Bachelor′s Puzzle
Bachelor's Puzzle
Ginger Chambers
WELCOME TO TYLERBETTER ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVESThere's been a flood at the old library, and the staff needs all the help they can get! Pitch in and catch up on the latest goings-on in America's favorite hometown.A LATE-BLOOMING PASSIONElise Ferguson, Tyler's head librarian, has slipped uneventfully into middle-aged spinsterhood. But lately she's been seen in the company of Robert Fairmont – that distinguished-looking visiting professor of architecture…OLD RIVALRIES RENEWEDElise's sister, Bea, is certain Robert must have ulterior motives. After all, why would any man be interested in Elise? Bea's snooping uncovers more than even she bargained for – and threatens everyone's happiness.
WELCOME TO TYLER-BETTER ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES
There’s been a flood at the old library, and the staff needs all the help they can get! Pitch in and catch up on the latest goings-on in America’s favorite hometown.
A LATE-BLOOMING PASSION
Elise Ferguson, Tyler’s head librarian, has slipped uneventfully into middle-aged spinsterhood.
But lately she’s been seen in the company of Robert Fairmont—that distinguished-looking visiting professor of architecture…
OLD RIVALRIES RENEWED
Elise’s sister, Bea, is certain Robert must have ulterior motives. After all, why would any man be interested in Elise? Bea’s snooping uncovers more than even she bargained for—and threatens everyone’s happiness.
Previously Published.
“Robert used you, Elise.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bea.” Elise faced her sister. “You don’t like Robert because you’re afraid that if I fall in love with him, I’ll either abandon you or put you in Worthington House. But it’s too late, Bea. I’ve already fallen in love with him and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
“Then you love a criminal! Ask him about the old library. Ask him why he was in such a hurry to buy it. With your help, he got the place for a song when it’s worth a million, maybe two!”
“I don’t believe you,” Elise whispered, her color fading.
“And now you tell me that you love him.” Bea laughed. “What a joke! If the town was laughing at you before, think what they’ll do now. You love him!”
With her sister’s laughter echoing in her ears, Elise shook her head. “No,” she said hoarsely. “No.”
Dear Reader (#ulink_4ccb6c3b-5dac-58e2-8245-b378e9648b89),
Welcome to Harlequin’s Tyler, a small Wisconsin town whose citizens we hope you’ll soon come to know and love. Like many of the innovative publishing concepts Harlequin has launched over the years, the idea for the Tyler series originated in response to our readers’ preferences. Your enthusiasm for sequels and continuing characters within many of the Harlequin lines has prompted us to create a twelve-book series of individual romances whose characters’ lives inevitably intertwine.
Tyler faces many challenges typical of small towns, but the fabric of this fictional community will be torn by the revelation of a long-ago murder, the details of which will evolve right through the series. This intriguing crime will profoundly affect the lives of the Ingallses, the Barons, the Forresters and the Wochecks.
If you’ve got a little time to spare, the volunteers could sure use some help with the crisis at the library. Right now, the old place is being held together by wishes and prayers.
And it seems Judson Ingalls could use some wishes and prayers, as well. A long-awaited announcement from the state coroner’s office has sent him to his bed and thoroughly alarmed Alyssa and his grandson, Jeff.
So join us in Tyler for a slice of small-town life that’s not as innocent or as quiet as you might expect, and for a sense of community that will capture your mind and your heart.
Marsha Zinberg
Editorial Coordinator, Tyler
Bachelor’s Puzzle
Ginger Chambers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ginger Chambers for her contribution to the Tyler series.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joanna Kosloff for her contribution to the concept for the Tyler series.
CONTENTS
Cover (#ueeeb83e9-6d01-5024-b180-c6dd9cb5980a)
Back Cover Text (#u94a92dc7-c5f1-5c4e-a554-3080b3b04da9)
Dear Reader (#u64b38d6f-6582-580c-97bf-93af71578eab)
Title Page (#uc796f147-985c-51c7-8bb9-41e572f3ee13)
Acknowledgments (#u7cae80a4-c8e2-5735-84be-cb82fc10e1ab)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5544bd13-8e4a-5275-90ee-62c7ef658c94)
CHAPTER TWO (#uf438a8c0-4072-54c3-a335-3099dd3b0abb)
CHAPTER THREE (#ud8c27c9a-ca0c-5a4b-b2ce-650d00853707)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ua7957de7-148e-58a9-87b8-803426cea578)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_58d4a1a3-a4ca-58d8-8473-d54400714e8f)
ELISE FERGUSON BRUSHED her fingertips through her short pale hair, smoothing it at the same time as she tried to fluff it. The perm she had gotten a few months ago was already loosening and she knew that soon she would have to get another. But right now she just didn’t have the time to think about it.
She leaned forward, peering closely into the mirror at the fine lines that seemed to have appeared from nowhere over the past few years. Then she moved back, checking whether the hurried makeup job had been sufficient. From a distance, it worked. She didn’t look substantially worse for wear than any other fifty-three-year-old who had just spent a morning in hell. And with the donning of her dress-for-success, reserved-for-meetings suit, she gave the illusion of complete competency. No one would believe that a scant half hour before, dampened through and through, she had raced into the bathroom, streaked with dirt from head to toe, her baby-fine hair sticking out at odd angles and her dress a shambles.
Elise’s stomach gave a nervous rumble. She knew she probably should eat something, but there wasn’t time for that, either. She had to be back at the library in—she checked her watch—five minutes. Five minutes! Impossible!
She reached for a bottle of her favorite scent and misted a light bouquet of spring flowers over herself. Then, grabbing a pair of tiny gold studs, she slipped them into her ears as she hurried down the stairs.
“Elise!” Her sister’s voice held a petulant edge. “Elise! I need you to do something for me!”
Elise veered into the living room, where her older sister, Bea, sat before the television set, their fat yellow cat, Buttercup, in her lap.
Bea’s gaze revealed her disapproval. “I asked before you went upstairs, but you didn’t hear me, I suppose. I’d like my wrap! It’s cool in the house today. You left too many windows open.”
It was summer; the temperature outside was in the mid-eighties. Still, Elise didn’t protest. “Would you like me to close them?” she asked.
Bea frowned grumpily. “No, just get my wrap. And the mail. I heard the postman come about an hour ago.”
Elise hurried onto the porch, checked the mailbox and withdrew some bills and a magazine. Bea’s doll collectors’ magazine. That would make her happy. She hurried back inside and delivered the magazine before moving into the kitchen. “I’m just going to warm up leftovers today, Bea,” she called into the next room. “I have a meeting I’m already late for.”
Her sister mumbled something that Elise didn’t understand, but she didn’t ask her to repeat it. Elise popped a bowl of yesterday’s shepherd’s pie into the microwave, arranged a small salad, buttered a piece of wheat bread and sweetened a glass of iced tea. All this she balanced on a serving tray and brought to her sister.
Bea shifted the cat from her lap, all the while grumbling beneath her breath. Finally, she said clearly, “I’m still cool!”
Elise groaned and glanced at her watch. Then she hurried into the bedroom just off the living room to find the wrap. “Here,” she said, spreading the soft material over her sister’s shoulders. “Is there anything else?”
At one time Bea had been beautiful, with silver-blond hair flowing softly to the middle of her back, bright blue eyes that flashed with anticipation and a delicacy of features and build that the two sisters still shared. Now, Bea pulled her hair into an unbecoming knot at the base of her neck, discontent had faded the color of her eyes and bitterness contorted the fragility of her features.
Adjusting her wheelchair to a more comfortable position at the side table, Bea said dismissingly, “No, I wouldn’t dream of asking for anything else. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your meeting.”
Elise suffered a pang of guilt. “It’s with the architect, Bea. The professor who’s going to see if he can help us build the new library. I’d forgotten all about it what with the water leak and everything. Remember when I first came in, I told you that a number of books had gotten wet and that people from all over Tyler had come to help?”
Her sister fixed her with a cool gaze. “You said something, but I didn’t understand. I thought you’d fallen into a mud puddle.”
Elise sighed and rubbed a hand across her brow, a telling gesture that she was unaware of using. “I’ll explain everything this evening, all right? Right now I really have to...”
“Go. I know. You always have to go.”
Elise wanted to scream. She wanted to yell at her sister that she couldn’t help it if she had to hurry off to her job. That if she hadn’t done so for these past thirty years they wouldn’t have eaten very well. There would be no house, no television, no leisurely outings, no subscriptions to doll collectors’ magazines, no vast collection of dolls.... But she kept her tongue, just as she had for all these years, knowing that Bea had reason to be bitter. “Yes, I do,” she agreed. “I’ll try to be home by six-thirty, but if I can’t, I’ll get Josephine to come make your dinner. I’ll let you know.”
Bea picked at the pie with her fork and didn’t say anything, a point Elise didn’t regret as she finally left the house. She was already nervous enough about her meeting with the architectural professor. The stakes were high—as in whether Tyler would continue to have a library and she herself a job!
Elise dashed for her car, a moderately old, tan Ford Escort, and quickly backed out of the drive. In her mind she rehearsed an apology for being late, one she hoped she would be able to deliver with a modicum of dignity.
* * *
THE ALBERTA INGALLS Memorial Library was housed in a spacious home built around the turn of the century. A series of narrow, vertical windows showcased the second-floor exterior, while a large wraparound porch with strong white columns gave character to the first. Over the years, Elise had planned the landscaping herself, encouraging the growth of rich evergreen shrubs along the base of the porch and seasonal flowers in the accompanying wide beds. The grass had a lush green cast, with shade provided by both oak and maple trees.
Normally the scene was placid, inviting patrons to come inside for a leisurely browse, but that was not the image presented today. Elise was forced to bypass the jammed parking spaces in front of the building and add her car to the numerous others crowded end to end along both sides of the street.
The library was a hive of activity. People moved busily inside and out. The front porch, usually reserved for quiet reading, was congested with folding tables. They in turn bore the weight of numerous books that were being set on end and fanned open so that they could begin to dry, even as more books continued to be removed from the water-damaged room within.
Elise gathered her purse from the passenger seat and hurried toward the scene. She was grateful to all the people who had turned out. It seemed as if everyone in town who could help had come when told about the emergency.
As Elise stepped onto the porch, Delia Mayhew, one of the library’s two part-time aids, rushed to greet her. “We’ve gotten almost all the books out now, Elise. We’re down to the Vs on the last shelf!” Delia’s dusky cheeks were flushed a becoming shade of pink and her dark eyes were shining. She had just turned twenty-one and had seldom, if ever, traveled farther than a two-hundred-mile radius from her home. For her, the accident that morning was a cause for genuine excitement.
Alyssa Baron looked up from her work with the wettest books. Elegant, blond and regal of bearing, Alyssa could always be counted upon in times of trouble. As the only daughter of the town’s most influential man, she seemed to feel service to the people of Tyler was her duty. She and her very pregnant daughter, Liza Forrester, were carefully placing sections of paper toweling between individual pages to act as blotting agents. “It’s a good thing the accident happened in the Biography Room,” Alyssa murmured wryly after hearing Delia’s somewhat oddly worded description. “Otherwise we’d have a hard time telling exactly where we were.”
Grinning at her mother’s wry jest, Liza agreed, “Oh, definitely. The Dewey Decimal classification 973.629A just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a V, does it?”
Cliff Forrester, Liza’s husband, came up beside them. “What’s this about V?” he asked, watching as his wife tore off another section of paper towel and placed it between two pages. “You’re not planning names for the baby, are you? What starts with a V? Let’s see: Virgil, Venus...”
Liza tilted her head and gave a devilish smile. “What would you do if I wanted to name our child Venus?”
Cliff smiled slowly and surprised Elise by winking at her. Normally, he was so quiet and self-contained. “Why, I’d agree,” he said. “What else?”
Johnny Kelsey dropped an armload of books onto a table behind Elise. “I’ve talked with Pastor Schoff,” he announced, causing Elise to turn toward him. “We can have the church hall any time we want it. When I get off work this evening, I’ll bring some of the men from the F and M and we can shift all this again.” He motioned to the tables and books scattered along the porch. “That’s still what you want, isn’t it? To get this lot moved inside somewhere?”
Elise met the deep-set gray eyes of the man she’d known since childhood. “If you could do that, Johnny, it would be wonderful. Do I need to speak with Pastor Schoff myself?”
Anna Kelsey arrived just in time to hear Elise’s question. She, too, was delivering an armload of damp books. “Probably should,” she said. “I’m sure he could arrange fresh volunteers for tonight if you ask him.”
“I’ll call right away. Oh!” Elise suddenly looked stricken. Once again she had gotten carried away by the immediate problem and forgotten the more looming threat. “Has anyone seen Professor Fairmont?”
There was a series of shrugs and head shakes. “Not since earlier,” Alyssa said.
“What about Renata?” Elise asked. “She said she’d watch out for him.”
Again Alyssa shook her head.
Elise’s stomach tightened. Robert Fairmont’s reputation was impressive. As a practicing architect, he had won numerous design awards, and his track record as a teacher was impressive, too. A growing number of his former students were beginning to make names for themselves, with many attributing much of their success to him. Had he been insulted that she was late for their appointment, and so had decided to leave?
“Where’s Pauline?” she tried yet again, starting to feel more than a little desperate. Delia pointed to a group of people at the far end of the porch. With a soft murmur, Elise excused herself.
Pauline Martin, the library’s only full-time aid, was a plump woman in her early forties with short, light brown hair and a perpetual expression of amused good cheer. An earth-mother type, she loved working with the children who came to the library, and along with Elise had developed a program that several libraries in other small towns now emulated.
When she saw Elise, Pauline broke into a beaming smile. “You look perfect! Don’t touch a thing! Otherwise you’ll get all dirty again. Have you heard? We can use the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Pastor Schoff didn’t understand at first why we couldn’t just put the books in another part of the library, but when Johnny told him about the dampness spreading to the rest of the collection, he agreed right away. Just like Johnny understood when you told him earlier. He—”
Elise broke into the ongoing stream. If Pauline were turned loose, they could be standing there for hours. “Pauline, Professor Fairmont—have you seen him?”
Pauline frowned. “Why, yes. Just a little while ago. He was...somewhere.” She scanned the people on the porch. “The last time I saw him, he was by the front steps.”
“Was he leaving?” Elise couldn’t help the note of alarm in her voice.
Pauline frowned in puzzlement. “Why would he leave when he’s come all the way from Milwaukee?”
“I’ll check inside.” Elise hurried through the open double doors that led into the library proper.
A steady stream of people was moving up and down the hall that led to a room at the rear of the library. There, a buildup of water from a leaking pipe had caused a portion of the ceiling to give way. Some people exiting from the hall were heading to the porch with damp volumes. Others had been assigned the task of stacking the numerous books that had managed to remain dry in an area off to one side of the circulation desk.
Elise shivered, remembering the horror of the moment when water had first sprayed everywhere. For a short space of time, her emotions had given way as well as she had tried frantically to rescue the books nearest the disaster.
At the Biography Room’s door, the tall young man next in line stood aside to let Elise enter. He was Ricky Travis, a recent graduate of Tyler High School. “Miss Ferguson,” Ricky said respectfully.
A glimmer of a smile touched Elise’s lips. Ricky was a person it was sometimes hard to like. A typical teenager, he’d had his share of ups and downs over the past year. In particular, he’d had difficulties on the high school football team. Some in town thought him cocky, but Elise knew another side of him. She remembered the little boy who had devoured books on dinosaurs the way other little boys eat cake. The fiercer the dinosaur, the better. Ricky had been able to rattle even the most complicated scientific names off his tongue. Next, he had progressed to adventure tales and finally to science fiction—his current favorite. “Ricky,” she acknowledged softly. She included a couple of Ricky’s friends in her smile and stepped into the chaos of the room.
Even though they had finally managed to cut off the water supply to the library, occasional drops still fell from the raw open wound on the ceiling. Bits of soggy plaster clung to the gaping edges of the hole, while other pieces cluttered the wet floor, mixing with dirt that had collected in the lathing for nearly a hundred years. Elise had tried to clear away the worst of the muck before she went home, sweeping it to one side, but numerous feet trampling through to rescue books hadn’t helped the situation. Several thick cotton towels had been spread as doormats into the hall, in an attempt to keep tracking to a minimum, but their success was debatable.
Josephine Mackie, principal of Tyler High School, waved to Elise from across the room. Elise lifted a hand and started to make her way toward her, all the while murmuring encouragement to those in the process of removing the last of the books as well as those taking down the free-standing shelves.
Several people in the rescue force Elise didn’t recognize, but she was grateful for their willingness to help even if she didn’t know them personally. One man in particular seemed to be enjoying himself. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and smudges of dirt on what once had been a pristine white shirt, he braced one of the metal shelf units so that Patrick Kelsey, Johnny and Anna’s oldest, could loosen the bolts that held it to the next section. Grinning, he said something that made Patrick laugh.
He was an attractive man, probably somewhere in his mid to late fifties, with wavy black hair sprinkled lightly with silver, an olive complexion that made him look as if he had a year-round tan, a capable, active-looking body and a rather rugged set to his features. He glanced up as Elise continued to watch him, and she was struck by the fact that his eyes were a curious shade of yellow and brown. But it was not so much their unusual color as their expression that unsettled her. Confident, vital and knowingly amused, they lent him the air of a man who could all too easily perceive the foibles and fantasies of the people around him.
Illogically, Elise averted her gaze, afraid that he might see inside of her. A moment later, after castigating herself for being fanciful, she looked back, only to find that his attention had returned to Patrick Kelsey.
Continuing on to Josephine’s side, Elise was perplexed that her heart rate had quickened. It was this horrible day, she told herself firmly. Nothing more than too much stress. She had passed her recent physical exam with flying colors; the only caveat the doctor had given her was to lighten up and not work so hard. Her? Lighten up? With one library literally falling down around her head and a new one whose construction, because of fiscal problems, had ground to a halt with only the foundation work complete? And to top it off, she had now lost the visiting professor, the only person who could help them solve their problem!
Josephine Mackie was almost seven years Elise’s senior, closer to Bea’s age than her own. But that illusionary difference had evaporated over time, and they’d been best friends for more years than either of them cared to think about.
A slender, gray-haired woman with a long thin nose, and pale gray eyes that hid behind round, rimless glasses, Josephine had presided over the high school with an iron hand for almost as many years as Elise had been Tyler’s chief librarian. She demanded that students and teachers alike do their best, holding them to strict guidelines. But she also ruled with fairness and maintained an open-door policy to anyone who had troubles. She had seen a lot and helped a lot, and the sharpness of her expression concealed a tender heart. As head of Tyler’s Friends of the Library organization, she frequently worked with Elise on various projects.
“Don’t look so panicked,” Josephine rebuked her fondly, taking a guess at the cause of Elise’s worried expression. “Everything is under control. The plumber’s on his way, the pipe will be fixed in no time, and then we can get the water turned back on and begin the cleanup.”
“It’s not that,” Elise replied, looking around anxiously. Her gaze skimmed over the man at the shelves before moving on to the other strangers in the room. None of them fit her idea of how a professor of architecture should look. “I’ve really messed things up, Josephine. He’s not here. I think he’s gone home...gone back to Milwaukee. He’ll probably never agree to meet with me again. I’ll have to go to the town council and tell them that I—”
“Elise,” Josephine interrupted her pleasantly. “He’s over there.”
“What? Where?” Elise’s head swung round, trying to follow the direction her friend pointed.
“At the shelves, with Patrick Kelsey. I saw you looking at him just now. I thought you knew.”
Elise closed her eyes. That man was Professor Fairmont, and he had been roped into helping. A man of his stature. “No,” she said weakly. “I didn’t know.”
Josephine rubbed her grimy hands on the rag she had been using to wipe down the shelves. “He’s really quite nice,” she said mildly. “He impressed me. He arrived early for your appointment, saw the mess and didn’t hesitate. He just took off his jacket and dug right in.”
“Oh, God,” Elise breathed.
Josephine looked at her. “What’s the matter? Should I have stopped him?”
Elise shrugged guiltily. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. It’s just...”
“Elise.” Josephine gave her one of the patented principal looks she had been honing on recalcitrant students for years. “Go talk to the man. Apologize. Thank him for helping. It’s all you can do.”
