucky to get a good deal. The high cost of real estate in town was pricing out the locals, and Rob was grateful he didn’t have to live in an apartment over a shop on busy Ocean Avenue anymore. He wasn’t getting rich working at the library, but he had enough to make his mortgage and still have money left over to eat. Not every millennial could claim such largesse.
And his secret side project might prove lucrative. If he could get past writing Scene One. He’d revised it so many times that he was utterly sick of it. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a screenwriter. Even if Belle wrote junk, there had been a lot of it published in her canvas bag, which, damn it, he’d forgotten to bring with him.
Which meant he’d have to see her again after tonight so he could return it.
Or he could assign Hailey that task. No doubt she’d be happy as a clam to get some fresh air out of the library. Rob would enjoy the silent break, too.
He could hear the rush and slap of wav
es as he walked down Pine Point Road. There was an old lighthouse at the end, now deactivated. The town put a Christmas wreath on it every year, but otherwise it was flaking into oblivion. Rob had been asked to join the Save the Lighthouse Committee, and he supposed out of civic duty he should before its derelict condition caused any more vandalism. The local kids had branched out beyond mischief in the library.
The charming cottages on either side of the narrow road were originally uniform, built as a motor court in the 1930s. They had been customized, winterized and were now individually owned, some rented out for the summer. Each of them had a fenced yard, a water view and was named after a bird. Rob passed Chickadee’s Coop and Sparrow’s Spot before he got to Crow’s Nest, the sign on the front porch featuring a black and menacing figure sitting on lopsided straw. He hopped up the brick steps and knocked on the blue-painted door, causing a flurry of barking and scrabbling beyond.
“Shush! Down! Be a good boy!”
“I’ll try. No guarantees,” Rob muttered. He was a little alarmed at the insistent yapping, and hoped he wouldn’t be knocked off his feet. He liked dogs in general, but this one sounded slightly deranged.
He was prepared when Belle opened the door. She tried and failed to hold onto the green plaid collar of a small writhing bundle of ragged fur. Rob’s hands were in his pockets, and he withstood acrobatic leaps with stoicism while the animal tried to reach his chin. To lick or bite? It was difficult to tell.
“Chuck! Down!”
Chuck had no intention of obeying his mistress. Growling, his nose was now buried in Rob’s crotch, and Rob decided it was time to hustle his hands out of his pockets before he became a eunuch. He pushed the dog off him, all the while rubbing behind its crooked ears. “Sit.”
Welcome to Serenity Harbor Page 26