Patrick had succeeded in releasing the final bolt that held the first shelving unit to the next, and as a result, the unit swung free. Immediately, a strong pair of hands compensated for the release of tension, balancing the unit until Ricky and his friends could come forward to relieve the holder of its weight. Then the unit itself was spirited out of the room.
Elise’s nerves fluttered. She’d known what she was going to have to do even before Josephine told her. She drew a deep breath and, after a quick, heartening glance at her friend, closed the distance between herself and the professor.
Robert Fairmont concentrated on his work, watching as Patrick bent to release the initial bolts holding the next unit. Elise stopped just in front of him. The neat crispness of her reserved-for-meetings suit seemed so out of place in the circumstances, her makeup too carefully applied. She was the only person in the library who wasn’t working, who wasn’t sullied.
“Professor Fairmont?” she asked, her voice strained. He looked up and again she was struck by the uniqueness of his eyes. She smiled to cover her nervousness and thrust out a welcoming hand. “I’m Elise Ferguson, the chief librarian here. I’m sorry I wasn’t available to greet you earlier, but as you can see, we’ve had a little accident.”
“This whole place is an accident, if you ask me,” Patrick Kelsey declared, straightening. “When Mom called to tell Pam and me what had happened, we thought it was the roof. Another bad storm and the whole thing could blow off. I’d hate to think of the cleanup then!”
“So would I,” Elise murmured.
Robert Fairmont started to take her hand but paused first to wipe his own along the side of his dark slacks. His touch, when it came, was warm, sure. “This is enough of a calamity, I should think,” he said.
His voice set off a series of alarms along Elise’s already disturbed nerve endings. It was low and soft, the voice of a man who didn’t have to shout to be heard because people automatically listened.
Patrick motioned for someone else to assist him, then said to Elise, “We can take care of this if you two need to talk. I was just telling Robert here how badly we need the new library, then I found out who he was. Sure hope you two can work something out.”
Robert Fairmont’s smile was assured. “We’ll do our best.”
Elise was conscious that he followed closely behind her as she walked out of the room. At a quiet corner in the hall, she turned to face him. “I’m sorry about all of this,” she said. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Would you like to talk in my office? It’s just down the hall. It’s dry,” she added as an extra incentive.
An array of lines crinkled the corners of his eyes and the creases in his cheeks deepened when he smiled. His was a strong face, weathered by life and tempered by experience. “Dry has a definite appeal today,” he agreed.
Elise turned away, unsure if he was laughing at her. She decided to take his reply at face value.
“Are the books salvageable?” he asked as he fell into step at her side.
“Hopefully most will be. Even the wettest. Our worst enemy is mold, not water. That’s why we had to get them into circulating air so quickly, so they could start the process of drying. We couldn’t afford to wait. Only the books with coated pages will have to be sent away to a vacuum chamber to be dried—they’ll fuse into hard blocks otherwise. Again, hopefully, there won’t be many of those, because the procedure can be expensive...something we just don’t need right now.”
She unlocked the door to her office and ushered him inside. The room was cramped, as were most of the other rooms in the library, both in the public and staff areas. Boxes were stacked on the floor; books and catalogs rested on every available flat surface. Notes fluttered from her small bulletin board. The town had outgrown the facility a number of years ago, far longer than the past two or so years that they had spent planning the new building. Not even continued weeding of books and materials could create enough space for everything and everyone.
Elise made no apology for the condition of the room. It was something she just couldn’t help. She took a seat behind her work station and nodded toward the empty chair. “Our ability to make coffee is hampered, of course,” she said. “But if you’d care to have some, I’m sure we can find someone who wouldn’t mind...”
“No need,” he said, folding his length into the proffered chair. His gaze once again searched the room before alighting on Elise. “Actually, I have a proposition to put to you. Why don’t we postpone this meeting for a day or two? Possibly even longer than that. You have your hands full now and I’m in no great hurry. I can wait.”
Elise had managed to school her face of all emotion, but at his suggestion, she jerked forward, her expression intent. “But we can’t do that!” she cried. “The new library can’t wait! You’ve seen how bad the situation is here. You’ve heard about the roof...and that’s not all! I love this old house. I’ve loved it all the years I’ve worked here and even before, when I came as a child to use it. But we’ve reached the point where we just can’t stay any longer—not with everything like it is. We have to build the new library. Either that or we make the necessary repairs, and I’m afraid that after all the money the town’s already spent on plans and contracts and fees, there won’t be enough money left to... Then we’ll lose everything—buildings, books...”
She stopped, her throat tightening. He didn’t need to know all that. She didn’t need to tell him.
After a moment he said, “A day or two won’t matter at this stage. Relax a bit. You can’t build a new library all on your own. That’s why I’m here. To see if I can help.”
“But...”
Robert Fairmont, professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, leaned forward to still the fingers that worked against each other on top of her desk. His smile flashed reassurance. “Relax,” he repeated softly. “In a few days we can talk. Say, on Friday. In the meantime, you can get things under control here, and I’ll go over the plans I have from the firm in greater detail. The time won’t be wasted.”
As she listened to him speak, Elise felt the tension she had been carrying all day melt away, as if his certainty could protect her. It was a nice feeling; her burdens had somehow been lifted. But the magic didn’t last. The difficulties both she and the town faced could not be ignored for long. She pulled her hands away, severing their connection. Still, what he said about delaying the consultation made sense. With all the people working nearby, she would be divided in her allegiance. She would want to be in both places at once. “All right,” she agreed tightly. “We’ll meet again on Friday.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. Then he stood up.
Elise remained in her chair. She continued to stare at him, completely unaware, for the moment, of what she was doing. Then she, too, got quickly to her feet, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. She was a competent woman. People trusted her to do the right thing. They trusted her with the growing minds of their children. She was responsible for every program and every book that came into or went out of the library. She was responsible for budget planning, for equipment purchases, for not indulging in gossip when she was in the perfect job for it. She knew everyone’s tastes, everyone’s interests, and sometimes, it seemed, everyone’s problems. Yet at this moment she felt like a little girl again, off center, off balance. It had to be the day, she told herself. It had to be.
She led him back to the Biography Room, but just outside the door, she paused to say stiltedly, “Don’t feel you have to help any longer. You shouldn’t have been pressed into service in the first place. We have enough people now. There’s no need for you to stay.”
He met her look levelly. “I helped because I wanted to. I love books and old houses. I think I’ll stay a little longer...that is, if it’s all right with you.”
Elise shrugged, trying to maintain some kind of cool facade. “As you wish, Mr.... Professor...”
“Robert,” he suggested. “Just call me Robert. And I’ll call you Elise.”
Elise’s heart jumped when he said her name, a fact that startled her. What was wrong with her? Maybe she should go see Dr. Baron and have another checkup.
“All right,” she murmured, and walking into the damaged room, she headed directly for the safe harbor that was Josephine.
She tried not to notice Robert Fairmont as he worked—that after checking to see if Patrick had further need of him, he started to shift the fallen debris, carrying out the larger pieces of plaster Elise had pushed to one side and disposing of the rest with a dustpan, broom and mop.
Then she tried desperately not to notice that she had noticed.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e764f37e-4028-5d65-89e2-0a4e52ec4f30)
ELISE GUIDED her Escort into the garage, the long day having finally taken its toll. At the moment she felt every bit of her fifty-three years. In fact, she felt a hundred and fifty-three! Her head ached, her back ached, her feet ached. She had been too exhausted to do more than pick at her food earlier when someone was kind enough to bring dinner to the volunteers at the church hall. But at least they had gotten the job done. Most of the books were now resting jauntily on end, their pages fanned open, continuing the process of drying. And the books that needed to be sent away and were valuable enough for the library to justify the costly procedure of reclaiming them had been frozen as procedure dictated. In all, only a small number would likely be lost. Considering everything, they had gotten off lightly. If the leak had been larger, or if it had occurred somewhere else—say, over the Tyler Collection that she had spent years gathering and that contained archival papers of the town’s history as well as old photographs that couldn’t be replaced... Elise shuddered at the thought. The day would have been a catastrophe. Now the only difficulty was the worrisome fact that such a catastrophe could still occur. If the pipes in one section of the library were in such poor condition, it stood to reason that pipes elsewhere could be the same. Not to mention the condition of the roof. Elise shook her head in quick denial. She didn’t want to think about the condition of the roof!
After gathering her purse and jacket, she let herself out of the car. Where once her suit had been crisp and smart, the skirt and blouse now looked to be in almost as wretched a condition as her dress had earlier. She hadn’t bothered to go home again to change into clothes suitable for the book rescue work. She hadn’t wanted to take the time. So she’d just removed her jacket and set to work. And after an afternoon spent wiping down shelves and walls and floors, and an evening supervising the transfer of water-damaged books, her clothes might never be the same.
Elise fitted her key into the back door lock and stepped inside the house that she and Bea had lived in for most of their adult lives. The design was perfect for Bea’s needs, and what wasn’t had been altered. Their parents had bought and refitted the house just a few years before their deaths.
Distinctive theme music from a popular television drama spilled out of the living room, alerting Elise to the presence of the others. She knew Josephine was there because her car was parked at the end of the sidewalk.
Both women looked up when Elise entered the room. The cat made the first move toward greeting, stirring her slightly pudgy body to get up, and then stretching her back into a high arch before starting a slow, regal walk toward the person who fed her. Tiny noises of pleasure sounded deep in her throat.
“It’s certainly about time,” Bea pronounced shortly. “We’d just about given you up for dead!”
Ignoring Bea’s remark, Josephine said, “You look exhausted. Were you able to finish?”
Elise crouched to stroke the cat, who was rubbing against her legs in an ecstatic show of goodwill. “Buttercup...hello. My goodness, did you miss me?” She laughed lightly when Buttercup purred a response. Scooping the cat into her arms, she straightened and answered Josephine’s question. “Yes, thank goodness. At least, with this part. Of course, tomorrow the insurance people will come and we’ll have to see about getting the ceiling repaired. Not to mention arranging things with the vacuum-chamber people and continuing to work with the books at the church. Then we have to do something with all the books that didn’t get damp but had to be moved anyway. They’re just stacked haphazardly about. Then...” Buttercup grew restless and twisted to be set free. Elise released her, then claimed a seat on the couch for herself.
“I’m sorry I asked,” Josephine murmured dryly, gazing at Elise with compassion.
“So that means tomorrow is going to be another repeat of today,” Bea said tightly, not showing any compassion. “You’ll be away again all day and half the night.”
“No, Bea,” Elise answered levelly. “Today was unusual because of the accident.”
“I was going to give you five more minutes and then go to bed,” Bea snapped. “If you want to stay out all night, well, that’s up to you. But there are those of us who have to sleep!”
“I’m home now, Bea,” Elise defended herself tiredly.
“I told you to go to bed, Bea,” Josephine said, taking up Elise’s cause. “I told you I’d brush your hair.”
“No.” Bea shook her head. “It’s the least Elise can do after being away each day for so long. And especially the way she abandoned me today.”
Elise closed her eyes. Right now she didn’t think she had strength left to lift the brush.
“Let me do it for you tonight,” Josephine urged. “Just this once.”
Bea gathered her possessions onto her lap, adjusting the wheelchair as needed. She collected her magazine, her sewing, her tissues, her wrap. “Elise can do as she wants,” she replied primly. “If she doesn’t want to brush my hair, she certainly doesn’t have to.” She then made a production of pushing herself across the room, making it seem difficult, hard to accomplish.
Elise started to get up but Josephine stopped her. “At least let me help you to your room, Bea. Elise is tired. She needs to rest.”
“I can take care of it myself!” Bea snapped. “I don’t need help from you!”
“Bea!” Elise protested.
Bea turned. She lifted her chin. Her body seemed delicate in the chair, but when she chose, her angry spirit could dominate even the most determined soul. “I can’t say it’s been nice, because it hasn’t. Today has been an absolute nightmare! Josephine, there’s no need for you to come over tomorrow. I’ll be fine. I can do without a meal or two. It won’t hurt me.”
“Bea!” Josephine chastised her in turn.
Bea threw their visitor a superior look before her eyes moved on to her sister. Once they were settled upon Elise, though, her expression became harder to define.
Tears of exhaustion sprang into Elise’s eyes. She had to blink rapidly to keep them from falling.
A tiny, satisfied smile feathered the side of Bea’s mouth. Then she turned away and rolled resolutely out of the room.
The television blared into a newsbreak but no one seemed to notice. At the closing click of Bea’s door, Josephine switched off the set. Silence permeated the room.
A moment later Elise said softly, “I suppose today has been difficult for her.”
Josephine’s jaw was tight. “I don’t see why. Between the two of us we’ve done everything we possibly could for her. She takes advantage of you, Elise, you know that. Anyone else would tell her to take her dictatorial ways and jump into the nearest—”
Elise sat forward, interrupting her. “Tomorrow really shouldn’t be as bad as today. There’ll be a lot to do, but at least I know what to expect. I can’t tell you how horrible it was this morning to look into that room and see that gigantic bubble hanging from the ceiling. Then to be standing almost under it when it broke!” Elise started to laugh, a release from tension. “I was grabbing books, trying to get them out of harm’s way, then, whoosh! We had our own indoor monsoon!”
“How did you get along with Professor Fairmont?” Josephine asked. “Does he think he can do anything to help with the new library?”
Elise’s laughter stopped. She had been successful in keeping the man out of her thoughts from shortly after she saw him leave late in the afternoon to this moment. She shrugged. “We didn’t really have time to talk. He’s coming back on Friday. We’ll discuss it then.”
Josephine nodded. “I told you before that he impressed me. I like the way he looks you straight in the eye and doesn’t bother to hide what he thinks. You know where you stand with someone like that. Not that he can’t charm the birds from the trees when he wants—you can see that at first glance, too. But there’s something underneath. A fine, strong character.”
Buttercup leaped gracefully onto the couch and started to purr as Elise absently stroked her silky head. “I felt like he could see too much,” she mused.
“What do you mean?” Josephine asked, frowning.
Elise shook her head, then was forced to cover a huge yawn.
Smiling good-naturedly, Josephine stood up. “The best favor you can do for yourself right now is get into bed and not worry about a thing. I’ve taken care of the kitchen. All the dishes are washed and put away. I also made some of Bea’s favorite breakfast rolls for tomorrow morning, so that should keep her happy, at least for a while.” Josephine took a moment to examine her friend closely. “It probably won’t do any good,” she said, “but I’m going to say it anyway. You’re taking too much onto yourself, Elise. Wearing yourself too thin. You can’t handle all the burdens of this town as well as those of your family. One person can carry only so much!”
Elise returned the woman’s gaze with tolerant amusement. “I’ll remember to give you the same speech the beginning of next semester when you’re single-handedly trying to drag the high school along in your wake. We’ve known each other for too long, Josephine.”
Josephine grimaced. “You’re probably right. Sometimes I think I’ll retire early. Go off on one of those world cruises, the kind that only single people can get a ticket on. Meet some nice man and settle down. Want to come along?”
“What? And shock everyone in Tyler? We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing forever, remember? Our lives can’t change. Town institutions don’t just get up and waltz away from their duties.”
Josephine located her purse. “Maybe one day we’ll surprise them all. The head of the library waltzes off, the head of the high school waltzes off....”
“I’ll just be happy to have the new library.”
Josephine nodded in resignation. “Me, too. One small step. Then maybe the school can build a new science lab. We’re not asking for that much, are we?”
Elise saw her friend to the door and gave her a warm hug. “Thanks for all you did today. At the library. Here.”
“Anytime. Well, no. I didn’t mean it that way. We certainly don’t want another accident.”
Elise waved as Josephine drove away, then she closed the door and secured it. The house was quiet when she turned. Quiet and somehow empty. Bea was in her room, waiting to have her hair brushed. The marmalade cat was fast asleep on the couch. Echoes of their parents still could be felt in the decor that had changed little since their deaths so many years before. Yet there were times when it just wasn’t enough.
Elise drew a soft breath, braced her weary shoulders and went to tap on Bea’s door. The call for entry came without hesitation.
Bea was sitting up in bed, the wheelchair off at an angle nearby. Elise moved it in order to get the brush out of the bedside table drawer. Bea had already taken her hair down, the long, pale threads her last remaining pride. Wordlessly, Elise perched on the edge of the mattress and began the ritual that ended each sister’s day.
As usual, Bea relaxed when the long strokes with the brush began, and as usual, Elise’s mind wandered. Tonight her thoughts flew to a certain time in the day when she had sat at her desk directly opposite a vital, attractive man, and he had placed his hand over hers and told her not to worry. And for a few enchanted seconds, she hadn’t worried. All her cares had lifted as she became lost in the certainty of his voice and the look in his unusual yellow-brown eyes.
Bea moved impatiently. “Have you gone to sleep?” she demanded. “You’ve stopped brushing!”
Elise immediately shook the memory away, glad that her sister couldn’t see the warm flush that had crept into her cheeks.
* * *
AMID THE FAMILIAR surroundings of his apartment in Milwaukee, Robert Fairmont sat at his drafting table and contemplated the set of blueprints for the Tyler library. He frowned in concentration as he moved from sheet to sheet and finally to the specifications at the end. It was a good job, nothing less than he expected from Fred Dupont—which was exactly what he’d decided after reviewing the project the day before. Fred had been a good student and now he was a good practicing architect in the firm with which Robert himself was affiliated. But Robert could see where civic pride and a good artist’s instincts had eventually led to a clash with today’s fiscal reality.
He checked the papers that constituted the history of the project. First contact with the firm had come nearly three years before, at a time when matching funds from state and federal sources were much easier for small towns like Tyler to access. As those sources dried up, any number of civic projects all over the state had been put on hold.
He returned to the specifications. Yes, it truly was a beautiful job. The library would have been a building all involved could be proud of. Only now it faced the same threats as had the courthouse in Johnstown Corners and the new administration building in Bennington Falls before he had found a way to save them. Could he help the people of Tyler in the same way?
He smiled slightly to himself. The simplest solution would be to lop off the top floor of the two-story Greek Revival structure, but he doubted that the chief librarian would sit still for that. And he couldn’t blame her. Space was so cramped in the building that presently housed the library. What would be the sense of constructing a new building that gave them very little additional room? The collection wouldn’t get wet, but that was about all he could promise.
Robert moved away from the drawing board to stand at the series of wide windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. Lights were starting to twinkle along the shore as the setting sun rapidly plunged the area into night. He leaned against the thick plate glass, his shoulder registering its solidness as well as its coolness as he hummed softly in accompaniment to the delicate strains of the Mozart piano concerto that reverberated throughout the apartment. There was no one to complain if he was slightly off-key or to protest that he hummed too loudly; no one to criticize his choice of music. His features relaxed into contentment. A short time later, when the movement drew to a close, he sighed, and with reluctance allowed his thoughts to return to the events of the day.
His time in Tyler had been far different from what he’d expected. He had planned to pass a couple of hours in consultation about the library, then be on his way back to Milwaukee, about an hour’s drive away. As it turned out, most of the day had been spent in hard physical labor! Row upon row of books had needed to be moved, shelves had to be taken down, the room where the leak had occurred had had to be emptied so that repairs could be made and all surfaces properly cleaned. There hadn’t been time to do much consulting—at least, not with the chief librarian. But he had been able to pick up on the feelings of a number of his fellow workers. It seemed that the old house that had served as Tyler’s library for the past forty years had reached the point of no return. Everyone agreed it was in terrible condition and might fall down at any given moment—an exaggeration, Robert knew, but one that expressed the townspeople’s feelings succinctly. All seemed to want the new library to be built, but no one had a good idea of how to replace the funding that had been lost. Their attempts to raise additional money had barely scratched the surface of what was needed, which made their frustration easy to understand. So, too, was the desperation of the librarian, who pretended to be calm and collected in the midst of disaster, but who in reality was in a near-explosive state of worry.
Robert pushed away from the window and moved restlessly about the apartment. He was glad he had a project to think about, something to keep his mind occupied for the dog days of summer. Unlike past summers, when he had traveled, this one he had decided to spend at home. And he could already tell that his decision had been a mistake.
He moved back to the drawing table and continued to hum, both lightly and on-key, as he exchanged the plans of the Tyler library for a set of yellow tracing sheets on which he had been sketching his version of a modern-day cathedral. After securing it in place, he sat down to work. It was his whimsy that one day one of his renderings would rival the best that Europe had to offer in style, grace and innovative grandeur.
The German poet Goethe had once likened architecture to “frozen music.” That was the way Robert thought of his craft. It appealed both to the artist in him and to the engineer. The challenge was everything.
* * *
ELISE HURRIED downstairs, aware that once again she was late. For a person who prided herself on being punctual, the past few days had been a trial. There had been problems with the insurance company, with arranging an appointment for the vacuum chamber, even with the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Somehow someone had overlooked the fact that the church hall was scheduled for use that weekend, and it had taken a number of calls, plus Elise’s own pleading intervention, to make arrangements for the planned awards dinner to be held instead at the hall belonging to the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.
Once Elise got behind in her schedule, she seemed to stay behind. She had thought to have most things under control by this morning, only to discover that Joe Santori could come three days early to repair the ceiling of the Biography Room. And she wasn’t about to tell him not to come. The way things were progressing, a refusal could equal several weeks’ delay. So she had stayed at the library longer than planned, which made her late arriving home to prepare Bea’s lunch, which accordingly had delayed her preparation for her second meeting with Robert Fairmont.
A light film of perspiration glazed her body, the result of a too-hot shower, a too-warm house and heightened tension. She wore another suit, a backup reserved-for-meetings suit that was the same pale blue color as her eyes. It didn’t quite manage the psychological boost of the red suit she’d donned three days before, but it was close. Fired with determination, she felt in control, competent and businesslike.
She had thought about everything that had happened when she met the professor the first time and decided that her reaction had been magnified all out of proportion. None of it had been real. When she saw him today he would prove to be an ordinary human being with eyes that saw nothing beyond the commonplace and a voice that held no particular power. He would come, they would talk, and hopefully Tyler would be able to build its new library. Afterward, she would go on just as she had always gone on, with one day following another.
Bea made no demand as Elise came downstairs. Giving in to curiosity, Elise peeked around the doorway into the family room. As usual, Bea was sitting in front of the television set, but instead of watching the broadcast game show, she had fallen asleep.
Elise paused, not wanting to wake her. But when Buttercup gave a meow of welcome and with feline grace jumped from the couch to the floor without disturbing Bea, Elise was drawn farther into the room. Chances to observe her sister unnoticed were extremely rare.
Bea’s blond head had no brace. She slept sitting upright, her slender body fragile in the dull-colored, shapeless dress. In repose, her features were soft, almost beautiful again. The ravages of bitterness and self-pity might never have been.
Elise studied her, then as shadows of the past began to dance before her eyes, she became very still. She saw Bea as she once had been: happy, smiling, unhampered...a flirt at seventeen. And she saw herself at eleven: half child, half budding young woman, who doubted herself even as she thought her sister one of the most magnificent beings in the world. Then had come a fateful Wisconsin winter, a snowfall, the gradual formation of ice....
A primitive cry sounded deep in Elise’s throat as her features twisted with pain. She tried to thrust the terrible memory away. It hurt too much! She loved her sister. She didn’t want anything bad to have happened to her. She didn’t want to remember!
Bea’s eyes opened with startling suddenness. In them, there was no question as to where she was or what was taking place. She looked directly at Elise and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
Elise tried to control the trembling of her limbs. She tried to act as if nothing was wrong. But she knew that Bea could see through her performance. “No, I just—You were sleeping and I thought—”
Bea had perfected a certain smile over the years, a smile that combined innocence and raw power. It was a smile that instantly plunged Elise into distress without her being fully aware of the cause. Bea used it now. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she said.
“But your eyes were closed!” Elise wanted to run from the room. She always felt so exposed at these moments.
“I was resting, that’s all. Are you leaving again?”
Elise rubbed a hand across her brow. Her hard-won poise had disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. The meeting was going to be a disaster. Robert Fairmont would arrive in Tyler and all her worst nightmares would come true. He would tell her that cutting costs would be impossible. That she should stay in the old library and be jolly well glad that she had it...even if the town council did dig in their heels and refuse to spend any more money on it for needed repairs. Then he would look penetratingly at her and see everything that she kept hidden inside, see her deepest thoughts and desires. See her for the fraud that she truly was! “Uh... yes,” she stammered. “I have a meeting.”
“With that professor?” Bea lifted an eyebrow in speculation. “The way Josephine described him, he sounds a little too hoity-toity for my taste. He must think quite a lot of himself.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Elise murmured, glancing at the door and escape.
Bea saw the look and dismissed her angrily. “Oh, go on. Leave! You’re not exactly a scintillating conversationalist anyway. Just get me a pitcher of lemonade before you go. The house is on the warm side today.”
“Would you like me to switch on the air-conditioning?”
“What? And have me freeze? No, I should certainly say not. Just get me the lemonade.”
Elise wished that she had never stopped to glance into the room. If Bea was quiet, she should have taken advantage of the moment and slipped silently out of the house.
While mixing her sister’s refreshment, she tried to repair the damage that had been done to her assurance. But she knew the job remained only half-finished when, upon her return, Bea’s sniff of disapproval still caused her pain.
* * *
ELISE SWUNG her car into the rear parking area of the library that was usually reserved for the staff. This afternoon, however, a truck was parked close to the back entrance and the whine of an electric saw could be heard coming from deep within the building. Joe Santori and his young assistant, Lars Travis, were still hard at work.
Elise set the emergency brake and stepped outside. Under the guise of adjusting the shoulder strap of her purse, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, strengthening her spine, she set off, seemingly ready for anything.
The interior of the library was divided into individual rooms, just as it had been during its occupation by the Friedrichs, the family who had once lived there. The floors were oak, buffed to a well-worn luster by the custodian, Jimmy Randolph, and in what once must have been an expensive touch, prodigious amounts of geometrically carved moldings decorated the walls, the doorways, the windows and even the bookcases that had been built into the home’s private library.
Changes had been made to convert the building to public use, but most of the changes involved running electrical conduits along the floor to various work stations for the staff and filling almost all the rooms with shelves. No walls had been taken down and only a few added.
Elise hesitated in the doorway of the large front room that had served the Friedrichs as a combination living and dining room and that now served as the library’s main circulation area. Her gaze swept over staff and patrons. From the calm that had descended over the facility, no one would have believed that only a short time ago the area had been involved in such chaos. Delia Mayhew was at the circulation desk checking out books, Pauline was on her way to the Children’s Room, where the regularly scheduled preschool story time was due to start, and Rebecca Sinclair, new to Tyler but already a treasure as a volunteer, was wheeling a cart loaded with books to be reshelved. Several people were standing at the long card catalog, searching through the alphabetized indexes, while others sat at nearby tables with narrow catalog drawers at their elbows as they hastily jotted down information they needed.
A light frown touched Elise’s brow. She had already stopped by her office, expecting to find Robert Fairmont there. Before leaving for home, she had asked the staff to keep an eye out for him, to show him into her office when he arrived and then to offer him coffee or tea or whatever else it took to keep him entertained until she returned. But he wasn’t there. Her office was as empty as when she left it.
She caught Delia’s eye and lifted her eyebrows in puzzlement. Delia immediately glanced toward the card catalog, causing Elise to examine that area again. And sure enough, there he was, standing beside the massive file, gazing back at her with such knowing amusement that Elise felt her whole body burn with embarrassment. Had he been there all along? How had she missed him? His smile grew, as if he were privy to those thoughts as well!
Elise struggled to control her reaction. She had to deal with this man, talk with him intelligently. She couldn’t afford to let him see that he unsettled her so badly. It was all in her mind, she told herself. Only in her mind!
He came toward her and stopped a short pace away. “Elise,” he said. His voice was simultaneously honey and fire.
Elise glanced at Delia for help, but Delia was talking to two of Britt Hansen’s children as she began the process of checking out their books. Elise’s gaze was drawn back to the professor.
He was dressed impeccably in light gray pants and a charcoal blazer with a stylish tie brightening his white shirt. His hair was brushed perfectly into place, full and thick and wavy, the threads of silver shining splendidly among the dark. His skin was still nicely tanned, the lines on his face lending a distinguished aura of wisdom and experience.
She smiled tightly. “I’m—I’m sorry I’m late again. Things are still, well...”
“I stopped by the room with the leak earlier. It looks as if everything is coming along nicely there at least.”
Elise was glad to have something to talk about. “Ahead of schedule, actually. The men weren’t supposed to come until next week.”
“Surely that’s good news.”
“Oh, yes! Definitely! At the moment I’ll take anything that looks like good news. It’s been such a...” She could hear herself continue to blather on about the problems she had faced over the past few days. Her words seemed to go on and on, and she couldn’t make them stop.
When there was the slightest pause in her monologue, he broke in...which only heightened Elise’s embarrassment at her behavior. She never talked endlessly like that! If there was one person in Tyler in control of her tongue, she was it! Still, he’d almost had to physically restrain her in order to insert a word.
“I think we can do it,” he said simply, delivering his verdict without aggrandizement.
Elise blinked. At first her mind didn’t register what he’d said. “Do what?” she asked.
His smile returned. “The library. It’s going to take some work. We’ll have to go over everything to see exactly what you need and what you don’t need. See where we can cut corners. But I don’t see why it can’t be done.”
For the moment Elise forgot everything but her joy at his words. Happiness lighted her eyes and her face, making them glow. “You’re willing to try?” she exclaimed.
“If you are,” he agreed.
She would put in as many hours as were needed. Exist on two hours of sleep each night. Do whatever was necessary to...
“Elise?” The voice calling her name was different. Male, but definitely not belonging to Robert Fairmont.
Elise turned to see Joe Santori standing beside them, dust from the gypsum board he had been using to repair the ceiling clinging to his skin and clothing even though it was evident he’d tried to brush himself off. Elise felt as if she had been shaken from a dream again, only this time a good one. “Yes, Joe?” she asked. “Is there a problem?”
Joe shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He was a large man, well-built, with curly black hair and a quiet pride in his work. “Well, yes. We’ve hit a little snag.” He hesitated. “Water’s starting to show up again. Not much,” he was quick to add when he saw Elise blanch, “just a few drops. But the quicker we get Mike McNamara back out here, the better it will be. We sure can’t close her up as it is.”
Elise stood very still, then she felt herself start to sway. The soft background noises in the library receded into a hollow hum and Joe’s face blurred. Over a sudden tightness in her throat, she managed to say, “Would—would you mind calling him, Joe? Right now...I just can’t...” Fingers reached out to steady her, pulling her against a solid strength.
Joe stepped forward in concern, guilt flashing over his features.
Elise wanted to tell him that everything was all right, that what was happening wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except possibly her own. She had been pushing too hard and not eating properly, and now she was paying the price. Not that she wouldn’t mind a temporary respite from her problems. To get completely away, to have a few moments of unadulterated peace...that seemed the most wonderful bliss. Though she felt bad when she saw Joe’s worried look. And when she turned to see that it was Robert Fairmont she leaned against so contentedly, she felt even worse.
She longed for unconsciousness, but it never came... which in a rather pathetic sort of way was funny. She was too responsible even to faint properly!
With her thoughts still slightly fuzzy, she met the gaze of the architect. In his eyes she saw concern, but also something else: his recognition that a part of her wanted to laugh! Surprise made him blink, then answering amusement sparked in his unusual eyes.
A smile tugged at Elise’s lips and, unable to help herself, she started to giggle, which caused Joe to completely misread the situation. Thinking that she was crying, he called out to Delia, who, when she saw that Elise looked near to collapse, abandoned the circulation desk and came running toward them. A few patrons rushed over as well.
“Does she need a doctor?” someone asked.
“Is it a heart attack?” someone else queried.
“Oh, my God!” Delia cried.
“Water started to drip from the ceiling again,” Joe explained to the audience at large. “I had to tell her.”
Elise choked. “Joe, it’s okay. I just forgot to eat lunch, that’s all.” Then her face crumpled into laughter again, which the crowd mistook for pain. The whole situation was just too much! One misunderstanding followed another.
A hand came out to shield her face, turning it in to the fine woolen material of a blazer. “I think she just needs some time alone,” Robert Fairmont said quietly but with dignified authority.
Pauline rushed up, called away from the children by someone who had witnessed the scene. Her round face was pallid, full of fear. “What’s happened?” she demanded. “What’s wrong? Elise?”
Robert swept Elise fully into his arms. She kept her face buried against his shoulder. Suddenly she wanted to cry. Laughter had evolved into tears.
“I’m taking her home. She needs to rest,” he said. He turned to Joe Santori. “Why don’t you call her later this afternoon to let her know what the plumber says. I’m sure she’ll want to know.” Joe nodded agreement.
Elise took a series of unsteady breaths as she felt herself being transported through the front door and onto the porch, then along the sidewalk to the line of parking slots that angled off the street. She peeked around the architect’s shoulder and saw that the little group of concerned people had followed them onto the porch. They watched as he placed her feet on the ground and dug in his pocket for the keys to a dark blue Mercedes.
He opened the door and bent to lift her inside, but she stopped him.
“I can get in myself,” she said.
He pulled back to look at her. “Are you sure?” he asked.
She nodded wordlessly.
He stood back, ready to lend assistance if needed. But it wasn’t needed...not this time. While crossing to the driver’s side, he waved to the small crowd and called out something, something she didn’t understand.
She watched as he slid behind the wheel, secured her seat belt and his own, then brought the engine to life. The car smelled of leather and a good men’s cologne, and its engine purred with understated power and efficiency.
Certainly this wasn’t the way she had expected to leave the library today!
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d2facb9c-3b02-57f3-94f5-581f23ba0a55)
“WHAT DID YOU SAY to them?” she asked.
“I told them you were better. There’s no use in them continuing to worry.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He shifted position. Obviously his intention was to look over his shoulder and reverse out of the parking slot, but he stopped short to look at her. The shiny buttons of his blazer had been set free and the material spread to show that no spare flesh hung over his belt when he sat down. The belt itself was of high-quality leather, black, matching his shoes. The creases in his slacks were precise, disappearing only along the hard muscles of his thighs.
Elise’s gaze whipped away. She wasn’t accustomed to examining men so closely. Particularly men whose masculinity vibrated forcefully in the air around them.
“You are, aren’t you?” he asked.
Elise had to search for his meaning. Finally she connected it to his earlier assurance to the crowd. She nodded tightly. “Oh, yes. I’m fine.” Yet her hands twisted in her lap and her body was as taut as an overstrung bow. He continued to watch her. Unable to stand it any longer, she at last demanded, “What is it? Why are we still sitting here? I thought you said you were going to take me home.”
She knew she sounded the exact stereotype of a spinster librarian who found herself in close confines with an attractive, eligible male. Instinctively, her gaze shot to his left hand. He wore no ring, but that didn’t signify anything. Any number of married men didn’t wear rings anymore.
He smiled and she twitched uncomfortably in her seat. Had he seen her quick glance at his hand? Elise wanted to leap out of the car, but her legs felt like twin weights. They didn’t want to move.
“Well, I was,” he explained drolly, “but I don’t know where ‘home’ is. Would you like to direct me?”
Elise bit her bottom lip. “Go down this street to the right. Turn left, then left again after the fourth stop sign.”
“It’s all right, you know,” he said calmly, not having moved.
“What is?” she asked. She didn’t want to look at him anymore or talk to him. She just wanted to go home, go upstairs and stretch out in her bed. Maybe she had pushed herself a bit too far.
“To laugh when everything seems darkest. Sometimes it’s the only thing a person can do to protect his sanity.” He shifted the car into reverse and backed into the street.
There was a great difference between riding in a Mercedes and riding in her Escort. Bumps in the road were barely noticeable. Trees and grass and houses seemed to glide by in a haze of comfort. He took the first turn smoothly, effortlessly. But instead of relaxing, Elise grew more tense. Ultimately she burst out, “I shouldn’t be doing this! I’m needed at the library. And my car! What am I going to do about my car? I’ll need it later.”
“Can’t someone at the library drop it off for you?” he asked.
“I can’t ask anyone to do that! No, this is silly. Take me back, please.”
He glanced at her. “They won’t be happy to see you return so soon. They were ready to call an ambulance.”
“But you know I wasn’t that bad!”
“I do, yes. But they don’t. If you go back now, they’ll worry. They’ll watch you, dissect your every move. Is that what you want?” When she didn’t answer, he continued, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take off a couple of hours. Get some rest. Satisfy everyone. Then I’ll take you back to the library myself.”
“I still don’t think...”
“It won’t fall down without you, you know. Contrary to popular belief, the building looks fairly sturdy. And even if you were there and it did fall down, would you be able to hold it up all by yourself?”
“You’re making fun of me!” she accused.
He glanced away from the street. “Not really.”
The Mercedes slid to a halt at the final stop sign before making the next left. Elise wanted to continue to argue, but held her tongue as she reluctantly admitted that what he said was true. Everyone would watch her, waiting to see if she might weaken again. And she would hate that, even if it was done in the name of caring. Also, there was the concept of living to fight another day. Maybe, just this once, she should take a little time to gather her strength so that she could deal with all the difficulties that were to follow...which included her meetings with this architect! It was apparent that she was going to need every bit of energy she could muster.
* * *
“TURN RIGHT at the next corner,” Elise said, continuing her instructions.
Her voice held a musical quality even as she perched stiffly on the seat next to him. Robert did as she requested, steering the car onto a street of houses that looked to have been built sometime between the two great wars. None contained any unique architectural features; they were purely utilitarian, built for growing families. Wide yards, aged trees, sidewalks that could use some repair. Upkeep on most houses was ongoing. A few needed work.
“It’s the first house on the left,” she said.
Robert turned into the narrow driveway. He cut the engine and turned slightly toward her. He still wasn’t completely sure she was as all right as she claimed. She was so thin...fragile looking. He could easily encompass her wrist between his middle finger and thumb with room to spare! Her short hair, lightly curling, changed from blond to silver depending upon the angle and degree of light. Her naturally pale skin held the lightest trace of a summer tan. Carved, delicate features, a long, graceful neck, a narrow waist.... He could only guess at her age, but he’d estimate late forties, early fifties. Her face had a quality that youth didn’t know...of numerous challenges won and lost and, as well, a haunting shadow of pain deeply held.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” she murmured, remaining stiff and formal in her manner even as she reached for the door handle.
“I’ll see you inside,” he offered.
“That’s not necessary.” She threw him a look from pale blue eyes that exactly matched the suit she wore. The look bade him not to press. But it also showed him her uncertainty. She didn’t know what to do with him! Twice they’d arranged to meet to discuss the new library and twice some outside event had gotten in the way. She couldn’t ask him into the house to work because she knew he wouldn’t agree to do so. Also, she was irritated with him because he had advised her to rest...something she obviously didn’t do a great deal. But she couldn’t just dismiss him. She needed him. So there she was, in a quandary. He tried to ease the situation for her. She’d already been through enough.
“I have friends who live on Lake Geneva. They’ve told me to stop by any time I’m in the area. Why don’t I go visit them for a couple of hours, then I’ll swing back by here and take you to the library. We can talk after that. It shouldn’t take long today. Just a few preliminaries.”
He’d wanted to do a lot more than that. He’d wanted to dig right in and feel out where she stood on a number of necessary changes. He already had a few proposals in mind. But looking into that pale face and seeing the edge of tiredness she couldn’t disguise made him willing to wait.
“Why just a few preliminaries?” she questioned, latching on to the key word. “I’d rather get on with this, wouldn’t you? Progress as far as we can.”
“Well, because...”
“I’m perfectly all right!” she insisted. “I simply forgot to eat lunch, that’s all. Then when Joe said what he did...I had a perfect right to be upset! Joe knew it. That’s why he didn’t want to tell me.”
“Do you faint every time you get upset?”
“I didn’t faint!”
“You came close to it.”
“But I didn’t actually faint!” Her denial was low and surprisingly fierce. She took a breath. “You’ve said you think we can make this new library work. I’m going to hold you to that, Mr. Fairmont. I’m willing to put in whatever amount of time it takes. You should be, too.”
“That’s what an architect does, Miss—”
“Good. Now, you go visit your friends. I think that’s an excellent idea. Then come back and we’ll get started on the plans.”
Robert continued to look at her, a smile pulling at his lips. She might appear to be fragile, but he could see that she was a force to be reckoned with when she spoke on behalf of the library. It might have been her child, a living, breathing entity she would give her all to protect. Attack it and you attacked her.
“Whatever you say,” he murmured dryly.
Her cheeks took on a rosy hue and she quickly let herself out of the car. He watched as she walked, her back straight, to the tiny porch that fronted the house, then she disappeared inside.
Robert’s gaze stayed on the door for a moment before moving away. Her house was one of the more neatly kept homes on the block. The white paint was fresh, the shrubs trimmed and numerous flowers bloomed in their beds. The look was pleasing to the eye.
He restarted the car. If he was going to stop in on Harry and June, he needed to find a telephone. Not that he wouldn’t enjoy a simple ride in the country if they weren’t at home. But he felt he should give them ample warning. He backed out of the drive, and after another glance at the unprepossessing house Elise lived in, accelerated down the street.
* * *
ROBERT TURNED AWAY from the pay phone at the service station. His friends were at home and had begged him to visit. It was months since they’d heard from him, they’d complained. And they were right. During term, there was always so much to do in the design studio, working with his students, challenging them to grow and to see beyond what was expected. Students of architecture, particularly during the last weeks of a semester, were some of the most overworked scholars on campus. Some practically lived in the studio in order to meet their deadlines. Accordingly, their teachers devoted long hours to the subject as well—a fact that Robert wouldn’t change. He loved working with his students, conveying knowledge and receiving in turn intellectual stimulation.
Yet between his work at the university and his work with the firm, little time was left to keep up social obligations. Friends sometimes became lost in the shuffle. Which was one of the reasons why he had never married. He didn’t feel his life-style would be fair to a wife. He had heeded perhaps a little too well the advice of an admired professor—that an architect should never encumber himself prematurely with outside obligations. Translated, that meant a wife, children and a mortgage. Not if the architect intended to travel extensively or to immerse himself in all the work involved in starting his own practice. It was advice he himself had given students over the years, advice that he still believed. Only sometimes did he wonder if he might have carried it a little too far.
Robert shrugged the thought away. He paid for the gasoline that had been pumped into his car and set off along the highway that would take him to Lake Geneva. But instead of looking forward to the enjoyment he would soon experience upon seeing his old friends, he found his thoughts returning to the Tyler library. Not the new one. The old one.
Robert had loved old buildings all his life, particularly old homes. To him, they were the key to another age—an age that in many ways was much more graceful than the present. As a child, he had lived in just such a house, creating fantasy worlds from basement to attic. He had always dreamed of owning one himself, but as the years passed, his dream faded. Still, he loved to look at such structures and to poke around in them when given the chance.
His business in Tyler afforded just such an opportunity. The old library, though decried by its users, was interesting to him. His guess was that it had been built at or near the turn of the century, and judging from the exterior and interior style, influenced by the revolution in architecture that had taken place around that time. It was the period when fellow Wisconsinite Frank Lloyd Wright had begun to evolve the personal style that so greatly influenced twentieth-century architecture.
Robert’s two short investigations of the building had whetted his appetite to see more. Both times he’d been distracted by other things: the water damage to the books, his second appointment with the librarian. He wanted more time to look around. And he saw no reason why, as he worked closely with Elise Ferguson, he couldn’t take it.
* * *
THE DOORBELL RANG and Elise went to answer it. Butterflies were aflight in her stomach. The fluttering increased when she saw that Robert Fairmont stood on the porch. She’d known all along it would be him, but reality seemed more potent than her thoughts.
“Hello,” she said, striving to keep her voice circumspect.
“Hello,” he returned, a smile both in his eyes and on his lips.
She stepped back, wordlessly inviting him inside. He moved past her into the formal front room. She saw his gaze quickly take in his surroundings—the heavy furniture and curtains, the ornate rug. Repeatedly over the years since their parents’ death Elise had wanted to redecorate, but Bea had stayed her hand. Bea didn’t welcome change. She wanted everything to remain as it was, no matter how out-of-date or ungainly.
Elise cleared her throat. “You, uh, saw your friends?”
“Yes. You look...rested.”
Elise shifted uneasily. She wanted to tell him about the numerous telephone calls she’d received from people who wanted to know how she felt. They’d come from patrons who had been at the library, from the library staff, from people who hadn’t been there but who had heard the news through Tyler’s lightning-quick grapevine. In fact, she’d spent more time on the phone reassuring everyone than she had doing anything else. But she couldn’t make herself tell him. Having him inside her home completely unnerved her. Turned her into the equivalent of a tongue-tied sixteen-year-old.
“Elise! Elise!” Bea’s irritated repetition of her name came just before she wheeled into the room. When she saw Robert Fairmont, she came to an abrupt stop. “Who are you?” she demanded, looking him up and down. She didn’t seem particularly pleased with what she saw.
Elise hurried into speech. “Bea, this is Robert Fairmont, the architect who’s going to help us with the library. I’ve told you about him, remember?” She hated to think what her sister might say. With Bea, you never knew. “Professor Fairmont...my sister, Bea.”
Robert Fairmont moved closer to Bea and held out his hand. “Call me Robert,” he offered.
Bea looked at his hand as if it contained poison. “Yes,” she said tartly. “I know who you are.”
Robert let his hand fall slowly back to his side.
An awkward moment passed before Bea turned her attention to Elise. “Elise, I want you to take that darned telephone off the hook! It’s rung every few minutes all afternoon. I can’t rest, I can’t think. If it rings again, it’s going to drive me mad!”
To emphasize her point, the telephone rang that very moment. Bea groaned while Elise dashed to answer it. Only a part of Elise’s attention was devoted to the caller, however, as she continued to listen to the conversation that took place between her sister and Robert Fairmont.
“Elise gave everyone a fright today,” she heard him say. “People are concerned about her.”
“I don’t see why,” Bea replied grumpily. “She’s as strong as an ox.”
“It seems she’s been under a lot of strain recently.”
Bea cocked her head to one side. “Are you trying to tell me you know my sister better than I do? You may be a fine-and-fancy architect in the town you come from, but I guarantee that you don’t know a thing about...”
Elise hurriedly broke off with the caller, saying, “I’m perfectly fine, really. In fact, I’m going back to the library this afternoon. Listen, Annabelle, I really do have to go. Do you mind if I...?” She murmured a couple of polite yeses and hung up. Then she moved quickly back across the room. “That was Annabelle,” she said to Bea, hoping to break the tension that existed between her sister and Robert Fairmont. She knew all the signals for when Bea didn’t like someone, and those flags were flying at full mast. “Our postmistress,” she explained to Robert. “She just wanted to see how I was.” The words she had been unable to find earlier now rushed out of her in a whirl. “She heard it from someone who came into the post office. They’d heard it from someone who heard it from someone else who had been in the library. It’s truly amazing. I think I’ve had a call from almost everyone in town!”
Robert’s gaze traveled from Bea to her. Elise couldn’t tell what he thought. Then a smile slowly lightened his features. “You’re a very lucky woman,” he said, “to have so many people care about you.”
Elise surrendered to the charm of his smile, but Bea seemed totally immune. She harrumphed crossly, “They’re all a bunch of silly people who don’t have anything better to do with their time.”
Elise was embarrassed by Bea’s hateful demeanor. The inhabitants of Tyler knew her; they were accustomed to her sharp tongue. But Robert Fairmont was a guest in their town, in their home. He wouldn’t understand. “Maybe we should go back to the library,” she suggested. “I truly would like to show everyone that I’m—”
“It was my understanding that you were home for the day!” Bea snapped, interrupting her.
“No, Bea,” Elise explained. “I told you I was going back.”
“Because of him?” Bea glanced spitefully at the professor.
“No, because I have to. I have work to do, Bea. You know that.”
“But you almost fainted. What if you do it again?”
Elise knew that Bea wasn’t voicing concern for her wellbeing. In her own way her sister loved her, but it wasn’t in Bea to think of another person first. Particularly not Elise.
“Then I’ll sit down and wait for it to be over!” Elise returned shortly. She took a bracing breath. “I’ll be home no later than six-thirty. I promise.”
She reached for her purse, glad of her forethought in setting it near the door. Then she turned to Robert. “Are you ready?” she asked with brittle control.
Robert nodded, but before moving away, he addressed Bea. “It was nice to meet you. Maybe next time it will be under better circumstances.” He was making an excuse for her ill humor.
Bea snapped. “I don’t see any reason why there should be a next time.”
Pain filled Elise’s heart as she wondered what Bea’s life, not to mention her own, would have been like if Bea hadn’t fallen on the icy steps. Blindly, she walked toward the door. Robert was just behind her and, sensing her need, he reached out to lightly touch her back, guiding her toward the exit.
Gratitude instantly took the place of pain, and not even Bea’s acerbic reminder, “Six-thirty, Elise!” could steal away the warmth that temporarily surrounded her being.
* * *
BEA SAT ALONE in the house, grumbling to herself. She was always alone, or so it seemed. She should be used to it. But it didn’t make the hours pass any faster. In Elise’s opinion, as long as she had her television and her books, her magazines and her dolls, she would be all right. Then Elise could go out into the world with a free conscience and not have to think about her. Leave her all alone except for the marmalade cat...who at present wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Buttercup!” Bea called, snapping her fingers near the floor. “Come to Bea, Buttercup!” she called again, but it did no good. The silly cat was sleeping somewhere, probably somewhere that she shouldn’t.
Bea straightened, drawing her hand back into her lap. She sighed and looked at the closed front door. Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that man. Not one little bit. She knew danger when she saw it, and he was definitely danger! Elise practically quivered every time he looked at her. She might not be completely aware of it herself, but Bea was.
Her mind went back to another man, years before, who had come calling on Elise. Elise had been twenty...no, nineteen. How many years ago was that? Thirty-four. My God, Bea thought dully. That meant she’d been in this chair for... Bea let her chin drop. Forty-two years!
A moment later she lifted her hands to examine them. The fingers were still long and narrow, tapering to delicate oval nails at the tips. But the skin had lost a great deal of its elasticity and age spots had begun to appear.
Her lips tightened. She was growing old. And what did she have to show for it? Nothing.
With a strength of purpose that would have surprised Elise had she been there, Bea pushed her chair over to the hall mirror, where she arranged herself in the best possible light. What she saw reflected was a drab-looking woman shrunk into an invalid’s chair. Dried-up; prune-faced. She tried to smile, but the muscles protested and her effort came off as more of a leer. She moved impatiently away.
No, she didn’t like that man, that fancy architecture professor. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, or the way he looked at Elise...which were two entirely different matters. Bea would have to be vigilant if she didn’t want to be left alone. Would have to watch Elise for any threatening signs.
Buttercup sidled up to the chair and, purring, rubbed her yellow side along the rubber rim of the right wheel.
“Ah! So there you are!” Bea exclaimed. She reached down to scoop the cat onto her lap. Buttercup responded by arching her back. “Yes,” Bea said a few moments later, still absently stroking a silky neck. “I must be extremely watchful.”
* * *
THE MERCEDES DIDN’T SEEM nearly as alien as it had on her previous ride. Still, Elise could not relax. She glanced at Robert Fairmont as he competently negotiated the Tyler streets. He didn’t look in the least disturbed, but she was. Bea’s rudeness had been unforgivable. She tried to apologize.
“I’m sorry that Bea... She didn’t really mean...” Elise took a breath and started over. “Bea can be extremely difficult at times.”
Robert glanced at her. “There’s no need to apologize.”
Elise shook her head. “No, I believe there is. She says things, does things. I understand because I live with her. But she forgets that other people don’t understand.”
“Has she been in a wheelchair long?”
“Most of her life.”
Robert was silent. Elise knew that her answer had abolished another excuse. A person unused to physical impairment could be forgiven for lashing out. Bea didn’t have that defense.
Elise’s hands tightened in her lap. “I can’t blame her, though. If it were me...”
How many times over the years had she wished that it had been her instead of Bea who had fallen on the steps? Even now she wished that she could trade places with her. Of course, she doubted that Bea would have cared for her in quite the same way. She’d probably be a resident of Worthington House now, possibly even placed in the skilled-care facility. She’d be one of the people she brought books to on a weekly basis. There would be no library as she knew it....
A light touch brought Elise from her reverie. She jumped, blinking.
Robert smiled. “You were a thousand miles away,” he said, replacing his hand on the steering wheel.
Elise hadn’t meant to woolgather. She resumed her apology. “I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t anything personal. Bea’s just...like that.” Yet Elise was afraid that it was very much personal. Bea disliked certain people more than others. Her reasoning was a mystery.
“It didn’t bother me,” he said firmly.
Elise sighed.
Soon the library came into view. Several cars were parked out front. Robert maneuvered the Mercedes into a slot next to a pickup. When they got out, instead of immediately coming to join Elise on the sidewalk, Robert opened the back door of the car and leaned inside to extract a long tube from the back seat. Elise knew what it contained: the plans for the new library.
He closed the door and walked up to her. Jiggling the tube, he said, “If you’re not up to this, say so. And any time you get tired, say so as well.”
“I’m perfectly—”
“—All right. I know. But it sounds as if this town tried to kill you with kindness when you were supposed to be resting. You’re little better off now than you were earlier. Except maybe you’ve eaten. You have eaten, haven’t you?”
Elise nodded as she fell into step at his side. She was very much aware of him. Aware of how handsome he was, of the lean vitality of his body, of the power of his personality. It felt good to be walking next to him; it felt good that he seemed to care about her well-being.
“I forgot to ask,” he said as they started up the library’s front steps. “Did you hear anything more about the leak?”
“Joe said the plumber would come right away. Hopefully, he’s been and gone. That way Joe can finish. Otherwise, it could take weeks.”
“And you need the room.”
“We always need the room.”
Pauline was the first to see them. She looked up from a stack of returned books and quickly came to take Elise’s hand. “Are you sure you should be doing this?” she asked. “I know what you said, but this has been such a hard week...for everyone, but for you in particular.” She turned to Robert. “Elise is one of our town treasures. We don’t quite know how we’d get along without her. The library would collapse—that’s a fact!”
“Of course I’m sure,” Elise answered brusquely. Pauline made her sound like a monument, like something pigeons sat on! Which wasn’t a description she wanted Robert Fairmont to remember when he...if he!...ever thought of her. “How is Joe getting along?” she asked, to deflect any further unfortunate comments. “Have you checked recently?”
Pauline shook her head as Delia rushed over.
“Oh, Elise!” It was obvious Delia had found another cause for excitement. “We were all so worried, even after Pauline called you. We thought about calling Dr. Baron, but we decided not to.”
Jeffrey Baron was the only grandson of Judson Ingalls, the most prominent man in Tyler, and the great-grandson of Alberta Ingalls, for whom the library was named. He also happened to be Elise’s doctor.
“Thank heaven for that, at least,” Elise murmured. She indicated Robert. “Would one of you please show Professor Fairmont to my office? I think I should check with Joe myself. I—I won’t be long.” The assurance had been directed to Robert, but she didn’t look at him.
She felt ridiculous as she hurried off toward the Biography Room. He knew what she was doing, of course. Running away. But she wasn’t accustomed to such overpowering attention. Even warned to expect it, she found it hard to take. She had merely come close to passing out, for heaven’s sake. She hadn’t actually done it. Neither had she expired! Yet from the way everyone behaved, it was as if they expected her to correct that particular oversight at any given moment!
She moved briskly into the work area, not pausing even when she came upon the soft canvas tarps that had been spread over much of the floor and draped over the built-in bookcases along the walls. The hole in the ceiling was larger than ever, but the edges were cut smooth in preparation for repair.
As was his habit, Joe sang snatches of an opera as he worked, but he stopped the instant he saw Elise. From the look of concern that instantly clouded his handsome features, Elise knew he was about to question her precipitate decision to return to work, so she quickly deflected him by saying, “I take it the plumber has already been here?” She held her shoulders straight, her chin high. She wanted to look her usual efficient self. She nodded to Lars, who had pulled off his hat and now held it rather self-consciously in front of his gangly, adolescent body.
Joe blinked and swallowed the words he had been about to say. “Uh—yes. He, uh...he says everything is fine as far as he can tell. It was a leak along the same pipe, at another joint. He replaced that bit and checked the fittings as far as he could. He didn’t see any other problems, but he says he can’t guarantee a thing. The system’s so old.”
The plumber had said almost those exact words to Elise when she’d called to thank him for coming out to fix the first leak. Yet she hadn’t expected trouble again so quickly. She moved closer to the hole and peered up, then backed away. “Do you think you’ll be finished today?” she asked.
“Sure thing,” Joe said. “Except for the paint. I’ll stop by tomorrow and take care of that.”
Elise frowned. “Don’t you normally take Saturdays off? I’m sure I remember Susannah saying that you and she and Gina were going to do something special.”
He grinned. “This won’t take half an hour. Then it will be done and you won’t have to worry anymore.”
Confronted with Joe’s noble effort to ease her way, Elise could not show misgivings. She smiled brightly, just as he wanted her to. But as she left the room to return to her office, her cheerful smile crumbled. It would take a great deal more than a half hour’s worth of paint to fix everything she had to worry about.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_34e2e265-3a9f-59f2-a96e-274af54d7982)
“THERE ARE TWO WAYS to cut costs,” Robert said as he and Elise studied the plans. “We can make the library smaller, reduce the overall size. Or we can downscale the quality of the materials we use. I recommend we try a combination of the two.” He had thrown his jacket over the arm of her chair, his only concession to comfort.
The set of blueprints unrolled on Elise’s cleared desk was an exact copy of the set the town council had on file. Elise knew almost every line by heart from her work with the other architect for the better part of three years.
She tilted her head, frowning. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘downscale the quality.’ How? What do you mean?”
Robert grinned. “It’s the difference between a gold toilet seat and a brass one. Does it really make any difference to the user?”
Elise stared at him, then she, too, started to grin.
He continued. “I’m exaggerating, but you see what I mean. Your town council went first class on this structure...which is fine. People want to be proud of their public buildings, which they think reflect the community. Chambers of Commerce love this attitude. They put pictures of first-class buildings in all their brochures to get people to visit here, to move here. Look! See what a progressive place Tyler is? Look at the new library we’ve built ourselves. Gold toilet seats!”
Elise started to giggle.
Robert’s eyes twinkled. “There are degrees of quality. My job is to help you decide just exactly how much quality you want and can afford and where you want to put it.” He turned to a booklet of photocopied specifications. “For example, these windows. This particular brand costs a small fortune. There’s no reason why something less expensive can’t work equally as well. And these crown moldings. Same thing. I know where we can find something just as good for a lot less. Then we get to the library plan itself....” He looked at her. “See what I mean?”
Elise nodded.
He went on, “There’s a lot of space here that’s wasted. I know!” He raised a hand as if to ward off attack. “But there is. When you have lots of money, space is wonderful. When you don’t...”
Elise saw herself sitting in a brand-new library with barely enough room to turn around. She protested, “But we have to have space. Patrons need to feel they have room to breathe, not to mention the staff! And the books...do you know books need air, too?”
Robert nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do. I also know you followed all the standards for library design, and I’m not talking about cutting anything there. I’m talking about the extras.” He flipped back through the plan until he arrived at the page he wanted. “Exactly how important is this atrium?”
Elise had loved the idea of bringing the out-of-doors inside. Wide sheets of glass would seal any moisture away from the book collection, so that patrons and staff alike could be treated to more than just the odd pot plant stationed forlornly on the circulation and reference desks. Looking forward to tending the area herself, she had already started to research which plants would be better suited. She shook her head. “Not important enough to keep us from building the library.”
Robert agreed. “Now, consider the curved stairway. What if, instead of having it where it is, taking up so much space...what if we move it to one side and straighten it out a bit....” While he talked, he began to make a quick succession of strokes with a red pen.
Fascinated, Elise watched as Robert’s ideas were transformed into a picture. With relatively little effort, he captured the feel of the main circulation area, deleting the atrium and shifting the stairway. Then with a few additional strokes, he sketched in the work areas, the new computerized cataloging system, even a few people, one of whom was sitting at a terminal and scratching his head at the mysteries of advanced technology. The people weren’t really people in the traditional sense of the word. But with a few practiced squiggles and swirls, Robert had given them life and form.
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Ginger Chambers
WELCOME TO TYLERBETTER ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVESThere's been a flood at the old library, and the staff needs all the help they can get! Pitch in and catch up on the latest goings-on in America's favorite hometown.A LATE-BLOOMING PASSIONElise Ferguson, Tyler's head librarian, has slipped uneventfully into middle-aged spinsterhood. But lately she's been seen in the company of Robert Fairmont – that distinguished-looking visiting professor of architecture…OLD RIVALRIES RENEWEDElise's sister, Bea, is certain Robert must have ulterior motives. After all, why would any man be interested in Elise? Bea's snooping uncovers more than even she bargained for – and threatens everyone's happiness.
WELCOME TO TYLER-BETTER ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES
There’s been a flood at the old library, and the staff needs all the help they can get! Pitch in and catch up on the latest goings-on in America’s favorite hometown.
A LATE-BLOOMING PASSION
Elise Ferguson, Tyler’s head librarian, has slipped uneventfully into middle-aged spinsterhood.
But lately she’s been seen in the company of Robert Fairmont—that distinguished-looking visiting professor of architecture…
OLD RIVALRIES RENEWED
Elise’s sister, Bea, is certain Robert must have ulterior motives. After all, why would any man be interested in Elise? Bea’s snooping uncovers more than even she bargained for—and threatens everyone’s happiness.
Previously Published.
“Robert used you, Elise.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bea.” Elise faced her sister. “You don’t like Robert because you’re afraid that if I fall in love with him, I’ll either abandon you or put you in Worthington House. But it’s too late, Bea. I’ve already fallen in love with him and there’s nothing you can do about it!”
“Then you love a criminal! Ask him about the old library. Ask him why he was in such a hurry to buy it. With your help, he got the place for a song when it’s worth a million, maybe two!”
“I don’t believe you,” Elise whispered, her color fading.
“And now you tell me that you love him.” Bea laughed. “What a joke! If the town was laughing at you before, think what they’ll do now. You love him!”
With her sister’s laughter echoing in her ears, Elise shook her head. “No,” she said hoarsely. “No.”
Dear Reader (#ulink_4ccb6c3b-5dac-58e2-8245-b378e9648b89),
Welcome to Harlequin’s Tyler, a small Wisconsin town whose citizens we hope you’ll soon come to know and love. Like many of the innovative publishing concepts Harlequin has launched over the years, the idea for the Tyler series originated in response to our readers’ preferences. Your enthusiasm for sequels and continuing characters within many of the Harlequin lines has prompted us to create a twelve-book series of individual romances whose characters’ lives inevitably intertwine.
Tyler faces many challenges typical of small towns, but the fabric of this fictional community will be torn by the revelation of a long-ago murder, the details of which will evolve right through the series. This intriguing crime will profoundly affect the lives of the Ingallses, the Barons, the Forresters and the Wochecks.
If you’ve got a little time to spare, the volunteers could sure use some help with the crisis at the library. Right now, the old place is being held together by wishes and prayers.
And it seems Judson Ingalls could use some wishes and prayers, as well. A long-awaited announcement from the state coroner’s office has sent him to his bed and thoroughly alarmed Alyssa and his grandson, Jeff.
So join us in Tyler for a slice of small-town life that’s not as innocent or as quiet as you might expect, and for a sense of community that will capture your mind and your heart.
Marsha Zinberg
Editorial Coordinator, Tyler
Bachelor’s Puzzle
Ginger Chambers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ginger Chambers for her contribution to the Tyler series.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joanna Kosloff for her contribution to the concept for the Tyler series.
CONTENTS
Cover (#ueeeb83e9-6d01-5024-b180-c6dd9cb5980a)
Back Cover Text (#u94a92dc7-c5f1-5c4e-a554-3080b3b04da9)
Dear Reader (#u64b38d6f-6582-580c-97bf-93af71578eab)
Title Page (#uc796f147-985c-51c7-8bb9-41e572f3ee13)
Acknowledgments (#u7cae80a4-c8e2-5735-84be-cb82fc10e1ab)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5544bd13-8e4a-5275-90ee-62c7ef658c94)
CHAPTER TWO (#uf438a8c0-4072-54c3-a335-3099dd3b0abb)
CHAPTER THREE (#ud8c27c9a-ca0c-5a4b-b2ce-650d00853707)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ua7957de7-148e-58a9-87b8-803426cea578)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_58d4a1a3-a4ca-58d8-8473-d54400714e8f)
ELISE FERGUSON BRUSHED her fingertips through her short pale hair, smoothing it at the same time as she tried to fluff it. The perm she had gotten a few months ago was already loosening and she knew that soon she would have to get another. But right now she just didn’t have the time to think about it.
She leaned forward, peering closely into the mirror at the fine lines that seemed to have appeared from nowhere over the past few years. Then she moved back, checking whether the hurried makeup job had been sufficient. From a distance, it worked. She didn’t look substantially worse for wear than any other fifty-three-year-old who had just spent a morning in hell. And with the donning of her dress-for-success, reserved-for-meetings suit, she gave the illusion of complete competency. No one would believe that a scant half hour before, dampened through and through, she had raced into the bathroom, streaked with dirt from head to toe, her baby-fine hair sticking out at odd angles and her dress a shambles.
Elise’s stomach gave a nervous rumble. She knew she probably should eat something, but there wasn’t time for that, either. She had to be back at the library in—she checked her watch—five minutes. Five minutes! Impossible!
She reached for a bottle of her favorite scent and misted a light bouquet of spring flowers over herself. Then, grabbing a pair of tiny gold studs, she slipped them into her ears as she hurried down the stairs.
“Elise!” Her sister’s voice held a petulant edge. “Elise! I need you to do something for me!”
Elise veered into the living room, where her older sister, Bea, sat before the television set, their fat yellow cat, Buttercup, in her lap.
Bea’s gaze revealed her disapproval. “I asked before you went upstairs, but you didn’t hear me, I suppose. I’d like my wrap! It’s cool in the house today. You left too many windows open.”
It was summer; the temperature outside was in the mid-eighties. Still, Elise didn’t protest. “Would you like me to close them?” she asked.
Bea frowned grumpily. “No, just get my wrap. And the mail. I heard the postman come about an hour ago.”
Elise hurried onto the porch, checked the mailbox and withdrew some bills and a magazine. Bea’s doll collectors’ magazine. That would make her happy. She hurried back inside and delivered the magazine before moving into the kitchen. “I’m just going to warm up leftovers today, Bea,” she called into the next room. “I have a meeting I’m already late for.”
Her sister mumbled something that Elise didn’t understand, but she didn’t ask her to repeat it. Elise popped a bowl of yesterday’s shepherd’s pie into the microwave, arranged a small salad, buttered a piece of wheat bread and sweetened a glass of iced tea. All this she balanced on a serving tray and brought to her sister.
Bea shifted the cat from her lap, all the while grumbling beneath her breath. Finally, she said clearly, “I’m still cool!”
Elise groaned and glanced at her watch. Then she hurried into the bedroom just off the living room to find the wrap. “Here,” she said, spreading the soft material over her sister’s shoulders. “Is there anything else?”
At one time Bea had been beautiful, with silver-blond hair flowing softly to the middle of her back, bright blue eyes that flashed with anticipation and a delicacy of features and build that the two sisters still shared. Now, Bea pulled her hair into an unbecoming knot at the base of her neck, discontent had faded the color of her eyes and bitterness contorted the fragility of her features.
Adjusting her wheelchair to a more comfortable position at the side table, Bea said dismissingly, “No, I wouldn’t dream of asking for anything else. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your meeting.”
Elise suffered a pang of guilt. “It’s with the architect, Bea. The professor who’s going to see if he can help us build the new library. I’d forgotten all about it what with the water leak and everything. Remember when I first came in, I told you that a number of books had gotten wet and that people from all over Tyler had come to help?”
Her sister fixed her with a cool gaze. “You said something, but I didn’t understand. I thought you’d fallen into a mud puddle.”
Elise sighed and rubbed a hand across her brow, a telling gesture that she was unaware of using. “I’ll explain everything this evening, all right? Right now I really have to...”
“Go. I know. You always have to go.”
Elise wanted to scream. She wanted to yell at her sister that she couldn’t help it if she had to hurry off to her job. That if she hadn’t done so for these past thirty years they wouldn’t have eaten very well. There would be no house, no television, no leisurely outings, no subscriptions to doll collectors’ magazines, no vast collection of dolls.... But she kept her tongue, just as she had for all these years, knowing that Bea had reason to be bitter. “Yes, I do,” she agreed. “I’ll try to be home by six-thirty, but if I can’t, I’ll get Josephine to come make your dinner. I’ll let you know.”
Bea picked at the pie with her fork and didn’t say anything, a point Elise didn’t regret as she finally left the house. She was already nervous enough about her meeting with the architectural professor. The stakes were high—as in whether Tyler would continue to have a library and she herself a job!
Elise dashed for her car, a moderately old, tan Ford Escort, and quickly backed out of the drive. In her mind she rehearsed an apology for being late, one she hoped she would be able to deliver with a modicum of dignity.
* * *
THE ALBERTA INGALLS Memorial Library was housed in a spacious home built around the turn of the century. A series of narrow, vertical windows showcased the second-floor exterior, while a large wraparound porch with strong white columns gave character to the first. Over the years, Elise had planned the landscaping herself, encouraging the growth of rich evergreen shrubs along the base of the porch and seasonal flowers in the accompanying wide beds. The grass had a lush green cast, with shade provided by both oak and maple trees.
Normally the scene was placid, inviting patrons to come inside for a leisurely browse, but that was not the image presented today. Elise was forced to bypass the jammed parking spaces in front of the building and add her car to the numerous others crowded end to end along both sides of the street.
The library was a hive of activity. People moved busily inside and out. The front porch, usually reserved for quiet reading, was congested with folding tables. They in turn bore the weight of numerous books that were being set on end and fanned open so that they could begin to dry, even as more books continued to be removed from the water-damaged room within.
Elise gathered her purse from the passenger seat and hurried toward the scene. She was grateful to all the people who had turned out. It seemed as if everyone in town who could help had come when told about the emergency.
As Elise stepped onto the porch, Delia Mayhew, one of the library’s two part-time aids, rushed to greet her. “We’ve gotten almost all the books out now, Elise. We’re down to the Vs on the last shelf!” Delia’s dusky cheeks were flushed a becoming shade of pink and her dark eyes were shining. She had just turned twenty-one and had seldom, if ever, traveled farther than a two-hundred-mile radius from her home. For her, the accident that morning was a cause for genuine excitement.
Alyssa Baron looked up from her work with the wettest books. Elegant, blond and regal of bearing, Alyssa could always be counted upon in times of trouble. As the only daughter of the town’s most influential man, she seemed to feel service to the people of Tyler was her duty. She and her very pregnant daughter, Liza Forrester, were carefully placing sections of paper toweling between individual pages to act as blotting agents. “It’s a good thing the accident happened in the Biography Room,” Alyssa murmured wryly after hearing Delia’s somewhat oddly worded description. “Otherwise we’d have a hard time telling exactly where we were.”
Grinning at her mother’s wry jest, Liza agreed, “Oh, definitely. The Dewey Decimal classification 973.629A just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a V, does it?”
Cliff Forrester, Liza’s husband, came up beside them. “What’s this about V?” he asked, watching as his wife tore off another section of paper towel and placed it between two pages. “You’re not planning names for the baby, are you? What starts with a V? Let’s see: Virgil, Venus...”
Liza tilted her head and gave a devilish smile. “What would you do if I wanted to name our child Venus?”
Cliff smiled slowly and surprised Elise by winking at her. Normally, he was so quiet and self-contained. “Why, I’d agree,” he said. “What else?”
Johnny Kelsey dropped an armload of books onto a table behind Elise. “I’ve talked with Pastor Schoff,” he announced, causing Elise to turn toward him. “We can have the church hall any time we want it. When I get off work this evening, I’ll bring some of the men from the F and M and we can shift all this again.” He motioned to the tables and books scattered along the porch. “That’s still what you want, isn’t it? To get this lot moved inside somewhere?”
Elise met the deep-set gray eyes of the man she’d known since childhood. “If you could do that, Johnny, it would be wonderful. Do I need to speak with Pastor Schoff myself?”
Anna Kelsey arrived just in time to hear Elise’s question. She, too, was delivering an armload of damp books. “Probably should,” she said. “I’m sure he could arrange fresh volunteers for tonight if you ask him.”
“I’ll call right away. Oh!” Elise suddenly looked stricken. Once again she had gotten carried away by the immediate problem and forgotten the more looming threat. “Has anyone seen Professor Fairmont?”
There was a series of shrugs and head shakes. “Not since earlier,” Alyssa said.
“What about Renata?” Elise asked. “She said she’d watch out for him.”
Again Alyssa shook her head.
Elise’s stomach tightened. Robert Fairmont’s reputation was impressive. As a practicing architect, he had won numerous design awards, and his track record as a teacher was impressive, too. A growing number of his former students were beginning to make names for themselves, with many attributing much of their success to him. Had he been insulted that she was late for their appointment, and so had decided to leave?
“Where’s Pauline?” she tried yet again, starting to feel more than a little desperate. Delia pointed to a group of people at the far end of the porch. With a soft murmur, Elise excused herself.
Pauline Martin, the library’s only full-time aid, was a plump woman in her early forties with short, light brown hair and a perpetual expression of amused good cheer. An earth-mother type, she loved working with the children who came to the library, and along with Elise had developed a program that several libraries in other small towns now emulated.
When she saw Elise, Pauline broke into a beaming smile. “You look perfect! Don’t touch a thing! Otherwise you’ll get all dirty again. Have you heard? We can use the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Pastor Schoff didn’t understand at first why we couldn’t just put the books in another part of the library, but when Johnny told him about the dampness spreading to the rest of the collection, he agreed right away. Just like Johnny understood when you told him earlier. He—”
Elise broke into the ongoing stream. If Pauline were turned loose, they could be standing there for hours. “Pauline, Professor Fairmont—have you seen him?”
Pauline frowned. “Why, yes. Just a little while ago. He was...somewhere.” She scanned the people on the porch. “The last time I saw him, he was by the front steps.”
“Was he leaving?” Elise couldn’t help the note of alarm in her voice.
Pauline frowned in puzzlement. “Why would he leave when he’s come all the way from Milwaukee?”
“I’ll check inside.” Elise hurried through the open double doors that led into the library proper.
A steady stream of people was moving up and down the hall that led to a room at the rear of the library. There, a buildup of water from a leaking pipe had caused a portion of the ceiling to give way. Some people exiting from the hall were heading to the porch with damp volumes. Others had been assigned the task of stacking the numerous books that had managed to remain dry in an area off to one side of the circulation desk.
Elise shivered, remembering the horror of the moment when water had first sprayed everywhere. For a short space of time, her emotions had given way as well as she had tried frantically to rescue the books nearest the disaster.
At the Biography Room’s door, the tall young man next in line stood aside to let Elise enter. He was Ricky Travis, a recent graduate of Tyler High School. “Miss Ferguson,” Ricky said respectfully.
A glimmer of a smile touched Elise’s lips. Ricky was a person it was sometimes hard to like. A typical teenager, he’d had his share of ups and downs over the past year. In particular, he’d had difficulties on the high school football team. Some in town thought him cocky, but Elise knew another side of him. She remembered the little boy who had devoured books on dinosaurs the way other little boys eat cake. The fiercer the dinosaur, the better. Ricky had been able to rattle even the most complicated scientific names off his tongue. Next, he had progressed to adventure tales and finally to science fiction—his current favorite. “Ricky,” she acknowledged softly. She included a couple of Ricky’s friends in her smile and stepped into the chaos of the room.
Even though they had finally managed to cut off the water supply to the library, occasional drops still fell from the raw open wound on the ceiling. Bits of soggy plaster clung to the gaping edges of the hole, while other pieces cluttered the wet floor, mixing with dirt that had collected in the lathing for nearly a hundred years. Elise had tried to clear away the worst of the muck before she went home, sweeping it to one side, but numerous feet trampling through to rescue books hadn’t helped the situation. Several thick cotton towels had been spread as doormats into the hall, in an attempt to keep tracking to a minimum, but their success was debatable.
Josephine Mackie, principal of Tyler High School, waved to Elise from across the room. Elise lifted a hand and started to make her way toward her, all the while murmuring encouragement to those in the process of removing the last of the books as well as those taking down the free-standing shelves.
Several people in the rescue force Elise didn’t recognize, but she was grateful for their willingness to help even if she didn’t know them personally. One man in particular seemed to be enjoying himself. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and smudges of dirt on what once had been a pristine white shirt, he braced one of the metal shelf units so that Patrick Kelsey, Johnny and Anna’s oldest, could loosen the bolts that held it to the next section. Grinning, he said something that made Patrick laugh.
He was an attractive man, probably somewhere in his mid to late fifties, with wavy black hair sprinkled lightly with silver, an olive complexion that made him look as if he had a year-round tan, a capable, active-looking body and a rather rugged set to his features. He glanced up as Elise continued to watch him, and she was struck by the fact that his eyes were a curious shade of yellow and brown. But it was not so much their unusual color as their expression that unsettled her. Confident, vital and knowingly amused, they lent him the air of a man who could all too easily perceive the foibles and fantasies of the people around him.
Illogically, Elise averted her gaze, afraid that he might see inside of her. A moment later, after castigating herself for being fanciful, she looked back, only to find that his attention had returned to Patrick Kelsey.
Continuing on to Josephine’s side, Elise was perplexed that her heart rate had quickened. It was this horrible day, she told herself firmly. Nothing more than too much stress. She had passed her recent physical exam with flying colors; the only caveat the doctor had given her was to lighten up and not work so hard. Her? Lighten up? With one library literally falling down around her head and a new one whose construction, because of fiscal problems, had ground to a halt with only the foundation work complete? And to top it off, she had now lost the visiting professor, the only person who could help them solve their problem!
Josephine Mackie was almost seven years Elise’s senior, closer to Bea’s age than her own. But that illusionary difference had evaporated over time, and they’d been best friends for more years than either of them cared to think about.
A slender, gray-haired woman with a long thin nose, and pale gray eyes that hid behind round, rimless glasses, Josephine had presided over the high school with an iron hand for almost as many years as Elise had been Tyler’s chief librarian. She demanded that students and teachers alike do their best, holding them to strict guidelines. But she also ruled with fairness and maintained an open-door policy to anyone who had troubles. She had seen a lot and helped a lot, and the sharpness of her expression concealed a tender heart. As head of Tyler’s Friends of the Library organization, she frequently worked with Elise on various projects.
“Don’t look so panicked,” Josephine rebuked her fondly, taking a guess at the cause of Elise’s worried expression. “Everything is under control. The plumber’s on his way, the pipe will be fixed in no time, and then we can get the water turned back on and begin the cleanup.”
“It’s not that,” Elise replied, looking around anxiously. Her gaze skimmed over the man at the shelves before moving on to the other strangers in the room. None of them fit her idea of how a professor of architecture should look. “I’ve really messed things up, Josephine. He’s not here. I think he’s gone home...gone back to Milwaukee. He’ll probably never agree to meet with me again. I’ll have to go to the town council and tell them that I—”
“Elise,” Josephine interrupted her pleasantly. “He’s over there.”
“What? Where?” Elise’s head swung round, trying to follow the direction her friend pointed.
“At the shelves, with Patrick Kelsey. I saw you looking at him just now. I thought you knew.”
Elise closed her eyes. That man was Professor Fairmont, and he had been roped into helping. A man of his stature. “No,” she said weakly. “I didn’t know.”
Josephine rubbed her grimy hands on the rag she had been using to wipe down the shelves. “He’s really quite nice,” she said mildly. “He impressed me. He arrived early for your appointment, saw the mess and didn’t hesitate. He just took off his jacket and dug right in.”
“Oh, God,” Elise breathed.
Josephine looked at her. “What’s the matter? Should I have stopped him?”
Elise shrugged guiltily. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. It’s just...”
“Elise.” Josephine gave her one of the patented principal looks she had been honing on recalcitrant students for years. “Go talk to the man. Apologize. Thank him for helping. It’s all you can do.”
Patrick had succeeded in releasing the final bolt that held the first shelving unit to the next, and as a result, the unit swung free. Immediately, a strong pair of hands compensated for the release of tension, balancing the unit until Ricky and his friends could come forward to relieve the holder of its weight. Then the unit itself was spirited out of the room.
Elise’s nerves fluttered. She’d known what she was going to have to do even before Josephine told her. She drew a deep breath and, after a quick, heartening glance at her friend, closed the distance between herself and the professor.
Robert Fairmont concentrated on his work, watching as Patrick bent to release the initial bolts holding the next unit. Elise stopped just in front of him. The neat crispness of her reserved-for-meetings suit seemed so out of place in the circumstances, her makeup too carefully applied. She was the only person in the library who wasn’t working, who wasn’t sullied.
“Professor Fairmont?” she asked, her voice strained. He looked up and again she was struck by the uniqueness of his eyes. She smiled to cover her nervousness and thrust out a welcoming hand. “I’m Elise Ferguson, the chief librarian here. I’m sorry I wasn’t available to greet you earlier, but as you can see, we’ve had a little accident.”
“This whole place is an accident, if you ask me,” Patrick Kelsey declared, straightening. “When Mom called to tell Pam and me what had happened, we thought it was the roof. Another bad storm and the whole thing could blow off. I’d hate to think of the cleanup then!”
“So would I,” Elise murmured.
Robert Fairmont started to take her hand but paused first to wipe his own along the side of his dark slacks. His touch, when it came, was warm, sure. “This is enough of a calamity, I should think,” he said.
His voice set off a series of alarms along Elise’s already disturbed nerve endings. It was low and soft, the voice of a man who didn’t have to shout to be heard because people automatically listened.
Patrick motioned for someone else to assist him, then said to Elise, “We can take care of this if you two need to talk. I was just telling Robert here how badly we need the new library, then I found out who he was. Sure hope you two can work something out.”
Robert Fairmont’s smile was assured. “We’ll do our best.”
Elise was conscious that he followed closely behind her as she walked out of the room. At a quiet corner in the hall, she turned to face him. “I’m sorry about all of this,” she said. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Would you like to talk in my office? It’s just down the hall. It’s dry,” she added as an extra incentive.
An array of lines crinkled the corners of his eyes and the creases in his cheeks deepened when he smiled. His was a strong face, weathered by life and tempered by experience. “Dry has a definite appeal today,” he agreed.
Elise turned away, unsure if he was laughing at her. She decided to take his reply at face value.
“Are the books salvageable?” he asked as he fell into step at her side.
“Hopefully most will be. Even the wettest. Our worst enemy is mold, not water. That’s why we had to get them into circulating air so quickly, so they could start the process of drying. We couldn’t afford to wait. Only the books with coated pages will have to be sent away to a vacuum chamber to be dried—they’ll fuse into hard blocks otherwise. Again, hopefully, there won’t be many of those, because the procedure can be expensive...something we just don’t need right now.”
She unlocked the door to her office and ushered him inside. The room was cramped, as were most of the other rooms in the library, both in the public and staff areas. Boxes were stacked on the floor; books and catalogs rested on every available flat surface. Notes fluttered from her small bulletin board. The town had outgrown the facility a number of years ago, far longer than the past two or so years that they had spent planning the new building. Not even continued weeding of books and materials could create enough space for everything and everyone.
Elise made no apology for the condition of the room. It was something she just couldn’t help. She took a seat behind her work station and nodded toward the empty chair. “Our ability to make coffee is hampered, of course,” she said. “But if you’d care to have some, I’m sure we can find someone who wouldn’t mind...”
“No need,” he said, folding his length into the proffered chair. His gaze once again searched the room before alighting on Elise. “Actually, I have a proposition to put to you. Why don’t we postpone this meeting for a day or two? Possibly even longer than that. You have your hands full now and I’m in no great hurry. I can wait.”
Elise had managed to school her face of all emotion, but at his suggestion, she jerked forward, her expression intent. “But we can’t do that!” she cried. “The new library can’t wait! You’ve seen how bad the situation is here. You’ve heard about the roof...and that’s not all! I love this old house. I’ve loved it all the years I’ve worked here and even before, when I came as a child to use it. But we’ve reached the point where we just can’t stay any longer—not with everything like it is. We have to build the new library. Either that or we make the necessary repairs, and I’m afraid that after all the money the town’s already spent on plans and contracts and fees, there won’t be enough money left to... Then we’ll lose everything—buildings, books...”
She stopped, her throat tightening. He didn’t need to know all that. She didn’t need to tell him.
After a moment he said, “A day or two won’t matter at this stage. Relax a bit. You can’t build a new library all on your own. That’s why I’m here. To see if I can help.”
“But...”
Robert Fairmont, professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, leaned forward to still the fingers that worked against each other on top of her desk. His smile flashed reassurance. “Relax,” he repeated softly. “In a few days we can talk. Say, on Friday. In the meantime, you can get things under control here, and I’ll go over the plans I have from the firm in greater detail. The time won’t be wasted.”
As she listened to him speak, Elise felt the tension she had been carrying all day melt away, as if his certainty could protect her. It was a nice feeling; her burdens had somehow been lifted. But the magic didn’t last. The difficulties both she and the town faced could not be ignored for long. She pulled her hands away, severing their connection. Still, what he said about delaying the consultation made sense. With all the people working nearby, she would be divided in her allegiance. She would want to be in both places at once. “All right,” she agreed tightly. “We’ll meet again on Friday.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. Then he stood up.
Elise remained in her chair. She continued to stare at him, completely unaware, for the moment, of what she was doing. Then she, too, got quickly to her feet, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. She was a competent woman. People trusted her to do the right thing. They trusted her with the growing minds of their children. She was responsible for every program and every book that came into or went out of the library. She was responsible for budget planning, for equipment purchases, for not indulging in gossip when she was in the perfect job for it. She knew everyone’s tastes, everyone’s interests, and sometimes, it seemed, everyone’s problems. Yet at this moment she felt like a little girl again, off center, off balance. It had to be the day, she told herself. It had to be.
She led him back to the Biography Room, but just outside the door, she paused to say stiltedly, “Don’t feel you have to help any longer. You shouldn’t have been pressed into service in the first place. We have enough people now. There’s no need for you to stay.”
He met her look levelly. “I helped because I wanted to. I love books and old houses. I think I’ll stay a little longer...that is, if it’s all right with you.”
Elise shrugged, trying to maintain some kind of cool facade. “As you wish, Mr.... Professor...”
“Robert,” he suggested. “Just call me Robert. And I’ll call you Elise.”
Elise’s heart jumped when he said her name, a fact that startled her. What was wrong with her? Maybe she should go see Dr. Baron and have another checkup.
“All right,” she murmured, and walking into the damaged room, she headed directly for the safe harbor that was Josephine.
She tried not to notice Robert Fairmont as he worked—that after checking to see if Patrick had further need of him, he started to shift the fallen debris, carrying out the larger pieces of plaster Elise had pushed to one side and disposing of the rest with a dustpan, broom and mop.
Then she tried desperately not to notice that she had noticed.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e764f37e-4028-5d65-89e2-0a4e52ec4f30)
ELISE GUIDED her Escort into the garage, the long day having finally taken its toll. At the moment she felt every bit of her fifty-three years. In fact, she felt a hundred and fifty-three! Her head ached, her back ached, her feet ached. She had been too exhausted to do more than pick at her food earlier when someone was kind enough to bring dinner to the volunteers at the church hall. But at least they had gotten the job done. Most of the books were now resting jauntily on end, their pages fanned open, continuing the process of drying. And the books that needed to be sent away and were valuable enough for the library to justify the costly procedure of reclaiming them had been frozen as procedure dictated. In all, only a small number would likely be lost. Considering everything, they had gotten off lightly. If the leak had been larger, or if it had occurred somewhere else—say, over the Tyler Collection that she had spent years gathering and that contained archival papers of the town’s history as well as old photographs that couldn’t be replaced... Elise shuddered at the thought. The day would have been a catastrophe. Now the only difficulty was the worrisome fact that such a catastrophe could still occur. If the pipes in one section of the library were in such poor condition, it stood to reason that pipes elsewhere could be the same. Not to mention the condition of the roof. Elise shook her head in quick denial. She didn’t want to think about the condition of the roof!
After gathering her purse and jacket, she let herself out of the car. Where once her suit had been crisp and smart, the skirt and blouse now looked to be in almost as wretched a condition as her dress had earlier. She hadn’t bothered to go home again to change into clothes suitable for the book rescue work. She hadn’t wanted to take the time. So she’d just removed her jacket and set to work. And after an afternoon spent wiping down shelves and walls and floors, and an evening supervising the transfer of water-damaged books, her clothes might never be the same.
Elise fitted her key into the back door lock and stepped inside the house that she and Bea had lived in for most of their adult lives. The design was perfect for Bea’s needs, and what wasn’t had been altered. Their parents had bought and refitted the house just a few years before their deaths.
Distinctive theme music from a popular television drama spilled out of the living room, alerting Elise to the presence of the others. She knew Josephine was there because her car was parked at the end of the sidewalk.
Both women looked up when Elise entered the room. The cat made the first move toward greeting, stirring her slightly pudgy body to get up, and then stretching her back into a high arch before starting a slow, regal walk toward the person who fed her. Tiny noises of pleasure sounded deep in her throat.
“It’s certainly about time,” Bea pronounced shortly. “We’d just about given you up for dead!”
Ignoring Bea’s remark, Josephine said, “You look exhausted. Were you able to finish?”
Elise crouched to stroke the cat, who was rubbing against her legs in an ecstatic show of goodwill. “Buttercup...hello. My goodness, did you miss me?” She laughed lightly when Buttercup purred a response. Scooping the cat into her arms, she straightened and answered Josephine’s question. “Yes, thank goodness. At least, with this part. Of course, tomorrow the insurance people will come and we’ll have to see about getting the ceiling repaired. Not to mention arranging things with the vacuum-chamber people and continuing to work with the books at the church. Then we have to do something with all the books that didn’t get damp but had to be moved anyway. They’re just stacked haphazardly about. Then...” Buttercup grew restless and twisted to be set free. Elise released her, then claimed a seat on the couch for herself.
“I’m sorry I asked,” Josephine murmured dryly, gazing at Elise with compassion.
“So that means tomorrow is going to be another repeat of today,” Bea said tightly, not showing any compassion. “You’ll be away again all day and half the night.”
“No, Bea,” Elise answered levelly. “Today was unusual because of the accident.”
“I was going to give you five more minutes and then go to bed,” Bea snapped. “If you want to stay out all night, well, that’s up to you. But there are those of us who have to sleep!”
“I’m home now, Bea,” Elise defended herself tiredly.
“I told you to go to bed, Bea,” Josephine said, taking up Elise’s cause. “I told you I’d brush your hair.”
“No.” Bea shook her head. “It’s the least Elise can do after being away each day for so long. And especially the way she abandoned me today.”
Elise closed her eyes. Right now she didn’t think she had strength left to lift the brush.
“Let me do it for you tonight,” Josephine urged. “Just this once.”
Bea gathered her possessions onto her lap, adjusting the wheelchair as needed. She collected her magazine, her sewing, her tissues, her wrap. “Elise can do as she wants,” she replied primly. “If she doesn’t want to brush my hair, she certainly doesn’t have to.” She then made a production of pushing herself across the room, making it seem difficult, hard to accomplish.
Elise started to get up but Josephine stopped her. “At least let me help you to your room, Bea. Elise is tired. She needs to rest.”
“I can take care of it myself!” Bea snapped. “I don’t need help from you!”
“Bea!” Elise protested.
Bea turned. She lifted her chin. Her body seemed delicate in the chair, but when she chose, her angry spirit could dominate even the most determined soul. “I can’t say it’s been nice, because it hasn’t. Today has been an absolute nightmare! Josephine, there’s no need for you to come over tomorrow. I’ll be fine. I can do without a meal or two. It won’t hurt me.”
“Bea!” Josephine chastised her in turn.
Bea threw their visitor a superior look before her eyes moved on to her sister. Once they were settled upon Elise, though, her expression became harder to define.
Tears of exhaustion sprang into Elise’s eyes. She had to blink rapidly to keep them from falling.
A tiny, satisfied smile feathered the side of Bea’s mouth. Then she turned away and rolled resolutely out of the room.
The television blared into a newsbreak but no one seemed to notice. At the closing click of Bea’s door, Josephine switched off the set. Silence permeated the room.
A moment later Elise said softly, “I suppose today has been difficult for her.”
Josephine’s jaw was tight. “I don’t see why. Between the two of us we’ve done everything we possibly could for her. She takes advantage of you, Elise, you know that. Anyone else would tell her to take her dictatorial ways and jump into the nearest—”
Elise sat forward, interrupting her. “Tomorrow really shouldn’t be as bad as today. There’ll be a lot to do, but at least I know what to expect. I can’t tell you how horrible it was this morning to look into that room and see that gigantic bubble hanging from the ceiling. Then to be standing almost under it when it broke!” Elise started to laugh, a release from tension. “I was grabbing books, trying to get them out of harm’s way, then, whoosh! We had our own indoor monsoon!”
“How did you get along with Professor Fairmont?” Josephine asked. “Does he think he can do anything to help with the new library?”
Elise’s laughter stopped. She had been successful in keeping the man out of her thoughts from shortly after she saw him leave late in the afternoon to this moment. She shrugged. “We didn’t really have time to talk. He’s coming back on Friday. We’ll discuss it then.”
Josephine nodded. “I told you before that he impressed me. I like the way he looks you straight in the eye and doesn’t bother to hide what he thinks. You know where you stand with someone like that. Not that he can’t charm the birds from the trees when he wants—you can see that at first glance, too. But there’s something underneath. A fine, strong character.”
Buttercup leaped gracefully onto the couch and started to purr as Elise absently stroked her silky head. “I felt like he could see too much,” she mused.
“What do you mean?” Josephine asked, frowning.
Elise shook her head, then was forced to cover a huge yawn.
Smiling good-naturedly, Josephine stood up. “The best favor you can do for yourself right now is get into bed and not worry about a thing. I’ve taken care of the kitchen. All the dishes are washed and put away. I also made some of Bea’s favorite breakfast rolls for tomorrow morning, so that should keep her happy, at least for a while.” Josephine took a moment to examine her friend closely. “It probably won’t do any good,” she said, “but I’m going to say it anyway. You’re taking too much onto yourself, Elise. Wearing yourself too thin. You can’t handle all the burdens of this town as well as those of your family. One person can carry only so much!”
Elise returned the woman’s gaze with tolerant amusement. “I’ll remember to give you the same speech the beginning of next semester when you’re single-handedly trying to drag the high school along in your wake. We’ve known each other for too long, Josephine.”
Josephine grimaced. “You’re probably right. Sometimes I think I’ll retire early. Go off on one of those world cruises, the kind that only single people can get a ticket on. Meet some nice man and settle down. Want to come along?”
“What? And shock everyone in Tyler? We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing forever, remember? Our lives can’t change. Town institutions don’t just get up and waltz away from their duties.”
Josephine located her purse. “Maybe one day we’ll surprise them all. The head of the library waltzes off, the head of the high school waltzes off....”
“I’ll just be happy to have the new library.”
Josephine nodded in resignation. “Me, too. One small step. Then maybe the school can build a new science lab. We’re not asking for that much, are we?”
Elise saw her friend to the door and gave her a warm hug. “Thanks for all you did today. At the library. Here.”
“Anytime. Well, no. I didn’t mean it that way. We certainly don’t want another accident.”
Elise waved as Josephine drove away, then she closed the door and secured it. The house was quiet when she turned. Quiet and somehow empty. Bea was in her room, waiting to have her hair brushed. The marmalade cat was fast asleep on the couch. Echoes of their parents still could be felt in the decor that had changed little since their deaths so many years before. Yet there were times when it just wasn’t enough.
Elise drew a soft breath, braced her weary shoulders and went to tap on Bea’s door. The call for entry came without hesitation.
Bea was sitting up in bed, the wheelchair off at an angle nearby. Elise moved it in order to get the brush out of the bedside table drawer. Bea had already taken her hair down, the long, pale threads her last remaining pride. Wordlessly, Elise perched on the edge of the mattress and began the ritual that ended each sister’s day.
As usual, Bea relaxed when the long strokes with the brush began, and as usual, Elise’s mind wandered. Tonight her thoughts flew to a certain time in the day when she had sat at her desk directly opposite a vital, attractive man, and he had placed his hand over hers and told her not to worry. And for a few enchanted seconds, she hadn’t worried. All her cares had lifted as she became lost in the certainty of his voice and the look in his unusual yellow-brown eyes.
Bea moved impatiently. “Have you gone to sleep?” she demanded. “You’ve stopped brushing!”
Elise immediately shook the memory away, glad that her sister couldn’t see the warm flush that had crept into her cheeks.
* * *
AMID THE FAMILIAR surroundings of his apartment in Milwaukee, Robert Fairmont sat at his drafting table and contemplated the set of blueprints for the Tyler library. He frowned in concentration as he moved from sheet to sheet and finally to the specifications at the end. It was a good job, nothing less than he expected from Fred Dupont—which was exactly what he’d decided after reviewing the project the day before. Fred had been a good student and now he was a good practicing architect in the firm with which Robert himself was affiliated. But Robert could see where civic pride and a good artist’s instincts had eventually led to a clash with today’s fiscal reality.
He checked the papers that constituted the history of the project. First contact with the firm had come nearly three years before, at a time when matching funds from state and federal sources were much easier for small towns like Tyler to access. As those sources dried up, any number of civic projects all over the state had been put on hold.
He returned to the specifications. Yes, it truly was a beautiful job. The library would have been a building all involved could be proud of. Only now it faced the same threats as had the courthouse in Johnstown Corners and the new administration building in Bennington Falls before he had found a way to save them. Could he help the people of Tyler in the same way?
He smiled slightly to himself. The simplest solution would be to lop off the top floor of the two-story Greek Revival structure, but he doubted that the chief librarian would sit still for that. And he couldn’t blame her. Space was so cramped in the building that presently housed the library. What would be the sense of constructing a new building that gave them very little additional room? The collection wouldn’t get wet, but that was about all he could promise.
Robert moved away from the drawing board to stand at the series of wide windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. Lights were starting to twinkle along the shore as the setting sun rapidly plunged the area into night. He leaned against the thick plate glass, his shoulder registering its solidness as well as its coolness as he hummed softly in accompaniment to the delicate strains of the Mozart piano concerto that reverberated throughout the apartment. There was no one to complain if he was slightly off-key or to protest that he hummed too loudly; no one to criticize his choice of music. His features relaxed into contentment. A short time later, when the movement drew to a close, he sighed, and with reluctance allowed his thoughts to return to the events of the day.
His time in Tyler had been far different from what he’d expected. He had planned to pass a couple of hours in consultation about the library, then be on his way back to Milwaukee, about an hour’s drive away. As it turned out, most of the day had been spent in hard physical labor! Row upon row of books had needed to be moved, shelves had to be taken down, the room where the leak had occurred had had to be emptied so that repairs could be made and all surfaces properly cleaned. There hadn’t been time to do much consulting—at least, not with the chief librarian. But he had been able to pick up on the feelings of a number of his fellow workers. It seemed that the old house that had served as Tyler’s library for the past forty years had reached the point of no return. Everyone agreed it was in terrible condition and might fall down at any given moment—an exaggeration, Robert knew, but one that expressed the townspeople’s feelings succinctly. All seemed to want the new library to be built, but no one had a good idea of how to replace the funding that had been lost. Their attempts to raise additional money had barely scratched the surface of what was needed, which made their frustration easy to understand. So, too, was the desperation of the librarian, who pretended to be calm and collected in the midst of disaster, but who in reality was in a near-explosive state of worry.
Robert pushed away from the window and moved restlessly about the apartment. He was glad he had a project to think about, something to keep his mind occupied for the dog days of summer. Unlike past summers, when he had traveled, this one he had decided to spend at home. And he could already tell that his decision had been a mistake.
He moved back to the drawing table and continued to hum, both lightly and on-key, as he exchanged the plans of the Tyler library for a set of yellow tracing sheets on which he had been sketching his version of a modern-day cathedral. After securing it in place, he sat down to work. It was his whimsy that one day one of his renderings would rival the best that Europe had to offer in style, grace and innovative grandeur.
The German poet Goethe had once likened architecture to “frozen music.” That was the way Robert thought of his craft. It appealed both to the artist in him and to the engineer. The challenge was everything.
* * *
ELISE HURRIED downstairs, aware that once again she was late. For a person who prided herself on being punctual, the past few days had been a trial. There had been problems with the insurance company, with arranging an appointment for the vacuum chamber, even with the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Somehow someone had overlooked the fact that the church hall was scheduled for use that weekend, and it had taken a number of calls, plus Elise’s own pleading intervention, to make arrangements for the planned awards dinner to be held instead at the hall belonging to the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.
Once Elise got behind in her schedule, she seemed to stay behind. She had thought to have most things under control by this morning, only to discover that Joe Santori could come three days early to repair the ceiling of the Biography Room. And she wasn’t about to tell him not to come. The way things were progressing, a refusal could equal several weeks’ delay. So she had stayed at the library longer than planned, which made her late arriving home to prepare Bea’s lunch, which accordingly had delayed her preparation for her second meeting with Robert Fairmont.
A light film of perspiration glazed her body, the result of a too-hot shower, a too-warm house and heightened tension. She wore another suit, a backup reserved-for-meetings suit that was the same pale blue color as her eyes. It didn’t quite manage the psychological boost of the red suit she’d donned three days before, but it was close. Fired with determination, she felt in control, competent and businesslike.
She had thought about everything that had happened when she met the professor the first time and decided that her reaction had been magnified all out of proportion. None of it had been real. When she saw him today he would prove to be an ordinary human being with eyes that saw nothing beyond the commonplace and a voice that held no particular power. He would come, they would talk, and hopefully Tyler would be able to build its new library. Afterward, she would go on just as she had always gone on, with one day following another.
Bea made no demand as Elise came downstairs. Giving in to curiosity, Elise peeked around the doorway into the family room. As usual, Bea was sitting in front of the television set, but instead of watching the broadcast game show, she had fallen asleep.
Elise paused, not wanting to wake her. But when Buttercup gave a meow of welcome and with feline grace jumped from the couch to the floor without disturbing Bea, Elise was drawn farther into the room. Chances to observe her sister unnoticed were extremely rare.
Bea’s blond head had no brace. She slept sitting upright, her slender body fragile in the dull-colored, shapeless dress. In repose, her features were soft, almost beautiful again. The ravages of bitterness and self-pity might never have been.
Elise studied her, then as shadows of the past began to dance before her eyes, she became very still. She saw Bea as she once had been: happy, smiling, unhampered...a flirt at seventeen. And she saw herself at eleven: half child, half budding young woman, who doubted herself even as she thought her sister one of the most magnificent beings in the world. Then had come a fateful Wisconsin winter, a snowfall, the gradual formation of ice....
A primitive cry sounded deep in Elise’s throat as her features twisted with pain. She tried to thrust the terrible memory away. It hurt too much! She loved her sister. She didn’t want anything bad to have happened to her. She didn’t want to remember!
Bea’s eyes opened with startling suddenness. In them, there was no question as to where she was or what was taking place. She looked directly at Elise and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
Elise tried to control the trembling of her limbs. She tried to act as if nothing was wrong. But she knew that Bea could see through her performance. “No, I just—You were sleeping and I thought—”
Bea had perfected a certain smile over the years, a smile that combined innocence and raw power. It was a smile that instantly plunged Elise into distress without her being fully aware of the cause. Bea used it now. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she said.
“But your eyes were closed!” Elise wanted to run from the room. She always felt so exposed at these moments.
“I was resting, that’s all. Are you leaving again?”
Elise rubbed a hand across her brow. Her hard-won poise had disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. The meeting was going to be a disaster. Robert Fairmont would arrive in Tyler and all her worst nightmares would come true. He would tell her that cutting costs would be impossible. That she should stay in the old library and be jolly well glad that she had it...even if the town council did dig in their heels and refuse to spend any more money on it for needed repairs. Then he would look penetratingly at her and see everything that she kept hidden inside, see her deepest thoughts and desires. See her for the fraud that she truly was! “Uh... yes,” she stammered. “I have a meeting.”
“With that professor?” Bea lifted an eyebrow in speculation. “The way Josephine described him, he sounds a little too hoity-toity for my taste. He must think quite a lot of himself.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Elise murmured, glancing at the door and escape.
Bea saw the look and dismissed her angrily. “Oh, go on. Leave! You’re not exactly a scintillating conversationalist anyway. Just get me a pitcher of lemonade before you go. The house is on the warm side today.”
“Would you like me to switch on the air-conditioning?”
“What? And have me freeze? No, I should certainly say not. Just get me the lemonade.”
Elise wished that she had never stopped to glance into the room. If Bea was quiet, she should have taken advantage of the moment and slipped silently out of the house.
While mixing her sister’s refreshment, she tried to repair the damage that had been done to her assurance. But she knew the job remained only half-finished when, upon her return, Bea’s sniff of disapproval still caused her pain.
* * *
ELISE SWUNG her car into the rear parking area of the library that was usually reserved for the staff. This afternoon, however, a truck was parked close to the back entrance and the whine of an electric saw could be heard coming from deep within the building. Joe Santori and his young assistant, Lars Travis, were still hard at work.
Elise set the emergency brake and stepped outside. Under the guise of adjusting the shoulder strap of her purse, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, strengthening her spine, she set off, seemingly ready for anything.
The interior of the library was divided into individual rooms, just as it had been during its occupation by the Friedrichs, the family who had once lived there. The floors were oak, buffed to a well-worn luster by the custodian, Jimmy Randolph, and in what once must have been an expensive touch, prodigious amounts of geometrically carved moldings decorated the walls, the doorways, the windows and even the bookcases that had been built into the home’s private library.
Changes had been made to convert the building to public use, but most of the changes involved running electrical conduits along the floor to various work stations for the staff and filling almost all the rooms with shelves. No walls had been taken down and only a few added.
Elise hesitated in the doorway of the large front room that had served the Friedrichs as a combination living and dining room and that now served as the library’s main circulation area. Her gaze swept over staff and patrons. From the calm that had descended over the facility, no one would have believed that only a short time ago the area had been involved in such chaos. Delia Mayhew was at the circulation desk checking out books, Pauline was on her way to the Children’s Room, where the regularly scheduled preschool story time was due to start, and Rebecca Sinclair, new to Tyler but already a treasure as a volunteer, was wheeling a cart loaded with books to be reshelved. Several people were standing at the long card catalog, searching through the alphabetized indexes, while others sat at nearby tables with narrow catalog drawers at their elbows as they hastily jotted down information they needed.
A light frown touched Elise’s brow. She had already stopped by her office, expecting to find Robert Fairmont there. Before leaving for home, she had asked the staff to keep an eye out for him, to show him into her office when he arrived and then to offer him coffee or tea or whatever else it took to keep him entertained until she returned. But he wasn’t there. Her office was as empty as when she left it.
She caught Delia’s eye and lifted her eyebrows in puzzlement. Delia immediately glanced toward the card catalog, causing Elise to examine that area again. And sure enough, there he was, standing beside the massive file, gazing back at her with such knowing amusement that Elise felt her whole body burn with embarrassment. Had he been there all along? How had she missed him? His smile grew, as if he were privy to those thoughts as well!
Elise struggled to control her reaction. She had to deal with this man, talk with him intelligently. She couldn’t afford to let him see that he unsettled her so badly. It was all in her mind, she told herself. Only in her mind!
He came toward her and stopped a short pace away. “Elise,” he said. His voice was simultaneously honey and fire.
Elise glanced at Delia for help, but Delia was talking to two of Britt Hansen’s children as she began the process of checking out their books. Elise’s gaze was drawn back to the professor.
He was dressed impeccably in light gray pants and a charcoal blazer with a stylish tie brightening his white shirt. His hair was brushed perfectly into place, full and thick and wavy, the threads of silver shining splendidly among the dark. His skin was still nicely tanned, the lines on his face lending a distinguished aura of wisdom and experience.
She smiled tightly. “I’m—I’m sorry I’m late again. Things are still, well...”
“I stopped by the room with the leak earlier. It looks as if everything is coming along nicely there at least.”
Elise was glad to have something to talk about. “Ahead of schedule, actually. The men weren’t supposed to come until next week.”
“Surely that’s good news.”
“Oh, yes! Definitely! At the moment I’ll take anything that looks like good news. It’s been such a...” She could hear herself continue to blather on about the problems she had faced over the past few days. Her words seemed to go on and on, and she couldn’t make them stop.
When there was the slightest pause in her monologue, he broke in...which only heightened Elise’s embarrassment at her behavior. She never talked endlessly like that! If there was one person in Tyler in control of her tongue, she was it! Still, he’d almost had to physically restrain her in order to insert a word.
“I think we can do it,” he said simply, delivering his verdict without aggrandizement.
Elise blinked. At first her mind didn’t register what he’d said. “Do what?” she asked.
His smile returned. “The library. It’s going to take some work. We’ll have to go over everything to see exactly what you need and what you don’t need. See where we can cut corners. But I don’t see why it can’t be done.”
For the moment Elise forgot everything but her joy at his words. Happiness lighted her eyes and her face, making them glow. “You’re willing to try?” she exclaimed.
“If you are,” he agreed.
She would put in as many hours as were needed. Exist on two hours of sleep each night. Do whatever was necessary to...
“Elise?” The voice calling her name was different. Male, but definitely not belonging to Robert Fairmont.
Elise turned to see Joe Santori standing beside them, dust from the gypsum board he had been using to repair the ceiling clinging to his skin and clothing even though it was evident he’d tried to brush himself off. Elise felt as if she had been shaken from a dream again, only this time a good one. “Yes, Joe?” she asked. “Is there a problem?”
Joe shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. He was a large man, well-built, with curly black hair and a quiet pride in his work. “Well, yes. We’ve hit a little snag.” He hesitated. “Water’s starting to show up again. Not much,” he was quick to add when he saw Elise blanch, “just a few drops. But the quicker we get Mike McNamara back out here, the better it will be. We sure can’t close her up as it is.”
Elise stood very still, then she felt herself start to sway. The soft background noises in the library receded into a hollow hum and Joe’s face blurred. Over a sudden tightness in her throat, she managed to say, “Would—would you mind calling him, Joe? Right now...I just can’t...” Fingers reached out to steady her, pulling her against a solid strength.
Joe stepped forward in concern, guilt flashing over his features.
Elise wanted to tell him that everything was all right, that what was happening wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except possibly her own. She had been pushing too hard and not eating properly, and now she was paying the price. Not that she wouldn’t mind a temporary respite from her problems. To get completely away, to have a few moments of unadulterated peace...that seemed the most wonderful bliss. Though she felt bad when she saw Joe’s worried look. And when she turned to see that it was Robert Fairmont she leaned against so contentedly, she felt even worse.
She longed for unconsciousness, but it never came... which in a rather pathetic sort of way was funny. She was too responsible even to faint properly!
With her thoughts still slightly fuzzy, she met the gaze of the architect. In his eyes she saw concern, but also something else: his recognition that a part of her wanted to laugh! Surprise made him blink, then answering amusement sparked in his unusual eyes.
A smile tugged at Elise’s lips and, unable to help herself, she started to giggle, which caused Joe to completely misread the situation. Thinking that she was crying, he called out to Delia, who, when she saw that Elise looked near to collapse, abandoned the circulation desk and came running toward them. A few patrons rushed over as well.
“Does she need a doctor?” someone asked.
“Is it a heart attack?” someone else queried.
“Oh, my God!” Delia cried.
“Water started to drip from the ceiling again,” Joe explained to the audience at large. “I had to tell her.”
Elise choked. “Joe, it’s okay. I just forgot to eat lunch, that’s all.” Then her face crumpled into laughter again, which the crowd mistook for pain. The whole situation was just too much! One misunderstanding followed another.
A hand came out to shield her face, turning it in to the fine woolen material of a blazer. “I think she just needs some time alone,” Robert Fairmont said quietly but with dignified authority.
Pauline rushed up, called away from the children by someone who had witnessed the scene. Her round face was pallid, full of fear. “What’s happened?” she demanded. “What’s wrong? Elise?”
Robert swept Elise fully into his arms. She kept her face buried against his shoulder. Suddenly she wanted to cry. Laughter had evolved into tears.
“I’m taking her home. She needs to rest,” he said. He turned to Joe Santori. “Why don’t you call her later this afternoon to let her know what the plumber says. I’m sure she’ll want to know.” Joe nodded agreement.
Elise took a series of unsteady breaths as she felt herself being transported through the front door and onto the porch, then along the sidewalk to the line of parking slots that angled off the street. She peeked around the architect’s shoulder and saw that the little group of concerned people had followed them onto the porch. They watched as he placed her feet on the ground and dug in his pocket for the keys to a dark blue Mercedes.
He opened the door and bent to lift her inside, but she stopped him.
“I can get in myself,” she said.
He pulled back to look at her. “Are you sure?” he asked.
She nodded wordlessly.
He stood back, ready to lend assistance if needed. But it wasn’t needed...not this time. While crossing to the driver’s side, he waved to the small crowd and called out something, something she didn’t understand.
She watched as he slid behind the wheel, secured her seat belt and his own, then brought the engine to life. The car smelled of leather and a good men’s cologne, and its engine purred with understated power and efficiency.
Certainly this wasn’t the way she had expected to leave the library today!
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d2facb9c-3b02-57f3-94f5-581f23ba0a55)
“WHAT DID YOU SAY to them?” she asked.
“I told them you were better. There’s no use in them continuing to worry.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He shifted position. Obviously his intention was to look over his shoulder and reverse out of the parking slot, but he stopped short to look at her. The shiny buttons of his blazer had been set free and the material spread to show that no spare flesh hung over his belt when he sat down. The belt itself was of high-quality leather, black, matching his shoes. The creases in his slacks were precise, disappearing only along the hard muscles of his thighs.
Elise’s gaze whipped away. She wasn’t accustomed to examining men so closely. Particularly men whose masculinity vibrated forcefully in the air around them.
“You are, aren’t you?” he asked.
Elise had to search for his meaning. Finally she connected it to his earlier assurance to the crowd. She nodded tightly. “Oh, yes. I’m fine.” Yet her hands twisted in her lap and her body was as taut as an overstrung bow. He continued to watch her. Unable to stand it any longer, she at last demanded, “What is it? Why are we still sitting here? I thought you said you were going to take me home.”
She knew she sounded the exact stereotype of a spinster librarian who found herself in close confines with an attractive, eligible male. Instinctively, her gaze shot to his left hand. He wore no ring, but that didn’t signify anything. Any number of married men didn’t wear rings anymore.
He smiled and she twitched uncomfortably in her seat. Had he seen her quick glance at his hand? Elise wanted to leap out of the car, but her legs felt like twin weights. They didn’t want to move.
“Well, I was,” he explained drolly, “but I don’t know where ‘home’ is. Would you like to direct me?”
Elise bit her bottom lip. “Go down this street to the right. Turn left, then left again after the fourth stop sign.”
“It’s all right, you know,” he said calmly, not having moved.
“What is?” she asked. She didn’t want to look at him anymore or talk to him. She just wanted to go home, go upstairs and stretch out in her bed. Maybe she had pushed herself a bit too far.
“To laugh when everything seems darkest. Sometimes it’s the only thing a person can do to protect his sanity.” He shifted the car into reverse and backed into the street.
There was a great difference between riding in a Mercedes and riding in her Escort. Bumps in the road were barely noticeable. Trees and grass and houses seemed to glide by in a haze of comfort. He took the first turn smoothly, effortlessly. But instead of relaxing, Elise grew more tense. Ultimately she burst out, “I shouldn’t be doing this! I’m needed at the library. And my car! What am I going to do about my car? I’ll need it later.”
“Can’t someone at the library drop it off for you?” he asked.
“I can’t ask anyone to do that! No, this is silly. Take me back, please.”
He glanced at her. “They won’t be happy to see you return so soon. They were ready to call an ambulance.”
“But you know I wasn’t that bad!”
“I do, yes. But they don’t. If you go back now, they’ll worry. They’ll watch you, dissect your every move. Is that what you want?” When she didn’t answer, he continued, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take off a couple of hours. Get some rest. Satisfy everyone. Then I’ll take you back to the library myself.”
“I still don’t think...”
“It won’t fall down without you, you know. Contrary to popular belief, the building looks fairly sturdy. And even if you were there and it did fall down, would you be able to hold it up all by yourself?”
“You’re making fun of me!” she accused.
He glanced away from the street. “Not really.”
The Mercedes slid to a halt at the final stop sign before making the next left. Elise wanted to continue to argue, but held her tongue as she reluctantly admitted that what he said was true. Everyone would watch her, waiting to see if she might weaken again. And she would hate that, even if it was done in the name of caring. Also, there was the concept of living to fight another day. Maybe, just this once, she should take a little time to gather her strength so that she could deal with all the difficulties that were to follow...which included her meetings with this architect! It was apparent that she was going to need every bit of energy she could muster.
* * *
“TURN RIGHT at the next corner,” Elise said, continuing her instructions.
Her voice held a musical quality even as she perched stiffly on the seat next to him. Robert did as she requested, steering the car onto a street of houses that looked to have been built sometime between the two great wars. None contained any unique architectural features; they were purely utilitarian, built for growing families. Wide yards, aged trees, sidewalks that could use some repair. Upkeep on most houses was ongoing. A few needed work.
“It’s the first house on the left,” she said.
Robert turned into the narrow driveway. He cut the engine and turned slightly toward her. He still wasn’t completely sure she was as all right as she claimed. She was so thin...fragile looking. He could easily encompass her wrist between his middle finger and thumb with room to spare! Her short hair, lightly curling, changed from blond to silver depending upon the angle and degree of light. Her naturally pale skin held the lightest trace of a summer tan. Carved, delicate features, a long, graceful neck, a narrow waist.... He could only guess at her age, but he’d estimate late forties, early fifties. Her face had a quality that youth didn’t know...of numerous challenges won and lost and, as well, a haunting shadow of pain deeply held.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” she murmured, remaining stiff and formal in her manner even as she reached for the door handle.
“I’ll see you inside,” he offered.
“That’s not necessary.” She threw him a look from pale blue eyes that exactly matched the suit she wore. The look bade him not to press. But it also showed him her uncertainty. She didn’t know what to do with him! Twice they’d arranged to meet to discuss the new library and twice some outside event had gotten in the way. She couldn’t ask him into the house to work because she knew he wouldn’t agree to do so. Also, she was irritated with him because he had advised her to rest...something she obviously didn’t do a great deal. But she couldn’t just dismiss him. She needed him. So there she was, in a quandary. He tried to ease the situation for her. She’d already been through enough.
“I have friends who live on Lake Geneva. They’ve told me to stop by any time I’m in the area. Why don’t I go visit them for a couple of hours, then I’ll swing back by here and take you to the library. We can talk after that. It shouldn’t take long today. Just a few preliminaries.”
He’d wanted to do a lot more than that. He’d wanted to dig right in and feel out where she stood on a number of necessary changes. He already had a few proposals in mind. But looking into that pale face and seeing the edge of tiredness she couldn’t disguise made him willing to wait.
“Why just a few preliminaries?” she questioned, latching on to the key word. “I’d rather get on with this, wouldn’t you? Progress as far as we can.”
“Well, because...”
“I’m perfectly all right!” she insisted. “I simply forgot to eat lunch, that’s all. Then when Joe said what he did...I had a perfect right to be upset! Joe knew it. That’s why he didn’t want to tell me.”
“Do you faint every time you get upset?”
“I didn’t faint!”
“You came close to it.”
“But I didn’t actually faint!” Her denial was low and surprisingly fierce. She took a breath. “You’ve said you think we can make this new library work. I’m going to hold you to that, Mr. Fairmont. I’m willing to put in whatever amount of time it takes. You should be, too.”
“That’s what an architect does, Miss—”
“Good. Now, you go visit your friends. I think that’s an excellent idea. Then come back and we’ll get started on the plans.”
Robert continued to look at her, a smile pulling at his lips. She might appear to be fragile, but he could see that she was a force to be reckoned with when she spoke on behalf of the library. It might have been her child, a living, breathing entity she would give her all to protect. Attack it and you attacked her.
“Whatever you say,” he murmured dryly.
Her cheeks took on a rosy hue and she quickly let herself out of the car. He watched as she walked, her back straight, to the tiny porch that fronted the house, then she disappeared inside.
Robert’s gaze stayed on the door for a moment before moving away. Her house was one of the more neatly kept homes on the block. The white paint was fresh, the shrubs trimmed and numerous flowers bloomed in their beds. The look was pleasing to the eye.
He restarted the car. If he was going to stop in on Harry and June, he needed to find a telephone. Not that he wouldn’t enjoy a simple ride in the country if they weren’t at home. But he felt he should give them ample warning. He backed out of the drive, and after another glance at the unprepossessing house Elise lived in, accelerated down the street.
* * *
ROBERT TURNED AWAY from the pay phone at the service station. His friends were at home and had begged him to visit. It was months since they’d heard from him, they’d complained. And they were right. During term, there was always so much to do in the design studio, working with his students, challenging them to grow and to see beyond what was expected. Students of architecture, particularly during the last weeks of a semester, were some of the most overworked scholars on campus. Some practically lived in the studio in order to meet their deadlines. Accordingly, their teachers devoted long hours to the subject as well—a fact that Robert wouldn’t change. He loved working with his students, conveying knowledge and receiving in turn intellectual stimulation.
Yet between his work at the university and his work with the firm, little time was left to keep up social obligations. Friends sometimes became lost in the shuffle. Which was one of the reasons why he had never married. He didn’t feel his life-style would be fair to a wife. He had heeded perhaps a little too well the advice of an admired professor—that an architect should never encumber himself prematurely with outside obligations. Translated, that meant a wife, children and a mortgage. Not if the architect intended to travel extensively or to immerse himself in all the work involved in starting his own practice. It was advice he himself had given students over the years, advice that he still believed. Only sometimes did he wonder if he might have carried it a little too far.
Robert shrugged the thought away. He paid for the gasoline that had been pumped into his car and set off along the highway that would take him to Lake Geneva. But instead of looking forward to the enjoyment he would soon experience upon seeing his old friends, he found his thoughts returning to the Tyler library. Not the new one. The old one.
Robert had loved old buildings all his life, particularly old homes. To him, they were the key to another age—an age that in many ways was much more graceful than the present. As a child, he had lived in just such a house, creating fantasy worlds from basement to attic. He had always dreamed of owning one himself, but as the years passed, his dream faded. Still, he loved to look at such structures and to poke around in them when given the chance.
His business in Tyler afforded just such an opportunity. The old library, though decried by its users, was interesting to him. His guess was that it had been built at or near the turn of the century, and judging from the exterior and interior style, influenced by the revolution in architecture that had taken place around that time. It was the period when fellow Wisconsinite Frank Lloyd Wright had begun to evolve the personal style that so greatly influenced twentieth-century architecture.
Robert’s two short investigations of the building had whetted his appetite to see more. Both times he’d been distracted by other things: the water damage to the books, his second appointment with the librarian. He wanted more time to look around. And he saw no reason why, as he worked closely with Elise Ferguson, he couldn’t take it.
* * *
THE DOORBELL RANG and Elise went to answer it. Butterflies were aflight in her stomach. The fluttering increased when she saw that Robert Fairmont stood on the porch. She’d known all along it would be him, but reality seemed more potent than her thoughts.
“Hello,” she said, striving to keep her voice circumspect.
“Hello,” he returned, a smile both in his eyes and on his lips.
She stepped back, wordlessly inviting him inside. He moved past her into the formal front room. She saw his gaze quickly take in his surroundings—the heavy furniture and curtains, the ornate rug. Repeatedly over the years since their parents’ death Elise had wanted to redecorate, but Bea had stayed her hand. Bea didn’t welcome change. She wanted everything to remain as it was, no matter how out-of-date or ungainly.
Elise cleared her throat. “You, uh, saw your friends?”
“Yes. You look...rested.”
Elise shifted uneasily. She wanted to tell him about the numerous telephone calls she’d received from people who wanted to know how she felt. They’d come from patrons who had been at the library, from the library staff, from people who hadn’t been there but who had heard the news through Tyler’s lightning-quick grapevine. In fact, she’d spent more time on the phone reassuring everyone than she had doing anything else. But she couldn’t make herself tell him. Having him inside her home completely unnerved her. Turned her into the equivalent of a tongue-tied sixteen-year-old.
“Elise! Elise!” Bea’s irritated repetition of her name came just before she wheeled into the room. When she saw Robert Fairmont, she came to an abrupt stop. “Who are you?” she demanded, looking him up and down. She didn’t seem particularly pleased with what she saw.
Elise hurried into speech. “Bea, this is Robert Fairmont, the architect who’s going to help us with the library. I’ve told you about him, remember?” She hated to think what her sister might say. With Bea, you never knew. “Professor Fairmont...my sister, Bea.”
Robert Fairmont moved closer to Bea and held out his hand. “Call me Robert,” he offered.
Bea looked at his hand as if it contained poison. “Yes,” she said tartly. “I know who you are.”
Robert let his hand fall slowly back to his side.
An awkward moment passed before Bea turned her attention to Elise. “Elise, I want you to take that darned telephone off the hook! It’s rung every few minutes all afternoon. I can’t rest, I can’t think. If it rings again, it’s going to drive me mad!”
To emphasize her point, the telephone rang that very moment. Bea groaned while Elise dashed to answer it. Only a part of Elise’s attention was devoted to the caller, however, as she continued to listen to the conversation that took place between her sister and Robert Fairmont.
“Elise gave everyone a fright today,” she heard him say. “People are concerned about her.”
“I don’t see why,” Bea replied grumpily. “She’s as strong as an ox.”
“It seems she’s been under a lot of strain recently.”
Bea cocked her head to one side. “Are you trying to tell me you know my sister better than I do? You may be a fine-and-fancy architect in the town you come from, but I guarantee that you don’t know a thing about...”
Elise hurriedly broke off with the caller, saying, “I’m perfectly fine, really. In fact, I’m going back to the library this afternoon. Listen, Annabelle, I really do have to go. Do you mind if I...?” She murmured a couple of polite yeses and hung up. Then she moved quickly back across the room. “That was Annabelle,” she said to Bea, hoping to break the tension that existed between her sister and Robert Fairmont. She knew all the signals for when Bea didn’t like someone, and those flags were flying at full mast. “Our postmistress,” she explained to Robert. “She just wanted to see how I was.” The words she had been unable to find earlier now rushed out of her in a whirl. “She heard it from someone who came into the post office. They’d heard it from someone who heard it from someone else who had been in the library. It’s truly amazing. I think I’ve had a call from almost everyone in town!”
Robert’s gaze traveled from Bea to her. Elise couldn’t tell what he thought. Then a smile slowly lightened his features. “You’re a very lucky woman,” he said, “to have so many people care about you.”
Elise surrendered to the charm of his smile, but Bea seemed totally immune. She harrumphed crossly, “They’re all a bunch of silly people who don’t have anything better to do with their time.”
Elise was embarrassed by Bea’s hateful demeanor. The inhabitants of Tyler knew her; they were accustomed to her sharp tongue. But Robert Fairmont was a guest in their town, in their home. He wouldn’t understand. “Maybe we should go back to the library,” she suggested. “I truly would like to show everyone that I’m—”
“It was my understanding that you were home for the day!” Bea snapped, interrupting her.
“No, Bea,” Elise explained. “I told you I was going back.”
“Because of him?” Bea glanced spitefully at the professor.
“No, because I have to. I have work to do, Bea. You know that.”
“But you almost fainted. What if you do it again?”
Elise knew that Bea wasn’t voicing concern for her wellbeing. In her own way her sister loved her, but it wasn’t in Bea to think of another person first. Particularly not Elise.
“Then I’ll sit down and wait for it to be over!” Elise returned shortly. She took a bracing breath. “I’ll be home no later than six-thirty. I promise.”
She reached for her purse, glad of her forethought in setting it near the door. Then she turned to Robert. “Are you ready?” she asked with brittle control.
Robert nodded, but before moving away, he addressed Bea. “It was nice to meet you. Maybe next time it will be under better circumstances.” He was making an excuse for her ill humor.
Bea snapped. “I don’t see any reason why there should be a next time.”
Pain filled Elise’s heart as she wondered what Bea’s life, not to mention her own, would have been like if Bea hadn’t fallen on the icy steps. Blindly, she walked toward the door. Robert was just behind her and, sensing her need, he reached out to lightly touch her back, guiding her toward the exit.
Gratitude instantly took the place of pain, and not even Bea’s acerbic reminder, “Six-thirty, Elise!” could steal away the warmth that temporarily surrounded her being.
* * *
BEA SAT ALONE in the house, grumbling to herself. She was always alone, or so it seemed. She should be used to it. But it didn’t make the hours pass any faster. In Elise’s opinion, as long as she had her television and her books, her magazines and her dolls, she would be all right. Then Elise could go out into the world with a free conscience and not have to think about her. Leave her all alone except for the marmalade cat...who at present wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Buttercup!” Bea called, snapping her fingers near the floor. “Come to Bea, Buttercup!” she called again, but it did no good. The silly cat was sleeping somewhere, probably somewhere that she shouldn’t.
Bea straightened, drawing her hand back into her lap. She sighed and looked at the closed front door. Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that man. Not one little bit. She knew danger when she saw it, and he was definitely danger! Elise practically quivered every time he looked at her. She might not be completely aware of it herself, but Bea was.
Her mind went back to another man, years before, who had come calling on Elise. Elise had been twenty...no, nineteen. How many years ago was that? Thirty-four. My God, Bea thought dully. That meant she’d been in this chair for... Bea let her chin drop. Forty-two years!
A moment later she lifted her hands to examine them. The fingers were still long and narrow, tapering to delicate oval nails at the tips. But the skin had lost a great deal of its elasticity and age spots had begun to appear.
Her lips tightened. She was growing old. And what did she have to show for it? Nothing.
With a strength of purpose that would have surprised Elise had she been there, Bea pushed her chair over to the hall mirror, where she arranged herself in the best possible light. What she saw reflected was a drab-looking woman shrunk into an invalid’s chair. Dried-up; prune-faced. She tried to smile, but the muscles protested and her effort came off as more of a leer. She moved impatiently away.
No, she didn’t like that man, that fancy architecture professor. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, or the way he looked at Elise...which were two entirely different matters. Bea would have to be vigilant if she didn’t want to be left alone. Would have to watch Elise for any threatening signs.
Buttercup sidled up to the chair and, purring, rubbed her yellow side along the rubber rim of the right wheel.
“Ah! So there you are!” Bea exclaimed. She reached down to scoop the cat onto her lap. Buttercup responded by arching her back. “Yes,” Bea said a few moments later, still absently stroking a silky neck. “I must be extremely watchful.”
* * *
THE MERCEDES DIDN’T SEEM nearly as alien as it had on her previous ride. Still, Elise could not relax. She glanced at Robert Fairmont as he competently negotiated the Tyler streets. He didn’t look in the least disturbed, but she was. Bea’s rudeness had been unforgivable. She tried to apologize.
“I’m sorry that Bea... She didn’t really mean...” Elise took a breath and started over. “Bea can be extremely difficult at times.”
Robert glanced at her. “There’s no need to apologize.”
Elise shook her head. “No, I believe there is. She says things, does things. I understand because I live with her. But she forgets that other people don’t understand.”
“Has she been in a wheelchair long?”
“Most of her life.”
Robert was silent. Elise knew that her answer had abolished another excuse. A person unused to physical impairment could be forgiven for lashing out. Bea didn’t have that defense.
Elise’s hands tightened in her lap. “I can’t blame her, though. If it were me...”
How many times over the years had she wished that it had been her instead of Bea who had fallen on the steps? Even now she wished that she could trade places with her. Of course, she doubted that Bea would have cared for her in quite the same way. She’d probably be a resident of Worthington House now, possibly even placed in the skilled-care facility. She’d be one of the people she brought books to on a weekly basis. There would be no library as she knew it....
A light touch brought Elise from her reverie. She jumped, blinking.
Robert smiled. “You were a thousand miles away,” he said, replacing his hand on the steering wheel.
Elise hadn’t meant to woolgather. She resumed her apology. “I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t anything personal. Bea’s just...like that.” Yet Elise was afraid that it was very much personal. Bea disliked certain people more than others. Her reasoning was a mystery.
“It didn’t bother me,” he said firmly.
Elise sighed.
Soon the library came into view. Several cars were parked out front. Robert maneuvered the Mercedes into a slot next to a pickup. When they got out, instead of immediately coming to join Elise on the sidewalk, Robert opened the back door of the car and leaned inside to extract a long tube from the back seat. Elise knew what it contained: the plans for the new library.
He closed the door and walked up to her. Jiggling the tube, he said, “If you’re not up to this, say so. And any time you get tired, say so as well.”
“I’m perfectly—”
“—All right. I know. But it sounds as if this town tried to kill you with kindness when you were supposed to be resting. You’re little better off now than you were earlier. Except maybe you’ve eaten. You have eaten, haven’t you?”
Elise nodded as she fell into step at his side. She was very much aware of him. Aware of how handsome he was, of the lean vitality of his body, of the power of his personality. It felt good to be walking next to him; it felt good that he seemed to care about her well-being.
“I forgot to ask,” he said as they started up the library’s front steps. “Did you hear anything more about the leak?”
“Joe said the plumber would come right away. Hopefully, he’s been and gone. That way Joe can finish. Otherwise, it could take weeks.”
“And you need the room.”
“We always need the room.”
Pauline was the first to see them. She looked up from a stack of returned books and quickly came to take Elise’s hand. “Are you sure you should be doing this?” she asked. “I know what you said, but this has been such a hard week...for everyone, but for you in particular.” She turned to Robert. “Elise is one of our town treasures. We don’t quite know how we’d get along without her. The library would collapse—that’s a fact!”
“Of course I’m sure,” Elise answered brusquely. Pauline made her sound like a monument, like something pigeons sat on! Which wasn’t a description she wanted Robert Fairmont to remember when he...if he!...ever thought of her. “How is Joe getting along?” she asked, to deflect any further unfortunate comments. “Have you checked recently?”
Pauline shook her head as Delia rushed over.
“Oh, Elise!” It was obvious Delia had found another cause for excitement. “We were all so worried, even after Pauline called you. We thought about calling Dr. Baron, but we decided not to.”
Jeffrey Baron was the only grandson of Judson Ingalls, the most prominent man in Tyler, and the great-grandson of Alberta Ingalls, for whom the library was named. He also happened to be Elise’s doctor.
“Thank heaven for that, at least,” Elise murmured. She indicated Robert. “Would one of you please show Professor Fairmont to my office? I think I should check with Joe myself. I—I won’t be long.” The assurance had been directed to Robert, but she didn’t look at him.
She felt ridiculous as she hurried off toward the Biography Room. He knew what she was doing, of course. Running away. But she wasn’t accustomed to such overpowering attention. Even warned to expect it, she found it hard to take. She had merely come close to passing out, for heaven’s sake. She hadn’t actually done it. Neither had she expired! Yet from the way everyone behaved, it was as if they expected her to correct that particular oversight at any given moment!
She moved briskly into the work area, not pausing even when she came upon the soft canvas tarps that had been spread over much of the floor and draped over the built-in bookcases along the walls. The hole in the ceiling was larger than ever, but the edges were cut smooth in preparation for repair.
As was his habit, Joe sang snatches of an opera as he worked, but he stopped the instant he saw Elise. From the look of concern that instantly clouded his handsome features, Elise knew he was about to question her precipitate decision to return to work, so she quickly deflected him by saying, “I take it the plumber has already been here?” She held her shoulders straight, her chin high. She wanted to look her usual efficient self. She nodded to Lars, who had pulled off his hat and now held it rather self-consciously in front of his gangly, adolescent body.
Joe blinked and swallowed the words he had been about to say. “Uh—yes. He, uh...he says everything is fine as far as he can tell. It was a leak along the same pipe, at another joint. He replaced that bit and checked the fittings as far as he could. He didn’t see any other problems, but he says he can’t guarantee a thing. The system’s so old.”
The plumber had said almost those exact words to Elise when she’d called to thank him for coming out to fix the first leak. Yet she hadn’t expected trouble again so quickly. She moved closer to the hole and peered up, then backed away. “Do you think you’ll be finished today?” she asked.
“Sure thing,” Joe said. “Except for the paint. I’ll stop by tomorrow and take care of that.”
Elise frowned. “Don’t you normally take Saturdays off? I’m sure I remember Susannah saying that you and she and Gina were going to do something special.”
He grinned. “This won’t take half an hour. Then it will be done and you won’t have to worry anymore.”
Confronted with Joe’s noble effort to ease her way, Elise could not show misgivings. She smiled brightly, just as he wanted her to. But as she left the room to return to her office, her cheerful smile crumbled. It would take a great deal more than a half hour’s worth of paint to fix everything she had to worry about.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_34e2e265-3a9f-59f2-a96e-274af54d7982)
“THERE ARE TWO WAYS to cut costs,” Robert said as he and Elise studied the plans. “We can make the library smaller, reduce the overall size. Or we can downscale the quality of the materials we use. I recommend we try a combination of the two.” He had thrown his jacket over the arm of her chair, his only concession to comfort.
The set of blueprints unrolled on Elise’s cleared desk was an exact copy of the set the town council had on file. Elise knew almost every line by heart from her work with the other architect for the better part of three years.
She tilted her head, frowning. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘downscale the quality.’ How? What do you mean?”
Robert grinned. “It’s the difference between a gold toilet seat and a brass one. Does it really make any difference to the user?”
Elise stared at him, then she, too, started to grin.
He continued. “I’m exaggerating, but you see what I mean. Your town council went first class on this structure...which is fine. People want to be proud of their public buildings, which they think reflect the community. Chambers of Commerce love this attitude. They put pictures of first-class buildings in all their brochures to get people to visit here, to move here. Look! See what a progressive place Tyler is? Look at the new library we’ve built ourselves. Gold toilet seats!”
Elise started to giggle.
Robert’s eyes twinkled. “There are degrees of quality. My job is to help you decide just exactly how much quality you want and can afford and where you want to put it.” He turned to a booklet of photocopied specifications. “For example, these windows. This particular brand costs a small fortune. There’s no reason why something less expensive can’t work equally as well. And these crown moldings. Same thing. I know where we can find something just as good for a lot less. Then we get to the library plan itself....” He looked at her. “See what I mean?”
Elise nodded.
He went on, “There’s a lot of space here that’s wasted. I know!” He raised a hand as if to ward off attack. “But there is. When you have lots of money, space is wonderful. When you don’t...”
Elise saw herself sitting in a brand-new library with barely enough room to turn around. She protested, “But we have to have space. Patrons need to feel they have room to breathe, not to mention the staff! And the books...do you know books need air, too?”
Robert nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do. I also know you followed all the standards for library design, and I’m not talking about cutting anything there. I’m talking about the extras.” He flipped back through the plan until he arrived at the page he wanted. “Exactly how important is this atrium?”
Elise had loved the idea of bringing the out-of-doors inside. Wide sheets of glass would seal any moisture away from the book collection, so that patrons and staff alike could be treated to more than just the odd pot plant stationed forlornly on the circulation and reference desks. Looking forward to tending the area herself, she had already started to research which plants would be better suited. She shook her head. “Not important enough to keep us from building the library.”
Robert agreed. “Now, consider the curved stairway. What if, instead of having it where it is, taking up so much space...what if we move it to one side and straighten it out a bit....” While he talked, he began to make a quick succession of strokes with a red pen.
Fascinated, Elise watched as Robert’s ideas were transformed into a picture. With relatively little effort, he captured the feel of the main circulation area, deleting the atrium and shifting the stairway. Then with a few additional strokes, he sketched in the work areas, the new computerized cataloging system, even a few people, one of whom was sitting at a terminal and scratching his head at the mysteries of advanced technology. The people weren’t really people in the traditional sense of the word. But with a few practiced squiggles and swirls, Robert had given them life and form.
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Ginger Chambers
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: WELCOME TO TYLERBETTER ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVESThere′s been a flood at the old library, and the staff needs all the help they can get! Pitch in and catch up on the latest goings-on in America′s favorite hometown.A LATE-BLOOMING PASSIONElise Ferguson, Tyler′s head librarian, has slipped uneventfully into middle-aged spinsterhood. But lately she′s been seen in the company of Robert Fairmont – that distinguished-looking visiting professor of architecture…OLD RIVALRIES RENEWEDElise′s sister, Bea, is certain Robert must have ulterior motives. After all, why would any man be interested in Elise? Bea′s snooping uncovers more than even she bargained for – and threatens everyone′s happiness.